13th Sunday of the Year

25/6/2016

There is a sense of urgency about discipleship – almost like emergency services responding to a crisis, in the Gospel today there is no time to wait for any normal human moments, no reason to delay: the hand must be placed immediately on the plough, the work must begin NOW! It can feel as though Jesus is being a little abrupt in this passage – even a little too intense! But it is a question of priorities: for the Lord, the work of salvation, or proclaiming the Gospel, brooks no delay. Perhaps this intensity is a valuable reminder for us – we can tend to “tame” Jesus, and forget that he was passionately and totally dedicated to the Mission his heavenly Father had entrusted to him – even to the point that he left Nazareth to become a homeless preacher with nowhere to lay his head.