On the Road with Jesus

The stories of Jesus that he told on the road through Samaria, between Galilee and Jerusalem, take on a distinctly practical tone. Jesus and his disciples have left the synagogues and familiarity of Galilee and are not yet at their ultimate destination of the temple in Jerusalem. They are in unfamiliar and hostile territory, but Jesus doesn’t rush through Samaria with a sense of urgency. If anything, he slows down. Takes his time. He begins to lay out a vision of the kingdom that makes sense in a place where most of the people don’t think like him, act like him or worship like him.

This is where the stories of Jesus, on his road trip through Samaria, provide for us an utterly compelling view of life with God that inspires us on the journey. The texts we will be looking at are found Luke 13 and 14.

It is a travel narrative in which Jesus is the one who knows exactly where we’re headed but will not miss an opportunity to take a pit stop or two. Then, at each seemingly unplanned pause on the road we see that Jesus has brilliantly disguised profound, eternal mysteries by wrapping them in tales of seeds, fig trees, doorways, bread and banquets. Our privilege is to walk this road with Jesus and discover that the Good News of the Kingdom is breaking in all around us as we remain on the way with him.