NewCreation

Homily for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And we continue with the Gospel of St Luke, though we've jumped a little since the last time. The last time, if you remember, was Luke's version of Peter's recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, and then Jesus telling everybody immediately afterwards that he now is going to be killed, he's going to undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes. So that's the first announcement of his death in Luke's Gospel. Immediately after this, there's the Transfiguration, and on their way down from the Transfiguration, they heal a boy — or Jesus heals a boy — with a demon. And then, in St Luke's Gospel, and this is rather important and it's a pity we miss it, is the second prediction of Jesus' death. The first time, you remember, it was very detailed: "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes" — he's describing there basically the Jewish authorities of his time — "and be killed, and on the third day be raised." So, very detailed. Then the second prophecy of his death comes after the healing of the boy with the demon, where everyone is amazed at it. And Jesus says to his disciples, "Let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands." So first time Jewish authorities, second time human hands. And it says, but they did not understand what he was saying. The third time, much, much closer to the Passion, it will be into the hands of the Gentiles. And it's enormously important that in each of these prophecies it's a different group of people that is described. The description is given in a different way: the sort of death — it's going to be the Jewish authorities, humans, through betrayal, and the Gentiles, with a series of descriptions of typical Gentile torture acts. And in each case it's described how they didn't understand what he was talking about. So it's important we remember that this is the background of what he's teaching them on his way. He has been shown to be the Holy One of God coming into the midst of the people of the Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah have talked with him, the one representing death, the other one representing resurrection, and now they carry on to Jerusalem. After this, we get some squabbles amongst the disciples as to who's greatest, and then immediately before today's Gospel, and this is quite important, we get John speaking to Jesus saying, "Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he did not follow with us." But Jesus says to him, "Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you." That's going to be very important, because the typical reaction, for most of us, is whoever is not with us is against us. And Jesus is very keen to reverse, if you like, that conspiracy theory thinking, saying, "No, no, no, you've got to learn to see the signs of the arrival of the Spirit of God wherever it is. It's not necessarily going to be on your side in the ways that you conceive your side, but it may actually be for you in a way that you can't understand." Okay, so that brings us to immediately before today's Gospel. And here we have what people regard as the halfway point in Luke's Gospel. This is where the second half, if you like, of Luke's Gospel up to the Passion goes, which is Jesus going to Jerusalem. Up till now he's been acting, doing miracles, signs, preaching, teaching in and around Galilee and the outlying non-Jewish areas. Now he sets his face to Jerusalem. So from today and from now on, for the rest of ordinary time up till Advent, we'll be going through this specifically Lucan area in which Jesus walks to Jerusalem very slowly but in fact walks through much of the Hebrew Scriptures, showing how he's fulfilling them on the way, and we'll have a look at that. This is very rich in references to the Hebrew Scriptures, and he's trying to bring out what he's doing always within the context of his going up to his death and that he is the Holy One of God who is coming to fulfil the Temple. So let's see what's going on here. "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Setting the face — that's a fairly standard Hebraism, but it's something which, interestingly enough, the Lord and two of his angelic companions did at Mamre after they'd talked to Abraham: they set their face to go to visit Sodom. And he sent messengers ahead of him, just as the Lord sent messengers to Sodom. On their way, they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him. Let's remember about the difference between the Jewish people and the Samaritans. The Samaritans were a very ancient part of the Northern Kingdom. They had a similar but slightly different set of scripture than the Jewish people. The Pentateuch they had mostly in common. But they rejected the insistence on Jerusalem as the centre of the Lord's presence, which — let's remember — Jerusalem had originally not been a Yahwistic city. It was a Jebusite city conquered by King David. So in a certain sense they were just old-fashioned traditionalists; they insisted on worshipping God on Mount Gerizim, and indeed many of the ancient prophetic sites where Yahweh had appeared were in the north, not in Judah. So they had a venerable tradition on their side. But because the Jewish people had set up Jerusalem as the pilgrimage place, and therefore the place with all the money, it should be said, Samaritans suspended normal hospitality to travellers if they were going towards Jerusalem. So if people from Galilee or the surrounding Jewish areas were on their way on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for one of the feasts, the Samaritans suspended the normal hospitality to travellers en route, which is to give them some food and so on, or even allowed them to buy food. Now, interestingly enough, when the same pilgrims were coming on their way back to their homelands, they were given food and allowed to buy food, and were treated to all the normal hospitality that was such a prized part of Middle Eastern social life. But it was well known that if you were going on your way to Jerusalem — that was a direct competition of holy place — so for religious reasons you would not be given hospitality. This was standard and known to everybody who travelled through there. There was nothing particular about Jesus and his friends going to Jerusalem at this point. But they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. And it's the receiving of people that is so important. Remember that what happened in Sodom was that the people did not receive the messengers; they tried to interrogate them forcefully, threatening them indeed with gang rape, just to find out who they were. This was not part of the hospitality rules. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" So we have James and John thinking of themselves as the messengers, the angels, whom the Lord had sent to Sodom, and they're threatening… to bring down fire to consume it. And in some ancient texts it reads, "Come down from heaven and consume them as Elijah did." And there are a couple of moments when, in the wake of Elijah's very feisty prophetic ministry, fire comes down from heaven and consumes a whole lot of people. The first is — actually it's people in one case, it's cattle — it's when he's set up a competition between himself and the prophets of Baal, and they set up a sacrifice and then pray to the Lord to send fire, but it doesn't come to consume them. And he sets up his sacrifice and he pours water all over the cattle who have been sacrificed, fills trenches with water, and then prays to the Lord, and then the Lord by fire answers and consumes the whole lot at once, thus showing that he is the Lord and that the prophets of Baal are to be despised. And so Elijah then quickly sends a bunch of his thugs to go and kill all the prophets of Baal. I mean, it's quite clear that this is not a model that Jesus is trying to follow — indeed, very specifically. There's another Elijah moment when a king sends some messengers to Elijah and wants Elijah to come and talk to him, the king, about something, and Elijah simply has fire consume all the messengers, and he repeats this twice because they're asking him to come in a rather peremptory fashion, so that a hundred soldiers get killed as part of their attempting to get Elijah to come and talk to the king. It is only the third time, when the commander asks nicely, that Elijah agrees to come. Again, Jesus is indicating: not as Elijah did, not as the Lord was in Sodom — and we'll get reference to Sodom in next week's Gospel as well, for the same reason — to show that the threat, if you like, is there, but it's not to be imagined in the same way as, if you like, the feisty prophets did. And here we have this very interesting phrase. When the disciples have asked him to do this, he says — "but he turned and rebuked them." Now, if you remember when we had Peter recognising Jesus in Luke's Gospel — Peter recognising Jesus as the Messiah — we don't in Luke's Gospel have what we have in Matthew, which is Jesus telling the disciples that he's about to go up to his death and then Peter attempting to correct him and say, "No, no, no, that shall never happen to you," and then the Lord turns and rebukes him. So here we have the turning and the rebuking, meaning you Have completely failed to understand what I'm about. He has that being done to James and John. It's a very similar psychological point, which is: you do not understand what I am about. In fact, some ancient authorities add this verse: "you do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of humans, but to save them." So this is a key demonstration that we're talking about two different sorts of spirit. The spirit of wrath, which destroys, and the Holy Spirit, which is building something up. And it's within that that following Jesus up to Jerusalem will be lived. Now, as they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus says to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Well, it's a very beautiful image, which we often hear suggesting, yes, that following the Lord is going to take you to strange places and you will have no fixed belonging. But it's more than that, because in the book of Lamentations, and in other places in the Hebrew Scriptures, foxes and birds notoriously hang around the remains of the sanctuary when it's been destroyed. In the book of Lamentations, for instance, little birds — sometimes it's sparrows, sometimes it's little ostriches, but it's the same word for birds. I've no idea what a little ostrich looks like, to be quite honest. But these birds hang around the desolate places. They're able to find a place to nest. The foxes are able to find a place to feed their young. But, and this is the important point, the sanctuary is to be nowhere. The kingdom of God is coming in, and from now on the sanctuary is going to be amongst humans, and it's going to be where the Lord carries it. So if you want to follow the Lord, you don't know where you're going. To another he said — so the Lord here is saying to someone to follow him — he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." And Jesus says to him, in one of the really famous quotes from the New Testament, "Let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." A lot of people are shocked by this, suggesting it's completely lacking in any sort of family tenderness. What does it mean? As far as I can tell, and I'm no expert, it appears from people who study the Aramaic that the Aramaic phrase "let me go and bury my father" doesn't mean "my father has just died, let me conduct the funeral service." It means my father is an old man and it's my proper filial duty to accompany him until he dies. In other words, "Last few months I'll go and accompany him to his death, which is a proper thing to do, and then I'll come and follow you." Jesus says to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Again, hints of terrible scenes in the book of Lamentations, when there's no one to bury the dead except the dead. They're all there. And Jesus is suggesting: no, that it's in the midst of all this culture of death, this destruction, that we have to stand up and learn what is the living presence of the Lord. It's one of the things that is consistent in the Gospels: Jesus having a very strict view of death, that it is not to be taken seriously, not to be treated as a source of cultural meaning and life. In John's Gospel, he gets very angry when he hears the mourners engaging in their ritual mourning, because that dulcifies and makes decorous death. Another says, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home." And Jesus says to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Which brings us to our first reading this week, where we have just had rather an interesting example of someone who was plowing — this was Elisha — when Elijah comes upon him, casts his mantle upon him, thus effectively saying, "Follow me." And what does Elisha do? Well, he says some of the things the slow followers say here. He says, "Let me go back and say goodbye to my family and I'll be with you." And Elijah says to him, "What have I done to you? Come along when you want." And so Elisha goes back home. But what does he do? He burns his yoke and uses the wood to sacrifice some oxen as a farewell sacrifice and feast for his family, and then immediately he follows Elijah. In other words, here's what we would — and the English would not be "burning the yoke," the English expression would be "burning your ships." What in effect Jesus is saying is: remember that if you're going to follow me, you'll have to burn your ships. So here, if you're going to carry on with the yoke and look back fondly, think, "Oh, well, when I was doing that it was okay," then you'll be like the people of Israel in the wilderness, looking back. What did Elisha do? Well, we're going to have to, in a sense, be more than Elisha, but the important thing is that we burn the yoke and follow. And here, the putting the hands to the plow, of course, refers metaphorically to the new task that has come upon you. But the putting the hand to the yoke might mean turning back — and burning the yoke, burning your bridges, burning your boats — so as to be able to follow him. The suggestion is, as he turns his face to Jerusalem, that this is going to be introducing a way of being the holy place, being utterly alive, being full of the prophetic spirit, that is beyond what could be imagined by Elijah or Moses or any of the prophets of old, and that this is what Jesus is inviting us… into doing, and we're going to see how that works throughout the next passages of St. Luke's Gospel in the rest of the year. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.