The following commentary may help to get a deeper understanding of the text.

At first glance, James and John, as featured in today’s gospel, seem like children on a playground threatening to take home their bat and ball when the game does not go their way. When the Samaritans refused them hospitality, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on their town. Jesus reprimanded them for their desire to misuse and misdirect their ministry and set out with them for the next town en route to their final destination, Jerusalem. However, Luke had a more profound reason for portraying James and John in such an unbecoming light.

At this point in his gospel, the Lucan Jesus resolves to head to Jerusalem where the exodus or departure that he had discussed with Moses and Elijah (9.31) was to take place. In 9.51, Luke refers to Jesus’ departure as being taken from this world. The Greek term analempis did not only refer to Jesus’ death but to the whole series of saving events that would climax in his ascension. Luke Timothy Johnson (The Gospel of Luke, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN: 1991) points out the similarity between Jesus’ being taken up and the reference to Elijah’s being taken up to heaven by God in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2.1). The association between Jesus and Elijah is further illustrated in the apostles’ request for a destroying fire from heaven to fall on the Samaritans (v. 54). In 2 Kings, when King Ahaziah of Samaria sent soldiers to force Elijah into compliance, the prophet called down a fire from heaven which consumed them. A third similarity between Jesus and Elijah is reflected in the offer of some of Jesus’ potential disciples, “I will follow you” (vv. 57, 61). Elijah had received similar pledges of discipleship from his successor Elisha who said, “I will not leave you” (2 Kings 2:2, 4, 6). Through these allusions to Elijah, Luke makes it clear that it is as God’s Prophet par excellence that Jesus will proceed to Jerusalem to effect the salvation of humankind. As he travels, Jesus speaks the saving word of God to all who will listen. Those who listen and attend become his disciples; those who refuse cut themselves off from the good news Jesus has come to proclaim.

In verses 57-62, Luke offers a sampling of responses to Jesus’ call to discipleship. To the first offer, “I will be your follower wherever you go” (v. 57), Jesus explained that his was an itinerant life. With “nowhere to lay his head”, Jesus did not organize an institutional ministry with a fixed horarium wherein his services were dispersed from a central base of operations. The mobility of Jesus’ ministry was dictated by the needs of the people; he sought them out, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the sinful and the lost. Jesus indicated that those who would go wherever he did should exercise a similarly flexible ministry.

Jesus’ other statements to his would-be disciples warrant some clarification. To the man who requested that he first bury his father before following Jesus, the response, “Let the dead bury their dead” seems harsh. However, George M. Lamsa (Idioms in the Bible Explained, Harper and Row Publishers, San Francisco: 1985) has shed some much needed light on the matter. “Let me bury my father” is more properly understood as an indication that the man’s father was not dead or even sick but elderly; therefore, his son was asking to delay his participation in Jesus’ ministry until such time as his father did pass from this world. But the demands of discipleship are more important than convenient. To that end, Jesus invited the man to come away to proclaim the kingdom. In Aramaic, the word for dead is metta; the word for town is matta. Lamsa suggests that in many of the mutilated manuscripts the small Aramaic character which determines the difference between these two words may have been lost or destroyed. Therefore, this saying of Jesus is more reasonably rendered as “Let the town bury their dead.”