Looking for Answers

Gospel: Luke 9: 18-22

Yesterday's Gospel portion saw Herod musing about Jesus.  Today Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him.  They reply with the same answers Herod had in his musings - John the Baptist, Elijah, an ancient prophet.  These are the answers from the palace - our mental palaces or ideological ones.  Now Jesus asks his disciples what they think - who do you say I am?  Peter gives the reply:  You are the Messiah, the Son of God.

This answer is fraught with danger and Jesus warns them to tell these answers to no one.  The title Messiah will lead to trouble with the religious leaders of the day, prompting them to seek the death of Jesus.  The title Son of God is a virtual death sentence from the Roman authorities who see in that title a direct challenge to the authority of the emperor.  For this reason Jesus tells his disciples that he must suffer and be put to death.

This answer proved a challenge for Luke's audience who lived in a time when they were being expelled from synagogues and threatened by Roman authorities.  If we take these titles seriously we will find trouble from religious and political leaders who have their own Messiah complexes and claims to absolute authority in the world.  For the way of the Messiah is one of service and mercy to others, not domination and control over people.   

Musings about Jesus

Gospel: Luke 9: 7-9

Herod is curious about Jesus.  He has heard a lot of things from various places about Jesus.  Herod considers a variety of theories.  He hears from some that John has been raised from the dead.  Others say Jesus is Elijah or one of the prophets.  Herod keeps trying to see Jesus, but from behind the walls of his palace, not out in villages where Jesus is.  When Herod finally does see him, Jesus is under arrest and will say nothing at all to Herod.  

How similar we are to Herod!  We have proposed all sorts of theories and theologies about Jesus.  We have reconstructed and re-created his life - all of which carefully crafted to suit our preconceptions and biases.  We have spun all these webs from within the safety of our own palace walls.  We say that we are eager to encounter Jesus, as long as it is in a warm fuzzy experience or in the tabernacle where we have placed God in a box.  

Jesus is found in the villages outside our palace.  He is healing sick people, liberating people from their demons, feeding people at table.  Jesus is the sick person, the prisoner, the poor and marginalized, the immigrant and refugee, the average person on the street - all people we seek to avoid.  Today is a day for us to leave our palaces both physical and mental in order to find Jesus in the same places we found him in the Gospels.

To Cure and Heal

Gospel: Luke 9: 1-6

Jesus sends out his disciples to undertake a simple mission - to cure people of their infirmities and heal them of diseases of all kinds.  The mission is the same one in which Jesus has been engaged, a mission that involves direct encounter with people in their homes, the marketplaces of villages, the fields and seashores where they work, and on the margins where outcasts are consigned.  In short, Jesus goes out and meets people wherever they are in order to heal and cure.  

In this work we have no permanent home and no possessions either.  We are to be utterly dependent on the hospitality of others and the providence of God.  Does all this resemble in any way the work of the modern church?  Nowadays the focus of "mission" is filling pews and financial coffers, and we have a great dependence on a vast array of possessions that we find necessary to complete the "mission."  We measure success of the mission in attendance data and financial reports.

This Gospel portion strikes the modern person as quaint.  We do not take it seriously at all.  Yet the original disciples and the early church did take it seriously, for it was the way Jesus himself lived and undertook his mission while on earth.  When we replace direct encounter with others with performative liturgy and mass media people become an abstraction and transactional agents rather than images of God and the neighbor we are called to be with in their hopes and fears, in their joys and sorrows.