Luke

We live like people who expect to be around forever. Many have ceased to watch the eastern sky. Many no longer pray “Maranatha—come quickly, Lord Jesus.” Many would frankly be disappointed to see all of this come to an end. We’ve settled in—we’ve bought long term CD’s, built houses and lands, gotten comfortable. We’ve given our place of watchfulness over to conspiracy nuts and book peddlers. But make no mistake—Jesus said there will come a time when the King will appear in all His glory. There will be a reckoning. There will be judgment. The old will be rent apart…all things will become new, and just, and full of life.

During my college years, at about this time I would pack up all my earthly goods into the back seat of a 1968 Black Beetle with holes in the floorboard and head off for Tennessee and school at Milligan.  Do you remember traveling lightly like that?  I got married, we got a job, bought a little trailer, but still we traveled lightly.  All it took was a little Chevette to haul our stuff around.  When it came time to move to California, we had a child, but we still carried everything we needed in a VW bus.  Then life started to get more complicated...I began to acquire things like insurance, and pensions, and car seats, and microwaves, and books and stereos, and winter clothes, and books, and tools, and toys, and books and STUFF.  When we moved to Tennessee,  we packed everything we had in one 25 foot moving van.  Now, more than ten years later...I guess it would take a semi trailer to move us again.  I bought a pickup truck to move our stuff around; I built a storage shed this year to pack away more belongings (and to store away half a dozen other peoples’ “stuff” too.  I like my stuff.  I rely on my stuff...from my air conditioner that knocks the heat off the day to my retirement account that will hopefully help me slide by in our older years without having to go the poor farm to my TV that I watch the Cubs on to the lawn mower that cuts the grass just the way I like it.  I don’t have any more or less than the next guy down the street, do I?  Then why do I get sort of an uneasy feeling when Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions?” 

    We listen and almost hear, we sing and almost feel, we pray and almost believe...and then we come to this table...we take our place at this table, with our friends all around us.  The host stands before us and speaks words of comfort and peace to our troubled minds.  Then she takes the bread and blesses it, and breaks it, and gives it to us saying, “This is my body given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  Suddenly it dawns on us that the hands that hold the bread are pierced hands, the eyes that meet ours are filled with knowledge, and pain, and deep love.  Suddenly, if only for a few moments, it all becomes clear, it all makes sense.  The fog is lifted, the darkness is dispelled and we catch a glimpse of the glory of God.  “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked to us...and opened the Scriptures to us?”

    Can I depend on God?  Will He be there for me?  When things go badly, can I depend on you?  Will you be there for me?  Will I be there for you?  Will you be there to catch me when I fall?  Will we be there to support you with our very lives when you face the valley of the shadow of death, when you face financial ruin, when you are tripped by sin, when you are hurt and abandoned?

    This morning’s story exposes our blindness to the poor.  How many other blind spots do you suppose we have?  In how many other areas of our lives are we running roughshod over the gospel, thinking that we’re doing just fine, when in reality we’re totally lost.  The pages of scripture are filled with people who should have seen, but didn’t.  The disciples heard all Jesus’ words about loving your enemies and being kind to those who mistreat you.  But when a certain village rejected Jesus’ message and told him to move on down the road, James and John were livid and said, “Hey Lord...Do you want us to call fire down from heaven on them?”  Or our morning scripture a few weeks ago was about slavery.  Paul wrote to slaves, “Now you be good and work hard for Master, especially if he’s a Christian.”  Maybe even Paul didn’t get the entire picture all at once.

    Since we started reading the Gospel of Luke six or eight weeks ago, we’ve been pummeled by Jesus’ insistence that we cannot serve God and wealth simultaneously.  Could this story be another of Luke’s tough teachings on Kingdom economics?   What if this story of the crooked manager is not simply an isolated teaching, but is part of Luke’s emphasis on the theology of money?  Luke believed that Jesus Christ, the Messianic King came into this self-centered age, this unrighteous world rife with the love of money and the lust for things to inaugurate a new kingdom, a new way of life.  He came to dislodge the mighty from their thrones, to send the rich away empty handed, and to fill the hungry with good things.  The collision of two worlds, two worldviews is the crisis the gospel brings as this present age crashes to ruin and a new age is born.

When we went to Jerusalem in February, I wanted to see the tomb.  THE tomb.  As with most things in the Holy Land, you get to take your pick.  There are TWO tombs that are possible sites of Jesus’ tomb.  The first is in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  The earliest Christians made so much noise about Jesus’ resurrection in first century Jerusalem that the original site of the resurrection began to draw the curious and the faithful.  This got on the nerves of the authorities, who quickly grew tired of listening to all the talk about resurrection, so it is reported that they razed the site of Jesus’ tomb to the ground, covered it with dirt, and built a temple of Venus on the site.  There, take that!  Surely that old wives tale would die now!
    But if death couldn’t close up that tomb, Venus and Rome didn’t have a chance.

    It was humility and obedience that brought Jesus to the point of death.  Our Gospel reading takes us to the Mount of Olives on the last night of Jesus’ life.  Here Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  The name Gethsemane translates “olive press.”  Jesus often came to this beautiful grove to pray, and on that night it lived up to its name.  Ancient olive presses were simple and effective machines: a basket full of ripe olives was placed on a stone catchment and a massive stone weight came down with crushing force, squeezing the oil out of the olives.  On this last night of earthly life, Jesus came to the “Garden of crushing,” and laid his life under  the weight of the world’s sin and the inexorable will of the Father.

Today, across town in a church building that looks like a refurbished Target store, a congregation sways in a darkened auditorium to the beat of drums and electric guitars. Four worship leaders sing earnestly into their microphones and the congregation sways in time to the music.
Today, across town in a church building that looks like a miniature Gothic cathedral, a congregation listens to the flourish of a pipe organ and searches the bulletin for the proper three part amen. Candles burn on the altar; a white robed minister prepares to preach.
Today, across town in a run down little room rented in a dilapidated strip mall, a group of worshipers shout and sing and dance down the aisles, hands lifted to heaven, jubilant expressions on their faces. The preacher mops his sweaty brow and bangs on the plywood pulpit with his fist, calling on the Holy Spirit to descend.

I then explained to Aidan that there were some children here that didn't have any toys and would not be receiving many, if any, toys for Christmas.  He looked at me with a puzzled expression as I continued,  "Do you think maybe we should share some toys that you don't play with anymore with children who don't have any?"  
    Aidan wasn’t so sure of that logic, but they gathered some toys anyway and off to the orphanage they went....