A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 23C and Proper 24C.
The text: Luke 17:20-37.
This isn’t a gap for this week. It’s really for last week. As you know, life happens. But this section of Luke seems more challenging the closer we get to Jerusalem. And this gap passage is pretty bonkers. But seems totally necessary for understanding what we’re doing here.
Context
The disciples are following Jesus to Jerusalem, learning about being the kin-dom of God in the now. The main theme over the last ten chapters or so is discipleship. And just as importantly, it is about apostleship. It’s both.
Discipleship, remember, is about following a rabbi to imitate them and do what they do. Apostleship, on the other hand, is about doing what the rabbi does without them.
Jesus told parables about faith and justice (16:1-13 and 19-31), taught about justice and the law (16:14-18), pushed them to forgive (17:1-10), and restored 10 outcasts, redeeming one of them.
To the Pharisees…
Jesus says that the coming Kingdom can’t be observed. And that’s pretty much it. You’re not going to be able to measure it or forecast the kin-dom like a storm front.
This seems strange given the earlier statement about being able to read the signs of the times.
However, this strikes me less of a literal or universal statement of fact as it is a description of the Pharisees’ collective blindness. In other words, this isn’t an objective statement about the physical manifestation of the kingdom or the observational skills of human beings. It’s more like you guys kinda suck at this.
Jesus keeps confronting Pharisees on literalism. And I don’t think this is nothing. And I also think there is a reason we are prone to looking like the Pharisees Jesus confronts.
Our cultural tendency is toward literalism.
Let me explain.
The era we call the Enlightenment, a time which started the Modern Era, saw the rapid and widespread dawning of scientific discovery. We suddenly became keen observers of our world and discovered many tools for measuring our environment.
This has led to an increasingly materialist view of the world. As we have discovered the nature of our bodies and what they can do, we have become increasingly focused on what our bodies are actually capable of.
We often measure this as an increase in knowledge and skepticism toward the supernatural. But this isn’t some abstract notion. It is directly related to new paradigms and taxonomies we’ve created for our world.
We aren’t skeptical of miracles, for instance, because we desire to be or as some bug in the system. We as people are increasingly skeptical of miracles because of the increasingly rigid materialism which colors how we see the world. It rejects the miraculous as incompatible with our material world.
Literalism, therefore, isn’t merely present in fundamentalists demanding every word in Scripture being true and occurring in history. It is also present in the same rigidity we have with the material order of the world. Healings and miracles become impossible, for instance.
So in many of our churches, the dance between literal interpretation and metaphorical interpretation of the text is really a battle between two embodiments of literalism. And therefore apocalyptic prophecy becomes an entirely literal argument about our future.
So when Jesus warns the Pharisees that the kin-dom is not observable to them because it is among or within them, this is a word to all of us. It isn’t an observable and measurable phenomenon. It transcends scripture and science.
The unspoken word is this: therefore, find it in one another.
To the Disciples…
Jesus’s teaching to the disciples is more pessimistic. OK, that’s not strong enough. It’s downright disturbing.
It seems to hinge on the notion of observing and seeing a demonstrable thing in the world. The difference, of course, is in which of these two groups (Pharisees and disciples) has the eyes to see.
So just as he says the Pharisees can’t see the kin-dom coming, the disciples won’t see the kin-dom in their midst. Why?
While the Pharisees can’t see the kin-dom because they think it is a materialist event, so they are looking for the big events in the future, the disciples have already observed the kin-dom in their ministry (see chapters 9-11). They have eyes to see because they aren’t looking literally.
But the reason they won’t see the kin-dom is that they will be surrounded by people who reject it. They are traveling toward the lion’s den and what they find there are not people transformed by the grace of God into Jesus’s beautiful way of love. No, they’re heading to the lions.
So the problem isn’t that God won’t be there. They’ll be too busy weeping over the crucifixion to see it.
Good News
This all may be really hard for those of us in the Mainline who don’t think of ourselves as literalists. After all, we are used to speaking about finding the works of the Spirit in one another. But Modernism has done a real number on all of us. And the literalism we embrace is not necessarily the kind we reject.
Perhaps this is most evident when we find ourselves troubled by a passage like this one.
Think about it.
When we read a passage about the challenge of discipleship, the impending persecution because we are walking differently than the world, and the violent tendencies of powerful people, and then seek to reject these words because we only want to hear the happy stuff, we are embracing a rigid literalism about God.
Jesus gives us good news here. And it doesn’t take some distorted rapture eschatology nonsense to find it.
It doesn’t say the kin-dom won’t be here. It says even they won’t see it. Because what is coming for them is Jesus will be murdered by the state. And their world is going to crumble.
And guess what? It literally does.
Then guess what? They get their junk together.
This isn’t a command or a judgment. It’s Jesus being honest. Those days are going to be dark. People are not going to be able to see God in their midst because people will literally die. Everything is going to change. Know this. And know that I’ve taught you all of this for a reason!
Next
That’s when Jesus tells them a parable about keeping faith. The very first verse of chapter 18:
“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”
Luke 18:1
Persist in prayer. And the parable has a callback to chapter 11. We’re to shame injustice. Push for justice. Make the good of this world the highest priority and fight for it.
And then another parable, for Proper 25C. Hold back that ego.
This is what discipleship looks like.
It isn’t easy. And it doesn’t always make sense given what we’re taught. Given what our friends tempt us to believe.
This is all just another part of how Jesus helps his followers see the primary goal of ministry is to follow a way of love. A way that embraces justice, generosity, joy, and forgiveness. And ditch the junk.
Even when it all seems too hard. Especially then.