One sentence marks the hinge of this Gospel: 51"he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Everything up to here, the birth, the boyhood, the baptism, the Galilean ministry, has been leading to this. Everything after it, ten chapters of teaching and travel, will be shaped by this deliberate decision. The phrase carries the weight of Isaiah's servant, who set his face like a flint (Isaiah 50:7), a settled resolve that will not be talked out of the road ahead.
The first test of that resolve comes almost at once. A Samaritan village refuses to receive him, 53"because his face was set toward Jerusalem," the city Samaritans saw as a rival to their own holy mountain. James and John, remembering Elijah calling down fire on his enemies, ask what their zeal suggests. 54"do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" By the old standard it is not unreasonable. But Jesus, whose whole mission is aimed at Jerusalem so that mercy might reach everyone, 55"turned and rebuked them." The road to Jerusalem moves on, without retaliation, to 56"another village."
Three brief, sharp exchanges follow, and each exposes a different kind of hesitation. The first volunteers eagerly. 57"I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus answers with a warning in place of a welcome. 58"the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Following him will not offer the security this man may assume. The second is a man Jesus himself calls, and his reply sounds entirely reasonable. 59"let me first go and bury my father," the most sacred family duty in that culture. Jesus' answer is startling. 60"Leave the dead to bury their own dead." The kingdom's urgency outweighs even the highest family obligation.
The third offers to follow, with one small condition. 61"let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus answers with an image from the fields these men worked. 62"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." It is almost the scene in which Elijah found Elisha behind a plow and called him, and Elijah allowed him to go back and say goodbye to his parents first (1 Kings 19:19-21). Jesus, standing where Elijah stood, refuses the request Elijah allowed. A plowman glancing backward cuts a crooked furrow, and a disciple looking back at what he has left cannot walk the straight road Jesus has just set his face toward.
These answers strip away any illusion of what following will cost. Comfort is not guaranteed. The deepest family loyalties can be outranked by the kingdom's urgency. And looking backward, however understandable the reason, is incompatible with the forward, face-set resolve Jesus has just modeled. He is walking toward Jerusalem with nothing held back and nothing unresolved behind him.
What is the one condition you have been attaching to your following? Say it plainly to him, and ask whether it is a plow you can hold with both hands.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son whose face was set toward Jerusalem long before he arrived, resolved on our behalf when resolve was hardest. Give us the same settled determination, undistracted by comfort, unretaliating toward those who refuse us, and undeterred by whatever we are tempted to look back toward instead of you. Whatever the road costs us, let us walk it with our hand already on the plow. In Jesus' name, amen.