Disciples

A man tells Jesus that he will follow him wherever he goes. Jesus answers that foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

It sounds like a warning about losing shelter. The animals have somewhere to return, while the man who follows Jesus must prepare for a life without the comfort of home.

But the same Gospel soon describes Jesus sending messengers into welcoming households. They are instructed to stay there and receive food and drink. Their commission includes provision for their needs.

A man asks Jesus to let him bury his father first. Jesus answers, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” and tells him to proclaim God’s kingdom.

The answer is startling. A familiar explanation makes it a demand for absolute loyalty: following Jesus takes priority even over burying a parent. The son supposedly wishes to fulfil a sacred duty, and Jesus requires him to leave that duty behind.

But why must burial and proclamation compete?

“The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.”
—Luke 10:2, KJV

What must these labourers accomplish? The familiar answer is that they must bring people into faith. The harvest is pictured as a multitude of prospective believers, waiting for enough messengers to gather them into the kingdom.

Why was Peter saddened when Jesus asked him a third time whether he loved him?

The familiar answer is that Peter had denied Jesus three times and now had to repair those denials with three declarations of love. The scene becomes a restoration of a fallen disciple. But this explanation depends on something that must first be established: that Peter had willingly abandoned Jesus, and that his love therefore needed restoring.

Luke 6:20–26 is often read as a simple symmetrical contrast. The poor are blessed, the rich are cursed; the hungry will be filled, the full will hunger; those who weep will laugh, while those who laugh will mourn.

At first sight, the passage appears to describe one single rule of reversal.

But the structure is more complicated.

The encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in John 20 contains an urgency that is easy to overlook. Mary has just recognized Jesus. Her despair instantly turns into overwhelming relief, and naturally she clings to him. Yet Jesus does not allow the reunion to continue. He interrupts it almost immediately:

“Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

Then he sends her to the disciples with a message about precisely that ascent.

The final chapters of the Gospel of John become much easier to understand if they are allowed to speak in their own sequence.

Jesus repeatedly tells the disciples that he must go away. His departure is not presented as an unfortunate loss but as something necessary. Unless he goes, the Paraclete will not come. More surprisingly, Jesus even insists that his departure is advantageous. The one who comes afterward will not represent a deterioration of his presence but an improvement upon it.

There is an apparent contradiction in the Gospel portrayal of Satan.

At one point, through Peter, Jesus is urged not to go toward suffering and crucifixion. Jesus reacts with extraordinary severity: “Get behind me, Satan.”

Later, through Judas, the process leading directly to the crucifixion is set in motion.

At first glance the two actions seem opposite.

First Satan appears to resist the cross.

Then Satan appears to produce it.