The Comfort of a Bridle

Luke 19:28-40 (esp. vv 30-31)

No wonder the pharisees ask Jesus to tell the people to stop--what the people are doing is treasonous! Jesus is riding into Jerusalem like a king, and the people are singing hymns to him that describe him as a king. Jerusalem is already a tinder-box with thousands of people crammed inside the walls for the feast days, and there are likely hundreds of rabble-rousers and revolutionaries about trying to foment resistance and a take-over of power. Here comes Jesus in a veritable parade! Any of us would have done the same, and asked Jesus to quiet down the crowds before the soldiers come and someone gets seriously hurt. How insensitive Jesus must have seemed to those religious and social leaders, showing such disregard for the safety of the people and the holiness of the season.

And what are we to think of Jesus' charge to take ("borrow" isn't supported by the text) a colt without paying for it, with just the explanation: "The Lord needs it"? Would any of us allow our car to be taken by strangers with just such a plea? (We are apt to argue that there are charlatans that abuse such language and trust today, but are we to believe that there were no false-prophets, no profiteers, no one willing to take advantage of such trust and faith-claims then as there are now? We cannot let ourselves off the hook because of our jaded experience--I'm certain the first-century residents of Palestine, and even more so the residents of Jerusalem, were familiar with the abuses done in the name of God.) And then, if the people did somehow believe that the colt was to be used for God, they would object to this colt precisely because it had never been ridden before, it was unbroken, still virtually untamed. To try to ride it would be impossible--it would be uncontrollable and end up hurting the rider and everyone around! The owners of the unbroken colt would have offered another, more obedient servant for the Lord's work.

Every element of the story seems fanciful, impossible... but we must remember that this story isn't primarily a factual account, but a faith-building story: a telling that shapes our faith and understanding as it goes, and so the description of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem is instructive for the reader, you and me.

What is the significance of Jesus' request to ride on a colt that has never been ridden on before? Is this a Lucan reference to the uniqueness of Jesus? A symbol of the untried message or means of Jesus? Lucan confirmation of the newness of the revelation brought by Jesus? What is distinctly Jesus in Luke?

Jesus calls for a radical transformation of society through the active subversion of oppressive structures (both mental/spiritual and political/physical) and through the substitution of new (Zionic) relations, grounded in a vision supplied by faith in a loving and forgiving and earnest God. To attempt a revolution of social, spiritual, and political dynamics without the use of force is an remarkably bold and untried program. Active nonviolent resistance that edifies both parties in conflict while establishing just relations is like an unbroken colt--impossible to manage or direct, impossible to control, and more than likely going to kick off any rider than be put to such direction.

OR, perhaps the world is symbolized by the colt: the assumption is that people need to be trained to obey before they can be managed, and that obedience comes from shows of power and strength, an understanding of position in hierarchy. In short, horses are broken through violence, and it is only after they are broken that they become valuable or useful in the eyes of the world. Jesus, however, asks for unbridled, unbroken people; Jesus asks for the wild strength and natural equality felt by an unbroken colt. And Jesus is somehow able (in a way that probably none of us could do) to mount and direct the colt for the Lord's work. This brings more force to Jesus' call to set the captives free--I'm sure he was talking about many of the people actually behind bars, but he was also talking about the broken people, those obedient to the masters of the world. This also brings more force to the people's cries of Jesus as king--defying the political king and the power of Rome.

We are called to Jesus for the Lord's work--though we think we are unfit, unworthy, unmanageable, that others are better suited. And we are called not as slaves, obedient to position and power, but as maverick spirits, and unbroken colts. God wants our natural sense of equality and justice, our sense of our own power and ability to resist domination; to put ourselves under the direction of Jesus, to recognize only one king (on earth as it is in heaven), to adopt Jesus' struggle and means of struggling. We are to continue the walk Jesus started on his way into Jerusalem: the conversion of the world through active nonviolent loving resistance (ahisma?) and substitution of a new world, a new way of thinking, Zion.

But that also means we have to give up the bridle and the bit (and the blinders and the saddle). We have to give up our addiction to control, to position, to direction, to domination (even sometimes over ourselves). We have to venture out of the stable, allow ourselves to be led away without assurance that we will ever return, simply at the call of the need of the Lord.

Loss and Gain

Philippians 3:4b-14 (Part Three: esp. v 7)

Whatever gains I have made in the world, because of Jesus I consider them rather a loss--not only rubbish and worthless, but actually counting against me, listed in the 'minus' column of my spiritual balance-sheet.

Why should worldly success be counted so adversely to a transformative relationship with Christ? Can't we have a relationship with Christ and be successful in the world? For Paul, it seems, the answer is no. I wonder if he was reading the Gospel of Luke at the time.

Paul seems right in line with Luke on this point. One of the overriding themes of Luke is the danger of material (worldly) success: wealth, power, prestige, praise, and so on. More than the other Gospels, Luke castigates wealth and the stranglehold material possessions have on people's hearts--and he's right, of course, our wealth does hold us back from being the kind of disciples Jesus calls us to be. (We are all that rich ruler who asks in all sincerity what we must do to gain eternal life, but then shirk from Jesus' frank reply: give up all your wealth and comforts and follow me.) Paul, too, picks up on this radical demand of Jesus, and seeing how difficult it is to do, Paul counts all those things holding him back to a worldly sense of accomplishment and merit, success and comfort, power and praise... Paul holds all of them as a loss, as something that holds him back, something that holds him down or slows his reaction to the gospel, that prevents a true discipleship.

Here, Paul is wrestling with the same realization--that this is really tough, and most people won't be able to do it very well--the same realization that Matthew faced in his Gospel when the rich ruler confronted Jesus. Matthew's answer was that one could be a disciple to the degree to which one gave up attachment to possessions. If one would be perfect, he wrote, one would give up all possessions and follow Jesus... opening the door to all of our (eager? inevitable? satisfactory?) 'mediocre' discipleship: we'll give up a little and count that as discipleship, or we'll know that our attachment to possessions is bad and we'll consider that awareness as our discipleship. Matthew opens this door to a softer, more permissive, less demanding discipleship. And Paul wrestles with his own convictions on the one hand, and the likely response of seekers to such a demanding discipleship on the other. Even so, Paul for himself comes down clearly in step with Luke on this issue: confidence in the flesh (or worldly goods) is only a stumbling block to discipleship.

This is a big statement for the Philippians--signaled by the occupation of ten verses on this specific point.

And for me... it is a reminder. I easily jump to the condemnation of wealth and power (even though I enjoy both as a middle-class American in a world dominated by American interests and supporting an high American standard of living). (For all my love of Luke's harshness and clarity of vision, in the end I sneak into discipleship through the back door opened up by Matthew.) Condemnation of wealth and power comes easily to me--I have taken that part of the prophetic message to heart and it is in my blood everywhere just under the surface. What is harder for me is the 'being thought well of' and especially the surety of convictions that I hardly question that are to me stumbling blocks to my transformation. To have such single-minded confidence in ideas or theories is one way the world holds on to my heart. It gives me some impression (however false or inadequate) that I am in control, or that I have some profound understanding of the mechanisms at work. And this is a false impression (as Job so painfully shows us). I am not loosed from the struggle or senselessness of the world, even in my accepting struggle and senselessness as a reality or means of creating meaning and purpose. I have to accept the contingency of my confidence/belief in contingency. What is ultimate for me must not be these convictions about the world--the way it works, the evil of capitalism, the inevitability of war, the horror of alliance with Bush, and so on. What must be ultimate for me is the dedication to the possibility of transformation, new life, new understanding--and the shifts I cannot predict may be subtle or radical, but I have committed myself to them, not knowing what they are.

Discipleship is like baptism or marriage, we dedicate ourselves to something (and someone) not knowing what will happen, the changes we will be called upon to make, the demands we must answer, the roads we will have to go down. But we commit ourselves nonetheless. And that, like any two paths diverging in the woods, makes all the difference.

And our time spent deliberating about which path to go down--one leading to wealth and comfort, the other to suffering and Christ--is counted as loss.

Committing to Tentativeness

Philippians 3:4b-14 (Part Two: esp. vv 13-14)

Not that I have become perfect, or have a complete understanding of the gospel yet, still I continue to wrestle with the revelation of God in Jesus, I struggle to make Jesus' revelation my own revelation, Jesus' story my own story--because Jesus made me his own. I'm certainly not finished yet, I haven't nearly made it my own. But regardless, this one thing I have committed to: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead--I am prepared to abandon the treasures and beliefs of my past if the upward call of God requires it. This forward straining, this search for the prize, this movement toward the goal is the most important thing--more important than tradition or previous understanding. It is this common yearning to grow, to be remade, to learn anew that is our faith, it is God as revealed in Jesus--an perennial call to unceasing creative transformation.

It is too bad that verses fifteen and sixteen aren't included in the lectionary selection, because they sum up nicely Paul's thinking here: there is room for diversity of opinion, room to disagree within the body of Christ, we are all growing and at different places inside ourselves. Just remember to focus on what we share, what we have attained as a community, the conclusions we have reached (keeping in mind that even these we might be called upon to abandon in the future--ever straining forward to what lies ahead).

I strain to hear the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Among my faith claims that one should stand alone, above all other claims I make: above all, I am committed to listening for and straining to follow the upward call of God, willing to abandon all other beliefs, preconceptions, confessions, understandings and priorities... even those I once held as revelation of God. I hold up the best that I know, knowing all the while that I may be called to abandon even that should I learn something better.

I think, generally, Christianity has a hard time with this. We revere tradition as something more than just the revelation of the past, more than just custom and culture and practice. Tradition and even scripture become holy in themselves, definitive revelations of God, not only constituting revelation but limiting and restricting it (even while scriptures like this point to the reality of needing to look beyond scripture or tradition to the Spirit).

There is good reason to acknowledge the tension here between the truth of past revelation and the truth of the uncertain future. (The devil you know is better than the devil you don't?) ;-) But there is also preserved here the value of diversity--we won't all agree, won't all see the same things the same ways, but there is much we have all been transformed by that we share, and we can build on that.

This is important for me to remember when approaching nationalist Christians--part of me would like to deal harshly with them, but I have to step back and admit that the Spirit is working with them as best it can under the circumstances, and that the Spirit is working with me, too, and that I may be called upon to change in the future. (I can't take myself too seriously, then.) We all have to accept each other for what we are--people who have committed to struggling to understand the gospel, forward-straining people, and that because of where we are or where we're leaning we won't be the same kind of people. None of us is perfect, and so none of us can claim absolute knowledge or authority, not you or me or the pastor or even Paul or any other Biblical author, let alone the Bible itself. We are all pressing on to make it our own, because we are convicted that Jesus made us his own. And what that means we may think we understand now, but tomorrow be shown we don't have a clue.

"The Chosen"

Philippians 3:4b-14
(Part One: esp. vv 4b-7)

We all have this in our traditions - some of us embrace it now, but even if we don't it is still there, lurking. We believe we are chosen because of some fact about us. We are "American," and America is Chosen. We are in the one true church, so we are Chosen. We are white, and white people Rule. We are men, and men are the heads of families and states. We are wealthy, therefore we must deserve comfort and security. We are Christian, and Christians are God's people... so no matter what, we are God's people.

But here, Paul lays that all to rest. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. If anyone ought to be consoled by the facts of his existence in this world, it should be Paul: a sanctified Jew of the chosen tribe, a zealous follower of the law, righteous, and even in the Roman Empire Paul was a citizen and could call on that defense as well. I'm sure he could have added things like a three-car garage and two and-a-half baths, a solid portfolio and 401k, a walk-in closet filled with Armani suits and patent-leather shoes, an advanced degree from an Ivy League school, and a secure job working for the prosecutor's office--or the first-century Palestinian equivalents. Paul has it made, if you go by the world's standards! He has every reason to stick to the normal way of looking at things. Except one.

And that one reason opens up a world of difference, such that everything he thought was in his favor comes to nothing (and, if anything, actually counts against him).

God, as revealed through Jesus, brings Paul to a different understanding, and all of a sudden all of those values and prizes and marks of success according to the world are foolishness and vainglory, worthless and distracting. And in the place of those prizes is picked up values that seem absurd to the world: suffering, and a faith whose merit cannot be demonstrated or delineated by a code of conduct.

(I wonder what this implies about the issue of homosexuality in the church--whether this is an issue that the world concerns itself with for reasons of power and prestige, and whether or not a new life in Christ would lift our eyes above those kinds of distinctions [distinctions between people worthy of certain kinds of love and those unworthy, between love that deserves dignity and love that does not]. Could Paul have added to his list of worldly accolades above the title "heterosexual?")

Whatever the qualifications you come up with--even ecclesiastical ones like piety and faithfulness and years in mission work, etc.--Paul has more than anyone. This isn't boasting (although it's close), it is Paul saying how much he stands to gain by not making the choice he has: to find a new world-view in Jesus. Paul is trying to highlight the extent of his sacrifice (though it is only a sacrifice in the worldly perspective--once one adopts a Godly world-view, one's priorities change and all those worldly prizes are like "rubbish"). He is trying to frame his decision to follow Jesus as not a strategic one, not one to gain prestige or influence, not one to gain a public image of purity or "chosen-ness." Paul had all those things at his finger-tips in the world before Jesus. He is making the case for his sincerity, as well as building the distinction between worldly values and the nearly-inverse values of a world in Jesus.

No longer can we appeal to the law as a guide to righteousness, or birth as a guide to God's favor. These are things "of the flesh," "of this world." (The word "flesh" here [Gk: "sarx"] can mean the body [as opposed to the spirit], or as a symbol of what is external, or as the means of kindred, as well as implying human nature and its frailties. The connection with kindred and birth and "tribe" and provinciality is compelling.)

We must look to the life, love and revelation of Jesus--an act that inverts many of our previously-held assumptions about favor in God's sight, an act that breathes afresh the prophetic voice. As disciples of Christ, we must be prepared for this inversion, for this radical change in values, to give up worldly means of evaluating or assessing people. There are no more purity laws. There is only the transforming love of God as expressed in Jesus.

"from the human point of view"

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (esp. v.16)

"From a human point of view" is literally "according to the flesh," and must be understood in Paul's usage as that which is opposed to God. I'm not sure if the human point of view opposes God so much as distracts from God, or distracts from adopting God's point of view. (Sort of like contemporary advertising, where one doesn't convince a person to buy a product, one convinces a person that they have a need, a need that can be met by *surprise* your product. Sleight of hand is so much more successful, oftentimes, than brute opposition.)

We no longer know people from this 'human point of view,' "because we knew Jesus that way and look how wrong we were on that account," Paul seems to be saying. "And once we start seeing things 'from God's point of view,' we can't stop at just Jesus, and we see everyone as God sees them."

What is so distracting about "the human point of view?"

Using "the flesh" is such an easier question, with visions of swimsuit-clad ladies, luxury, and doting attentions from others. My "flesh" obviously enjoys being gratified, and it is "easy" to imagine how it could be, and how that gratification would be distracting. I remember when I first started dating my wife and being occasionally distracted by a passing attractive lady, how embarrassing that was and the discipline I had to exert over myself to focus on our conversation sometimes. At times like this I am willing to give in to Augustine and see myself as just a ball of concupiscence, a huddled mass of sinning, that it's not my fault, that it's my nature. "The flesh" is so hard to resist.

But is that the whole story? Is that the most honest answer I could give? There are surely some times (and some people for whom this is even more so the case) where I sin compulsively, I don't have a choice. But just as obviously, at some level, I am choosing to act one way rather than another - most of the time, if not all the time. (And I accept the difficulty of using the word "choose" here, considering cultural, linguistic, physical and imaginative limitations on our range of "choices.") At some level, it is my responsibility (even at the same time that it isn't entirely my fault). What makes me choose to see "according to the flesh?"

One reason may be because most of the rest of the world works in that order - things make more sense (in the World) if I abide by the World's logic and economy (oikonomia: [GK] how one orders the household/life). It's just easier to participate in the conversation if you speak the same language everyone else is speaking - and everyone wants to belong, to feel included and participatory. And we live our lives so much in "the World" and "according to the flesh" and "from a human point of view" that even to us the logic of God's point of view seems nonsensical, contradictory, impossible. And, indeed, when we hold God's logic up to human evaluation, it often comes up profoundly lacking - you can't make money like that! You won't win a fight that way; you'll lose! Those people can't change, that they way they are! And so on.

(And all this while we repeat over and over the narrative(s) of Jesus' life - which was a clear indictment of just that kind of thinking: Jesus did win that way.)

Why do I keep coming back to living and seeing "from a human point of view?" Perhaps it is because I have not yet given myself wholly over to living from God's point of view (and accepting the Worldly consequences of such a lifestyle, likely including poverty, homelessness, public derision, hunger, discomfort, harassment, imprisonment, and so on... prices for full-fledged discipleship I cannot afford while still stradling the line between the two worlds). While I have even a toe in the human point of view, God's point of view will seem terribly risky, costly, nonsensical. (Even now, trying to convince myself of the ultimate sensibility of a God-view-lifestyle, I know that my marriage would likely fall apart under the stress, and that my group of friends would drift from me, and these are things I can't believe would be good or right - surely that isn't supposed to happen in God's view of the world!)

Will there be a time when the world as one can take that step, make that leap, all at once and together, so the new logic makes sense, so the new reasoning "works," so we're all working off the same definitions of success and winning? Am I wrong and weak to hope for such a time so that my discipleship would be easier? (Is it possible to be a disciple if discipleship were easy?)

It is an enormous task, to see people from God's point of view, not "according to the flesh" - not to see in them how my own desires or ambitions could be gratified. To see in them God's desire for them - to wish them success in losing money or position; to hope with them for public scorn and violence; to smile as you join each other in prison, or under torture, or being executed. To see people as agents of a subversive counter-culture, a colony of heaven in a foreign land. To not see in their eyes the reflection of your own wishes for yourself (prestige, power, influence, comfort, and so on).

But we changed our minds about Jesus - he was "just a man," too. But in him we saw a glimpse of God's point of view, and feel all of humanity reconciled to this foreign way of thinking. What was so desperately strange and contrary, in Jesus becomes our very own. Perhaps Paul is advocating that we see everyone as little Jesuses - each of them carrying within them the potential reconciliation of humanity to God, each of them helping to shift our points of view away from Worldly notions of winning and losing and toward God's (totally different) priorities. Or perhaps, to see everyone as a mystery to be respected, even revered.

At any rate, we're challenged to not see them as they are - rich or poor, powerful or outcast, sick or healthy, loving or vengeful. And that might be the toughest demand of discipleship of all.

Prodigals All

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

I assume we are to sympathize with the elder brother, the faithful son who stands bitterly unrewarded for his constant service while his younger brother is celebrated for having returned from gluttony and caprice. I certainly sympathize with him - and perhaps this shows just how far I have to come in my spiritual journey.

The preface is Jesus welcoming sinners who listen to him, and the Pharisees grumbling about it. The series of parables that follow, one of which is of the "prodigal son," illustrate the inverted relationship God has with humanity. God celebrates those we find it difficult or unfair to welcome. God revels in the recovery of one sinner more than the faithful piety of a hundred people. A dishonest manager who forgives debts out of scheming is praised for his good judgment - being faithful with dishonest wealth (which I will have to think about seriously sometime - 16:1-13 isn't on the lectionary schedule for this year).

I would like to think that I am above worldly ambitions, beyond American piety-prosperity and just rewards principles, not captive to notions of position in return for faithfulness and righteousness. But Jesus' parables call me out. My sympathies do not immediately follow Jesus'. I can understand Jesus' point, of course (all are equal in God's eyes, and therefore the recovery of one lost is cause for celebration, while the faithful continuance of another is just par for the course). But if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I feel for the others - I am easily part of the crowd that is amazed and confused by Jesus' profound reassessment of the Reign of God and my particular place in it. I do feel like we faithful ones should be rewarded, and better! Those who come late, who haven't struggled and who may have even fought the faithful, don't deserve as much praise or celebration or reward as those who have fought the good fight, run the good race, longer, harder, with more sacrifice. Put shortly, I sympathize with the elder son.

A good deal of my identity - for better and for worse - is bound up in struggle: the struggle for this, the struggle against that - all very worthwhile and Christian principles. And I find myself bitterly struggling against other Christians oftentimes... even my own father. Now, my father, for instance, in his support for President Bush, is partly responsible for the horrific deaths of millions of people. I have been struggling with him for years now. If, at the very end, he responds to the gospel and decides he was wrong all those years - that won't bring those dead people back, it won't un-torture all those prisoners, it won't erase all the harm and violence he supported and contributed to. Meanwhile, not only have I been struggling against these things happening, my own father has struggled against me so that those things happen. And Jesus is saying that if my dad comes around at the last minute, God will throw a huge party. But my struggle remains uncelebrated.

That isn't fair.

At least, not according to the way the world thinks of fairness.

But, I suppose God isn't so interested in "fairness" as much as God is interested in love. Sure, economic and social justice are in part about fairness, but only as a public expression of our love for people - there isn't anything ultimate or absolute about how much wealth or food or comfort someone has, except that no one goes without or has needs unmet while others feast.

I have to give up my superiority complex, my holier-than-thou-because-I-struggle notion. If I'm struggling in order to feel superior or holier than someone else, then I'm doing it for the wrong reasons. Any struggle I engage in, any sacrifice I make, any cause I support, any side I take, must be done - if I am to be more like Jesus - in love, out of love, for love. I am to love such that I would celebrate any conversion, no matter how late, and not seek to be celebrated myself.

And, too, perhaps Jesus meant the listeners to identify with the younger son, who spent how many years squandering precious life and resources, and came back humble, desperate, ashamed, willing to be the least of the servants in his father's house - and finding his return celebrated. All of us, at some point, were the younger son returning, having wasted so much, been blind so long, only seeing the truth too late. Perhaps we get one party - when we turn - and then we get to work.

I guess no one ever said discipleship was easy or fair. It is what it is. And I should be content with mere discipleship, mere love.

Hope and Forgiveness Under Captivity

Isaiah 55:1-9

The background of captivity and exile for these verses is important. It is one thing for those in power to sing about the justice of God and about their nation being a light to the world. But here, deutero-Isaiah speaks of God's steadfast love and everlasting covenant with the people - a people defeated and exiled and returned to the kind of slavery from which they were delivered in Egypt. To speak of God's steadfastness and love in this context is daring and unexpected.

But it is also a song of comfort and reassurance: come and drink and eat, you don't need money or to work for what God offers. While all around you you are ruled by money and markets and demands and exchange, God offers what is God's freely, without price. Even David, so long ago a warrior and king, is lifted up as still meaningful - "you still have a nation," deutero-Isaiah seems to be saying, "you still have an identity as a people, you are still unique and special and beloved." And then, as if to glory in the inversion deutero-Isaiah is creating here, the writer shouts that nations they are not aware of will run to them, that God is working beyond them to bring new people to them (as a rescue from the Babylonians, or referring to the Babylonians themselves as having been brought to the Israelites to learn something from them?). Even in the midst of enslavement and exile, God is working to bring people together.

Who are the wicked here? The Babylonians? Israelite exiles who have abandoned their religion for that of their captors? Hebrew or Babylonian overlords who deal unjustly with their charges? We don't know, but are assured that God's forgiveness extends even to them - should they turn from unrighteousness.

It takes extraordinary suffering, sometimes, to cultivate an awareness of forgiveness. Profound hardship can sometimes (hopefully) lead to a profound forgiveness - a forgiveness so deep that it mirrors a divine compassion, and is articulated as God's own pardon.

Their Story is Our Story

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Here is Paul at his syncretic finest. Here he retrofits the Exodus story as revelation and participation of Christ. In somewhat a backwards fashion, to my mind, Paul grafts baptism on to the journey through the Reed Sea and deliverance - where it seems clear to me that it was the other way 'round: baptism emulated the deliverance and redemptive act performed in the Exodus. (Crossing the Jordan into Palestine, in fact, was considered reminiscent of the Exodus, and it was this that was re-enacted by desert prophets like John the Baptist.) And Paul identifies the rock that gave sustenance as Christ - following in the footsteps of Philo, a hellenistic Jewish philosopher and contemporary of Paul, who identified the rock as "wisdom." (This would be taken up by Hellenic Christians later in the association of Jesus with Wisdom in ancient philosophy.)

For all of Paul's discussion of immorality and such - certainly a dominant theme of the letter as a whole - it doesn't strike me as the most important thing bubbling up from the text.

For me, what stands out is that Paul is identifying the ancient Hebrews as the ancestors of all of us - signaling a very early identification of Christians with the spiritual history and heritage of the Jews. Even years later, when Jews and Christians went their separate ways, and throughout the centuries of later animosity and violence, our pasts are bound up with each other - their story is our story. Even if we understand it differently, we as Christians ought to remember that ours is a religion rooted in Judaism, in a Jewish figure among Jewish followers to start. I wonder how much suffering in the world could have been avoided by recognizing and honoring our spiritual indebtedness to Judaism. (And how Christianity could have been a model for Islam to follow - instead of a model of barbarism and sectarian violence.)

Our World and the Fig Tree

Luke 13:1-9

Some people around Jesus ask him about the recent (?) execution of a group of Galilean pilgrims at the hand of Pilate (in Jerusalem?). This comes after Jesus encourages people to "settle with their opponent" before it is too late - so it is possible that the crowd is asking Jesus if Pilate's treatment of the pilgrims is a result of divine judgement, or perhaps an occasion to sound out Jesus' feelings on the Roman occupation. The Galileans, apparently, are being thought of as either holy martyrs or sinners who were duly punished (by proxy via the Roman occupation).

Jesus, however, cuts through the fat of the argument and gets to the point: do you think, he asks the crowd, that these Galileans were any worse (or better) than any other group of Galileans, that they deserved the fate they met in Jerusalem? No.

And, Jesus adds, if you continue acting and thinking they way you do, you will meet the same end they did.

What?! What is Jesus saying here? The trouble is, we don't know from the text anything about these Galileans and their beliefs. Is Jesus making a political point that if we continue to support or resist the occupation, we will be subject to it, and therefore forever under threat of execution by it? Or is Jesus making some religious point that beliefs similar to the Galileans ends in sticky deaths? (And is it also important that Jesus was himself referred to as a Galilean - does the region imply some background religious or political flavor?)

Jesus seems to emphasize his point by adding the comparison with innocents who were killed when a tower collapsed. Why just them? Were they worse than everyone else in Jerusalem?

Is Jesus here taking a stand somewhat like Job, pointing out that chance seems also to play a part in the world, that the world is not always just and fair. Sometimes innocent perish along with the guilty, suffering and fortune do not signal righteousness or sin. Who can know the mind and will of God, in a world such as this? The book of Job ends with the demand that we believe and have confidence in God regardless, despite all the chaos and seeming senselessness of the world around us (which, for all it's drawbacks, is at least more honest about the world than the Calvinist piety-prosperity principle).

But then Jesus says, No - they were no worse (or better?) than any of you - but unless you repent (metanoia: [Gk] change your way of thinking, change direction, turn around) you will perish as they did - randomly, senselessly, innocent along with the guilty, unforseeably? With this would-be clarification of what he means, Jesus ends up making the confusion even greater.

Unless....

Jesus follows this discussion with a parable of a barren fig tree, which for three years hasn't borne fruit - the landlord said "cut it down." The gardener, though, asked for one more year, a year in which he would dig around the tree and fertilize the soil, to see if this didn't cause the tree to fruit.

I think Luke is putting this parable here in order to make two points: first, there is always hope - even after three years, the gardener still pleads with the landlord for time to nurture the tree to see it bear fruit. At the same time, however, there is a point after which continuing to waste time on a tree that will not bear fruit is poor stewardship of resources. There is a sense of enduring hope, but not endless permission for inactivity.

Secondly, Luke is contrasting the former discussion with the latter - religious pilgrims and random people on the street all meet their deaths in seemingly senseless violence and caprice. But the fig tree is judged on whether or not it bears fruit - its existence is laid against a backdrop of an expectation of productivity. Is Luke saying that those who put their hope in the other-worldly, in the power of God outside of them, are doomed to die just like those who have no such confidence and spend their time hoping for redemption in the streets beneath towers of human accomplishment? (The Galileans were religious pilgrims killed by the state; the eighteen people in the streets were killed by a chance collapsing of a tower.)

Is Luke advocating a Third Way? A blend of hope in the divine and a commitment to working to change this world in that vision? The admixture seems typically Lucan: discipleship is grounded in a transformation of ourselves that comes from outside ourselves, but that transformation necessarily leads to our intentional living as to transform the lived-world around us.

Is this what the fig tree is supposed to teach us? That we are forgiven for our reluctance or misunderstanding up to this point, but there is a limit to even God's patience, and we must at some point decide (or, more accurately, to continue to not decide or commit is itself a decision and commitment not to bear fruit).