Our Readings for the 13th Ordinary Sunday are all about a radical change of status in life wrought by the grace of Christ. Now many of us dream of rags to riches moments for ourselves or others, and play with the ideas this brings about, as many young boys dream of football fame. In the Greco-Roman empire such life enhancing moments might actually come through adoption, becoming heir to someone rich with no sons to succeed him, and others often slaves would understandably have dreamt of gaining their freedom and with it the end of physical and sexual abuse, or the threat of being sold to someone even worse. Freedom, an official and legal process, meant that one’s former owner might set you up in business and that you could become wealthy in your own right, and even see your children achieve public office in the cities of the empire. Our Readings reflect the dramatic shift in reality which faced Christians, as they came to understand the presence of the Kingdom of God amongst them in their everyday lives, inviting them into a wholly new relationship with God through the gift of Christ to the world.
In 1 Kings (19:16. 19-21) we are partakers of an ancient world, for Judaism was hundreds of years old; and we see the Prophet Elijah preparing for his own death and for a successor. It is a traditional, even peaceful transfer of authority. Elijah follows the divine instruction and finds Elisha, anoints him as his successor and Elisha bids farewell to his admiring parents, and offers a sacrifice from the large team of his father’s oxen, which he kills and cooks on the iron plough, indicating that this was an incident from the Iron Age. Significantly here his status shifts from son of the house with slaves at his command to slave of the Prophet, but clearly slave-heir carrying on the story of Israel and fulfilling its rules and obligations.
But things are dramatically different in our Gospel (Luke 9:51-62) the point in the Gospel when Jesus prepares for his own self-offering to the Father and the making clear of his identity as Son of God, and offering all of us a staggeringly different vision of the Kingdom and of human life. We are told that he ‘Resolutely took the road for Jerusalem.’ This determined action had been preceded by the Transfiguration, and Peter’s identification of Jesus as Messiah. We then have a lot of teaching and healing, confirming his identity before Luke gets us to the Passion in Chapter 22; but all that is seared with Jesus’ determination to fulfil his life’s work in obedience to the Father, revealing God to man. To demonstrate the shift from the ways of the world, and especially those of Judaism, we have the vignette of the rejection by the Samaritan town where the disciples want to make a revenge attack for this lack of hospitality, and find Jesus simply rebukes them. Violence is not God’s way, and this in itself is radical and shocking, as both Jews and pagans would have expected a zapping of the offenders. We then have three tiny incidents in which Jesus lays out the true cost of discipleship, homelessness and total dependence on others, absolute commitment to Jesus above all else. As Lord and giver of the Kingdom, all existing rules such as the obligation to bury the dead especially a parent must be turned aside by the precedence of Jesus, and finally even simply respecting one’s familial duties, such as keeping parents informed and making proper farewells, are flung aside; so that dutiful respect we found and understand so well from 1 Kings 19, no longer applies. A wholly new relationship, binding us to the divine is the rule. Small wonder then that the Jews and the likes of Theophilus were shocked; all those things which keep society on the rails take an inferior place to the needs of following God.
Sadly our Jerusalem Bible translation of Galatians (5:1.13-18) gives the impression that Paul is talking about morals, with the word ‘unspiritual’ which in Greek is simply ‘flesh’, sarx. The point would not be lost if we had not got the clipped version of this passage with v.1 detached from vs.13-18. In Galatians you will recall, Paul is incandescent with rage that his converts to Christian belief have succumbed to the demands of hard line Jews and have accepted circumcision and the whole of the law. His position is, and it makes sense when we read any Gospel, is that life in God, in Christ, has nothing to do with what we do or do not allow to happen to our literal flesh, here circumcision. Circumcision and law righteousness was what separated Jews from the rest of humanity, and Jesus’ outreach as we know simply defies any boundaries; all who accept his message are included in the life of the Kingdom. Paul is adamant that the Jewish law exists merely to point out human faults 3:19, it has no power at all to incorporate in the life of God, gifted in Christ. The fact that his only law is love of neighbour, respect and generosity for everyone, is very telling. 5:2-12 is all about a rejection of circumcision, cutting of the flesh, as the mark of belonging and a radical turning to faith in the Son of God who has loved us into God’s life. ‘If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you.’ So being a Christian requires this dramatic shift in the status of every believer from great to lowly, for we are all children of the resurrection by grace and are bound to the Kingdom by God’s ways, not those of the world.
Comments