Fear not, Little Flock (Luke 12)

A homily on Luke 12: 32 - 40. Jesus teaches his disciples not to fear.
     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
     Today's Gospel contains a number of instructions: 1. Do not be afraid. 2. Sell your possessions. 3. Give alms. 4. Make purses that don't wear out. 5. Be dressed for action. 6. Have your lamps lit. 7. Be like those waiting for their master, and, to sum up, 8. You must be ready.
     2, 3, 4 can be summed up as "Sell your stuff and give away the proceeds." 5 through 8 can be summed up as "Be prepared." And it is the first instruction, "Do not be afraid," that makes the other instructions possible. Only the lack of fear that Our Lord is talking about releases us from the possessions that tie us down, and makes it possible for us to be ready for whatever God wants us to do next.
     "Do not be afraid." Those are also God's words to Abraham in Genesis 15, verse 1, in today's first reading. Abraham has just returned from a battle with the king of Sodom, and he is blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem, to whom Abraham gives one-tenth of his goods. And after Abraham promised the king of Sodom that he would not take his king's possessions, God says to Abraham, "Do not be afraid...I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great." We learn that in return for his restraint toward the king of Sodom, Abraham will be given descendants, and they, we hear in verse 14, will have great possessions. Our Lord parallels this exactly in Luke's Gospel: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." The "little flock" probably feared what Abraham feared: that they would have no possessions and no descendants either. These verses, after all, are in a section of the Gospel which the New Revised Standard Version calls "Do not worry," which contains the lines we have all heard many times: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear...consider the lilies...they neither toil nor spin...and do not keep striving for what you are to eat...and drink...instead...strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well." For Abraham in the Genesis story, the concern has been for earthly descendants and possessions. In Luke's Gospel, the emphasis is on letting go of earthly possessions, and any anxiety about them, for the sake of a future kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth.
     I don't want to sidetrack myself here, not unnecessarily anyway, but I do want to look at a few words in this story which have been puzzling me. Our Lord says, "Sell your possessions, and give alms." Sell them to whom? Give alms to whom? It seems to me that there are two groups here: the little flock to whom the Father will give the Kingdom, and everybody else, whom the little flock will leave behind. Does Our Lord intend this? Is there really only going to be a part of the human race, the "little flock," who will receive the Kingdom? Furthermore, is the little flock really supposed to sell everything to the remainder, and give away the proceeds? Where do the proceeds go?
     The beginning of an answer comes in the next line of the Gospel reading. "Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." I want to look at the Greek word which our translation renders as "purses." The Greek is 'ballantia' which derives from a verb 'ballo,' which, my dictionary says, means 'throw, put, place, offer, give, pour, sow, invest, deposit,' and many more extended meanings somehow related to 'throw' or 'put.' The 'ballantia' then, are places where we put, or deposit, our treasures. But our text actually says that the 'ballantia' the purses, are the "unfailing treasure in heaven." What, then, is in the 'ballantia,' the purses, the treasure in heaven? In our consumerist, materially prosperous period, we naturally think of money and material possessions, and they can indeed be obstacles to perceiving the will of God.  But I think that our story is actually directing us to look at possessions and alms more closely.
     Remember the summary of the three groups of instructions in today's Gospel: Do not be afraid. Sell your stuff and give away the proceeds. Be prepared. It occurs to me that selling, and giving away, and being prepared, are exactly what we need to do in order not to be afraid. Our Lord is telling us how to let go of fear, so that we will be able to receive the Father's gift of the Kingdom. We let go of fear by letting go of the stuff that we think we need. They could be material things, as the literal surface meaning of the story suggests, or they could be ideas, notions, wishes, dreams, any intellectual or emotional obstacle at all, that get between us and God. And when we "sell" them, that is, when we let them go, we get back freedom. Freedom is what we have to give away...the alms of the story are...freedom. When we do that, we have treasure in heaven, which can't be stolen or eaten by moths. That freedom is what goes into the 'ballantia,' the purses, and it's that freedom in God that makes them treasures.
     Being prepared is the other way not to be afraid. When we are prepared for anything, then there is nothing to be afraid of. "Be dressed for action," "open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks." There is nothing to be afraid of when we are prepared for God's arrival at any time.
     We remember that it is our "Father's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom." Our Lord tells us how to prepare for this, but the Father's good pleasure has been decided in advance. We don't earn it by doing what Our Lord commands, but we do give ourselves up to it. There is a paradoxical double movement here: we are not to fear and therefore let go of possessions and make sure that we are prepared, and, also, doing those things liberates us from fear. We have the Father's promise that, either way, it is his good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. The only condition really is that we "open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks." But that he will come is clear, and all we have to do is be ready for him, and he makes that readiness possible. "You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." He makes it possible for us to be ready, and our readiness makes it possible for the Kingdom to appear.
     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus cures a woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13)

A homily on Luke 13: 10 - 17. Jesus cures a woman on the Sabbath.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     The most striking thing about today's Gospel is the remark by the leader of the synagogue in verse 14, when he says, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day." The leader sounds like he is taking a number of things for granted, and apparently he believes that his hearers do too. The first thing he takes for granted is: curing apparently goes on all the time. The second is: curing is a form of work. The third thing he takes for granted is: six days a week are enough time for it.

     There is no hint in the Gospel that there is anything unusual about such a cure. Nowadays, in the heyday of scientific medicine, we are liable to be skeptical, and perhaps more than skeptical, of reports of cures by religious teachers. But our time is also the heyday of great Christian shrines like Lourdes and Saint Anne de Beaupre and many others, where people go to pray for a cure, and where many receive healing from God. And the Roman Church, as we know, has a rigorous procedure for verifying miraculous cures in the process for confirming the holiness of those thought to be saints. So, even in our age, although we may not take cures for granted in quite the same way as the leader of the synagogue does in today's Gospel, we are aware that such events apparently do occur, and we don't necessarily dismiss stories of such events without examining them. So we can appreciate somewhat the attitude of the leader of the synagogue in today's story, for whom such a cure is not out of the ordinary.

     Curing is also work. It's a job, and of course it is, as any medical doctor or nurse or anyone working in a hospital would say. And like any job, there are rules and expectations around it. And one of those expectations is that the worker, Jesus the healer in this case, takes one day off a week like everybody else. Surely, six days out of seven are enough to work cures! The leader of the synagogue takes this for granted, as I said, and reminds his hearers of it, just in case they have forgotten.
     Notice how he does this. The leader says, "Come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath." "Come on those days and be cured." He is actually addressing the cured woman, as well as the crowd. He doesn't speak directly to Jesus. The leader is saying that the woman has broken the rule by accepting the cure, not Jesus by performing it. Note that the woman does not ask for a cure either; she simply appears in the synagogue, and Jesus calls her to him and lays hands on her. Jesus takes the initiative here, not the woman. I'm willing to speculate that the woman takes her condition for granted, as an unchangeable part of her life, just as the leader of the synagogue takes the conditions of his life and society for granted as well.
     The next sentence is equally interesting: "But the Lord answered him and said, 'You hypocrites!' "  "The Lord answered him," singular, and said, "You hypocrites!" plural. In contrast to the leader, who evades expressing his indignation at Jesus by speaking instead to the crowd, and to the woman as part of the crowd, so Jesus makes sure that he addresses everybody: the leader and the crowd.
     Jesus accepts the leader's understanding that the cure is work. But he upends the prohibition against it, by pointing out that some activities not thought to be work actually are, and they occur on the Sabbath, and so curing the sick can occur on the Sabbath as well. In other words, an exception for some other forms of work on the Sabbath allows an exception for this particular form of work, and so people can be cured on the Sabbath. "And ought not this woman...be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?" Jesus does not seek to overturn the Sabbath law, but he does point out that it is not as exclusive as the leader of the synagogue believes it to be. The Sabbath is about freedom from bondage, and is not about submitting to the bondage of exclusive rules.
     Then Luke writes, "When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing." This sentence introduces an element, or rather elements, into the story, who haven't been there up until now. "All his opponents were put to shame," it says. Where do these opponents come from? They aren't there at the beginning of the reading, and they aren't anywhere else in it either. All of a sudden, they appear. "And the entire crowd was rejoicing." The opponents aren't part of the crowd?
     We don't actually know what the opponents oppose. Presumably they oppose the cure, as the leader does, but the text doesn't actually say that. But there is no need, however, to worry about this curious, vague interruption of the text, because there is always an element that opposes good, that seeks to undermine it, that seeks to restrict freedom, and that resents the rejoicing of people freed from bondage. So Luke reminds us of this presence, this opposition, without having to be too specific about it.
     And therein lies a lesson that we can take from this story. Into a situation where the woman does not question her condition or seek to do anything about it, a situation where the leader of the synagogue assumes that almost anything anyone does on the Sabbath is forbidden, and a situation in which there is very little face-to-face communication among the participants, and where there is an opposition ready to object no matter what, into these assumptions and routines and conventional and traditional understandings, comes Jesus. And what happens? A woman's life is transformed, the leader's understanding is changed, Jesus's opponents are stopped, for a time, and, as the Gospel says, "the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things he was doing." The free act of God in Jesus shakes everyone, or almost everyone, loose from what they take for granted, from what they think they know, and a new thing, freedom in God, comes into their lives. And the crowd, and the woman, respond in the only way, the best way, they can. They rejoice.
     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.