Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 9.

This passage contains some interesting juxtapositions.  Luke goes from recounting how Jesus attempted to settle His disciples argument about who would be the greatest by telling them that the least among them would be the greatest to Jesus telling John not to stop outsiders from casting out demons in His name.  Then Luke goes on to recount how James and John wanted to call down lightning on the Samaritans who rejected Jesus.  So, let’s walk through the connections between these events.

Jesus introduced the idea of the least among us being the greatest by telling His disciples (and us) that whoever welcomed a child in His name welcomed Him, and whoever welcomed Him welcomed the One who sent Him.  When we take that with John telling Jesus that they had tried to stop an outsider from casting out demons in Jesus’ name, I take it to mean that the disciples thought they were greater than this outsider.  The outsider was doing good in Jesus’ name, so by trying to stop him, they were failing to welcome him, and thus, had failed to welcome Jesus.  Then when James and John wanted to call lightning down on the Samaritans they once more demonstrated that they had failed to understand Jesus’ teaching about how we should deal with those outside our group.  It also combines with John being the spokesman for trying to stop the outsider from casting out demons in Jesus’ name to cement the understanding that James and John were the hotheads among Jesus’ disciples.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.