As we return now to Ordinary Time, we pick up in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus, having set his face toward Jerusalem, now begins the denouement of his ministry. After the Transfiguration Jesus told the disciples what would occur, and so it begins.
The Gospel we hear on this 13th Sunday of the Year sounds abrupt and disjointed as the movement contains short and seemingly unconnected moments. Jesus is with the disciples, and while they encounter random individuals along the way, there is no teaching of the crowds here. This section of the Gospel is transitory – Jesus is moving from one place and one point of emphasis to another place and a different point of emphasis.
There are several subtle, yet very important, allusions to Old Testament prophecies and events in this section of the Gospel. Whether or not the disciples are cognizant of them at the time is uncertain, but certainly their meaning was not lost on the later Church and the evangelists.
We often get struck by the odd response of the disciples to the Samaritan village where they and Jesus were met with hostility. James and his brother John – the “Sons of Thunder” as Jesus calls them elsewhere in the Gospel – want to reign down fire and brimstone upon the village.
This response seems very out of character for them. They seem to presume power that is not given to them, nor one that they could presume to exercise. There is no place in the Gospels where Jesus even suggests that such a response would be reasonable.
Jesus rebukes them. As outrageous as their request seems, there is an Old Testament precedent for this act. The prophet Elijah called for fire from heaven to consume his enemies on two occasions, demonstrating that he is a man of God to those who questioned his authority.
So besides the gut, and very legitimate response, that calling upon heaven to destroy this village would run contrary to his message and mission, Jesus also would need to distance himself and his disciples from Elijah.
Jesus cannot identify himself with Elijah for he is not Elijah returned as he reveals elsewhere in his ministry. The crowds muse to this possibility, and so then to act as did Elijah would only serve to add to the confusion. At the same time, the disciples James and John cannot presume to act with Jesus as the disciples of Elijah did. The relationship of Elijah to the ministry of Jesus is always a curious one.
Our First Reading is Elijah calling Elisha as his successor. Elisha abandons his life and family to follow Elijah and succeed him in his ministry as prophet to all of Israel. The disciples, too, abandon their livelihoods in order to follow Jesus.
The relationship between Jesus and his disciples is very different from that of Elijah and Elisha. Elisha stands as a prophet in his own right. And, while he was chosen by God as the successor to Elijah and may even be a greater prophet than Elijah, this is not so of the disciples.
The disciples are not chosen to replace Jesus. As Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus is God present acting in place and time. The ministry of Jesus, which reaches its climax in the Paschal Events, is unique to him. The disciples will never “replace” Jesus nor will they ever even approach him much less be greater than he is.
This request of James and John, then, to rain down fire from heaven, is similar to their request (or that of their mother) to sit at his right and at his left when he comes into his kingdom.
Their ambition to point to Jesus as Messiah comes with their own selfish desire to stand as his heirs and reign in his stead. They have missed entirely the point of why they are accompanying Jesus to Jerusalem.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.