A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 13C and Proper 14C.
Last week, the lectionary jumped from the beginning of chapter 11 into the middle of chapter 12. What we skipped over were teachings in which Jesus expands the sense of what it means to love one’s neighbor.
It culminates with a confrontation which really puts plain the double teaching from the parable of the Good Samaritan.
- Love your neighbor
- Don’t YOU dare exclude anyone from being a neighbor.
The problem with how most of us hear this teaching is that we fall into the trap that loving all our neighbors really does seem to have an exception. We don’t know how to love the one who hurts other people.
This thinking is a logical trap and one into which Jesus even seems to think we’ll inevitably fall.
But if we recall the parable, he gives us a Samaritan to emulate and two religious leaders to not emulate. He isn’t just saying do good but also don’t avoid doing good as the powerful do.
We want to focus on whether or not to love the Pharisees. And it’s almost like Jesus is saying Stop worrying about loving them! I’m more worried that you’ll become them!
This juxtaposition was laid out in the succeeding stories, including Mary and Martha at the end of chapter 10 and then the dinner with the Pharisees at the end of chapter 11. It is in this latter story that Jesus condemns the Pharisees for hurting the powerless, which seems to be central to how Jesus understands this relationship.
So the moral burden which sometimes silences us from condemning some of our neighbors, because we are trying so hard to love them seems to hinge upon our neighbors being equals. Those with power have greater responsibility for building this equality.
The focus shifts slightly in chapter 12.
It doesn’t shift away from neighborliness, but from this moral conundrum and to more practical teaching for the disciples themselves.
Jesus warns the disciples of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and that they may be forced to confess (as I described last week). Notice that these are both predicated on the followers of Jesus being the powerless ones pushed around by the powerful. While many cultural conservatives describe this sensation today, they do so as perhaps the most powerful voting block in the U.S. over the last 40 years.
The more apt condition is not the supposed persecution of a pluralistic society in which Christians aren’t the ones in power. The historic reference is the Roman Empire threatening death under Nero. People’s literal lives on the line because they have ZERO power rather than the gall of having to share power with others.
Notice, too, that Jesus doesn’t offer an affirming sense of what they are supposed to believe about God, but that the focus is on the act of believing in the midst of persecution. Act and God will support you in your action.
Suddenly, Proper 13C feels out of place.
The story the lectionary jumps to is now talking about money and possessions. Wait, what?
Someone asks Jesus to be an arbitrator in a domestic dispute over real estate in 12:13-21. But Jesus warns about the blinding effect of greed. This naturally draws out that sense of the light in the eyes. And while I focused on that myself, that doesn’t preclude it from also being an economic discussion.
It certainly pairs well with the story of the rich young ruler which will come much later.
It also seems to explain the purpose of the story we read last week better.
Don’t let your possessions be in the way. Even the disposal of possessions becomes a trap because they possess you. But focus instead on what God offers the world instead.
God provides the cycle of the natural world. That’s the place.
While Jesus references Solomon’s wisdom, perhaps the better analogy would be God’s feeding in Exodus 15-17. God provides sufficiency and equality to the world.
Possessing food for tomorrow becomes hoarding because it steels God’s role in providing for us.
But it also does something equally bad. It compromises equality. We hoard, not just to eat tomorrow, but that we may eat tomorrow. Not our neighbors. Even if we save enough for our family or perhaps our friends, we’re deciding who lives and dies. Suddenly, we are playing God.
God clothes and feeds creation.
Focus on that. Not yourself.
Note about Proper 14C
I know that was a lot of build-up to get to a small little absent passage about not forgetting that God’s the generous one here. But I think we need to be clear what context the next passage drops us into.
And this is the ongoing teaching of becoming neighborly. Which is not just being nice or polite. Nor is it avoiding difficult subjects in polite company.
This context is about being neighborly in a culture that rejects neighborliness. So it isn’t just “be the Good Samaritan.” It’s more like “be the Good Samaritan when the priest and the Levite will have Roman soldiers kill you.”
Know your context. Not just for the sake of understanding the gospel, but for your own following of Jesus.
This is why he warns them about the Pharisees at the beginning of this chapter and prepares them for Roman interrogation. And then tells them to keep their eyes on the prize. Because there are other interests in opposition to Jesus’s way of love.
Light your lamps and get ready.