Tag Archives: Gospel of Luke

On Hosting Jesus

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I like to think I know who the good guys are and who the bad ones. It’s a practical skill that helps one get along in life. When one meets a stranger, one way to find out if this stranger is good or bad is to note who the stranger thinks is good and who is not. If the stranger likes the people I like and hates the people I hate, chances are the stranger is good. But if the stranger offers friendship to a bad person, I write off the stranger.

In Jericho, at the time Jesus came to town with his disciples on the way to Jerusalem, (Lk. 19: 1–10) everybody knew that Zacchaeus was a bad guy. The ridiculous figure he made of himself by climbing a sycamore tree to gawk at the stranger come to town just proved the point. So it came as quite a shock when Jesus called out to the bad guy and said he needed to stay at his house. I know I grumble if somebody commends somebody I don’t like, so I can sympathize with the people of Jericho when they grumble at the stranger’s lack of discernment.

Now one might think the people of Jericho were envious of Zacchaeus, because Jesus had singled him out to go to his house. Although there is no indication that anybody in Jericho wanted to invite the stranger and his followers to their home, perhaps the fact that the bad guy, Zacchaeus, had shown a strong desire to entertain the stranger, suddenly made the stranger desirable. Or, more likely, they coveted the commendation that Zacchaeus had received without wanting to take on the burden of hospitality. Or did they want to have anything to do with him? This stranger had shown that he has bad taste in people.

At this point, we could each ask of ourselves: would I like to have Jesus come into my home? Into my life? We become much more conscious of what our home is like when company comes. We also become much more conscious of what kind of people we are when somebody comes to see us. We want to make both our homes and ourselves presentable in a way that we might not bother to do if nobody comes calling. So what would it be like to have Jesus into my home?

When Jesus was walking the earth and was limited in time and space, there was only one house he could have visited at a time. Today, we know that Jesus has no such spatial limitation. He can come into the home, into the life, of everybody on the planet and every other planet that has intelligent life. So there is no zero sum game when it comes to Jesus.

But do we really want Jesus with us? Imagine Jesus being with us every minute, every second of the day. This would make us constantly aware of Jesus, something Benedict in his Rule admonishes his monks to be. How do we behave if Jesus is with us, closely with us? Does it make a difference in how we conduct our lives? In the case of Zacchaeus, it made a very big difference. But what about us? Or, if we think about it, would we rather that Jesus pass us by and visit somebody else?

There is also the problem of the company Jesus keeps. Maybe we can put up with Zacchaeus because we see him being a good guy. But what about the people on our lists of bad guys? How do we feel if somebody we thought was bad shows good qualities of kindness and generosity? Are we edified, or disappointed that we have to cross the name off the list? The problem is that if Jesus comes into our lives, we get all the other people Jesus associates with as well. Are we ready to cope with that?

The Real Cripple

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It is often said that we learn a lot about a person by how a person takes adversity. Some become embittered while some show amazing patience. In the story in today’s Gospel (Lk. 13: 10-17) we have a woman who was been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. If that isn’t adversity, nothing is. How patient has this woman been? One important clue is that the woman was present at the synagogue. In spite of her pain and handicap, she was participating in the worship of Israel. Even if she had help from others, she had made quite an effort to be there. The leader of the synagogue seems to be a healthy, vigorous man. If he is suffering in any way, it doesn’t show. Jesus is also there. He soon suffers abuse from the leader of the synagogue, but it is later in the story of Jesus that we learn how deeply he endures suffering. Also present are The People. If the eighteen years the woman has been crippled is an illusion to the eighteen years Israel suffered under Eglon before they were delivered by Ehud (Judges 3:12-25) then the crippled woman stands for all of The People suffering in the present time under the rule of Rome and the Jewish leaders.

We also learn a lot about a person by how that person reacts to the suffering of another. The leader of the synagogue shows not the slightest sympathy to the crippled woman, while Jesus shows such a profound sympathy the he goes up to her and heals her, knowing that the leader of the synagogue was sure to berate him for what he had done. This is the kind of act by which Jesus deflected the suffering of another to himself, the kind of act that would lead to the cross.

Yet another way we learn a lot about a person is by how that person reacts to the good fortune of another. The formerly crippled woman rejoices, another sign that she had taken adversity well. An embittered person might not have rejoiced so strongly. The leader of the synagogue creates a very bad impression on that score. At least this isn’t a case of a person who gloats over the misfortunes of others and is upset over their good fortune as a result. What is chilling , though, is that the man’s sense of values gets in the way of human sympathy and an ability to rejoice in the woman’s healing. The leader of the synagogue has a vision of the perfect sabbath, something that could be and actually is a good thing. The sabbath is a gift of God, a day of rest where one abstains from work because even God renounced God’s creative work so as to simply rest. But this vision has become corrupted in to a notion that one cannot accept a wondrous gift of healing that happened on that day. A sad irony of all this is that Jesus doesn’t seem to have done any work beyond laying hands on the crippled woman. The counter example of untying a donkey to bring it to water takes more effort.

This story, then, invites us to examine our values and how we use them. The leader in the synagogue has good values but he uses them wrongly. The sign that he uses his values wrongly is his inability (unwillingness?) to rejoice in the healing of the crippled woman. What Jesus shows us in this story is that each individual person is important and no value should be allowed to override this significance. Every crippled person is Israel and every healed person is a cause for all Israel to rejoice. The leader of the synagogue seemed to be a healthy person, but while all of The People were rejoicing, he alone showed himself to be severely crippled by a spirit. Can this cripple allow Jesus to touch him on the sabbath and cure him? Can we take the healing of this crippled woman as a sign for the healing of all of us, all of Israel?

The Call to Contemplation

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The brief story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary, when Martha serves Jesus and Mary sits at his feet, listening to him, (Lk. 10: 38-42) has been interpreted as contrasting the active and contemplative lives since the early church. The contrast between Martha being so frantically active and Mary so still a listener firmly calls for attention. In any case, the relationship between activity and contemplation is one with which Christians have struggled since the Early Church. Although the Desert monastics embraced an ardent contemplative lifestyle, there are stories about the need for Martha, such as the amusing story of a visitor to a monastery who said he would not help with the work because he had, like Mary, chosen the better part, but was upset when he wasn’t called to dinner.

On the face of it, though, the contrast of action and contemplation doesn’t seem to be an issue for Luke or the other Gospel writers, which raises the question of whether or not the use of this story for evaluating the relationship between action and contemplation might be a bit anachronistic, even if congruent to the story. So I thought about what the story might have met to Luke–-but came up empty. I couldn’t think of any other meaning than the traditional one, which raises the question of whether it is so anachronistic after all.

First, I reflected on the pace of each of the four Gospels. Mark, considered the earliest, is very fast paced, breathlessly narrating the healing miracles and overwhelming the reader (or listener) with the power of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew and Luke slow the pace considerably, mainly by including long episodes of Jesus’ teaching, teachings that require reflection to begin taking them in. Although Luke’s pace is roughly the same as Matthew’s, it is instructive that he stresses more the times Jesus went off alone to pray, suggesting that Jesus had to balance his active life with contemplation. John, most likely the latest Gospel, is much the most contemplative Gospel as it unfolds at a very slow pace and suggests deeper meanings to the events in the narration. Such a progression suggests a growing awareness of those who developed the Gospel traditions of the need to contemplate the meaning of Jesus’ life that culminated in the shocks of the crucifixion and Resurrection, as well as absorbing the teachings which seem to have puzzled Jesus’ closest followers at the time. So, the traditional interpretation of this brief story doesn’t seem anachronistic after all.

When we look at the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, we encounter profoundly contemplative insights on the part of Paul, or whoever else might have written the epistle. (I favor Pauline authorship, but if somebody else shared the same contemplative insights as Paul demonstrated in his undoubted epistles, that attests all the more to the contemplative development of the early church.) Paul connects Jesus, whom he encountered on the Road to Damascus, to the Creator of the world, (Col. 1: 15–17) perhaps sensing the same creative activity on the part of God in Genesis as in the re-creation Paul experienced when Jesus called him out. This same Jesus is also the head of the Church, (Col. 1: 18) the specific group of humans who have responded to Jesus as Paul has. All this convinces Paul that the fullness of God dwells within Jesus. (Col. 1: 19) Most important, Paul realizes that Jesus’ reconciliation with him, who had formerly been hostile to Jesus, is part of a general reconciliation Jesus has made with all people, a reconciliation made not through the military, political, and cultural force of the Pax Romana, but the Peace of Christ who suffered at the hands of the Roman Empire. (Col. 1: 20) The very persecution Paul engaged in was flipped to a reconciliation by the suffering of Jesus. In this dense passage, we see the fruits of profound contemplation, a sitting at the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. This gives us all the more reason to believe that Luke, probably writing two or three decades later than Paul, was passing on a caution traced back to Jesus that the action required by charity, such as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan that directly precedes this story of Mary and Martha, and the need to proclaim the Kingdom of God, be grounded in quiet contemplation of what the Kingdom ix really about.

In Genesis, we have the incident when Abraham and Sarah welcome three men who turn out to be angels. (Gen. 18: 1–10) Although there is much activity, we don’t see the frantic movements of Martha, and certainly not a trace of the resentment on Martha’s part. Starting with the Early Church, there has been a tendency to interpret the angels as the Holy Trinity come to visit the patriarch and matriarch. That interpretation really is anachronistic, but Paul’s proclamation that “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints” (Col. 1: 26) suggests that some interpretations of scripture will transcend time. The well-known icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev, inspired by this scene, leads us into the deep contemplation, not only of the hospitality of Martha, Sarah, and Abraham, but also of the hospitality of Mary who invited Jesus deeply into her heart. Such a presence of God within us can never be taken away from us and will remain with us for all eternity.

It Was Necessary that Jesus Ascend

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With the celebrations of Christmas and Easter and, to some extent, Pentecost, the celebration of Ascension seems to get lost in the shuffle, something of an afterthought if it is thought about at all. Part of the trouble is that it isn’t all that easy to get an idea of what the Ascension is all about, so we wonder: What ‘s the big deal? We celebrated Jesus’s birth at Christmas and his rising from the dead at Easter. What more do we need? Isn’t the Resurrection enough? According to Luke and John the answer is: No.

Another part of the trouble is that the Ascension is a downer with Jesus leaving his disciples. The first aria in J.S. Bach’s Ascension Oratorio is a long lament over Jesus’ departure. Hardly a cause for celebration. If Jesus loves us enough to come to earth and spend time with us, why would Jesus leave us?

Distance as well as closeness, however, typifies our relationship with God. It is put succinctly in the Psalm verse: “For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly.” (Ps. 138: 6) In theological terms, God is radically transcendent, but also radically imminent. God’s immediate presence wouldn’t be all that awesome if God were not transcendent as well, and a god who remains aloof from humans doesn’t exactly catch the heart of humans. Moreover, God’s distance gives humans space to live by decisions humans make while God’s closeness offers guidance to those who are open to it.

Luke describes a forty day period during which Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God and the forgiveness of sins. Most importantly, Jesus opens up the scriptures to the disciples by explaining why it was “necessary” that he suffer and rise from the dead. (As Luke and the other Gospel writers make clear, the “necessity” is human, not divine.) All of these are good thing, such good things that it is puzzling why Jesus would leave rather than continue with them. So what was the problem?

On the road to Emmaus, Cleopas and his companion told Jesus (while not recognizing him) that they had hoped he would “redeem Israel.” (Lk. 24: 21) In opening the scriptures to these two companions, Jesus shifted their lost hope to the need for Jesus to die and rise again. But after opening the scriptures for another forty days, Jesus was still asked: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1: 6) At this point, it was clear that, as long as Jesus was with the disciples, they would be distracted from his opening the scriptures to them. The temptation to triangle Jesus into their human agenda seems to have been irresistible as long as Jesus was physically present. Only if Jesus left them would they have the space to let the scriptures be opened to them so that they could understand the need for Jesus to have died and risen again. Jesus’ leaving also left the disciples as vulnerable to other humans as Jesus himself was while on earth, putting them, and us, in the position of suffering at their hands.

A second reason for the need for Jesus to ascend after a relatively brief time after his Resurrection builds on the first reason but also reinstates the dialectic of transcendence and imminence that had been temporarily compromised by Jesus’ Incarnate presence on earth. In John, Jesus says that only if he goes away can he send the Paraclete to guide them in all truth. In Luke, Jesus promises the disciples that the Holy Spirit will soon come if they wait in Jerusalem. Sure enough, ten days later, the Holy Spirit comes in tongues of fire, giving the disciples the gift of tongues so that they can communicate with other peoples. More importantly, the Holy Spirit guides the disciples into understanding the scriptures that Jesus had opened up for them so that not only did they finally understand that Jesus had to die and rise again, they were inspired to preach this truth along with proclaiming the forgiveness of sins.

In Ephesians, Paul proclaims the reality of the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord, seated at God’s right hand “in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 1: 20) Jesus may be exalted, with “all things under his feet,” but this exalted Jesus remains the crucified Lord who had to die before being so highly exalted. That is, we are not under the rule of a powerful deity, we are under the rule of the crucified one who rose with total forgiveness of those who tortured and killed him. It is this crucified, risen and ascended Lord who appeared to Stephen when he was being stoned for preaching what the Holy Spirit had inspired him to preach, and it was the exalted Jesus who filled Stephen with the same forgiveness of his persecutors. The ascended Lord may be infinitely up on high, but this same Lord sends the Holy Spirit deep into our hearts with the same apostolic message of forgiveness he gave to the disciples.

Resurrection in Miniature

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One of the oldest instinctual human acts is to reverence the bodies of the dead. Only in the most recent years have there been any signs of attenuation of such customs. There are no pragmatic reasons for it. As Søren Kierkegaard noted, the dead can’t pay you back for what we do for them, which makes reverence for the dead a profound act of disinterested love. Why do we have this instinct? Why was it important to the women to bring spices to the tomb at the dawn of the day after the sabbath at great expense? In answering these questions, it occurs to me that there is something awesome about death. How is it that the life that used to fill this body is no longer there? Where did that life go, if it went anywhere? Finding the tomb empty was bewildering to the women. How could they reverence the body if the body was not there? Worse, what sort of disrespectful act might have been committed on the body of a man who had died a criminal’s death?

Suddenly seeing the two men in dazzling clothes only compounded the bewilderment. These “men,” presumably angels, teased the women for looking for the living among the dead. (Lk. 24: 5) True, if one is looking for a live person, a tomb is not the best place to look, but the women had come to reverence a dead person who had meant much to them, and a tomb is the right place to look for that. As it turns out, the women who came to the tomb are the first to be told that Jesus is risen. They are also derided for not having expected this outcome, but since this is the only time in the history of the world that a dead person has risen bodily from the dead, they can be pardoned for not expecting it, Jesus’ prophesies of dying and rising notwithstanding. After all, the disciples didn’t believe Jesus when he said he was going to be killed. How could such a great man come to such an end? And if they didn’t believe Jesus was going to die, they would hardly have gotten to the notion he would rise again. Given the reaction of the women at the tomb, they hadn’t believed these prophesies any more than the disciples did.

It is highly significant that the first persons to be told about Jesus’ rising were not the disciples, but this small group of women who came to care for a dead body by anointing it with spices. One could say they got a lot more for their kind action than they bargained for. What if nobody had come to the tomb to reverence the body of Jesus? Would the resurrection have been made known? The story following in Luke gives us the first resurrection appearance of Jesus himself, but it isn’t straight-forward. The two disciples on the Road to Emmaus don’t recognize Jesus, but they invite him to stay with them when they come to an inn at eventide. If they had not kindly invited the stranger to stay and share supper with them, would they ever have seen the man as Jesus resurrected from the dead?

When the two disciples run back to Jerusalem to tell the other followers of Jesus, they are told that Jesus had appeared to Simon Peter. Although one would think this appearance the most momentous of all, it is mentioned almost in passing. Even Paul gives it more prominence is his list of appearances. (1 Cor. 15: 5) Luke then concludes with Jesus appearing to all of the disciples. It all seems low-key and very quiet. Hardly earth-shaking as the Resurrection is in Matthew.

I suggest we think further about how closely tied the Resurrection appearances in Luke are to small acts of human kindness. In Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri tells of how a man’s small act of giving him a bag of nuts made a deep impression on him. Such acts may seem to accomplish little, but they are the stuff of the resurrected life that abides.

Forgiveness as Gift

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Jesus’ teachings of love for one’s enemies and returning good for evil (Lk. 6: 27–31) are deeply inspiring and edifying as long as one doesn’t live by them. There is a tendency to regard these teachings as one regards a beautiful work of art: wonderful to look at but not something to guide my life. In any case, this teaching suddenly becomes not so beautiful when somebody maliciously wrongs me. All of a sudden, revenge is as compelling as it is sweet. That is to say, forgiveness is very difficult when the wrong is serious, when one has suffered badly on account of what another person has done. People who suffered serious abuse as children struggle with the pain all their lives and understandably have great difficulty forgiving their abusers. Pressuring such a person to do the “Christian” thing tends to amplify the pain of the abuse.

Taken in isolation, the moment Joseph forgives the brothers who had sold him into slavery (Gen 45: 4–9) seems to work smoothly, making forgiveness seem simple. But if one considers the whole story of which this moment is the climax, it is clear that the forgiveness did not come easily. The ordeals that Joseph subjected his brothers to once he recognized them may possibly be a calm and calculated attempt to test their moral fibre, giving them a chance to show improvement, but the ordeals come across to me as vengeful and punishing. Would Joseph have kept Benjamin in Egypt and sent the other brothers away if nobody protested the orchestrated framing of Benjamin? Who knows? It is Judah’s offer to take his brother’s place that breaks down the hostility Joseph had shown up to then. And when their father dies, the brothers still fear that Joseph will take revenge on them and Joseph has to reassure them.

The Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley noted that in the Hebrew Bible, forgiveness is considered to be the prerogative of God alone. The only verb besides the Hebrew verb “to forgive” which was reserved to God alone is bara, “to create.” Creation and forgiveness make a powerful pair of prerogatives. This is why when Jesus pronounced the forgiveness of sins, he was accused of claiming to be God. Perhaps it is as impossible for humans to forgive as it is impossible for humans to create a world out of nothing. But if it is not our place to forgive sins, why does Jesus tell us to forgive even our enemies? If we are not capable of forgiving them, which often seems to be the case, is Jesus asking us to do the impossible?

Paul’s powerful proclamation of the resurrection of the body in 1 Cor. 15 doesn’t seem to be relevant to the question of forgiveness, but maybe we should examine the question in case it is relevant after all. Paul makes it clear that the resurrection body is a gift from God. (1 Cor. 15: 38) We are not capable of giving ourselves a resurrection body and nobody is telling us that we should try. Is forgiveness as impossible as giving ourselves a resurrection body? If the resurrection body is a recreation, then maybe the answer is Yes. Later on, Paul tells us that the physical body is created out of the dust, as was the body of Adam, and we are created in that image. But the heavenly body is created according to the image of “the man from heaven,” which is Christ. Could it be that Jesus, in claiming the divine prerogative of forgiveness, is passing on that prerogative and ability to us as fundamental to the our re-creation in Christ? Joseph forgives his brothers in the context of divine providence. Such discernment makes forgiveness much more possible. For myself, I have experienced forgiveness, not as an accomplishment, but as a gift from God. I did not forgive another person; God forgave that person through me.

Let us return to the notion that Jesus’ teaching on love of enemies is like a beautiful work of art. Are we really unaffected by a work of art that we admire deeply? No. A work of art may not seem to have any practical value, but it has an effect on one who encounters it. Over time, the effect of a work of art can sink down into a person to the extent that it brings about a small transformation. How much more could the beauty of Jesus’ teaching of forgiveness and love of enemies sink more and more deeply into us over time, bringing us closer and closer to what Paul called “the Mind of Christ?”

Freeing the Body

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During the governorship of Nehemiah, when the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt to protect the returning exiles from Babylon, the scribe Ezra read the Law of Moses to the people.(Neh. 8: 1–12) The Law of Moses taught the Jews how they were to live together in community under the God who had first delivered them from Egypt and latterly, from Babylon. The people wept. Was that because they realized how short they fell from what the Law of Moses required of them? Or did they weep for joy because they knew what was asked of them and knew what to do? In any case, Ezra told the people to go and have a great feast to celebrate the reading of the Law. Touchingly, Ezra told them to send portions “to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord.” (Neh. 8: 10) Clearly, such sharing is what the Law of Moses is all about.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul teaches the values of Christian community through the analogy between the human body and the Body of Christ. (1 Cor. 12: 12–31) Both are one while composed of many members, each with a distinctive function for the benefit of the whole. Each member has need of all the other members, even, rather especially, the supposedly weaker members of the body. If a member of the body were to be considered foreign and so expelled, the whole body would suffer the loss.

Luke inaugurates Jesus’ ministry with his appearance at the synagogue in Nazareth. While Ezra read the Law of Moses, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, after which he said: “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Lk. 4: 21) This implies that Jesus himself has been anointed by the Spirit and that he is bringing about what Isaiah had prophesied. That is, Jesus is bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. Quite a lot to proclaim in a society where many people were imprisoned in many ways, blind in many ways, and poor in many ways. One could say that Jesus has put the table sharing enjoined by Ezra and the caring of one part of the body by the others enjoined by Paul on steroids. Given this prominent placing in Luke’s Gospel, we should rank this brief teaching alongside the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew as a baseline teaching for a life devoted to Jesus.

The political implications are enormous, both in Jesus’ time and in the present day. However, we should not leave the implementation of this program to the politicians, especially at a time when many politicians are going in the opposite direction. We ourselves should seek out those who are imprisoned in any way, perhaps in hatred or fear, and try to free them. Likewise, we should heal our own blindness so as to heal the blindness of others in whatever way we and others are blind. And so on with the other items in this list. That is to say, we need to accept healing and freedom in order to heal and free others.

When we speak of freeing captives and healing the blind, we tend to think that some people are captured and others are captors. Some people are blind and some are blinded by others. When we think in those terms, our own fear of being blinded or captured tempts us to join the blinders and captors. But that is only an alternate form of imprisonment and blindness. That is, those who capture others, imprison others, blind others, are just as imprisoned and captured and blind as the victims. One could say it is an inverted body where, instead of each part of the body caring for the others, each part tries to capture and imprison the others. What a way to have a complete breakdown in the health of the body!

This inaugural sermon of Jesus is a challenge to begin anew, which is what the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee, is all about. The Jubilee year in the Law of Moses is God’s way of periodically offering all of us a new start by canceling debts and returning land to those from whom it had been alienated. Captives are freed to get a new start. So far, the people who think they are the captors and imprisoners have, at least for the most part, resisted efforts to implement this biblical teaching. Can we ever learn that nobody is free unless everybody is free? Can we learn to desire true freedom for ourselves which entails giving freedom to others? Can we open our eyes so that we can help others open their eyes?

See also How About a Jubilee? for similar reflections

Mary and Martha Together

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This little story of Mary and Martha where Martha does all the work while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus has been interpreted as referring to the relationship between action and contemplation since the early church. In his book Three Studies in Medieval Religious Social Thought Giles Constable has a long essay on the interpretations from Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the late second century through the late Middle Ages. In the Gospel story, there is sone hint of sibling rivalry, especially on Martha’s part. According to Constable’s essay, this rivalry continues through many of the countless interpreters of the story with some arguing that Mary has chosen the “best part” and that the contemplative life is superior while others champion Martha because of her fruitful charitable work.

By and large, though, a preponderance of thinkers over these centuries argue for a complementarity between the two sisters and the ways of life they are said to represent. Sometimes it is a complementarity between different lifestyles, but more usually it is a complementarity within each person. That is, each person should have elements of both Mary and Martha. This embrace of both sisters is called “the mixed life.” It is worth noting that our patron St. Gregory the Great is among the many who affirmed the mixed life, even though he had a personal yearning for the contemplative way.

There is an amusing story from the Desert Monastics that illustrates the need for both sisters. A pilgrim came to a monastery to visit. The monks asked him if he could help with their chores, but the pilgrim said that he had chosen the “better part” of Mary and did not work. Hours passed while this pilgrim spent time in reading and contemplation and finally he became hungry. He asked the monks when dinner was going to be served and was told that the monks had eaten some time ago. The pilgrim asked why he was not invited to eat with them and was told that he didn’t need earthly food because he had chosen the “better part.” I think this pilgrim learned his lesson.

This way of framing the issue of an active way and a contemplative way seems to owe more to the Greek tradition than it does to the Jewish tradition out of which the Gospels emerge. Origen and Clement certainly draw on Greek thought in this matter. However, Jesus was a person who had done many thought-provoking things and said many things that were even more thought-provoking and mysterious. Might a sensitive woman like Mary have felt moved to sit and just listen to Jesus and ponder what he says? This is precisely what Mary, the Mother of Jesus, did when confronted with the mysteries surrounding her son’s birth. (Lk. 2: 19) And then Jesus himself, faced with the mystery of his own unique calling, spent many times alone in prolonged prayer, sitting at the feet of his heavenly Abba so to speak. Jesus and his mother would have seen such prayerful pondering modeled many times in the Psalms, such as: “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory because your love is better than life,” and “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help.” (Ps. 63: 2–3, 6–7)

Often in his epistles, St. Paul demonstrated the fruits of pondering the mystery of the Christ whom he encountered on the road to Damascus. In Colossians, for example, he says: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” (Col. 1: 15–16) It wasn’t a matter of logic but one of intuitive contemplation that led Paul to realize that the One who called him out of his persecutory mania was not only the forgiving victim on the Cross but also the One who participated in creating the world, something only God can do. But there is more. Paul’s prayerful pondering brought him to this even deeper insight: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Col. 1: 19–20) Paul’s contemplative insight deepened his sense that Jesus was so filled with God as to be God and, more important by far, this God was devoted to a costly reconciliation where he absorbed the rage on the part of Paul as well as that of the rest of us.

Jesus clearly led a mixed life of action and contemplation, and it is noteworthy that his mother, Mary, was held up as a model of the mixed life by many medieval writers, since Mary not only pondered the mystery of her son’s birth but had to take care of him day after day. Paul himself is clearly yet another model of the mixed life. Although we tend to consider St. Gregory’s to be a contemplative monastery, there is much work we all need to do to minister to each other and our numerous guests. With that said, Mary of Bethany had been pretty well knocked off the map since the later Middle Ages until a number of people in recent decades began to realize that their activism needed to be tempered by sitting at the feet of Jesus. It is true enough that we should respond to Jesus by doing as the Good Samaritan did, but we also need to respond to Jesus by taking time to open our hearts in silence to Him as did Mary of Bethany.

Bring Peace to Each House

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The mission of Jesus’ seventy disciples in Luke is filled with breathless excitement and peril. There is an urgency to the mission as “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” (Lk. 10: 2) On the other hand, Jesus warns his disciples that he is sending them out “like lambs among wolves.” (Lk. 10: 3).

The tone of the mission is expressed in the phrase: “Peace be to this house.” (:l. 10: 5) This offer of peace makes the disciples vulnerable to the reaction of the members of the house. In the best case scenario, somebody there promotes peace and welcomes the disciples who then accept what hospitality they are given. When peace is offered and accepted, it becomes dynamic throughout the house that has received it as the disciples heal the sick and announce that the Kingdom of God has come near. All this has the flavor of Jesus’ inaugural sermon that announced a new Jubilee. That is, announcing good news to the poor and freeing captives. We can see this missionary journey, then, as Jesus’ disciples spreading the Jubilee throughout the country.

As with Jesus first announcement of the Jubilee, there is no litany of doctrines or list of rules but a spirit of living, like the Spirit that was upon Isaiah and then upon Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. In his mission to Galatia, we see Paul, in his way, proclaiming the same Jubilee of good news to the poor and freedom of the captives. In this case, freedom from the Jewish Law and freedom for Christ. He celebrates this freedom through reconciliation so that anyone who is caught in a sin is restored “gently.” The spirit of this reconciliation is to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal. 6: 2) Perhaps we can see this as the essence of the kingdom that has come near. Although there have been attempts to define the carrying of one another’s burdens, as Charles Williams famously did with his doctrine of substitution, it is best to see the mutual bearing of burdens as a Spirit-filled shape of spreading peace within the house that has received it.

But what about the wolves? Jesus tell the disciples that if a town rejects them, they should wipe off the dust from their feet and move on. (Lk. 10: 11) The wolves don’t seem to have done any real harm. But then Jesus goes on to say that it will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for the towns that rejected the disciples. Far from threatening these towns with divine vengeance, Jesus is actually warning us that the systemic violence embodied by these past cultures is about to be a lot worse in the present. Lots of wolves here. The few households of peace are surrounded by imperial strife and persecution. Paul’s church in Galatia was in this situation and we find ourselves in an even worse maelstrom of social rage. (It will go even worse for Western Civilization than it did to the towns that rejected the disciples.)

Maintaining a sense of peace in the midst of all this turmoil is excruciatingly difficult. We easily become enraged just from reading the news. What if we should actually face these enraged people in real life? It is hard to believe that the disciples had been so successful in their mission, but then if Satan fell from the sky, where else would Satan be now than in the midst of the wolves? This is where we must allow the peace we offered to return back to us and then vent our frustrated anger by dusting off our feet. Otherwise, we are drawn into the surrounding rage and all peace is lost. In the midst of this turmoil, bearing one another’s burdens is a practical way of developing the spirit of Jubilee, all the more so when we are all overburdened by the stress of it all. Bearing each other’s burdens fulfills the Law of Christ because this practice takes us right into the heart of what Jesus did for all of us on the Cross. Our house of peace in the mission of the Seventy seems small and weak, and it is. Paul’s household in Galatia was small and weak, too. But could the oppressive rage around us also mean there is the potential of a plentiful harvest if we can bring peace to others so as to bring the Kingdom of God closer?

The Risen and Ascended Living Interpreter of Scripture

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In Luke’s Gospel, the first thing Jesus does after rising from the dead is explain the scriptures to two of his followers on the Road to Emmaus, explaining how it was “necessary” that the Messiah “suffer these things and then enter his glory.” (Lk. 24: 26) The last thing Jesus does before his Ascension is explain the scriptures to the disciples in the same way. Understanding this “necessity” is a tricky business. For whom was it “necessary?” It is ludicrous to suggest that it was “necessary” for God that the Messiah should suffer. On the contrary, Luke, like the other Gospel writers, tells the story of Jesus’ execution on the cross in such a way as to stress the necessity on the part of humans that Jesus die in order to bring “peace” to Jerusalem. The key to understanding the scriptures that Jesus opened his disciples’s minds to is this human necessity that the Messiah (Jesus) die so that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins. . . be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Lk. 24: 47) So what was “necessary” for God? For God the only thing necessary was to raise Jesus from the dead so that he could continue to open our minds to the true meaning of the scriptures as a living interpreter.

Luke’s Gospel and its sequel, Acts, reveals quite clearly the human tendency to solve social problems through collective violence as theorized by René Girard. But these writings also reveal a deeper and much brighter truth about the human potential for sympathy and empathy. This is where Resurrection and Ascension, repentance and forgiveness, all come in. In announcing the Jubilee in his inaugural sermon in Luke, Jesus proclaims a gathering through sympathy and caring rather than through competitive tensions and violence. This new gathering involves freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, and setting the oppressed free. (Lk. 4: 18) In his teaching, Jesus makes the words quoted from Isaiah his own in his famous parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In opening the scriptures to the disciples, Jesus is not only revealing the truth of collective violence but also the human potential for sympathy that leads to forgiveness and reconciliation as taught in these parables. From there, Jesus leads us even deeper into the self-giving love shown on the cross, a love we too may need to embrace. More important by far, Jesus embodies this teaching and revelation in his own act of forgiveness and thus enables the same in each of us.

A dead Messiah wouldn’t be available to enact and enable repentance, forgiveness and costly self-giving. Only a Messiah who is very much alive can do that. This is why Jesus, having been raised from the dead and now ascended into heaven, is seated at the “right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” (Eph. 1: 20–21) The image of all things placed under Jesus’ feet suggests the earthly rulers who use their fallen enemies as a footstool. (Ps. 110: 1) I suspect this is the image the disciples have when they ask Jesus just before the Ascension if now he is “to restore the kingdom to Israel.” (Acts 1: 6) But Jesus, in opening the scriptures to the disciples, has revealed his kingship to be one of sympathy, forgiveness, and compassion; in short a kingship based on the Jubilee proclaimed at the start of his ministry. Rather than thumping his foot on us, Jesus bends down and raises us up to his seat. In revealing his true kingship, Jesus has not only opened up the scriptures to us, but he has opened up the truth of human history as well, a truth more glorious than the “necessary” violence that we think gives life its “meaning.” As the key to scripture and history, Jesus fulfills Paul’s prayer that “the eyes of [our] hearts may be enlightened in order that [we] may know the hope to which he has called [us], the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” (Eph. 1: 18–19)