Scripture Reading: Luke 9:51-62
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.
Power and Weakness: How the Church Follows a Crucified Savior Luke 9:51–62
Based on Luke 9:51-62 and the story of Elijah
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.
Today, Jesus begins his journey to go to Jerusalem. This is a turning point in the Gospel of Luke where everything up to this point is introducing who Jesus is. And then at this verse, it says, "When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Everything after this in the Gospel of Luke is Jesus's journey to the cross where He will die, there be buried, rise and ascend into heaven with the promise that He will return to give us eternal life.
But our story today, the surprising part, is not that, but what happens when the Samaritans reject Him. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He sends messengers ahead, and they say, "No, we don't want you." And it says, because he's going to Jerusalem. And then James and John ask Jesus, kind of something weird. They say, "Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Which is exactly what I think when someone says they don't want to come to church, right? Maybe not. What a weird way to approach this problem. They don't receive Jesus, and they say, "Yeah, let's burn that village to the ground."
The Paradox of Strength and Weakness
And what it reminds me of is some of the problems that Christians have when we face rejection or when we are thinking about the way the Christian church should function. Sometimes we lose the paradox of strength and weakness that is evident in the Christian church. And what I mean by that is we have both the Almighty, all powerful God on our side, who can do things like rain down fire from heaven, and also a God who dies on a cross, which is about the weakest thing you can imagine, which means that we have to hold on both to all powerful God and weakest thing in the world, and somehow both things need to take place in the Christian church. Holding on to both is the key to understanding how we work in the world. Over emphasizing one or the other will lead us into error.
The challenge for the disciples here is they are leaning into the all powerful Almighty God. They come, they go to this village, and when the village rejects Jesus, they say, "Oh, yeah, you want to reject the God of the universe. We will call fire down on your head." And if all you have is strength, that's the kind of thing you might do.
Elijah's Example of Power
Our story in the Old Testament reading comes right after a story of that kind of strength. We get Elijah in the wilderness, desperate, but right before that, Elijah stands on Mount Carmel and challenges the prophets of Baal to a duel. The duel is who can call down fire from heaven and light the sacrifice. The prophets of Baal can do nothing. And Elijah is so confident in God that he douses the sacrifice with so much water that there is a puddle around the base. And he prays, and fire comes down so hot that it consumes the altar, not just the sacrifice. And so Elijah stands up victorious, and he tells all of Israel to go out and kill all those prophets. And they do it—power and might.
Maybe the disciples were thinking about another story where Elijah was out on his own and a king sent armies up to talk with him, and every time they did, Elijah called fire down from heaven and burned them up until the point where they had to, kind of like, "Elijah, don't kill us. We just want to talk."
And so the disciples ahead of Jesus aren't thinking, "Yeah, we're going to Jerusalem, and you know what's going to happen in Jerusalem? Jesus is going to take over. Now is the time to punish our enemies. Now is the time to force everyone here to follow the true Messiah and we will conquer."
Jesus's Power and Promise
Now, Jesus is powerful enough to do that. We see him throughout the Gospel of Luke and the other gospels accomplishing amazing acts of power. He heals people by his touch. Demons come to him, and they quiver in fear and beg him, and all he has to do is cast them out with a word. He's on a boat, and the storm rages, and he says, "Be quiet," and the storm listens—almighty, all powerful God. He is on the side of his church. He is there. He has this kind of power to save and we rejoice in this, because this means that his promises come true. No matter what this means, we can trust in savior who is Almighty, who is all powerful, who will not let anything get out of his hand, including you.
The Danger of Overemphasizing Power
But the disciples take it too far. They know that this God, Jesus is there to save, and that everybody who follows Him has the promise of Almighty God. But they also think that this almighty God will destroy. And for the Christian church, we sometimes lean into that. We sometimes want to lean into fighting the people who reject the Savior, voting for laws, getting rules that will force people to come to Jesus, or maybe just act like Christians, or maybe it's what they did in the Middle Ages, when they would actually send armies out and threaten to kill them if they didn't get baptized. Charlemagne did that. Very effective at raising the numbers of people in your church. Not so effective at changing hearts, right?
And I think today, when we look out at a world that is so weird and so crazy, and we think back to the nostalgic days... many people think Christians just haven't been aggressive enough. We just haven't been hard enough, and we need to be louder and angrier and make sure we get out there and bring back those days. And we have to remember our God is all powerful, but he didn't use his power that way.
When we overemphasize the power of God, what we get is a God who fights. We need to remember his strength in his promises, the God of all creation, and that everything is coming to the day when Jesus returns. But also remember that the Jesus who came and spoke to the storm, allowed himself to be crucified, and that is the side that we also have.
The Example of Christ's Weakness
Our Savior, the God of all creation, took on the weakness of human flesh to the point of dying on a cross so that you and I could be saved. And this is not just the moment of salvation. It is not just a task that he brought forward. It is also the example of what it means to be faithful to us as humans—that the Christian church serves as Christ serves us, that we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him, and we live in the weakness of our Savior.
So what does that mean? It means we can't fight like the disciples want. We don't go out and use the world's kind of strength to make Christians. We follow the example of Jesus, Christ, who used the word, who loved and served.
The Danger of Overemphasizing Weakness
Now there is a danger in this weakness too. The danger is what happened with Elijah. See, Elijah goes out, he has this amazing victory, and it means nothing, because immediately after he kills the prophets of Baal, Jezebel comes after him with soldiers, and he runs out into the wilderness, and he is all by himself. And he says, "God, I'm going to die. I'm by myself. Nobody is working for you. Everything is done. Just kill me."
He overemphasizes the weakness of the word. He overemphasizes his loneliness. He forgets about the power behind it all, and we the church, can be like that too. We can over emphasize the weakness that we have as human beings and think, "Well, we're just... we're the only ones who are faithful. We're just sitting here. The church is declining. Everything is going terrible. The offerings are less. Our people are dying off. And you know, we gotta... everything is lost. And if you look around at all those people who are preaching prosperity gospel, they're getting bigger and bigger and more successful. We're all just lost."
And we can be like Elijah, thinking, "This is it."
Holding Both Together
But the weakness of God and the strength of God must come together. We who follow our Savior, who died on a cross, need to remember that God is still in charge, that He is in control. His promises are sure and true. Maybe fire won't come down from heaven like the disciples wanted, but our Savior still preserves His church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
For Elijah, the reminder was that he's not alone. That's what he says. He says, "I'm the only one left, God." And then God tells him there are 7,000—7,000 in all of Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal. "You're not alone."
God reminds us that we're not alone, no matter what's going on in the world or in our church. Christ is with us, the Savior, the Almighty, the all powerful, and when we follow Him, we follow a Savior who leads us to resurrection and eternal life. On the last day, he will call us from our graves and give us perfection forever. And no matter what happens now, no matter how weak the church might seem or the gospel might seem here, no matter how different the world gets, we have that sure and certain promise that we cling to a Savior who will give us life—that his power is expressed in this world through the weakness of the proclamation of the gospel.
Conclusion
So we don't want to get stuck in the strength of God and say, "We have to fight like the world." But we also don't want to get stuck in despair, over emphasizing the weakness of God. We remember we follow a Savior who died and served but did so so that we could have life, so that God who would return would restore all things, call the dead from the grave and make all things new in Jesus' name.
Amen,
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