FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook 

2/18/13

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.

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 Lukan 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 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 of Jehoiakim 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.
 
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 set upon paths that seemed right to them and to the pursuit of which their predilections and skills fit them.
 
The clich� "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. Luke evidently believed that the power of early first century CE Jerusalem empowered by Rome 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?