FINDINGS II
Lent
II - C - February 28, 2010
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
 By Harry T. Cook
2/22/10
RUBRIC
We knew more clearly after April 4, 1968 that the late
Martin Luther King Jr. had for years been under constant threat of being
assassinated. Not only had he challenged institutional racism and the treatment
of African Americans but had gone so far as to condemn the Vietnam war -- and
that from one of the most prominent pulpits in the country. He knew the FBI was
watching him; he knew that he was courting trouble, and yet he kept on. Why?
Because he had the demons of racism to cast out and a cure for the nation's
class bitterness to offer. His conviction carried him so far as to join the African
American sanitation workers of Memphis, Tenn., in their long, weary efforts to
obtain decent wages and working conditions. People who cared about him and
supported his work warned him time and again that he was a target. He would not
quit.
King's well-known story is a helpful exposition of the Lucan
passage for the Second Sunday in Lent Year-C.
WORKSHOP
This passage seems to spring from a source known only to or
used only by the author(s) of According to Luke. Some who work with these texts
suggest that the passage also has a touch of authenticity to it, viz. that
figures such as Luke depicts Jesus as having been no doubt ran afoul of the
principalities and powers on a regular basis. Burton Mack /*includes vv. 34-35 in what he
determined was a later version of the original Q (Quelle) document, meaning
that he thought at least the "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" lament was both authentic
and early.
The greater context for 13: 31-35 is 13:22, which depicts
Luke's Jesus going "through one town and village after another, teaching as he
made his way to Jerusalem" -- Jerusalem always in the Lucan mind the final
destination for Jesus. Luke sets the start of Jesus' career there in 2:46ff as
he is depicted as a youth among the teachers (or rabbis, perhaps) somewhere within
the Temple precincts. Perhaps Luke meant to connect the study of Torah at the
beginning of Jesus' adult life with its outworking in and through its end and
what led to it.
Herod's reported threat to do away with Jesus should be seen
in light of 13: 26-28 which makes clear that, at least in Luke's understanding,
mere acquaintance with Jesus and his mission would not avail when push came to
shove. Those who would follow him needed to know that such powerful figures as
Herod would generally be in opposition.
The tart response to the Pharisees' warning, which Luke puts
on Jesus' lips, may remind the contemporary reader of the remarks made above in
RUBRIC concerning the determination
of Dr. King to stay the course even knowing that it was dangerous for him. The
words Luke gives Jesus to say, viz. "Today, tomorrow and the next day I must be
on my way" can be understood in our manner of speaking to mean "as time goes
on" or "day after day I press on." The idea is that the ministry of casting out
demons and bringing cures is the permanent agendum.
It is difficult at this temporal and cultural remove to
understand exactly what exorcisms and cures were being referenced. J.D. Crossan
has spoken and written in countless times and places about the connection in
Jesus' ministry between "eating" and "healing." To sit at table with a person
in the Mediterranean world, even to this day, is to confer upon the host even
as the host confers upon his or her guest a sense of dignity. To share food is
to partake in healing, i.e., the closing of breaches and the breaking down of
walls of hostility (cf. Ephesians 2:14). -- How any of that commonality may cast
out demons or bring cures is left to the contemporary reader to puzzle out.
Luke makes a deal of his Jesus' anxiety to get to Jerusalem
because that was the only place a prophet could be killed. "Jerusalem" here
might be taken to represent the midst of things, the center of power and
significance. We are reminded that Jehoiakim is depicted in Jeremiah 26 as
killing the prophet Uriah in Jerusalem and the assassination of Zechariah
there, as well, as reported in 2d Chronicles 24 and what Jeremiah told of his
own peril there in 38: 4-6. A prophet, i.e., one who names a thing for what it
is, is likely to do so in a time and place that will call attention to the
naming. So Amos made what must have been a rigorous journey from a remote
village in southeastern Judea north to the corrupt court at Bethel to make his
pronouncement about causing justice to flow down like waters. Amos, in fact,
courted mortal danger in doing so.
As a coda to 13:31-33, Luke or the editor(s) of Luke tacked on
that brief passage (34-35) attributed by Q to Jesus. Whether or not it originally
followed on 31-33, it makes for an appropriate lament. The essence of it is the
embrace of concern Luke's Jesus is made to express for his contemporaries, not
only in Jerusalem but throughout the region of which Jerusalem was the cultic
center. Those compiling Luke would have known, of course, of Jerusalem's eventual
fate and of that of its Temple. Jerusalem may kill the prophets who come to it,
but the principalities and powers in turn kill off the Jerusalems.
One can see why late First Century nascent Christians
insisted that the spirit of Jesus had been raised from the dead. They knew the
temple still lay in ruins, but against that bleak scene they could depict an
irrepressible Jesus who had returned in the form of communities dedicated to
his ethical wisdom teaching to replace the Jerusalem that killed and was itself
killed.
No offense meant to the editors of the RCL, but in dealing
with the gospel lection of this proper, there will not be much help afforded by
the Genesis reading and its vision of Yahweh's land grant to Abraham of
everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. Paul's admonition to his Philippian
congregation to "stand firm in the Lord" can be cited as a version of "Today,
tomorrow and the next day, I must be on my way" regardless of what Herod
thinks.
*/Mack, Burton S., The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q &
Christian Origins, p. 98
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
The gospel lection discussed above can apply to almost any
legitimate effort of which a person of good intentions could conceive. The
central theme of the reading goes to the issue of persistence and follow-through
based on conviction that a way, a process, a plan, a path is a right one, if
not "the" right one on which a person may embark. Leaving aside the dubious
claims made by some that they are "called by God" to do a certain thing, it
does seem clear that human beings are wont to discover in themselves reasons
and resources to pursue a thing.
Dr. King, of whom I have written above, was one such obvious
example. So, too, was Mohandas Gandhi and countless other human beings who have
set upon paths that seemed right to them and to the pursuit of which their
predilections and skills fit them.
Obviously such an impetus can and has driven such persons as
Josif Stalin and Adolf Hitler through terrible means to terrible ends.
The cliché "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes" is not
what is at issue here. It is, rather, a worthy goal the accomplishment of which
will contribute positively to the greater good. Luke wanted the hearers and
readers of his work to see the character of Jesus as one determined to "cast
out demons" and bring cures until he could not longer do so, as a persistent
sort convinced of the necessity and worthiness of his mission and inwardly
empowered to see it through.
Luke knew that the Jerusalems of this world kill the
prophets who speak truth to their power. Luke also knew that such power centers
can come to grief at the hands of greater powers. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Luke evidently believed that the power of early First Century C.E. Jerusalem
could and did kill Jesus, thus putting to an end his mission of casting out
demons and brings cures. Luke's communities, though, stood as testimony to the
truth that such a mission does not have to end with the death of its leader,
that other leaders can be recruited to carry it on.
My question is this: How many so-called churches in the 21st
Century see themselves as casters out of demons, in whatever rational way such
words can be construed today? How many see curing, i.e., making whole society
and its members as their singular mission, given the gospel they preach and the
history they share?
How many churches and their leaders see themselves as under
threat by political powers? And if not, why not?
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