pentecost 5 year C

2 Kings 2: 1-2; 6-14 NRSV text
Psalm 77: 1-2; 11-20 NRSV text
Galatians 5: 1; 13-25 NRSV text
Luke 9: 51-62 NRSV text

Things are hotting up in Luke’s gospel – not that you’d realise it from the way in which the Lectionary texts are set! Between the story of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac last week and today’s turning point in the gospel (9:51, where Jesus turns towards Jerusalem and the Way of the Cross), several things have happened: we’ve bypassed the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the unstoppable menstrual bleeding; the mission of The Twelve, the feeding of the 5,000, Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah, the first of the Passion predictions, the Transfiguration, Jesus healing a demon-possessed boy, the second Passion prediction, a discussion about true greatness is in Jesus’ (Kingdom) terms, and the question of a “rogue” exorcist!

That is a serious chunk of the story to have missed out – because if you read it as a piece of flowing text (which is, after all, how Luke intended it to be read!), the significance of the build-up of tension is clear. The stakes are being cranked up at an alarming rate.

In narrative terms, we’re into the unfolding of Jesus’ mission (ever since the sermon in Nazareth in chapter 4). Here Jesus is announced (via the Isaiah text) as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests. Jesus is God’s Anointed – God’s Messiah (as Peter has recognised in 9:20). But what has unfolded is the unexpectedness of God’s Messiah – and therefore of God!

Jesus the Messiah as the revelation of God
We need to keep firmly in mind that if Jesus is God’s Messiah, there is a direct connection between who Jesus is, the way he behaves and the character of Yahweh. That is something specific to being the Messiah – part of the job description. We don’t see that with the great prophets – or even the apostles. We don’t suppose that Yahweh is somehow like Moses in character – or even Elijah! In fact, what the biblical texts frequently emphasise is how puzzling the prophets (those anointed by Yahweh) find God. Their task is primarily one of faithful obedience. Nor do we suppose that God is like the apostle Paul (at least, we hope not!).

The point is that we do say about Jesus, “God’s like that!” That is one of the unique things about being the Messiah. As David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham wisely remarked, “God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore there is hope!”

Why is Jesus so different from other figures who have been anointed by the Spirit? Why does Jesus show us – in his own character and person; in the specifics of his personality and actions and interactions – what God is like, in a way in which Elisha or Paul – or Moses before them – did not? It’s an extraordinary thing, once you begin to think about it, isn’t it? We’re used to the notion that God can reveal things through people via the Spirit. We are used to the idea that extraordinary people can be incredibly Christ-like (or God-like) in character (we usually call them “saintly”). But to suggest that we consistently learn about what God is like through the personality of a human being is of another order altogether.

The difference between Jesus and his predecessors is that Jesus is shocking. Luke has been emphasising that since chapter 7, when poor old John the Baptist just cannot cope with the stories he is hearing about Jesus. Luke deliberately evokes the Elijah/Elisha stories because these were the two prophets renowned for their miraculous power. The healings and the raising of children from the dead echo these two great men of God. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Jesus, supremely possessed by the Spirit, does the sorts of things that Elijah and Elisha do. If these prophets were characterised by a particularly “powerful” baptism/anointing of the Spirit, Jesus is similarly characterised. Of course, there is the sense that “one greater than Elijah/Elisha is here”. There is a sense in which Jesus, like Elisha, inherits the mantle of Elijah (cf today’s reading in 2 Kings 2: 1-2; 6-14). The healings, then, are a cause for amazement and excitement. But the point is, they’re not unexpected. Peter can bolt these sorts of events on his Blue Peter version (“Here’s one I made earlier”, for American readers) of “Messiah”.

What is extraordinary is Jesus’ constant presence in contamination zones! Have you noticed how much Jesus is involved in uncleanness during Luke’s stories in the last couple of chapters? In Nain, Jesus deliberately goes up and touches the funeral bier. He is feted by a prostitute who touches him – in embarrassingly intimate fashion. He is touched by an “unclean” woman. There is an intimate connection between contamination and death. For all the wonder of Jesus’ raising people from the dead (and there is a concentration of these miracles in this section of Luke’s narrative), we need not to miss the fact that Jesus is dabbling in death and contamination.

Last week’s story of the Gerasene demoniac is, in narrative terms, the climax of this death/contamination complex. Ironically, it is among the dead, in place infested with demon, in Gentile territory in a place, in other words, reeking with horror and contamination – that Jesus encounters the “living dead” demoniac.

What Luke wants us to “get” is that all this provokes the question, “This is all well and good – spectacular stuff and all that, and certainly of the calibre of the old Elijah/Elisha stories – but what is God’s Messiah doing among all this death stuff? He seems to have a decidedly unholy fascination for ghoulish, dirty stuff! I’m worried.”

Isn’t that precisely the dynamic we see in Peter’s confession? “You are the Messiah of God” is followed by the first of the Passion predictions. In other words, the answer to the question about Jesus’ apparent unhealthy obsession with death and contamination is that he is himself going to be involved in it!

This is what causes the problem for people. How can the Messiah reveal God when he spends his time being so disgustingly unholy? God cannot approve of this, can he? (I take the purity-obsessed notion of holiness to be characteristically male – particularly if you look at the Jewish male horror of anything to do with bodies and blood. Surely the story of the woman with the discharge tells us that, if nothing else).

This is why Jesus reveals God in a way in which no other person has done. Jesus is “God among us” – “God-who-touches”, “God-who-is-caressed”, “God-who-does-not-avoid-contamination”, “God-who-gets-dirty”. But what Luke really wants us to register is the shock factor of the notion that God, in Jesus, becomes involved in death.

The God who gets involved in death (Luke 9: 51)
If we’ve been reading, we’re becoming aware of the tension that’s building in the text: on the one hand, Jesus’ “mighty acts” declare him to be the Messiah. He is causing amazement and excitement. The rural crowds love him. On the other hand, though, we’re squirming more and more. Jesus is an uncomfortable character. His personal life seems to leave more than a little to be desired – his choice of friends and haunts, anyway. And he is less than scrupulous about observing the Law. He’s not your typical “holy man of God” – in fact, he’s decidedly unholy in terms of the Law. And he’s perhaps – maybe – a little bit too fascinated with death.

So the question is, is this a character flaw, or what? What would God reckon to all this? Is Jesus a David-type figure – clearly one of God’s favourites and with enormous strengths, but also fatally flawed?

Luke’s answer is startling: this is directly the action of God. Rather than being the God who dwells in splendid holy isolation within the Holy of Holies (an important theme in Luke), God is among the people – and more than that, among the outcasts and “sinners”! God isn’t here to judge and condemn, either, but to save.

Being here to save means getting involved in darkness and dirt. It will ultimately involve God in death. In Jesus, God comes among us at the points of deepest need and deepest evil. This is the sense in which Jesus “reveals” God: for Jesus’ contemporaries, Yahweh the God of the Covenant is to be defined primarily by holiness. Jesus calls Yahweh “Father” and redefines God in terms of compassion and salvation.

The absolute deliberateness of God’s saving involvement in death is driven home by what scholars have identified as the “Lukan Travel Narrative”. Here at 9:51 – the midpoint of the gospel – Jesus apparently begins a journey to Jerusalem. The rest of the gospel “takes place” on the road to Jerusalem. It’s a narrative device to make clear that Jesus is not just “wandering around”, but following a path – a path that will lead to Jerusalem and the cross. The journey becomes an occasion for Jesus’ teaching on discipleship. Ironically, the nearer Jesus draws to the cross and death, the more resistance he will encounter from his disciples. Ultimately, he will lose them all.

The Passion and resistance (Luke 9: 52-56)
The cross is the stumbling block. While Jesus concentrates on miracles and exorcisms alone, all is well. He is assured of a popular reception. His teaching strikes an uneasy note, though. Look at the teaching blocs in this section of the gospel (Luke 4 onwards): he continually faces people with an “either/or”. He will not allow people to have things both ways. In his Sermon on the Plain, he pronounces blessings on the poor, the hungry, the mourners and the despised – but then pronounces woes on the rich, the well-fed, the happy and the celebrities! He espouses a radical view of morality and holiness, too: he resists the notion that our moral responsibility for others has any boundaries of friendship, race, or religion (6:27ff).

Jesus makes himself the criterion for being on the right track or not: hearing and following him is building on a rock, whereas refusing him is building on sand. And most shockingly of all, Jesus resists any sensible, traditional notion of kinship: all who “hear the Word of God and do it” (and we must understand: Jesus assumes we hear the Word of God through him and “do” it by doing what he says) are his “family”.

This is difficult stuff to swallow. It can be done while it’s possible to sideline the teaching in favour of the miracles. But the more explicit the inevitability of death and the cross becomes, the more overt will be the resistance. This is what Luke makes so clear on the first stop on the “road to Jerusalem”: they enter a Samaritan village and the villagers will not receive him “because his face was set toward Jerusalem”. It’s a little vignette that foreshadows the ultimate fate of Jesus’ mission and emphasises the divisive nature of the cross.

The Passion and the New Age (Luke 9:57-62)
There are two different worlds. One is the world as we all experience it, with its rules and conventions and socio-economic arrangements. The second world is the world of the Kingdom. It’s the world of grace and compassion and salvation. It’s the world of Jesus. Note, though: it’s not a different world (geographically), but this world … as seen through Jesus’/God’s eyes. It’s this world, transformed into all that God intends it to be. But it is also the world that can be accessed only by way of the cross. In other words, the road – the journey to Jerusalem – is the only way to get there. It means leaving everything else behind. It costs – just as it will cost Jesus his life.

The problem is, there’s no in-between possibility in Jesus’ teachings. The Way of the Cross is not a road that runs parallel to other roads. Other roads cross it – or it crosses other roads periodically. Jesus walks the road, and it is set quite deliberately to cross other roads. It is the way of God’s salvation – the means by which God comes searching.

Those crossing places, though, are touching places. People meet Jesus. Jesus has come to meet them – but he isn’t stopping! His face is set towards Jerusalem. The challenge is to follow Jesus – which means obeying the rules of the Road. There is no other way. It isn’t an easy road, and there is no negotiation about conditions. Neither is there isn’t time to dither.

That’s what Jesus stresses in these three enigmatic, startling and offensive exchanges (9:57-62). One would-be follower claims (as Peter will!) that he will follow wherever Jesus is going. But Jesus is only going to one place: the cross. There are no alternatives – no “safe havens”. Jesus’ mission effectively makes him a refugee: there is nowhere for him – as he has just discovered in the Samaritan village! Ultimately, there will be no place for him in the world, as Luke has representatives of the whole of humanity giving their last word on the subject in Jerusalem: “Crucify him!”

The second and third would-be followers ask for time. The first asks for time to bury his father. This is not a frivolous excuse, akin to the guests who refuse the invitation to the king’s feast: burying one’s father is a sacred duty. Jesus effectively says, “This is your kairos. Nothing takes precedence. In Kingdom terms, these things belong to another world – the world of death and darkness. Such is the urgency of the Kingdom that when it comes by (in the person of Jesus), there is no time to delay and nothing that must be allowed to exercise a more urgent call on one’s life, priorities and attention.

The third says, “I need time to say goodbye to my family”. Jesus has already pronounced on his view of family ties. Family ties are a distraction. Family means being “at home” in the world – and Jesus’ point is that the Kingdom cannot be at home in the world! Families – with rites of passage, issues of inheritance etc – are part of the weft and warp of what holds the world as we know it together. They support us – but they also entangle and trap us, so that we are unready/unwilling/unable to answer Jesus’ call when he comes by.

These are harsh words. Yet for Jesus, the Way of the Cross presents a stark choice. Following Jesus involves taking up one’s cross and following (9:23). It means losing one’s life for the sake of the Kingdom – ie having to turn one’s back resolutely on this world. That is not some sort of “holy withdrawal” – it is about actively embracing the Way and the New World of the Cross, and it costs everything.

“It’s the foreskin or Jesus!” (Galatians 5: 1-13)
We’re on one of Paul’s favourite subjects: circumcision! Paul is apparently obsessed with the subject. Now of course, it’s a matter close to the heart (as it were!) of any good Jewish boy. And it’s what Paul’s opponents are pressing, so he’s engaged with it theologically. But there’s more to it than that: Paul loves willy jokes! He does circumcision and willy humour in the same way that others do toilet humour! In fact, what Paul does is to employ the irony and sarcasm of some pretty crude jokes as a rhetorical device in theological debate. And if we pay him close attention here, he will certainly raise a few well-manicured eyebrows among those church members who tut disapprovingly at anything risqué or smutty!

Paul’s opponents are arguing that Christians need to obey the Jewish Law; in particular, Gentile male converts need to be circumcised. What Paul has learned (as we know) is that Jesus has been crucified under the Law – and God has raised him from the dead! This means that the Law is finished – it’s become outdated because, through resurrection, God has ushered in the Messianic New Age of Resurrection. It is characterised, not by being marked by circumcision, but by the presence of the Spirit. It is the age of freedom.

His conclusion is stark: “Guy’s it’s your foreskin, or it’s Jesus! You can’t lose your foreskin and keep Jesus!” That is literally his argument in 5: 2-4. There’s a crude pun: if you get circumcised, you cut yourself off from Jesus (v4).

For Paul, the age of resurrection is the age of freedom. We have been enslaved under the Law – not because the Law is bad (quite the opposite!) but because human sin means that we are constantly placing ourselves under the Law’s condemnation, rather than discovering the freedom that the Law is intended to bring. The Law cannot bring that freedom that God intends. Jesus, however, dies “under the Law” … but is raised by God! For Paul, that means only one thing: Jesus was unjustly condemned by the Law. He kept it – and God therefore raised him from the dead.

But if Jesus is the Second Adam, what makes the difference is that the new humanity in Jesus is characterised by freedom in the Spirit, rather than slavery under the Law and in bondage to sin. If that is true, it follows that reverting to Law-keeping is going back into a world that God has gone to enormous lengths to render obsolete – for our sakes. Being circumcised, therefore, is voluntarily to embrace the Old World – the world in which the Law was operational and circumcision was the sign of those committed to keeping God’s Law. That is why he says, in v3, that anyone being circumcised obliges himself to obey the whole Law.

Circumcision, for Paul, therefore means turning one’s back on grace. This is where the contrast comes between Law and grace comes in: it’s not between “good” and “bad” but between “old” and “new”. And “old” is the realm of the world prior to the resurrection of Jesus: the world of sin, death and the Law.

The cross, Paul is quite clear about, is offensive. It is offensive because it does away with the Law. The cross is the death of the Old Covenant. Paul, a good Jew, is reaching the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – but without the covenant of Law and circumcision! And he is getting it in the neck (as it were!) from fellow Jewish Christians who are insisting on circumcision as part of faith in Jesus. For Paul, it’s one or the other: the way of faith or the way of the knife. You cannot have both. The preaching of circumcision is contrary to the gospel. Despite the intentions of the Judaizers, the effect is to preach an alternate gospel to the gospel of freedom in Jesus through the Spirit. That’s why Paul explodes, “I wish that the knife would slip and they’d end up cutting the whole lot off!” (v12)

Freedom, flesh and the Spirit (Galatians 5: 13-25)
Paul is aware of how thin the line is between freedom from the Law and anarchy, or between the Law and licentiousness. The abolition of the Law – freedom – doesn’t change what is right and wrong. That is why Paul affirms the Law’s condemnation of things that were apparently rife in the Galatian churches (v19).

What we need to understand as we read his contrast between “flesh” and “Spirit” is that Paul is Jewish, not Greek or Hindu! This isn’t a contrast between the physical and “spiritual” (meaning incorporeal) world; it’s the contrast between “flesh” (= circumcision/foreskins) and the Spirit of Resurrection. Paul’s rhetoric here is based on an elaborate (and crude!) pun: he is accusing his opponents (those who insist on circumcision) of living “life in the foreskin” (flesh) rather than in the freedom of the Spirit.

It isn’t about cutting off the foreskin and keeping the Law; it’s about allowing the new life of the Spirit (the Spirit of Resurrection) to work, growing and bearing fruit. The “fruit” of the Spirit is about Christ-likeness. Jesus is to be followed, not by becoming good Law-abiding Jews, but by being filled with the same Spirit that filled Jesus!

And it’s all gift! It’s something that Jesus has done on out behalf, and that God has done on our behalf through Jesus. Jesus has become a sacrifice on our behalf. By faith – participation in Jesus – we go through our own dying to sin and rising to new life. How? By the Spirit. It’s what the Spirit does for us through baptism. We don’t have to “mutilate” the flesh, says Paul, because it’s already been crucified!

Paul puts us the other side of the Way of the Cross. The path on which Jesus sets out in Luke 9:51 ends in Jerusalem, on the cross. “Crucify him!” is our last word on the subject. Yet it is not going to be God’s last word. God has another word to speak – a word of resurrection! And that Word – a Word of grace and life – is Spirit-filled. There is nothing left for us to do, other than to follow Jesus, by baptism, along the Way that he and only he has actually walked. By grace, we get to share in what he went through, and by grace we live by the same Spirit that empowered him in his mission and raised him to new life.

Hallelujah!

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