Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Luke 21:5-19

Ordinary 33, Year C Luke 21:5-19

It is disconcerting to read that, while some of the witnesses will be put to death for their testimony in verse 16, not a hair of their head will perish in verse 18. To the critical historian this is one of those places that exposes the unwelded seam in a collection of “sayings” or “traditions” that has been hammered into a narrative. Sometimes we find missing rivets in the final product. Fair enough. The Bible is full of them. More people in the church would figure it out for themselves if they thought they had permission to read that way. But as a reader of HolyScripture, which the critical historian may or may not be, the contradiction between the verses reveals the character of our life in which Jesus has already said in the gospel:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. - Luke 9:24 (NRSV)

This is counter-intuitive for the survivalist in us. Church-raised folk are familiar enough with “surrendering” their lives to God at the altar call, or, for other traditions, at First Communion perhaps. When the subject of surrendering to Christ comes up in communicant's or seeker's class, elders and sponsors nod their approval. Problem is, in church culture “losing life” can easily become a Lenten seasonal thing, like giving up peanut butter. The penitential seasons come and go, and then it's time to get on with the old life. Like the spring tonics old timers across the American countryside once took to purge the system. And later, the summer revival. Whether church is "high" or "low", the issue of life and death tends to devolve to a routine liturgical emphasis. We have a way of inoculating ourselves against the inconvenient truth that Christianity is a matter of life and death. Right now. As 21:16 would have it, reading ourselves into the text, some of us will be turned over by our own families. The scandal is pandemic, whether we want to admit it our not. Death has a way of morphing into all of life, subverting every relationship. In the process the church we have known, to the extent that it has become a puppet to the times, itself in denial, may be thrown down like the temple (21:6). 

This is not an anti-church rant. The rituals of our salvation are precious. But to be faithful to the reading, our text is pure apocalyptic. It reveals. It uncovers truth and glory. But it does so at a very high price. Jesus' crucifixion was the center of the awful unveiling of the true nature of life and death. Think of the church-conditioned picture we get of the relation of death and life – our death and life - as a photograph that has been overexposed. We have been overexposed in all those sweet hymns of Calvary, the melodious liturgies of the Eucharist and Baptism that have lulled us into a failed vision. Get your tickets punched here and out the right aisle please. Apocalypse is like taking this bland, overexposed image into a photo-editing program and turning up the contrast. The brights get brighter. The darks get darker. If you turn up the contrast long enough there will be no middle values left. It'll put the fear of God in you!

That's the way it is. Some of us will loose our lives, but not a hair of our head will be out of place. The world will see, through the spirit of Christ in us, that not even the death of all we know, including ourselves, can escape the faithful touch of the Creator's hand.

© 2010 Andy Gay