Third Sunday after Pentecost: Gospel, Luke 9:51-62                                 

Luke 9:51-62

My this is a gospel reading that brings so much to the reader. There is a difference between reading a text that is to be observed and one that is set out for the reader to obey something. This includes both. But I want to focus on something at the very outset that is to be observed.

“Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51a).Watch the Lord Jesus. He has a task to accomplish. We know that task. But perhaps the first-time reader would not and so they may ask why does Jesus “set His face”? 

So much of Christianity of the American sort has become optional. Baptism is seen that way. Communion? Oh, whenever I can get around to it. Even weekly attendance is a thing of the past. Or perhaps a never thing for a new convert in this climate. Now this isn’t everyone. But this kind of lazy spirituality marks the American church landscape on many fronts.

Jesus has a job to do. And His mission is not a shared one in this regard: He is dying a unique death with a unique result. Forgiveness of sin, freedom from the devil, and triumph over death is won by it and offered free to all who will receive. And we can only observe. Jesus is set to do it. It is His duty, called by the Father He is willing beyond willing to oblige. Read on in the passage and you clearly understand that setting His face toward Jerusalem was the impetus that took Him all the way to His cross. The scapegoat must die outside the walls of the great city.

Jesus set His face not to require us to follow Him on that mission, but on whatever He gives us to do. There is Christian duty. Filled with the Holy Spirit and the conviction that Jesus is the truth, we can now set our face to His task.