Luke 19:1-10
Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.
When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”
Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”
Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
|
0 Comments
Psalm 46:1-6, 10-11 I was talking with a person last Thursday, in a counseling setting, and this person was expressing their frustration about a situation they are currently involved in. They are frustrated with the other people involved in the situation, and with the way the situation was moving. They want it all to move faster. They want it to be all over with … to be behind them. They kept assuring me they trusted God’s timeline. “I trust God…but…”
The person used this phrase several times until finally I held up my hand and said something to the effect of: You know you really can’t say that. They stopped and looked a little puzzled. I continued, You really can’t say you ‘trust God … but …’ This applies in any discussion of “trust” but you especially cannot “trust God …but” because the “but’ immediately negates any claim of trust. Trust is an all-or-nothing proposition. You either do or you don’t. There is no half-in, half-out. You can say, with complete honesty, such things as “I want to trust God completely” or “I’m trying to trust.” And I think this is what many of us mean, when we say we trust God. And sometimes we think we really do trust God … until we get to that “…but.” In my life I have found myself in dark places where it seemed that trusting God was the only option open to me. And yet, I knew full well that I wasn’t very good at it – and I found myself forced to confront that unspoken “…but.” Forced to say things like, I going to trust you even though I don’t feel very trustful – I’m going to say the words and trust that you will help me to eventually feel it. And God honored that pathetic prayer and in time I was able to recognize that God had come through for me – not in the way I initially wanted, but still – God had come through for me and with me. The Psalm we just read sets a very high standard for us. It most clearly does not say that we can trust God because God is always going to jump in and fix everything for us – give us everything we think we need. God is most decidedly not Santa Claus. [For that matter, when did Santa Claus ever give you everything you thought you wanted?] None of us has reached the age we are today without at least once or twice being forced to acknowledge that things around us are most definitely not OK. This isn’t what we prayed for. We don’t get the job we really, really want. The medical test comes back with a not-good result. Someone we love dearly does die in spite of our best prayers. What the Psalm does tell us is to trust God even if the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. Even if everything literally falls to pieces, even if the worst possible thing happens. And that is hard. I suspect in actual everyday life that it is impossible. And so we aim at something close. We manage the best we can. We trust God to be there even when it doesn’t go the way we want it to go. When we honestly trust God with our lives, we pray…and then we accept what comes as the answer for those prayers – even if it is light-years away from the thing we asked for. We accept that God is with us here and will guide us through. And if we have really practiced trusting then we one day wake up to realize that where we are is exactly the best place for us to be. Not only a place that we can make work, but the very place that gives us our deepest joy. THIS, not the thing we asked for, is what gives us joy and life – and we might never have asked for it because we never even knew it was an option for us. God knows stuff like this. "Be still and know that I am God..." Knowing that God is God lies at the heart of trusting. Trusting God is going on with our lives knowing that it is going to be all right – somehow, it is going to be all right. Trusting God is waking up that one morning and recognizing that it is, indeed, all right – somehow it really is. And life is good. And God’s goodness surround us. And there is joy in the world – in spite of all the terrible things that happen. Somehow – we recognize God’s presence in us and around us – and we know that God is taking care of things. And God is taking care of us. Be still and know ..... Genesis 32:22-31 When I was younger, back in the days when I was still a loyal Catholic, my husband and I were close friends with the young Irish priest who served our local parish. This parish had a school attached to it and it was part of Fr. Dan’s day to make the rounds of the classrooms and chat with the kids.
One day when Dan arrived in a certain classroom he was greeted with this question: Is it true that when Mary died the room was filled with the scent of roses? Being fairly young and none too versed in parish politics Dan answered honestly: No – that’s just a nice story that shows the love and reverence we have for the Mother of Jesus. Well later that day, Dan got reamed up one side and down the other by Sr. Mary-Whoever who was that classroom’s teacher – and the person who had told the children the story in the first place. Dan learned that day that it is never a good idea to casually discount another person’s mythology. And that’s what this reading is today – a piece of the Hebrew peoples’ mythologizing of their relationship with God. This kind of mythologizing is a recounting of an event – most often with grandiose detail added to emphasize the importance of the event and the people involved. Everyday human transactions are easy to forget in time. But the ones that truly have an effect on us tend to grow in our retellings – not because we intend to lie but because they just seem that important to us – we use verbal frills to make sure everyone understands their importance. In time, these “frills’ become part of the story. Sometimes – over long lengths of time and many repetitions – they become the most important part of the story, all that we remember. The story for today – Jacob wrestling with an angel -- is a story that has puzzled readers for generations. It seems to tell an exciting story, but when you stop and think about it afterwards it really doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Let’s set some background, first. Years ago, after Jacob had cheated his brother Esau out of his legitimate eldest-son’s blessing, he had run away to live with his uncle Laban. Over the years he had worked for Laban, married his two wives Rachel and Leah and had become a rich man himself. He was so successful that he was now crowding Uncle Laban and things were getting tense between them. At this point Jacob received a message from God telling him that it was time now to go home, take up his stolen blessing, and make peace with Esau. And so he did, he and his wives and his servants and his flocks. They packed up and left, stealing as much as they thought they could get away with in the process. It’s important to remember that Jacob truly is a thief and a scoundrel. That’s a key piece of this story. And here is where our reading picks up today. Jacob is understandably tense at the prospect of facing Esau again so he sends everybody else across the river into home territory but stays behind himself for one last night alone – maybe to wind up his courage. It is entirely typical of Jacob that he sends his wives and children off to an unknown reception in what he has every reason to assume is hostile territory, and remains behind himself. Read at just a surface level, this is a nonsensical story. Some stranger comes out of nowhere and attacks Jacob and they wrestle all night long – and then we have this “important detail” that the stranger throws Jacob’s hip out of joint – this point appears to be important to the Hebrews, signifying something we really don’t get – and then Jacob decides the stranger was God. We can – and do – explain the wrestling as metaphorical. We have all, I suspect, at some point in our lives, wrestled with God – not literally, not really – but still legitimate emotional wrestling. But if we allow that to be the point of the story then we risk missing what I believe is absolutely the most important part, which is that Jacob was given a new name. And with that new name, Jacob truly does appear to become a new person. Jacob was a thief and a con-man. Israel is not. Israel makes peace with his brother – acknowledging his wrong and offering to make it as right as he can. Israel settles into fatherhood and becomes a good citizen. It appears that Israel, once free of carrying the burden that had been Jacob – a burden that told him he had to cheat and connive to get through life – Israel could now become the one whom God always intended him to be. What names do we put on ourselves? What names do we put on others? Have you ever thought – when you are calling yourself loser, or stupid, or useless or ugly or whichever of the dozens of ugly things we have to choose among that we occasionally decide to call ourselves – do you ever remember that that is not the name by which God calls you? Do you ever -- when you’re yelling at someone on the TV or that driver who just almost hit you – or the friend who has betrayed and hurt you – do you really think that is the name by which God calls them? Jacob bore the burden of his name for years before God set him free to be Israel. God said, in effect, You don’t have to be that Jacob anymore. You never have been that ‘Jacob’ to me. Now you will know yourself as the one I’ve always known you to be – you are ‘Israel,’ my beloved child. What name do you carry in your own heart, your own mind? Is it the name God calls you when God speaks to tell you that you are loved? When we talk about others, are the names we use the names that God uses for them? What burdens do we place on other’s shoulders with the names we give them? What unnecessary burdens do we carry ourselves when we live the name the world gives us rather than the name that God has given us? When God calls us by name, that name is always Beloved Child. Luke 24:44-49 Well, here we are. We’ve had a few gaps in our summer and it has taken longer than I thought it would, but we have made it through our intensive study of the four Gospels – reading and studying them in the order in which New Testament scholar Marcus Borg suggests they were originally written down: Mark, Matthew, John and – finally – Luke. I have a couple of thoughts on Luke just to wrap up and then I want to hear from you what you think about this experiment we’ve conducted this summer. What, if anything, have you learned by dealing with these writings in the order in which they came into being and began to pass around the newly emerging Christian world? Does Borg’s thesis make sense to you? How has it helped your understanding of the Bible – or has it? But first a few odds and ends we haven’t covered. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet that Borg brings out is Luke’s emphasis on the Spirit – in this gospel it is made clear that Jesus’ ministry is facilitated by the workings of Spirit in this world. Jesus in conceived by the Spirit, and then the Spirit descends on him at his baptism, after which he returned from the Jordan, filled with the Spirit, to withstand the temptation in the wilderness. Throughout his ministry he makes the claim that he is guided by the Spirit – he is doing the Spirit’s will. The other gospels – especially John -- refer to the Spirit, of course, but just for fun I checked out my NRSV Concordance and found that the word “Spirit” occurs almost twice as often in Luke’s gospel as in any of the other three. Jesus’ first public words of ministry are “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor...” and as he was dying on the cross, his last words were into your hand I commend my spirit. The book of Acts, which as we know is simply a continuation – Chapter Two – of Luke’s Jesus story, begins with the grandest of all Spirit stories – the wide-scale over-taking of the Spirit on the believers at Pentecost. Another important point to recognize in Luke’s gospel is his inclusivity. We talked last time about Luke’s social justice emphasis and his inclusion of all the peoples that orthodox Judaism had excluded: those in certain “unclean” professions, such as those shepherds who were so prominent at Jesus’ birth; the poor and property-less, who rarely count in any culture; women, represented by the many strong and important women in this gospel; and finally, Gentiles – the ultimate outsiders. All the way back when the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple, the Elder Simeon rejoiced that he had lived long enough for his eyes to have seen God’s salvation, “which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of your people Israel.” One last comparison: Both Matthew and Luke recount the parable of the Great Feast. Matthew’s version is, as we have seen throughout that gospel, directed at “the Jews” and this version ends with an emphasis on anger and punishment against those who were initially invited but refused to attend the feast properly dressed and in celebratory mode. Luke’s version, on the other hand, does say that those who were invited are now out of luck, but here the emphasis is on going out and inviting everyone in. Matthew’s retelling of the story is a cautionary tale. Luke’s is a worldwide invitation. To quote Borg one final time (for this season) – speaking of Luke: “The author [Luke] proclaims in both volumes [Luke & Acts] that the inclusion of Gentiles as well as Jews in the Jesus movement was divinely and providentially ordained from the beginning of Jesus’s life. It was neither an accident nor a mistake.” If you would be interested I would like – probably next summer – to take this same approach and look into Paul’s letters – and we’ll find out quite a lot there about the troubles that trying to include those Gentiles could lead to. Now … let’s hear your thoughts … Some thoughts on our discussion: Luke 6:20-26 Last week we looked into Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus and discussed its many points of difference from the version found in Matthew. One of those differences – and a major difference, at that – is its emphasis on justice for the poor and oppressed. Today we will take some time and look into Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, specifically for their social justice content, but before we get to that I want to take just a few minutes and look at the history of justice concerns in the Old Testament. I would guess many of us, if asked broadly what the Old Testament is about, would answer with maybe the Ten Commandments, and the Exodus story and some of the hero stories, like David and Goliath. I know that before I began doing this Bible stuff on a full-time basis that would have been my answer. Maybe Noah and the Flood, Jonah and the Whale – stories about people and particular events. But if you had asked me what was the reason for all this in the first place, I would have been hard pressed to answer. We could be excused, I think, for not having a quick and easy answer because the Old Testament is a long and complex story. It’s the history of the formation of a people, covering over 1000 years – good times and bad – and there were plenty of both. But there was one teaching that followed them through all those years. When they paid attention, things went pretty well for them. When they ignored this teaching, things generally went pretty badly. And that teaching was to care for the less fortunate among them – never to turn their backs on the poor, the powerless, the voiceless – because they were once there themselves and could very easily end up there again. The formative narrative of the Hebrew people was the Exodus story when God stepped into their lives to rescue them from oppression. A people thus rescued should never turn around and oppress others for any reason. And yet they did … over and over … and the prophets thundered against them that unless they changed their greedy ways their lack of mercy and compassion would turn against them … and it always did. In the first chapter of Isaiah the prophet instructs the people to Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; The author of Proverbs, in number 31, warns them Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Again, God, speaking through the prophet Amos tells them Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I could truly – and easily -- go on all morning with justice-demanding quotes from the prophets, but I suspect you get my point, so I’ll just give you one more – one we are all entirely familiar with, from Micah, chapter six: You have been told, O people, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? What does all this have to do with Luke’s gospel? Well, simply this. Social justice did not become an issue when Jesus arrived on the scene. It was not a new idea that he brought the people. When Jesus hammers – as he does – all throughout the gospels, on justice issues he is simply insisting on teaching from the traditions in which he had been raised all his life. And when Luke records these instances for posterity, he isn’t introducing anything new. These issues are the very heart and soul of Jewish teaching. When Jesus taught the people, as he does in today’s reading: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. he was not teaching them something new, he was reminding them of something they should have known all along. He was also promising the poor and overlooked that they are not forgotten and that God not only continues to love them but chooses them especially for blessing. These are essentially the same beatitudes that Matthew recounts in his gospel, except that Luke reports some of them in language that reminds us that there will be a price to pay if we neglect to extend justice and mercy when we ourselves have been blessed: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Jesus does not take all those centuries of calls for justice lightly – and neither should we. Luke makes his point over and over again, with stories like the Beatitudes, or Mary’s Magnificat that we looked at last week, with its lines about lifting up the lowly and sending the rich away empty, which sounds a whole lot like the beatitude I just read. Or parables that are found only in Luke, such as, the Widow and the unjust Judge, who started out not caring about the widow’s claim but eventually recognized that God was on the widow’s side, and gave her justice for her cause; or the Dishonest Servant, who fearing to be caught out at cheating his master decided on the unique tactic of being merciful to those who owed him, and discovered that this was actually a good choice, and he, in turn, received mercy for his actions.
We will wrap up some loose ends and finish up with Luke next week. I’m thinking that the following week then we will have a general discussion of what we’ve learned from our trip through the gospels and taking them in the order in which they were written. Luke 2:1-7 This is our second week looking into the Gospel according to Luke. One of the major – and unique -- themes of Luke’s gospel account starts out right at the beginning – and the way it begins happens twice. An angel, who identifies himself as “Gabriel who stands in the presence of God” appears - twice - and announces an impending birth – actually, two impending births. One son each to mothers who should not have been mother material. Elizabeth was barren and Mary was an unmarriwed virgin but such things matter little to angels carrying messages from God. Elizabeth would give birth to John, the one we call the Baptist, and Mary, of course, would be the mother of Jesus. One son’s role in life would be to prepare the way for the other – to announce his arrival in the world of humankind. This is a birth narrative much different from the one we read in Matthew’s gospel. In that one John the Baptist isn’t mentioned at all until he appears as an adult, preaching in the desert, and Mary and Jesus himself are almost footnotes to the story. Matthew’s version of the story, written nearer the actual time of Jesus’ life, it written for a specific community of people in a specific time and place. It has one purpose, and one only, to “prove” Jesus’ Davidic descent, and legitimize him in the eyes of the traditional Jewish community and set him up in their minds as the “new Moses”. Matthew's only agenda is to convince "the Jews" that far from being a heretic leading people away from true Judaism, Jesus is instead the culmination of all those centuries of prophesying and waiting. Luke ignores this aspect almost entirely, except for one brief sentence explaining that the couple had to go to Bethlehem, the city of David, for the census because Joseph was descended from the house and family of David. Luke’s story is written for a much broader audience inhabiting a more cosmopolitan world. Written farther in time from Jesus’ actual life this account attempts to relate the story of a Jesus that farther-flung peoples, often from other cultures, can find palatable. This gospel also shows the effect that time has had on the mythologizing of Jesus. Jesus has become, not just a local Jewish boy from a good family, but a “hero” figure, and especially in the near-eastern/Mediterranean world of this time the birth of the "hero" was always attended by lots of supernatural trappings. Most cultures had at least one story of a god impregnating a human woman, with strange unnatural events surrounding the birth of the half-human/half-divine child. By the time that Luke is written, Jesus’ story has attained exactly this status. Luke's version of Jesus' birth would feel comfortable to his hearers. Mary is by far the star player in Luke’s story, with her conversation with an angel, her visit to see her cousin Elizabeth, and our deeply ingrained image of the young mother, tenderly holding her child and “treasuring all this and holding it in her heart,” and especially for her beautiful Magnificat, her hymn of praise to God for blessing her so. We’ll look at this piece more closely in a moment. But the biggest difference between the two versions lies in the casts of supporting characters. In Matthew, the main person other than the family itself is the wicked King Herod, followed by three more kings, as we have come to call them even though they were most likely astrologer-priests. Whoever they were, they were important people, come from far nations to acknowledge the superior claim of this newborn Jewish king. In contrast, Luke’s bit players are as common as dirt: an inn-keeper, a slew of shepherds, one old man who is described as “holy” but of no particular rank when the baby is presented in the Temple, and an old woman, likewise in the Temple and likewise of no particular rank. Of course, there are choirs of angels but their presence merely contrasts with and points out the ordinary humbleness of the rest of the story. And do not overlook that because it is precisely all this ordinariness that matters most. The fact is that what was, in truth, a monumental divine act (hence the angels) – took place among the most ordinary of mortals. Jesus was born, not in a palace in Jerusalem, but in a stable in Bethlehem, the smallest of back-country towns. The only attendants were shepherds who had likely been out for weeks with no one around but their sheep – not your most elegant of guests. Luke will make the point, over and over in this gospel, that those ordinary people are precisely the ones for whom Jesus came – the ones God favors. This is made clear right at the start in Mary’s reply to Gabriel, her Magnificat: My soul magnifies the Lord, Those are, in truth, radical words. They are revolutionary words. Luke’s passion for justice for the poor, the overlooked and voiceless is apparent all throughout this gospel. When we first meet John the Baptist as a preacher in the desert he is calling the people to repentance, reminding them that it isn’t enough to be a practicing Jew, a son of Abraham, because God can call up children of Abraham from the very rocks around them if he should want. And when they ask just what they must do then, John answers in unmistakable social-justice language: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
For anyone who reads this gospel with an open mind, as free as possible from past teaching and indoctrination (and admittedly, this is not an easy task) the primary message of social justice calls out loudly and clearly. It is in this gospel account that Jesus begins his public ministry teaching in the local synagogue in Nazareth and quoting Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” This social-justice agenda will be reinforced even more when we read Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, comparing them with Matthew’s version from the Sermon on the Mount, but that is going to take more time than we have today so we will start with that next week as we continue our way through Luke. Luke 1:1-4 Today we finally come to the last of the four canonical Gospels – that is the four that are fairly universally accepted as being true gospel format and being legitimate revelations from God. While many other gospels do exist -- apocryphal gospels, non-canonical gospels, Jewish-Christian gospels, gnostic gospels – the early church fathers deemed these four – Mark, Matthew, John and Luke – to be authoritative accounts of the life of Jesus. In a more credulous, unquestioning age these four were accepted as presenting an accurate history of Jesus. This view is still held by biblical literalists but questioned by the majority of modern scholars – based on too many reasons to go into here and now. As with the other three gospels, we don’t really know who Luke might have been. The name “Luke” was assigned to this gospel sometime in the 2nd century. There may have been some communal memory linking this to someone named Luke, or it may have been connected to the Luke mentioned often in Acts. As with so much of scripture, we simply don’t know. Today it is no longer commonly accepted that the writer was the Luke who traveled with Paul. Whoever Luke may have been, this author is generally accepted to have also written the Book of Acts. The two books appear to have been only separated by the early church’s determination to clump the gospels together at the beginning of the New Testament. They are a single work written in two volumes and there is an interesting reason for that. In that ancient world when things were written in scrolls, rather than books as we do today, the maximum length for a scroll was about 30 feet. Anything longer would simply be too heavy and bulky to use. Luke’s writings came to two scrolls (our current word, volume, comes from the Latin word for scroll). So Luke and Acts are volumes (or scrolls) One and Two of a single writing. For some time it has been thought that Luke was written somewhere in the 90’s of the first century, but more recently many scholars are leaning toward an even later date sometime in the early years of the second century, 70 to 80 years after the death of Jesus. In the earliest years of Christianity there was a brief period of détente between the new Jesus followers and traditional Jews. Back in Matthew’s gospel, as we have seen, that amicability was starting to come unraveled, with strong tensions brewing between the two groups. By the time we read Acts it is clear that a split has already occurred and that period of détente is over. Whenever a point of controversy occurs between the two groups anywhere in Luke’s writings, there are always threats or even actual acts of violence by the Jews against the new Christians. Even when Luke re-tells an incident that was previously reported in Mark or Matthew, it comes out with much more anger being shown against Jesus and the Christians by the authorities or even the Jews in general. It’s clear that attitudes have changed in the time since the earlier gospels were written. Sides have been chosen and lines have been drawn. All these push a probable date for the writing of Luke into the 2nd century. Whoever ‘Luke’ may have been we don’t seem to know where he was from. He is a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian. Luke is a Greek name, for whatever that might mean. He appears to be comfortable writing about Jesus’ movements throughout Galilee and Jerusalem, but he is equally comfortable describing the Mediterranean world of Paul’s missionary journeys. It appears he is an educated, cosmopolitan man – but even the “man” part has been seriously contested by some who have suggested that the writer of Luke/Acts might have been a woman. I will continue to use the masculine pronoun just because history always has done so and he/she is too clunky. Whoever the writer may have been, they start out from the very beginning, stating their beliefs and their intentions in writing this account: Since I have investigated all the reports in close detail, starting from the story’s beginning, I decided to write it all out for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can know beyond the shadow of a doubt the reliability of what you were taught. Theophilus, by the way, might be one man’s proper name (it means lover of God) or it might refer to a group of people – an early church community for instance. Whomever this is addressed to Luke is writing a history he has culled from the memories and stories he believes are handed down by the original eyewitnesses. We here today have no way of knowing how these ‘original eyewitness’ accounts may have been embroidered and added onto. Luke accepted them without question. We are probably more skeptical.
Luke’s is the third of the synoptic gospels. Like Matthew, Luke uses Mark as a resource, but Luke lifts maybe 65% of Mark into his gospel rather than the almost 90% used by Matthew. Where Matthew basically copied and pasted from Mark with little editing, when Luke copies from Mark he adds in details he apparently found from other, uniquely Lukan, sources. There are several pieces in Luke that are unique to this gospel – not found in any other account. These include most of the nativity story, and parables like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Woman and the Lost Coin, and others we’ll look at as we go along. Luke even manages to tell some of the Easter story differently from Matthew. But the first and primary difference that exists in Luke’s version is its deep commitment to social justice. We will find as we go through this gospel that Luke’s stories consistently lift up the oppressed – the poor, the overlooked – emphasizing Jesus’ insistence that “blessed are the poor, the hungry, the grieving, for of such is the kingdom of God.” Where Mark and Matthew emphasize Jesus’ link to the long-awaited messiah and Old Testament promises, and John focuses on the divinity of Jesus, Luke will take us back to Jesus and his own teachings on the “reign of God” and our expected response to it – all that is contained in a phrase which came out of Latin American Liberation Theology is the last century – a “preferential option for the poor.” (This empathy for justice for the powerless is actually one of the reasons given for the possibility that the writer of Luke was a woman.) Throughout the gospel and the Acts Luke reminds us that for Jesus, the poor and powerless are not only our concern but God’s dearly beloved ones. We’ll start off next week with the long nativity story.
Last week I talked mostly about some of the things that the writer of John does differently from the other gospel writers – primarily that John is less concerned with historical fact than spiritual truth. This gospel account is less about a long string of “happenings” – healings, exorcisms, and such - and more about how each recited event goes about directing our paths and expanding our spiritual growth into the beings we were created to be. Although every one of the gospels exists to show that Jesus is/was the Christ, John’s gospel is often considered the most overtly Christological of the four. Christology is the study of the Christ-hood of Jesus. This is one of those theological terms which is very slippery because it all too often means whatever it means to the one speaking. Generally speaking, in extremely broad terms, a high Christology is one which holds that Jesus is God - the second person of the Trinity - who took on human form and lived among us for awhile. A low Christology is one which sees Jesus as a man – one called by God into a very special service role – one who took on aspects of divinity as he grew and matured in his ministry. Most of us, if we are honest, bounce around back and forth within these parameters. The synoptics generally start from a lower Christological point of view. Only at the end of Jesus’ life, as the disciples’ understanding grows, do they venture into a higher Christology. John, starts out right at the top with the prologue, which we looked at our first day in John – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. In all four of the gospels John the Baptist tells his followers that one is coming who is more powerful than he, but only in the Gospel of John does the writer expand this by saying that the one to come pre-existed the Baptist - this one who was since the beginning.
In this gospel, Jesus is seen as God’s divinity enfleshed, not as a human man raised to messiah-status. We’ve talked before about how confusing the term messiah can be and that it has held so many different layers of meaning throughout Old Testament history. When theologians equate the Hebrew Messiah with the Greek Christos they create a new layer of confusion because the two words are not entirely the same. Both refer to one who is anointed but that just adds to the muddle because anointing is used for so very many purposes, in both of these cultures - some higher, some lower. And then we read John and John throws in the concept of Logos, or the Word – that Greek ordering principle that organizes all that is into Being and Non-Being. And then, to go even further, Logos is associated with Sophia, or Wisdom – carrying us back to the wisdom traditions and writings of the Old Testament and linking Wisdom with the Holy Spirit, who is often conflated with Sophia. That’s a whole other sermon - actually it's a series of sermons and we simply don't have time here right now. epending then on what you have read, what you have been taught, what you choose to believe – Jesus is some -- or all – or even none – of these things. The simple truth is that Jesus sometimes appears to us in each of these guises, and like Godself, is complicated far beyond our human comprehension. I said last week that this week we would look into Jesus’ ultimate sermon at the Last Supper but we are running out of time and it will have to be a quick run-by. There is too much to say in this short time. One of the key differences in John’s story of the Last Supper is that Jesus never says words of institution – this is my body, this is my blood. In fact, the meal itself plays no role here except as the setting for all that is spoken. The only time bread is even mentioned is when Jesus break a bit of bread off and gives it to Judas with the announcement that the one to whom I give this is the one who will betray me. After Judas’ departure from the table, Jesus tries to tell those remaining what is coming. He predicts Peter’s betrayal, in spite of Peter’s vehement denials. He promises that where he is going, the disciples will go too, and promises to send them the Holy Spirit in his place - to not leave them orphaned when he is gone. He explains that he himself is the vine and we grow outward from him only if we remain rooted in him, and he leaves us the command to love one another as the Father loves him and he loves us. He tries to tell the disciples that soon they will see him no longer, and there will be sorrow for a time but that it will eventually turn to joy. And then he prays a lengthy prayer, putting his followers into God’s care and asking his Father to protect them when he is no longer here with them to protect them himself. He reminds the disciples that nothing he has done or said originates from him. He emphasizes that everything he has taught them is what the One who sent him told him to say. He, like the prophets of old, has not spoken for himself but simply passed on what God was saying. Following all this he them leads them out into a nearby garden where he is arrested, then taken to be tried, and the next day, executed. John’s gospel has one of the fullest post-Easter stories of any of the gospels. It’s words are very familiar to us because it is most often the designated reading for Easter morning. First the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and then the disciples, then the disciples again - this time with Thomas, the skeptic. A few days later he appears again to several of the disciples who are out trying to fish through their grief, commanding Peter three times to “feed my sheep.” There is so much richness to be found in John that we could spend several more weeks here. I would love to spend that time because somehow, to me at least, the Jesus of John’s gospel seems more “real,” more someone I want to be like, than the Jesus of the other gospels. Because of the richness of John’s symbolic, archetypal language this Jesus touches my heart more deeply. This is the Jesus who washed the feet of his disciples and told them the servant must always be ready to serve. This is the Jesus who wept at the death of a friend and the suffering of the dead man’s sisters. This is the Jesus of the seashore, waiting with a fire and with breakfast when the numb and grieving disciples came in from a fruitless night of fishing. This is the Jesus who warned Peter that he would betray him and then freely and lovingly forgive him after the fact – not only forgave him but gave him the care of his beloved sheep, with those three-times-repeated directions to “feed them.” As I said, we could spend weeks yet here, but Luke is waiting – the fourth and last of the canonical gospels to be put into writing – and there’s a lot of richness there, too. This is supposed to be a Summer Series and summer is winding down and soon it will be time to return to the regular lectionary calendar. So - we will start our look into Luke next Sunday.
This is our third week looking into the Gospel of John – the “different” gospel. I spend so much time emphasizing those differences that I thought I’d throw in a brief list of the things that John does the same, roughly, as the synoptics.
• the story of Jesus’ adult life start with his interaction with John the Baptist • his public life begins in Galilee • all 4 tell the story of the storm at sea and Jesus walking on water • the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to feed the multitude is all all four gospels • Jesus gives sight to a blind man • and he heals a paralytic But, even when John recounts the same stories, he usually tells them very differently. Remember, this account was written 60 to 70 years after the life of Jesus – and John is, apparently, not pulling from the same sources as the other gospel writers do. In fact, New Testament scholars don’t seem to have any clear idea of whether or not John had direct access to the previously written down Mark or Matthew or any of the same sources they used. We simply don’t know where John comes from, aside from the supposition that he is a Hellenized Jew. Anyone reading John looking for a straight-line historical account of the life of Jesus is going to be befuddled. Even when John tells the same stories as the synoptics, he places them differently in the timeline. For instance, here Jesus’ very first public act comes at the wedding at Cana - turning water into wine - a story told only in John, by the way. He does have disciples, at this point, but not because he called them to him - they’re there because John the Baptist pointed him out to them and said, “there, that’s the one you’re looking for.” At Cana he isn’t out preaching or teaching, already in the public eye – in fact, he appears to be distinctly annoyed with his mother for forcing him to act at all out in public. And the very next story recounted by John – in chapter 2 – is that of the cleansing of the Temple. This story is told in the synoptics, but it is always placed into the last week of Jesus’ life - at the end of his ministry instead of as only the 2nd public thing Jesus does. And in the synoptics it is presented as the “last straw,” the thing that Jesus does that forces the authorities to act publically against him – the act that convinces them that he needs to be shut down. In John, it becomes more Jesus’ “Here I am, world” statement – an opening move rather than a move to force an ending. In all my years of preaching I have emphasized the vast difference between “Truth” and “Fact” when dealing with the life of Jesus. “History” is, theoretically at least, “facts” -- recorded and dated and verifiable from outside sources, taken from eyewitness or at least trustworthy witness accounts. History is also, we must never forget, always written by the victor – and “facts” can easily be added or omitted and arranged by the victor into something unrecognizable as the actually “truth” of an event. Although John tells a story of Jesus that is in many ways similar to the stories told by Matthew, Mark and, later, Luke, John appears to be less interested in an historical accounting of a certain period of time and one man’s life – than in the “truth” of what that man’s life meant in the world – both then and now. As Marc Borg puts it: “John is a remarkable testimony to what Jesus had become in the early Christian milieu in which the gospel was written.” Not just who and what Jesus was but what he had become to the people impacted in some way by his life and his story. If John tells different stories than those in the synoptics, he tells the same type of story – stories of healing and exhortations to grow and be better. The Jesus we meet in John is entirely familiar to us – just a lot wordy-er. I took my title for this particular message from the last line of today’s scripture reading: “But remember the root command: Love one another." Throughout John’s account Jesus’ message is that we were brought into being for one purpose – to love. To love God, to love Jesus, and to love one another. We have no other reason for existence. In what is probably the best known bible verse in the world, John 3:16, Jesus tries to show us this loving God: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Somewhere along the way this statement became, in our minds, all about reward and punishment – believe in Jesus and you’ll be rewarded, don’t believe and you will be punished. But if we hear these words without the centuries of cultural expectation it’s had layered on it is possible to hear something very different. Jesus exists to tell us all about God’s love for us. Those who hear Jesus will receive the message and know God’s love. Those who do not recognize or understand Jesus will not hear that message and will never know how very much they are loved. They will live and die without ever knowing that they are cherished. No threat - just a statement of what is. The phrase “eternal life” as John uses it does not mean “life after death.” The original Greek phrase that we translate as “eternal life” is actually better translated as the “life of the age to come” or “the kingdom of God.” To know God as Jesus knew him is to enter into the kingdom of God - here and now – in this world, in this life. To miss knowing God as Jesus knows God is to live unaware of the joy offered to us. It doesn’t take away the love or the offer of joy - it simply means we remain deaf and blind and unaware. We remain - in the words of an old song - standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.* And there’s absolutely nothing here that says the offer is only made once in our lifetime. Jesus tells us we are told all these things in order that “my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.” Love as God loves – not as humans love, with conditions stuck on all over the place and threats - real or implied - to enforce them. Just love. We’ll take one more week with John next week and look at the "last discourse," as it it is known – Jesus’ long last teaching at the Last Supper. **************************** *Standing Knee Deep in a River (Dying of Thirst) - written by Bob McDill, Dickey Lee and Bucky Jones, 1993 John 8:12-16 Last week we began with a general introduction to the Gospel according to John – the third gospel to appear in written form and the one “oddball” among the four gospel accounts. Before we move along I feel the need to insert an editorial reminder that most of the information I’m passing along in this series comes from Marcus Borg and especially his book Evolution of the Word. While I am using other sources, the bulk of this series comes from Marc Borg.
Last week I introduced the idea that John – whoever he might have been – was a diaspora Jew living in a Greek-influenced time and place, and we talked about the difference Greek language and thought made in John’s imagery and metaphors. This is strongly apparent in the series of teachings we call the “I Am” stories, which are found only in this particular gospel. One of the most noticeable of the differences in John’s writing is the use of archetypal imagery. Jewish writers used archetypes, as well, but with much less frequency and perhaps with less awareness. The first image in the bible - the chaos that was before creation - is an ancient archetype signifying dissolution or un-being. Being comes with order and stability – without order and stability there is only death and Un-Being. We all, at some level of awareness, recognize and respond to this truth. Because that’s what archetypes are - universal symbols that call up something deep and often unconscious from us humans - and this happens across cultures and times. Take for instance a circle. In almost every culture throughout time the circle form has signified eternity. Our wedding rings are, supposedly, our eternal promise. Evergreen wreaths at Christmas time symbolize God’s eternal, unending presence with us. The ouroboros, which you may have seen somewhere but not known what it was you saw, is a symbol of a snake devouring its own tail, curled around into a circle to do so. It is an ancient symbol for infinity - a circle with no beginning and no ending. We may not 'get' why we are looking at a snake devouring itself, but we do somehow get that this is a depiction of eternity - no end, no beginning. This is one of those symbols that speaks to us across cultures whether we are aware of it or not. The “I Am” stories are each based on a different archetypal image. The reading we began with today may be the most common archetype - Light vs. Darkness. Again, Jewish writers used this – think of the great promises out of Isaiah that we read at Advent time: the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, or the star in the sky that guided the Magi. In Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world. But only in John does Jesus announce that he is the light. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” And again, in the next chapter, after Jesus cures the man born blind he tells the people “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Without what Jesus offers us we are lost and blind. With him, we see – with the eyes of the body and the eyes of the spirit. “I am the bread of life,” again uses another archetypal image, that of bread as those things that feed us, whether our hunger is spiritual or physical. Jesus offers himself to feed us whatever we lack. “I am the good shepherd” who leads his sheep to safety and plenty, Jesus tells us, but also “I am the gate” by which they may safely enter the sheepfold. Gates and doorways are strong archetypal images having to do with crossing over from one plane of existence into another – liminal places where, once having crossed, we are never the same. Coming of age ceremonies in many cultures employ the crossing of an actual threshold to illustrate the young person’s change in status even if it is only a stick on the ground. In England many older churches had a lychgate - a covered platform outside the church grounds where the deceased’s body rested until it was carried into the church for the ceremony that would send the recently dead into their new eternal life, with the blessing of the church. Jesus, John claims, is not only the shepherd who guides us to the gate, he is the gateway himself. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This is one of the trickier “I am” sayings because it has been read, all too often through the years, to mean “I am the ONLY way,” and used to state that those who come to God by any other means are not truly “saved.” Jesus does not say "the only way" and I don’t believe that this is what Jesus ever meant because nothing else we ever hear from Jesus is used to exclude and shut-out. In John’s gospel, God’s self – the Word – is enfleshed in Jesus. For us to believe that what we humans are capable of understanding of Jesus is all there is to see is pure arrogance to my thinking. God's love is so much greater than our understanding. Jesus is all about invitation – in the synoptics and in John. Jesus offers himself as the way - and God’s Way is far greater than our limited capacity to take it in. I don’t think it behooves us to try to place limits on God’s way, and Jesus does not demand that this form is the only way possible. And finally, Jesus is “the life.” And what is the opposite of life but death? Death is that which is sealed in a tomb and decays. Death is un-being. The life that is Jesus is the polar opposite – life in all it’s fullness. Be-ing. Be-ing with God, and in God, and for God, and by God's desire. Be-ing greater than we can comprehend. These archetypal images are powerful and they touch something deep inside of us. They are part of why John’s gospel speaks to us so powerfully. People have been captivated by the richness and beauty of John’s language for centuries. This gospel is less a historical narrative and more an evocation of the richness and majesty – the depth and the glory – that is Jesus and God’s love for the world. We’ll come back to John again next week because there is still a great deal for us to uncover. |
Rev. Cherie MarckxArchives
March 2025
|
RSS Feed