Luke 20-24
As we come to the end of this gospel we know how it is going to end. We've already heard it twice. This road is not going anywhere good--at least not for Jesus.
Maybe that is why my attention turned elsewhere this morning--to the Pharisees. Throughout the gospel they come across as the Bad Guys. If this were a Western, they would wear black hats and have mustaches!
And yet...
As I have said before, if I am honest, I want a congregation full of Pharisees. They were the good people! They were the ones who were encouraging, pushing, pleading with people to keep Torah. They truly believed that if everyone would just follow the law for one day, then the Messiah would come to set up God's kingdom.
And here comes this rabble-rousing, law breaking, drunkard and wine-bibber itinerant preacher stirring up the people with this new teaching that seemed to turn the law, their law on its head! What are we to do with him?
And then the verse that caught my attention this morning. They knew what they wanted to do, but they couldn't because "they were afraid of the people."
I wonder if that is not the case for many of us in the church. We would follow Jesus too, but we are afraid of the people. We are really afraid of what would happen if we started hanging out with sinners and tax collectors--those that the good people look down on. What would happen if we started hanging out with drug dealers and prostitutes? What would happen if we opened our buildings up to young girls to keep them away from pimps? What about the skaters and the kids that truth be told we really don't want in our youth group or building? What if we started preaching about the fact that putting our trust in financial spreadsheets is what has brought us to the place we are as a nation and as individuals, and what following Jesus really means is selling it all and giving it away? (Except of course, for our building, and my house, and he really can't expect me to do without health insurance!)
Luke's gospel starts with the angel's exhortation, "Don't be afraid." And yet, everyone in Luke is afraid. We are afraid. Jesus was even afraid. At the end of the Last Supper, that holiest of times, Jesus tells his disciples to go out on a weapons buying spree! So should we be surprised when one of them cuts off someone's ear in the Garden? Isn't that what Jesus said?
Maybe THAT was the moment of decision for Jesus. He probably could have turned the tide right there; he could have led a revolution. Or he can be faithful and committed to the path he has been traveling. I can imagine him wavering--but then he decides.
Put away your sword. We're not going that way. I am not going to turn aside because I am afraid of where it will lead. At that moment he really chose to place his spirit, and his life, in God's hands.
Would we? Or will we be afraid?
So Luke and the synoptic gospels are over. Tomorrow we go to John and a totally different way of telling the story!
2 comments:
I like the idea of a "moment of decision" for Jesus. We so often assume it was easy for him, that he had everything figured out from the beginning, but there are definitely clues here and there that this was not the case. He still had a choice, and in the end he chose obedience and sacrifice over a violent display of power. Pretty amazing.
I love the resurrection account in Luke. This is the passage I did my sermon on in my preaching class in seminary. Love the women at the tomb, love the angel telling them to "remember what he told you" (so they had heard it before), love the stubborn apostles refusing to believe what sounded to them like an "idle tale" (I always think "old wives tale"), love the Emmaus road journey where Jesus walks incognito with them, love the recognition of Jesus in the breaking of bread, love Jesus coming to the apostles and eating fish to prove he isn't a ghost, love all of it. Good stuff.
So, yes, John tomorrow. As the old Monty Python show used to say between skits, "And now for something completely different . . ."
As I listened to Luke, I was struck in a way that I never had been when reading, how, unlike Matthew, entire passages are lifted almost verbatim to Mark's gospel. Now that we are in John, the difference from the Synoptic gospels also is much more apparent!
~Scott McBroom
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