Pentecost 6C. 2019
Luke 10:1-10
A Cynic Like, No Frills Jesus,
Today is the 7th Day of the 7th Month 2019 a date that is other than the date of this day today, of little significance. Well that’s probably untrue in that there is no doubt the fact that this day, this date for someone has some significance. It has to be someone’s birthday of anniversary of some event. There was a date similar but not the same that had significance and that was Saturday the 7th day of the 7th month on the year 2007 and at 7 minutes past 7am on that day the world ended.
Of course, it was off the mark because we are still here! But in reality there have been over many years several ‘visions’ or predictions as to when the ‘end of the world’ or the Second Coming of Christ, is to occur. One of the most famous of these predictions goes back to an American, called William Miller, a farmer and layman of the Baptist church, and a person who was one of those instrumental in establishing the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Beginning with a strictly literal reading of the ages of people mentioned in the first chapters of Genesis, and the dating of other events mentioned in Daniel and Revelations,
“Miller believed that precise calculations were possible and one could predict the second coming of Christ and the inauguration of the Millennial kingdom… somewhere around 1843” (Wikipedia). Actually, the 22 October 1844, was the date commonly accepted throughout the Millerite, movement, although it has been said Miller himself was uncertain as to the exact day. The topic was discussed in the newspapers as well as in theological journals. “New Testament eschatology competed with stock market quotations for front-page space…” (Wikipedia).
But when we go back to our numerical patterns. We find that in a sample poll conducted towards the end of 2006, again in America, it showed that one in four Americans anticipated the second coming of Christ in 2007. Indeed, 11 percent said it is “very likely” that Jesus will return to Earth in 2007!
William Miller and his followers not only tapped into a long tradition,
they have also added to and expanded that tradition. And as we now know, it is from within the Millennial or Rapture or Armageddon fundamentalist traditions that much of the so-called ‘religious right’ in the western world seek to influence governments on foreign policy issues. We might take for instance the relations in the volatile Middle East.
We might as how can there ever be a negotiated solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict,
when fundamentalist Christians continue to lobby politicians while claiming that:
“Peace and peace plans in the Middle East are a bad thing… because they delay the countdown to Christ’s return” (Quoted in Crossan 2007:201) Domonic Crossan reminded us of this in 2007. The problem is that vote scared politicians continue to listen to them!
So, let me be quite clear about what I think: “The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen soon. The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen violently. The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen literally. The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with divine presence” and let me say that I am not alone in this thinking. Domonic Crossan said as much in 2007. (Crossan 2007:230-231).
Returning to our text we see that over the last two weeks our gospel storyteller whom we call Luke, has been setting out his agenda, his vision, for cooperating with divine presence. Foxes have holes, but have nowhere to lay your head… Leave the dead to bury the dead… Carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals…. Salute no one on the road…
Take what food and drink is offered you…
It has to be that these stories about these short, sharp sayings, are important – both then and now. Contemporary biblical scholarship suggests they are either from, or have been influenced by, the code of the Q Movement… The texts we take as from an unknown source used by the gospel writers. The important collection or memory of Jesus sayings,
which in their earliest state, are very close to the Cynic’s style of making social critique.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3F4BCzN5D8
And we can also now speculate that those same Q people were not only part of a very lively Jesus movement in Galilee, remembering and shaping just the sayings tradition of Jesus, but that their ‘voice’ is probably the best record we have of the first 40 years of the Jesus movements.
When we look at some of the basic conventions of the time we see that by conventional common sense standards of the everyday word, a home was necessary; the streets were unsafe, a son must honour the family above all else, especially in death, money and clothes and provisions are about living – and status, respect given and received was what made the world go around, only clean or organic food is what one should always eat.
Popular tradition has it that the Cynics always challenged their listeners by their dress and their sayings, to re-imagine the world away from the everyday world of common sense. Now this is where an important bit comes in. So too does the link to all that stuff I said at the beginning: about Millennial or Rapture or Armageddon fundamentalist traditions, usually called the ‘apocalyptic’ tradition. An apocalyptic or ‘end world’ theory doesn’t exist in any of these sayings, despite what some, including some scholars, want to claim. Neither does a blue print for modern world missions. This is why mission is usually not defined. It is God’s mission and thus does not fit man’s definitions which are culturally bound.
What does exist is a new counter-culture tradition that simply suggests: don’t jump to hasty conclusions, consider the human condition or circumstances of all. And when you take account of that kind of in-depth thinking, something different can be accomplished, now. This is what I was suggesting last week and the week before. Good news is about the new, the radically alternative and different. A change of attitude or behaviour is a simple response but only part of it. A new vision of what it means to be human on equal terms based in love on love and for love. Being alive to the present moment in all of its possibilities, positive and negative. What makes me suggest some of this? When a ‘no-frills’ Jesus used imaginative language to call into question his received life/everyday world, in favour of the life world that emerges in his parables and short sayings (aphorisms), (Patterson 2007) then he and we, are getting close to what it means to live
with divine presence – both then and now.
We can catch hold of that presence when our eyes are wide open… “capable of catching a glimpse of what lies beyond the reigning view of the world” (Funk 2002:28).
Like I have said before, the Roman Empire, like all empires then and now, and what seems to permeate our culture even today is that empires, institutions based on a power over are base in the premis that they will change the world through victory after war. Note that peace is dependent upon victory and only comes after war. The ‘end-of-the-world’ advocates say we’ll save the world by destroying it. Jesus seems to have said: let’s re-imagine the world differently by considering the human condition of all. That is now our ‘no frills’ journey, where-ever it takes us. Amen.
Notes:
Crossan, J. D. 2007. God and Empire. Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. New York. HarperSanFrancisco.
Funk, R. W. 2002. A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press.
Patterson, S. J. 2007. “Report from the Jesus Seminar on Christian Origins” in The Fourth R 20, 1, 16-20.
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