Main news for 27 October 2019

King James Version (en)

Luke, Chapter 13, verse 34

³⁴O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

NOTES

The Saviour's preaching continually displeased the powerful of this world. At the beginning of this chapter, the Lord is asked about a cruel act of Pilate's. He neither approves nor excuses it, although He calls not for armed resistance, as people expected Him to, but for repentance. People's attitude towards Christ also caused considerable anxiety to Herod and to Pilate. At one point, those who have seen the miracle He performed conceive the idea of seizing Him “by surprise” and making Him king. Herod's desire to kill Christ is therefore only one expression of the attitude towards the Saviour of those whose way the Lord obstructed in one manner or another. For us, what He Himself says in this connection matters far more.

In response to Herod's threats, the Lord invites His hearers to recall certain passages from the Law and the Prophets. He says that it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside Jerusalem, recalling Israel's repeated rejection of God's messengers—a rejection that foreshadowed His own. As He said to the prophet Samuel: “It is not you but Me they have rejected, so that I should not reign over them.” The Saviour then quotes the song Moses sang after the destruction of the golden calf (Deut 32), grieving that so often He wished to gather His people as a bird gathers her young beneath her wings. For in that song Moses speaks of the people's rejection of God, who cared for them as a bird cares for its young. The Lord goes on to quote Jeremiah's prophecies and words from the psalms saying that those who betray God are left alone with their sin.

Thus Christ's rejection and execution become more than events in the lives of Jesus and His contemporaries: they take their place within the historical context of the tragic rupture between God and humanity. Christ warns that by killing Him, people “fill up the measure of their fathers' lawlessness.” Here it is especially important to hear how tenderly the Lord cares for people as He gathers them into His Kingdom, and to remember that by accepting rejection and execution, He brings the whole history of humanity's salvation to a victorious conclusion.

Today's reading continues the theme of the Kingdom, but now in a somewhat different, eschatological aspect. Eschatology is often confused with apocalyptic, yet they are not the same. Eschatology is a rupture in time and history through which the Kingdom can be seen; apocalyptic is a philosophy of history in which history is viewed as the process of the world's movement towards the Kingdom.

Jesus often speaks of the coming of the Kingdom as a rupture in time, when the former order of things comes to an end. It then becomes clear that, in the face of the new reality revealed at the moment of rupture, former assessments and criteria prove inadequate. This is manifested first of all in a change of priorities: if outward proximity previously played the decisive role, spiritual relationships now do.

When speaking of outward proximity, of course, one must not have only territorial or geographical proximity in mind. National, religious, and every other kind of proximity determined in one way or another by the structure and laws of the untransformed world is also implied here (vv. 25-28). Spiritual proximity, by contrast, becomes decisive (vv. 29-30). This is why the path into the Kingdom proves narrow (vv. 23-24): it begins in a world not yet transformed, living by laws very far from the laws of the Kingdom, but in order to enter the Kingdom, one must begin living by its laws here and now.

This is neither a whim nor a test of loyalty. One can follow the path into the Kingdom only by living according to its laws. For the Kingdom itself, in our world which is not yet fully transformed, depends on those who seek it. It is no accident that Jesus draws His listeners' attention to the fact that at first the Kingdom is completely imperceptible in the world that rejects it and becomes visible only at the end, when the world is transformed (vv. 18-21). Only the person who bears the Kingdom within can find it, and such a person cannot live according to the laws of the world lying in evil. This is why the path leading into the Kingdom proves narrow. But at its end lies the fullness of life awaiting everyone who follows this path to the end.

We have read many times already that Christ's Kingdom is not like all our human "kingdoms." It is like salt in food, like yeast in dough, like...

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