God’s Purposes

Luke 13: 31 - 35 (February 28, 2010)

1) The Text

31At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

2) The Context

This passage consists of two pericopes (i.e., an extract or selection from a book, especially a reading from a Scripture that forms part of a church service), "The Warning against Herod" (Luke 13:31-3) and "The Lament over Jerusalem" (13:34-35). They are located within the so-called Travel Narrative in the Gospel of Luke (9:51-19:27). Ever since 9:51, Jesus and his followers are on a long journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.

Although the section is designated a "narrative," there is actually not much narrative in it. It contains teachings primarily; for example, most of the parables of Jesus that Luke has collected appear in this section. The teaching materials consist primarily of (1) instruction for Jesus’ disciples; (2) controversies with opponents; and (3) words of judgment. The two passages being discussed here fit into the latter two categories.

The first of the pericopes begins with the approach of some Pharisees who warn Jesus about "Herod," which would have been Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee (technically a "tetrarch," or ruler of a fourth of the former kingdom of Herod the Great), 4 B.C.—A.D. 39. Why this Herod would have sought to kill Jesus is not said. The most plausible reason would be that he thought of Jesus as, in some way, a successor to John the Baptist; some had even claimed that "John had been raised from the dead" (9:7), and that Jesus was he.

This pericope appears in Luke without parallels in the other gospels. It is special Lucan material. The second has a parallel at Matthew 23:37-39. The wording is almost identical in Matthew and Luke. The lament over Jerusalem in Luke, 13:34-35 seems to be out of place. Jesus is still in Galilee in Luke's narrative. He does not arrive at Jerusalem until 19:41. Matthew's placement of the lament, however, is more fitting for anyone who seeks to construct a chronology of Jesus' ministry, for he places the lament at 23:37-39 after Jesus' entry into the city of Jerusalem (21:10).

3) Interpretation

This text provides an opportunity to address the problem of religious prejudice that arises out of preconceived notions and stereotypical generalizations. Christians have traditionally viewed Pharisees as enemies of Jesus. Yet the evidence in the gospels does not unequivocally present such a picture. In this text they seem to offer Jesus protection from Herod. How often we form an opinion about a person or a group without really attempting to understand them as persons of value. Christians have made the name Pharisee equivalent to hypocritical legalism. While Pharisees did have a tendency to become legalistic, they were in fact committed to Hebrew Scriptures and sought ways to live by the biblical commandments.

Another way that religious prejudice can be seen in this text is in the attitude that Herod and Jerusalem have toward Jesus. Both see Jesus as a threat and seek ways to get rid of him. Herod is a political figure and his concern is that Jesus appears to be disturbing the peace in Galilee. In one sense, Herod had nothing to worry about because the message of Jesus was about the kingdom of God and not a political agitation against Herod. In another sense, Herod had everything to worry about because when people take the kingdom of God seriously Herod could lose his political leverage with the people. Through peaceful resistance Ghandi brought about the collapse of the British regime in India when armed resistance failed.

Herod seeks to kill Jesus. But, as the story will unfold, the real threat to Jesus is not Herod but Jerusalem. How is it that Jerusalem, the holy city, this religious capital, has become known as the city that kills prophets and will shortly put to death God’s final envoy? Why is it that it is often the religious establishment that has so much conflict with prophets?

What needs to be heard here is not the fixing of blame for the death of Jesus on Judaism or the whole city of Jerusalem. This text is a call to all of us who have been immersed in a particular religious tradition to search ourselves. How easy it is to think that our own understanding of the faith is the absolute truth and therefore any view that challenges our own must be interpreted as unorthodox and condemned and eliminated.

On the other hand, religious truth can be viewed as a matter of individual decision not to be questioned by anyone else. Passionate commitment to an unflinching faith and uncompromising faithfulness to God are labeled as fanaticism. Yet the text presents to us a model in Jesus worthy of consideration. Jerusalem in its passionate zeal brings about the death of prophets and Jesus. Jesus, on the other hand, in his passionate commitment to God’s purposes journeys resolutely to Jerusalem to carry out his mission, knowing full well that such a course is replete with dangers. In his zeal to carry out the purposes of God he is willing to undergo suffering and death.

Here we have two contrasting pictures of religious zeal--Jerusalem and Jesus. Religious passion drives Jerusalem to murderous ends. Religious passion moves prophets and Jesus to fulfill God’s mission at the cost of their lives. We who follow in the footsteps of Jesus are faced with a challenge. Will we adopt the model of faithfulness to God’s purposes even if it means vulnerability and suffering? And if so, when? God is like a mother hen making repeated attempts to gather her chicks under her wings, but the chicks are going their own way. Divine judgment will eventually come but God’s judgment is tempered with grace, mercy, and the hope of redemption.

4) Thought Exercise

What is God’s mission for you, for our church?

How much are we willing to contend with to fulfill these missions?

Testing and Temptation

Luke 4: 1 - 13 (February 21, 2010)

1) The Text

4Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 9Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 12Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

2) The Context

From 2:41 to 4:30, Luke records six events which herald the beginning of the Messiah's mission. The events testify, witness to, Jesus' kingship. Today’s passage, 4:1-13, is the fifth of these testimonies - the witness of the temptation. In the temptation story there are three tests: (1) Stone into bread. Will God supply Messiah's needs as he seeks to bring in the kingdom? (2) Authority over the world. Will the way of suffering achieve results? (3) Signs and wonders. Surely self-glory will achieve a better response and so hasten the coming kingdom?

Luke has told us of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, of “a voice ... from heaven” (3:22) saying “You are my Son ...”. On that occasion “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form”, but is this what we today, would consider bodily? Ancient people conceived of several levels of spirit worlds with occasional contact between them and earth.

Perhaps Jesus transcends between earth and a spirit world in the story of his testing by the devil. During his time there (“forty days”, v. 2, meaning a significant period of time), the Holy Spirit sustains him in his travails; human as he is, Jesus is totally dependent on the Spirit being with him, for “he ate nothing”. In this dependence, Jesus is humanly helpless; he humbles himself before the Father.

The devil speaks, but is this like “a voice from heaven” speaking? The devil recognizes him as “Son of God” (vv. 3, 9), the one who fulfils God’s plan in creation and, given Luke’s genealogy in 3:23-28, in Israel’s history. Jesus answers the devil’s questions with quotations from the Law, i.e. Deuteronomy, then considered to be the words of Moses.

3) Interpretation

There are many layers of meaning to this story. Historically we know that it was not uncommon for leaders and would-be leaders of change to make their way to the wilderness. The hopes for liberation lived from the stories of liberation, especially the story of the exodus from Egypt, but also the return from exile. Revolutionaries gathered their troops in the wilderness. Pious groups, like the Essenes, made their interim settlements there, waiting for the great climax. Individual figures like John the Baptist made the wilderness their starting point.

Wilderness was the wild place, the waiting place, the place of preparation. It also connected then, as it does now, to very basic spirituality: a place to grapple with God, a place to learn dependence on nature and its provisions, a place of extremes or contrasts, of wild beasts and desert. It is the Lenten space par excellence. So it was natural that people expected Jesus headed for wilderness and very likely that he did. He went to John there and was baptized.

As with the birth stories, so with the testing, there are two versions. Both are situated in the wilderness. Mark’s brief account has Jesus tested for 40 days and nights and envisages a struggle between Jesus and Satan in which Jesus emerges victorious and ready to embark on a successful ministry of baptizing people with the Spirit through exorcism and healings.

Q’s version, drawn on by Luke and Matthew, has more elaborate allusions to Israel in the wilderness. Jesus is faithful and obedient in contrast to Israel’s unfaithfulness in the wilderness, a typology which Matthew has already been developing in the birth narratives. Here is the true ‘son’. The links with Israel in the wilderness are certainly also there in Luke, but Luke has not concentrated on the Israel typology in the same way as Matthew. His order is different: the climax is not the ascent of the mountain, but the pinnacle of the temple. Temple miracles were often a feature of future expectation along with times in the wilderness. It is true that for Luke Jerusalem is central, but the temple miracle is likely to have been also the original climax of the story and would make good sense in the light of Jewish hopes.

Many of the details of the story only make sense in the light of such hopes. In fact the story then emerges as a subtle way of defining just what Jesus was and what he was not. Yes, he is the liberator, but to say that or think that then raised a host of difficulties. Just what kind of liberator was he? It almost makes little difference whether we imagine ourselves listening in on early Jewish Christianity at this point or listening to Jesus’ own thoughts on retreat in the Judean wilderness. The central question was: who am I? who is he? And for us: who are we?

He is not primarily a wonder worker - as many aspirants to divine agency sought (and seek) to be, though no one wanted to deny his miracles. The story is bigger than ‘what happened’. It is a theological story about him, about them and about us. It is larger than life. It invites us to address spiritual options to engagement in God’s hope for the world: why we go to the wilderness and why we don’t stay there.

4) Thought Exercise

How do you depend on God during times of testing and temptation?

How can you find time and space to “head to the wilderness”? What will you do when you get there?

Holy is He!

Psalm 99 (February 14, 2010)

1) The Text

1The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
2The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.
3Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!
4Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
5Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!
6Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
7He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them.
8O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
9Extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.

2) The Context

Psalms is a collection of collections. The psalms were written over many centuries, stretching from the days of Solomon's temple (about 950 BC) to after the Exile (about 350 BC.) Psalms are of five types: hymns of praise, laments, thanksgiving psalms, royal psalms, and wisdom psalms. Within the book, there are five "books"; there is a doxology at the end of each book.

Psalm 99 is a hymn of praise to God as king. The endings of Vv. 3, 5 and 9 are perhaps a refrain, said or sung by worshippers as they “extol” (v. 9) God. God, on his throne above the “cherubim” (v. 1, the half-human, half-animal creatures thought to hover above the altar) in the Temple, is to be praised by “all the peoples” (v. 2). V. 4 lists some qualities God has shown “Jacob”, the people of Israel. (His “footstool”, v. 5, is the Ark). For Israel, God has also helped people in need (vv. 6, 8), given them just laws (v. 7); and punished and forgiven them where appropriate (v. 8).

“Moses ... Aaron” (v. 6) and “Samuel” were known for communicating with God, and were his representatives. “His holy mountain” (v. 9) is Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem stands.

3) Interpretation

Psalm 99 is the last of a group of four psalms (Psalms 96-99) which speak about the sovereignty or kingship of God. There is a threefold structure to this psalm. After an initial statement about kingship of God in the third person expressing the influence of that kingship not only in Zion but over nations (vv. 1-2), there follows an address to the Lord with the refrain ‘Holy is He’ (v. 3). It could be that this refrain is meant to be said by all people. There is a further address to the Lord (v. 4) with a final call to the people to repeat the refrain (v. 5). On this occasion the nature of God’s sovereignty is explored a little with references to God loving justice, establishing equity, and executing justice and righteousness in Israel. These are all the things earthly kings were responsible for too (cf. Psalm 72). Indeed the human monarch’s ability to deliver such ideals was dependent on their relationship with God. This may be evident in the Hebrew at the start of v. 4 which translates ‘and a king’s strength’ implying that God is the strength behind any human monarch, rather than the NRSV emendation ‘Mighty King’ referring to God.

The psalm concludes with a lengthier third section (vv. 6-9) in which there is reference to Moses, Aaron, and Samuel as three of God’s particular servants, to each of whom God spoke, answered, forgave and avenged their wrongdoings. These three stand out as exemplars of faith from the past, and yet ordinary individuals within the history of the community. This section ends with a third call to the people and a longer concluding refrain for them to say (v. 9).

There are some points which we should note about God’s sovereignty from this psalm. First it is universal in nature (v. 1) but expressed in a special relationship to God’s people. There is specificity in the psalms about God’s kingship which we can’t ignore. God is always proclaimed king vis-a-vis someone, namely Israel. God’s sovereignty is never some abstract, absolute entity without ties to human affairs. So just as lament psalms are willing to name the enemies of God, so enthronement psalms such as this one name those who are faithful and define clearly the nature of the one to whom they are faithful (v. 4). God’s sovereignty over the world, and over peoples proceeds from that point. The sovereignty of God is expressed in specific human instances of justice, equity and righteousness and in relation to the lives of real people.

In vv. 6-7 there is a twofold nature to the response to God’s sovereignty. There is the possibility of those who are faithful to cry out to God for deliverance from some trouble. The other side of that is obedience to God’s law, the ‘decrees’ and ‘statutes’ of v. 7c. If God’s sovereignty is expressed by an attentive divine response to God’s people, then there is the requirement of an equally attentive response by those same people to God’s ways. There is an expectation of both divine presence and a corresponding obedience to divine will. Divine presence and obedience to divine will both involve justice, equity and righteousness.

Verse 8 of the psalm probes matters deeper and reveals two sides to God’s presence and will. First God is a forgiving God. But God is also an avenger of the wrongdoings of God’s own people. When one, therefore, proclaims ‘The Lord is king’ as called forth in v. 1, one must do so in full awareness of the nature of the relationship which that statement reflects and the demands attendant upon it. To cry ‘Holy is He’ as the psalm calls for, is to proclaim God’s holiness not only in word but in relationship.

4) Thought Exercise

How does one demonstrate faithfulness to God’s ways?

How does God demonstrate His sovereignty in our lives?