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Now it happened, as He went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath, …

Eating bread on the Sabbath was (is) an essential element of the Jewish Sabbath day observation. It invoked the eating of bread in the wilderness, which, we recall, was the manna saved up on Friday, as the Lord instructed. As such, it was a reminder of the Lord’s providence. Also it was a reminder that the Lord gives us the rest – because it could be stored up on Friday, no work needed to be done on Saturday.

This prayer is said with the bread, “Blessed are you LORD our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” It’s a good ritual and reminder of the rest we have in the Lord, even in a fallen world. One day a week we are given to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labors, which are truly how the Lord provides for us. After creating the earth in six days, the Lord guaranteed the continuation of the creation with all its fruits. How? Through the seed. The Lord feeds the birds through their beaks and talons; He feeds man through his mind and mastery of creation, his ability to work the ground with seeds and cause food to be brought forth.

And one day a week we get to sit back and rejoice in the fruits of our labor. But still, it’s a fallen world. Still, we die. Still, we fall down pits.

As such, the Sabbath is unfulfilled. In today’s passage, then, we get somewhat of a parallel with John 6. There, Jesus had just finished feeding the five thousand, and the people recognized in Jesus a Moses-like character who like Moses could feed them. Was this the “prophet like Moses”?

Jesus begins there, but takes things to the next level. Again, He’s new wine not able to be contained by old wineskins. Also true in this week’s Gospel. Jesus begins with the Law, with the observance of the Sabbath, but He takes things to a higher level, as we will see.

But let’s pause and consider that Jesus, in fact, did “go into the house to eat bread on the Sabbath.” Jesus was no revolutionary. He didn’t come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. He submitted to the existent forms, the culture of the day.

Also note He evidently had been invited into the house of one of the ruling Pharisees. True, they were trying to test Him. Still, at this point Jesus is among colleagues. He was a rabbi, a teacher, and part of the body of Jewish teachers. The image of Him as some hippy street preacher is simply wrong. As Jesus says to the High Priest, “ I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing.”

Note here St. John’s little dig at the Gnostics, as he quotes Jesus saying, “In secret I have said nothing.” It was the Gnostics who believed Jesus had a body of teaching taught secretly to an elite group of apostles.

This is all to say Jesus was not a subversive or a revolutionary. He wasn’t buried away in some secret enclave passing on esoteric teachings to an elite body of believers. He was a man of the Law, of the Old Testament, come to His people. He was out in the open, teaching publicly, debating with the teachers of the day, among whom He was one.

But Jesus took this tradition to another level, a level we see pan out in the Gospel. Whatever Sabbath the Jews thought they had, Jesus makes it something more, something greater. And whatever the Jews thought about the bread they ate and shared, Jesus was going to make it something more, something greater.

He is the Sabbath; He is the bread; He is the ruling Teacher. And if you’re the man with dropsy, isn’t his exactly what you want and need?

 

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” This is the last passage from this week’s Gospel and it’s the last we hear from St. Luke in the Church year. (I was wrong last week when I said that was the last Luke Gospel – it’s this week.) Interesting, but this was how Luke’s contribution in the Trinity season began, with the account of Lazarus and the Rich Man, another Gospel about the humble exalted and the exalted humbled.

It’s also arguably what the entire Lucan contribution is, even as he begins with those powerful Christmas Gospels, invoking Mary’s hymn, which in turn invoked Hannah’s hymn, in which are the words, “The LORD kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up. He raises the poor from the dust And lifts the beggar from the ash heap, To set them among princes And make them inherit the throne of glory.”

How is the entire life of Christ not a fulfillment of these words? As I teach the Old Testament, I always explain how there are four ways the Old Testament prepares the way for Christ. First there are the blatant prophecies about Christ. Second are the typologies, like the Exodus or King David, which are essentially action prophecies about Christ or the Church. Third is the Seed Promise, first given in Genesis 3: 15 and flowing through the entire Old Testament in the patriarchs, in characters like Rahab and Ruth, and in the dynasty of King David – Matthew’s Gospel picks up this strain in his first chapter.

The fourth way it prepares for Christ is in the unfolding humble-exalted theology that we see throughout the Old Testament. We get an early example of this in the two lines of Cain and Seth. Cain’s family was urban (because the land was cursed), innovative, and accomplished. Of Seth’s family all we hear is “and he died” over and over again. Yet Cain’s line ended in the flood, and Seth’s family line carried on through Shem to Abraham and into the starry sky, as fulfilled eventually in Christ’s children by faith.

God uses a childless Abraham to populate His kingdom. The enslaved Joseph becomes a prince of Egypt. A nation of slaves becomes a great people. Gideon’s army of 300 defeats a nation. David kills Goliath. On and on we could go. The humble are exalted; the ones falling down into the pit are lifted up on high. It’s a theological theme woven throughout Scripture culminating in the humiliation and exaltation of Christ.

Jesus uses the parable of a donkey or oxen falling into a pit to illustrate His point. Who on the Sabbath wouldn’t go down to save his own animal if it fell into a pit. That no one answers indicates clearly it was well within acceptability to show such mercy on an animal on the Sabbath.

Jesus analogizes the point. Just as the people could save what belonged to them on the Sabbath, so can Jesus save what belongs to Him. Interesting, but in the analogy, we’re the donkeys or oxen. Lots to mine from that. He doesn’t compare us to spider monkeys or gazelles, fleet-footed or agile animals with lots of skill. He compares us to lumbering herd animals who are helpless. Because that’s what we are in our curse of sin and death! We must be helped; we must be saved.

Also by analogy, we have fallen into a pit. Now, where did Jesus reach down into a pit, on a Sabbath Day, and save us from that pit? Isn’t this what Jesus did on the day between His death and resurrection, on the Sabbath Day, when He descend into hell? His descent becomes the event metaphorically replicated every time, through the ministry, He reaches to us in our “pit” – of despair, of sin, of disease, of death – and saves us by the Gospel, by forgiveness, by grace.

“But it’s the Sabbath! You can’t work on the Sabbath!” Such was the reaction of the Pharisees. To which Jesus’ response is – if we glean all the material on the Sabbath from the Gospels – the Sabbath was an unfulfilled day made for man pointing to a greater fulfillment and a truer rest centered in Jesus Christ. And, by the way, as we learn in St. John’s Gospel, the Lord never really stopped working, but “has been working until now, and I [Jesus] have been working.”

The heavens and earth were “finished” on the sixth day, but in God’s wisdom, this “finished-ness” needed to be fleshed out in time, and was fleshed out in Christ on the day (the sixth day) when He said, “It is finished.” So, whatever Sabbath was begun on the first seventh day needed another fulfillment, when Christ sanctified the grave with His own rest and rose from the dead.

This is why Christ says now of rest, “Come to Me and I will give you rest.” He’s our Sabbath Day, not a time, but a Person.

Jesus began the Sabbath Day in the grave, grabbing the hands of Adam and all his children – those helpless donkeys and oxen – and lifting them up on Easter Day into their exaltation, with Him. This is the true rest we, the weak and heavy-laden (like oxen), have. The humble are exalted.

Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”; and, “God has visited His people.”

Here again we have the embryo of the liturgy, showing how the liturgy is not some random assemblage of words written out by some random monk in the 600s, but is truly the world of the Bible brought to life in the moment of today. Without the liturgy, church becomes simply a mental act of remembering – in keeping with the doctrine of communion in non-liturgical settings. It even becomes an act of phantasm projection, as we attempt to “get back into the moment” of time in Jesus’ day and imagine what we would have done or how we would have reacted. Whatever the case, the assumption is that today is far removed from the authentic moment when Jesus was on earth.

The liturgy is something other than this. The liturgy brings the Gospel moment into today, even as today connects to the living Lord of the Church sitting at the right hand of the Father. It’s not a remembrance, but a real presence. The Gospel through the liturgy creates a new world into which we step.

In the context of the Gospel of Jesus raising the widow’s son, and the reaction of the people, we are given to join them, or they us, as fear comes upon us, as we glorify God, and as we confess that Jesus is God visiting us.

And there’s your liturgical embryo. “Fear came upon all.” That’s how the liturgy begins. We realize we’re in the presence of the Lord God. Fear leads to a confession of sins and a prayer for mercy. “They glorified God.” We’ve spoken much about this, how central this is to the Church’s worship. It fulfills the Old Testament prophecy that all nations would glorify the name of the Lord. Then there’s the time of confession, “God has visited His people.” Yes, the Son of God, our Lord, is conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, and has come down to us.

We confess He’s come down to us in the creed, and we testify to His presence in His own testament, on the altar, through bread and wine. It’s His visitation.

The phrase, “God has visited His people” is Luke’s way of proclaiming the incarnation. Again, Luke perhaps has the weakest foundation of Jesus’ divinity in the Gospels – we strain to find that simple proof text in his opening chapters which teaches the incarnation. Matthew reveals the name Immanuel, which means “God with us.” John has the passages, “The Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Even Mark, though not as clear, starts off with John the Baptist proclaiming, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” even as he prepares the way for Jesus.

Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus as the Son of God, and you can hear nay-sayers saying, “The Son of God is not the same thing as God.” Such are the Jehovah’s Witnesses and liberals. But Luke reveals Jesus’ divinity in other ways, and it comes deeper in the Gospel.

Three times the idea of “God visiting His people” comes up. First with Zacharias’ canticle: “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people.” The second comes in that same canticle: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest; For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, To give knowledge of salvation to His people By the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God, With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us.”

The Dayspring is the Messiah, and His way is prepared by repentance and baptism, which gives the forgiveness of sins. This is where the Lord visits His people.

The idea of God visiting His people first comes up with Joseph promising the Lord will “visit” Israel and bring them to the Promised Land. Exodus was God’s visitation, when God came to save them from slavery. A Psalm says God visits the earth when it rains. Through the proclamation of the Gospel to gentiles, the book of Acts tells us, the Lord visited the gentiles.

The Greek word for “visit” is also used in more mundane contexts, but always in acts of mercy. “I was sick and you visited me.” Pure religion is “to visit orphans.” Paul and Barnabas visited the places where they had preached the Word.

Finally we get to our Gospel: “God has visited His people.” As we’ve seen, what this looks like is Jesus having compassion, becoming unclean, and conquering death – sort of the entire Gospel in a nutshell! Jesus is God coming down in the flesh to bear our unclean-ness and give us eternal life.

The picture emerging of God visiting His people is still not quite a clear doctrinal statement that Jesus is God, at least not the sort of statement we perhaps would like. If God visited His people through John the Baptist, through Moses, through rain, through the preaching of the Gospel, through a visit to an orphanage, or through a visit to the sick, then surely the fact that God visited the widow through Jesus need not be interpreted as a statement that Jesus is God anymore than we would say Moses, John the Baptist, or the rain is God.

Yet, perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Luke is expanding the doctrine of the incarnation out of the systematic books. The doctrine of the incarnation isn’t just an academic exercise for catechism class. It’s something permeating the Christian life. It’s the foundation of the ministry – he who receives one who Jesus sends receives Him. It’s the foundation of sanctification – we become the hand of God as we visit orphans, widows, and the sick. It’s even the foundation of natural occurrences that bless us – Jesus fills all things in heaven and on earth, sends rain on the good and evil alike, and feeds us our daily bread.

We have to be careful with this way of thinking, because we never want to have God “leak” out of Jesus’ flesh and blood, such that where God ends and we begin is unclear, or fuzzy, and we begin to think of ourselves as God, or God’s hands, or God’s faces. So we need to make clear and distinct that the way God is present in Christ and “visits” us is unique and wholly other than the way He is present and visits us through the ministry, the rain, and our visits to orphans.

The problem manifests when ministers develop personality cults, when we worship nature, or when we turn deeds of love and sanctification as the essence of Christianity, rather than the Person of Jesus Christ. This is God leaking out of Christ into something else, so that it becomes confusing where God ends and we begin.

Luke certainly centers God’s presence in Jesus Christ, like when the Samaritan leper worshiped Him, and so should we. But Luke also articulates a ripple effect of God’s demarcated presence in Jesus Christ. It ripples out through the ministry in its proclamation of the Gospel, and through acts of mercy.

The doctrine of the incarnation is not an isolated doctrine, but a permeating one. However, the danger of isolating it is not when we focus on it, but the reverse, when we isolate it as one of many theological doctrines – this is God leaking out of Christ and into other doctrines; God is not seen solely centered in Christ and rippling out but rather through all sorts of isolated doctrines, like the incarnation, sanctification, and so on. What this looks like is the church that focuses on, say, good actions you can do as a Christian, and, if you want to find out what they believe about Christ or the Trinity, you can check out their “what we believe” page on their website.

When Christ is center and God’s actions through the other doctrines ripple out from Him, that looks like, well, that looks like the liturgy. Always the liturgy centers on the Triune God and God’s incarnated presence in Christ – in its canticles, creeds, and rites – and the climax of that action, holy communion, results in our prayer to have fervent love for one another – that is the basis for the Christian’s life in the world. (Read Mother Theresa quotes on this truth.)

“God has visited His people.” This means Jesus, of course, as God’s incarnated Person on earth, but it also wraps into it the life of the Church. The Church is the place of God’s visitation today, in the testimony of those who fear and glorify Him. As the Psalm says, the Lord is “Enthroned in the praises of Israel.” Luke’s Gospel subtly articulates a doctrine of the incarnation not isolated, but permeating the entire life of the Church.

And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother.

We got a hint of this in the previous devotion, when we saw how in the text it said, “and those who carried him stood still.” Who’s “him”?

And in the passage for today, who’s “young man”? Who is “he who was dead”? Clearly, the text, and Jesus, locate the man’s existence in the material body of the individual. They locate, to use the modern jargon, his “identity” in the physical body. The body still has a sex – “him,” “he” – and age – “young” man. He’s still of the species homo sapiens – young “man.” He is not simply a clump of physical stuff whose true “Self” or true identity is separate and distinct from his body.

In other words, there is no support for Gnosticism in the language of the text. Gnostics would understand identity, and one’s person, as transcending the physical body. The true center of one’s being is not in his physicality, but in that “spark of divinity” certain elite people have. Scholars have also referred to this “spark of divinity” as the Self. And indeed, that’s our modern, existential understanding of Self, that it’s who we authentically are behind all the onion layers of external stuff we falsely might thing is us. Our sex, our family name, our country, our culture, our religion, these are all “the other in us” as one philosopher put it. Our “true Self,” rather, is something transcending the body.

It is because of this resurgent Gnosticism that people will talk about being “a male in a female body” or vice versa. It’s the reason why cremation is on the rise, because as one funeral director once told me, “People will just say, throw my body to the curb; it’s not who I really am.” It runs so much funeral piety: “He lives on in our hearts.” (Really? So if the possibility of his vivified flesh were offered, you’d say, “That’s OK, he’s still alive in my heart”?) It’s partly the reason why tattooing is popular: the body is just a canvass for self-expression after all. It’s why marriage is understood not as the compatibility of two biological bodies intended for reproductive copulation, but as a more transcendent “love” that has nothing to do with bodies. It’s why we can even have a discussion of when true “personhood” begins independently of when biological says the human body ultimately begins, at the embryo.

The bottom line is this is our predominant philosophical view of the human person: the body is an outer carcass of a transcendant “self” where our true, authentic personhood exists. This is Gnosticism. It is not what Jesus demonstrates in our Gospel this week.

Were the text to speak in Gnostic terms about the situation, the “young man,” when he died, would have been floating around somewhere else. He would have ascended to the heavens, or gone to the light, or dissolved into eternal oneness. Jesus would have ordered his hovering Self to return to that carcass. Instead, Jesus speaks of the carcass in personhood terms: him, he, young man. The text says, “he who was dead sat up and began to speak.”

For that matter, even how many people think of the death of people prior to Christ’s resurrection, there are some problems. According to many peoples’ thinking, the young man, when he died, would have gone either to heaven or hell. Presumably he would have gone to heaven given Christ’s positive posture toward him. So, he’s floating around in heaven, awaiting the second coming when he’d reunite with his body, and suddenly Jesus calls his spirit back down into his body.

I don’t go with this understanding, mainly because Jesus says no one has ascended to the Father, as of that moment in time prior to His resurrection. Also, the Old Testament teaches that those who died went to Sheol, which is simply the place of the dead, the grave. At best they may have gone to this place known as Abraham’s Bosom, which itself could be a simple metaphor for the land of Israel, the place of burial for the faithful dead. On these terms, the young man would have been experiencing more of something like a soul sleep.

In any event, the bigger point is that Jesus connects this young man’s personhood not to some spirit or self floating around independently of the physical body, but with the physical body. This gets into the interesting question which helps us distinguish Hebrew from Greek understandings of the human person: Are we incarnate spirits, or animate bodies? The Greeks would have answered with the former; the Hebrews, the latter. We are animate bodies. Our bodies are what “we” are, and the spirit God gives it animates it.

True, when we die, “the spirit will return to God who gave it.”  (Ecclesiastes 12: 7) But what is the nature of this spirit?  Is there a consciousness to it?  Does it have a sense of self awareness?  The Psalm says, “For in death there is no remembrance of You; In the grave who will give You thanks?”  Or is “the spirit” simply the principle of life, which always belongs to the Lord ultimately, so that at any time He can cause that spirit to reanimate that lump of dust in which our true identity lies?

Based on how Jesus treats the young man, we’d have to go with the latter. Else we have that issue of the young man’s conscious soul floating around somewhere in bliss, when suddenly he’s drawn out of his bliss and caused to go back into his body. Where’s the mercy in that, for the young man? “I was doing great floating around in heaven, and then all of a sudden this Jesus guy forces me back into the fallen world in my fallen body. That kind of sucked!”

The Gospel is pretty clear in how it understands things. The man’s identity and personhood were right where Jesus placed it, in his body. That is, after all, what He created, what He became, and what He came down to redeem.

Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians:

“Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people.’ Therefore “Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, …”

Here we see a good example of an Old Testament foundation for this week’s Gospel, whose deeper theme carries over into New Testament theology. The rule is that one becomes unclean when in contact with dead things. The Old Testament implication was “therefore don’t touch such things.” Jesus made this teaching into a new wine that could no longer be contained by the old wineskins of Old Testament law, but that doesn’t mean the commandment no longer holds. It’s interpreted in new ways, as St. Paul makes clear. How so?

“Don’t be yoked with unbelievers.” Don’t let give them a “voice” in your world. Don’t let heresy into your church. Don’t befriend bad influences. Don’t let sewage into your house through your screen. Don’t let dead ideas and death-causing sin gain a foothold in your soul.

The training-wheels observance of this truth is what was taught in the Law of the Old Testament – don’t touch corpses; don’t touch lepers. Jesus fulfilled this law and lifted it to new heights. He made the unclean clean. He made the dead live. He became the curse so that the cursed might be received back into the community of the Lord.

The word for “touched” is “take a firm grasp of.” Jesus has resolve. He knows exactly what He’s doing, because He’s the good Samaritan. He’s not afraid to risk becoming unclean, like the Levites and priests did. Gosh, it’s almost as if He wanted to become unclean! Well, of course He did, for that is why He came, to save us from our sin and unclean-ness.

Through Christ the touch of God heals. In the Old Testament, those who had contact with God outside of His carefully ordained means died. Those carefully ordained means were the tabernacle, temple, the sacrificial system, and the priesthood. Those dealt with by God through these ordained means had a “healing,” a “healing” in quotes because “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats [to] take away sins.” Still, they were “healed,” as it were, in type.

Jesus fulfilled it all. He’s the tabernacle, the temple, the sacrifice, and the priest. And His healing is real healing, and those who would have contact with God outside of Christ will find only wrath and death. That doesn’t change.

When Jesus came up and grasped the coffin, those who carried the dead man stood still. Jesus stops the march of death in its tracks. Or, like those laughing at Him when He said the girl was only sleeping, Jesus halts the sad “way of the world” a fallen race accepts as normal. He’s the One standing athwart history saying “no!” and it sticks.

A final comment about the language of the text, which is interesting and sets up tomorrow’s meditation. “Those carrying him stood still.” Jesus touches the coffin, and those carrying “him” stood still. Not those carrying “it,” but “him.” When Jesus sees a corpse, He doesn’t see an “it,” an inanimate object, a clump of inert material whose spirit has floated off into never-never land. He sees “him.” He sees the man. He locates the man’s identity not in something other than where his flesh was, but exactly where he was. Oh what mysteries we can probe here (and will)!

At a minimum, at this point, we can make a parallel with Jesus raising the girl. “She’s only sleeping.” Jesus doesn’t accept death’s verdict. He doesn’t give up on the bodies He – He! – has made. These are His possessions, His treasures! He gave up everything to purchase and redeem the hidden treasures buried in the ground. Where others see something to bury away – a dead girl, an “it” – Jesus sees a treasure, and gives up His own life to purchase and redeem that treasure.

When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”

The Lord has compassion – it’s something that cannot be overemphasized . It’s a theme throughout the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Interesting, but neither the word “compassion” nor “mercy” is found in John, who tends to focus on the word love.

The Greek word Luke uses for compassion is not the same word used for mercy, the word that’s the basis for the Kyrie Eleison (Lord, have mercy); it’s a more affectionate word rooted in the Greek word for “inward parts,” splangchna. I’ve always liked the translation “gut-spitting love.” It’s the idea of feeling in your gut a care and concern for someone in their pain.

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus has “splangchna” for the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd (so He fed them), a blind man, and one who was demon possessed. Luke’s three uses include the widow in this week’s Gospel, the good Samaritan, and the father of the prodigal son.

We can run with the gut, the mid-section of the body, and follow it all the way back to eternity. Jesus “is in the bosom of the Father” St. John tells us, and this is from eternity, Proverbs tells us when in it Wisdom (the Word) says, “I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.”

Or as the Lord says of His anointed in Psalm 2, “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.” And try as the enemies of God might, no one can break their bonds asunder: “Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.’ ” God laughs as such nonsense.

Because to have gut-splitting love is not incidental or accidental to God’s nature, as it is with other non-Trinitarian understandings of God. It is the essence of His being. God is love. Were God only one Person, this love would have to be either potential only, for He would have no object of His love, or else, His love would only be self-directed, which means nothing for us. But being a Trinity, from eternity love is seen in this, that the Father from eternity has ben begetting the Son…from His gut regions. To be one with Christ is to have no doubt of the Father’s eternal love. As Jesus says, “for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me.”

When God made man in His image, it stands to reason man would have a similar gut-gift, when the Lord took from Adam’s gut Eve, the one bound to him as one flesh, and let no one put them asunder – it’s the relation between the gut-giving one and the gut-given one.

And then where does life happen from Eve? From the gut point.

The Holy Spirit gives life from gut to gut, from the Father to the Son, from Adam to Eve, and from Eve to child. It’s the flow of life, the creation and procreation furthering the Father’s life, love, and giving-Person.

When Adam sinned, life still goes on, but now in pain. Now it’s gut-splitting. Eve gives birth in pain. Adam supports and provides for his wife in pain. The Father sends His Son, abandoning Him – without doubt in pain and sadness, though I’m not aware of any text that specifically says this.

Except for the fact that Jesus – Who reflects the Father’s nature in every way – split His gut open to provide for His bride, the Church, in His death, when water and blood, with the Spirit, flowed out of Him.

To love and have compassion is always to take up the cross and do so sacrificially. It cannot be any other way. Love in a fallen world requires sacrifice. This is something everyone knows. To love neighbor requires giving up Self for the sake of other, and often this happens in pain and denial.

There were lots of people in the world at the time of Jesus who experienced loss, like the widow, but only this widow was “seen” by Jesus. She became His neighbor. Neighbors are not some abstraction of “humanity” but actual persons with whom we come in bodily contact. Yes, Jesus died for “humanity,” but even this means nothing until a flesh and blood messenger delivers the benefits of that cross to neighbors, bodies in his vicinity. And that too requires sacrifice, as the martyred apostles will attest to.

And that compassion for the widow certainly cost Jesus. He touched the coffin and became unclean, and He took that unclean-ness to the cross, where He was placed outside the city gates. His compassion moved Him to this sacrifice. No surprise here. It’s what the Lord has been doing from eternity.

And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out…

We’ve been contemplating how, especially in the last several weeks, in Luke’s Gospels, there is a clash between worlds, between an Old Testament world of the Law and a New Testament world of the Gospel. The parable of the good Samaritan runs along these lines, as does the account of the ten lepers. This week’s account certainly follows the pattern as well.

Each of these Gospel begins with the world of the Law, or the Old Testament. Now, just because it’s the Old Testament world, or the world of the Law, doesn’t mean it’s bad, or wrong. Jesus Himself said He didn’t come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it.

Several times the New Testament talks of the Old Testament Law as a shadow, or type. Here are a few examples of that:

From Colossians: “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.”

Two from Hebrews: “For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things”

“For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.”

The things of the Law were a shadow of “the good things to come.” They themselves could not ultimately do what needed to be done, but they pointed forward to the One Who would do those things. Insofar as they pointed forward to something quite real, and insofar as they were shadows cast by something substantially real and true, they themselves point to important truths. In fact, understanding Old Testament Law through Christ can give dimension to the substance that might be missed if all we had were the New Testament.

So, we make a mistake if we say the Old Testament Law is perverse, or profane. For example, the priest and Levite were wrong in their application of the law on corpses, but they weren’t wrong to have that law at the fore of their minds. Crossing the street, in a sense, was the proper first response – it was the second response that needed some work.

Or again, the nine lepers obeying Jesus and continuing to go to the priest wasn’t wrong – it was not only what the Law taught but what Jesus commanded! However, in not seeing in Christ the true High Priest who fulfilled the Law, they lacked in faith, and so Jesus shamed them.

In this week’s Gospel, as we learn how God’s Law places dead bodies and those who handle them outside the city gates, we might think this is cruel, or perverse, or “Old Testamental.” We might think, there goes that mean old God from the Old Testament again, banning people and “other-izing” them. He’s building walls, when He should be building bridges. He should be more like that New Testament God, Jesus!

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is classic Gnosticism, to make such a dichotomy between the Old Testament “God” and New Testament “God.” Both “Gods” are one and the same Triune God, our Lord. Furthermore, the God of the Old Testament abounded in mercy often, even as Jesus could and will display great judgment and wrath.

The Law placed dead bodies and those who handled them outside the gates because God has nothing to do with death. God is a God of life and wants a people of life around Him. Death can have no part with life. This He showed us already in Eden, when He cast Adam and Eve outside its gates. You could argue as the doors of the ark were shut, the Lord was shutting the dying world outside of His new gates, the door of the ark. Or, in a sense the Lord shut the gates of the Red Sea as He separated His people from Egypt.

But all of this was in type, because in the end, Noah, Moses, and all of Israel remained in their sins and under the curse of death. Only in Christ would heaven’s gates be opened. Only at His birth are we given to see the angels singing “Glory be to God on high.” Only at His baptism are we given to see heaven split open and hear the Trinity revealed. And only at His ascension are we given to receive the Holy Spirit who lifts up our humanity through the open gates, to receive in Christ our status at God’s right hand at the altar.

Jesus comes into our arena of death in order to fulfill what that community of life was intended to foreshadow, and creates a real community of life. But the shadow and type remain teachers of truths. Still, there is a great cleavage going on, a separating of God’s people from the arena of death, or, the arena now of those who don not believe. As St. Paul put it, “For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?”

Throughout the New Testament, there is a great cleaving going on, a fissuring off of the new world from the old, that parallels the cleaving off of death from the community of life. The Church itself is a “calling out” of a new people from the old. This is true of Christ, His Church, and individual Christians.

As for the Church, deadly sins or doctrines should have nothing to do with it. They should be “cut off,” like the hand or eye that causes the body to sin. As for individual Christians, that which leads to death – willful and unrepentant sin, false doctrines – should be severed from the body, “cast outside the city gates.” It is very much a teaching of the Scriptures.

But why the separation? Because death has a contagious effect. It sickens the body, real bodies and metaphorical bodies. Dead teachings can lead a whole church to death. Dead behaviors can drive a soul away from Christ into eternal death.

This is why the Church excommunicates, for the good of the body, with the hope that the one excommunicated will be shocked into similarly excommunicating whatever it is in his life that is causing death in his own life.

Of course, for those who repent, who turn to Christ, Jesus is more than willing to enter into their unclean-ness and save us. That is most clearly seen in this week’s Gospel. Indeed, it is where Jesus does His work, at the place of God’s abandonment. For now, He did not come to judge, but to save.

Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her.

Clearly there’s am image St. Luke is setting up by the two references to a “large crowd.” One crowd follows Jesus; it’s “many of His disciples.” Recall, Luke reveals how Jesus sent out seventy disciples to preach the Gospel. How big was this crowd here? 50-70? That’s a large enough crowd.

Another crowd follows the coffin with the woman. They were mourning the child’s death and supporting the widow. As touching and compassionate as this crowd was, it lives, as it were, in another world than the first crowd.

We’ve pointed out especially in these past several weeks how the Gospels from Luke seem to be working out the theme of clash between two worlds, the one world of the Law and the other world of the Gospel.

In the parable of the good Samaritan, we begin in the lawyer’s world: “What must I do to inherit life? Follow the Law. What does this mean?” Then we get the parable. The Levite and priest, both creatures of the Law world, avoid what appears to them a dead body. Why? Because that would make them unclean. That’s old world thinking, not so much on account of the Law, but on account of their abuse of the Law, their losing sight of its merciful intent, for the Lord desires mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus not only had to remind them of this, but also fulfill the Law. This He does by revealing the good Samaritan, who risked becoming unclean for the sake of mercy.

In the account of the ten lepers, we begin in the world of the Law again. Lepers are outside the city gates, and to be readmitted into the city, the priest had to declare them clean. So Jesus sends them to the priest, knowing He’d clean them. As they get healed, the nine remained in the Law world, continuing to the priest as understood in Old Testament Law. But the one Samaritan went to the true Priest, Jesus, to be declared truly clean. He had entered into a new world, the world of the New Testament.

In this week’s Gospel, we get a similar dynamic. There’s the pretense of the account, the boy’s death. The Law had strict rules about what was to happen to him, that is, his body. As it says in Numbers, “Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and whoever becomes defiled by a corpse.”

Those handling the corpse would need to do so outside the city gates, where they could “work off” their unclean-ness. Like outside Eden’s gates, like outside of heaven, and like hell ultimately, this is where our sins place us, outside the gates of the city, outside of the community of God. It’s the place of death, and the Lord has nothing to do with death. He is a God of life.

The world of the Law explained, in shadows and types, how to deal with death. Death shall be separate from life. But being only in shadows and types, it never really dealt with the ultimate problem. Similarly, the sacrifice of sheep and goats did not really give forgiveness.

But the arrival of Christ would change all that. He is the substance of the shadows, the antitype of the type. And that’s what we get when the new crowed comes in. Here again, we see the new world overturning the old one, the new crowd of joy following life overtaking the old crowd of sadness following death.

Note, the Lord “went into” the city of Nain. He came to the world of death. He came on account of His compassion. That’s why He came into our world, to overcome darkness and death. He came to fulfill what the Old Testament was pointing to.

And note the new worship His advent would inspire, which parallels much of what we got a few weeks ago with the ten lepers. The people glorify God and recognize in Jesus the presence of God. They confess the incarnation and the Holy Trinity, giving glory to Him.

This world continues today through the holy liturgy, where similarly we enter into the Lord’s new world and bear witness to His divinity, and give glory to Him. And similarly, He touches us, taking our unclean-ness and overcoming it with His mercy, incarnation, life, and forgiveness.

 

More Luke. We get lots of Luke in the ordinary time after Trinity. We get lots of Luke in the historic lectionary. This being the last we see of Luke until the beginning of the church year, let’s do some statistical review on the historic lectionary.

Luke has more Gospels in the historic lectionary than any other Gospels, at 37.1%. Matthew comes in second (31.4%), with John in third (25.7%), and Mark at 5.7%. A few comments.

Several years ago when I began using the historic lectionary, I detected a more devotional, less academic tone in the entire year.

The three year lectionary’s focus on a single Gospel encourages an academic approach rooted in the view that Gospels need to be seen as a comprehensive whole, that this was how they were written and how they should be received.

I believe this subtly takes away from the divinity of the Word, from its cradling in the Church, a cradling I see as integral to the Scripture’s divinity. That is, the canon was self-authenticating not in a vacuum, but in and through its reception and placement in the Church’s liturgical life. This is not to be confused with any notion that “The Church gave us the Scriptures,” for, the Holy Spirit truly gave us the Scriptures. But just as He used authors to write it, He used hearers to validate the authors’ divine inspiration – sheep follow the Shepherd’s voice and not another.

The historic lectionary developed from the cradle of the Church as well, and therefore had a rooting in the pastoral and devotional life of the Church. The historic lectionary came from academics guided by newer understandings literary works, understandings which assumed the Gospels were first received as comprehensive wholes and intended to be received by their writers as such.

But is this how the Holy Spirit intended them to be received? And given the correlations between especially the first three Gospels but even all four Gospels, was this even how the writers intended them to be received? Early on, perhaps even as early as the writing of Revelation (with its four beasts around the throne), the four Gospels came to be seen as four integrated reflections of the one truth.

Perhaps to provide some light, we might look at the relation between early icons and later religious works of art. Early art, and icons, were not singed by the artist. They weren’t seen as we see art after what has been dubbed “the rise of the Self” in the 13th century, that is, as items of self-expression, to be signed. Rather, they were seen as craft work, as testaments to objective truths. The place of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John’s personalities relative to the objective Gospel to which they testified is similar to that of John the Baptist to Jesus: “He must increase and I must decrease.” Or, as Jesus taught of the Holy Spirit: “He will testify of Me.”

This modern obsession with the writers’ personal feelings and perspective is an indulgence to the centrality of the Self in western cultural history and unseemly not only on biblical grounds, but even on academic grounds. Do we, for instance… Let me begin that thought again. Did we, for instance, once care (before they got politicized) about who wrote a grade school history text? No. The writers were reflecting important truths about history that we all agreed by consensus were important. So also the Scriptures.

That being said, the Lord did use human writers, and because we’re not Gnostics believing any human element is of essence defective, we do detect certain emphases in each Gospel. All the more reason why the historic lectionary verges on brilliance, insofar as it weaves together in a glorious comprehensive whole all four Gospels, rather than falling into the ruts of one evangelist’s emphases.

So, back where we began, after that detour into the merits of the historic lectionary. Several years ago when I first began using the historic lectionary, I detected a more devotional tone. I believe this is due to the prevalence of Luke in the season of Trinity – half of all Gospels in the Trinity season are from Luke. Luke has an emphasis on the Lord’s mercy that comes through the Gospels of ordinary time after Trinity.

A few quick comments on the rest of the church year. In very wide strokes, Luke also dominates the Advent and Christmas seasons (57.1%), Matthew owns the ordinary Sundays after Epiphany (57.1%), John owns Lent and Easter (54.5%), and Mark has precious few, but highly important, Gospels: Easter Sunday, Ascension Day, the feeding of the 4,000 (introducing inclusion of the Gentiles), and the only healing of a deaf man.

What does this tell us, given the emphases of each Gospel?

Matthew, with about a third of all Gospels in the historic lectionary, has the most consistent spread of Gospels in each season. This reflects his role as the first and foundational Gospel. When Jesus said disciples are made by “teaching them to observe all things which I have instituted” at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, a solid suggestion is to review those teachings through Matthew. The lectionary certainly does that. Matthew’s dominance in Epiphany ordinary time reflects his two chapter miracle marathon (Matthew 8-9), the revelation of Jesus’ divinity through His miracles being a big theme after Epiphany.

Mark’s all business. Bring him in for the big stuff: resurrection, ascension, unique healings. This fits his Gospel, which got down to business, like an evangelism pamphlet.

Luke dominates the more devotional seasons, Advent, Christmas, and the “green-for-growth” season after Trinity. Also, obviously, Luke’s material on the nativity of Jesus biases his contributions during Advent and Christmas.

John dominates Lent and Easter, particularly Easter. This reflects his “soaring” theology, like an eagle (his symbol). With Jesus’ teaching on His ascension, the Trinity, and the purpose of His crucifixion, it’s difficult to find better material to connect Holy Week with the Trinity season which follows seven weeks later. (Even the three-year lectionary acknowledges this, fitting John in throughout the three years, but particularly during the Easter season.)

Now, let’s turn to the Gospel for this week and make a few quick comments which will be expanded throughout this week.

Again, if Luke’s contribution to the lectionary is indeed the pastoral, devotional tone, few Gospels better cap off his contributory Gospels. The commentators and hymn writers like to set up the Gospel as a confrontation between two crowds, a “large crowd” of death following the widow, and a “large crowd” of life following Jesus.

The two meet each other outside the city gates. Why? Because that’s where God’s Law places death – death has no place in God’s world.

When Jesus sees the woman, He has compassion on her. There’s the pastoral and devotional touch of Luke. He regularly testifies of Jesus’ mercy, not only as seen in His example, but also in what He teaches – God is about mercy; Jesus does mercy; Jesus wants His disciples to be merciful; this cannot be avoided in the Gospel of Luke.

Because of that great mercy and compassion, Jesus heals the boy, touching the coffin and in so doing becoming unclean. That unclean-ness would one day place Him where the Law had placed the boy by the Law, outside the city gates.

Jesus tells the boy to arise, and by doing so we see where our Lord locates our human identity, not in abstracted Selves disassociated from our physical bodies (so that one could say, “I’m trapped in my body”), but in our physical bodies. We’ll return to this theme later.

Finally, in response to Jesus’ great healing, we get another testimony of Jesus’ divinity in the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s Gospel, we’ve observed before, is least strong in laying down Jesus’ divinity in its opening chapters. Matthew reveals the name “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” Mark begins with John the Baptist saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” and then preparing the way for Jesus. John has the strong “the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Luke has no such statements, but throughout His Gospel, He certainly reveals Jesus’ divinity, in ways like we see here. The people say, in response to Jesus’ acts of mercy, “God has visited His people.”

And that is exactly as Luke would have it. Jesus’ divinity isn’t so much a systematic teaching, or a title, or an ontological truth, but something realized in us as a consequence of His mercy: God is present among us in His mercy, to save us from death.

 

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

This is an odd way of expressing things, but only because we tend to interpret it wrongly. Again, as presented in previous meditations, we tend to Americanize Jesus’ teaching on worry and make it into some sort of motivational “live for today” motto. But understood properly, it’s a foundation for St. Paul’s words that, “God is faithful, [and] will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.”

Key is the phrase “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Or as one lexicon translates it, “each day makes us suffer in a special way.” That’s a bit of a different tone than “Live for today!”

Contracting our vision to a single day is a powerful philosophical foundation. Think of what that entails. It first entails a revolution in our understanding of time. We see time at a bird’s eye view. We see our life ahead of us in weeks, months, and even years. “Where do you see yourself ten years from now,” is the type of stuff career counselors smartly ask, to tease out of an interviewee a clue as to his character. Is he the type who plans and cares about his future? Or is he someone who lives only for the moment?

Now, the Bible is not a “live for the moment” kind of book, as several proverbs make clear. “Living for the moment” suggests certain values – living by passions, indulging whims, not being concerned about how ones decisions impact others – that the Bible does not endorse. Yet, living for the future can suggest other values the Bible doesn’t endorse either – worry, lack of trust, miserliness, fear. Jesus tells parables against building extra barns, on account of covetousness.

Both the worry wart planner and the whimsical one are ultimately driven by covetousness, and covetousness helps us realize that very often the planner is nothing more than someone, due to his own personality traits, casting his covetousness over an organized long time rather than a single moment. So he was smart enough to retire early and get a boat and a cabin, rather than having the cabin and boat combined with massive debt and other problems. Still, covetousness is the root, and that is idolatry.

Idolatry is antithetical to the Gospel, because of Mammon. As we said early in this week’s meditation, Mammon takes our focus off what is given us in any given day – the good creation God set Adam in – and relocates it to that one area of non-good, the knowledge of evil. What is that? It’s the lack, the vacuum we think needs to be filled; it’s whatever we think we need beyond what the Lord has given. And it casts a pleasant looking fruit in our minds, good for eating. That’s why we pursue it.

Jesus teaches a contracted vision – to a single day – combined with an otherworldly vision – set on the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Those two things, when working together, will provide everything needed for this life. The one who lives this way will be generous, free of worry, not frivolous, and not stressed. He will do as God has given him to do, and if wealth follows, he will be generous with it. If not, he’ll still be generous with it, because he’s filled with the riches of heaven.

But still, that vision, while anchored in heaven, is not by any means “otherworldly.” Remember how the Lord began the Gospel, directing us to the birds and the lily. Remember how he spoke of our bodies and lives, teaching that both are “more than” food, drink, and clothing. God created us in bodies, gave us lives, for something greater than what this world has become, with its constant covetousness and craving for whatever we don’t have.

The lily and birds snap us out of any “head in the clouds” spiritualism, in the same way that the sacraments keep us anchored on the creation. Jesus’ teaching, in fact, while seeming anti-earthly, is ultimately pro-earth – consider the lilies and birds, and be delighted in the riches of heaven while strolling through a park! Meanwhile, Satan’s religion (or Mammon’s), while claiming to be pro-earth – “Enjoy the fruits of the earth to the max!” – is actually otherworldly, directing us not to what is, on any given day, but on what could be, in the distant future.

But still, there are those “troubles” of the day. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. That is, our Gospel message of the lily and the birds comes with the cross. The grasses today are, and tomorrow are thrown into the oven. The birds of the air, well, they do fall to the ground with the Father’s knowledge. So Jesus counsels taking up these troubles, seeing in the sadness of a fallen creation its redemption, knowing there is a loving Creator who will make everything right.

We, and the creation, don’t groan, after all, for nothing. It’s part of the cross we bear. Thank God taking up the cross is a daily task, and like Israel in the wilderness, we are responsible only for this day. As we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”