About this sermon
Luke 9:43-62 is read in one block, then unpacked as a run of failures: the disciples cannot take in that Jesus will be betrayed, they argue over which of them is greatest, and they try to stop an outsider casting out demons in his name. The teacher reads John's complaint as jealousy over the standing of the Twelve, and James and John wanting fire on a Samaritan village as the exact opposite of the instruction to shake the dust from their feet. It closes with three would-be followers and the sending of the seventy-two.
