The Gospel of Luke 22.31-38 (part two)
Watch or listen to this talk here
I suspect that at one time or another most of us have experienced the sheer joy of having an important but difficult conversation late at night. The hours roll on, the mind loses focus, the heart get weary. What are we talking about, why are we talking about this now? Maybe some of us even attempted having a conversation like this last night. The dead of night is not usually an optimal window when it comes to crucial discussions or decisions, and yet we’ve probably all been there. It’s dark, dramatic, and to be honest we’re just getting sleepy. At some point someone has to say, “let’s call it a day”, and the conversation pauses or ends altogether.
This is the kind of moment we’ve now come to in the gospel narrative. For a few weeks we’ve been sitting with Jesus and his disciples around a meal the night before his death, and the meal is now probably rolling deeper into the night. I share that to remind us that it’s not as this scene is set on a bright Sunday morning, fresh off a cup of coffee and a couple of cheery worship songs. The night is drawing on, the discussion has been heavy, and at no point during the meal did it seem like Jesus’ disciples were any closer to understanding him. Nor do they seem prepared for the seismic events they’d face in the following twelve or so hours. As mentioned last week we’re taking our time in this stretch of the gospel because we want to let the wine breathe. There is something being poured out at this table which needs some air. It’s the new wine, the new way. And still today we must confess we’re getting used to it too, learning to acclimate to Jesus’ holiness and humility and bearing.
We also noted last week that part of what we’re reading in this section of the gospel narrative is a growing separation.[i] There’s an obvious separation between Jesus and the Temple higher-ups, between Jesus and the Roman authorities, soon between Jesus and the people. But there’s also a growing separation between Jesus’ and his closest followers. As Jesus’ steps up into faithfulness and victory, everyone around him will slide into betrayal, denial and failure. In other words, there are no good guys and bad guys in this story. There is Jesus, and then there is everyone else. And what Jesus is stepping into, his version of faithfulness and victory, is not at all aligned with those around him and their ideas of winning at all. And so, at the table, and in the garden, and so on through the narrative, Jesus becomes increasingly isolated from everyone because of who he is, the way he chooses to go, and what he alone has been born to do.
The setting again for our passage today is the Passover meal which commemorated the Exodus – the liberation of the Hebrew people from Egypt. Gathering only his nearest and dearest, shockingly, Jesus’ has wrapped the meal around himself. Is Jesus about to bring on another Exodus? As Jesus is trying to get across to his disciples what he was about to do, what they needed to be prepared for next, at every turn of the meal the disciples get the wrong end of the stick. They’re fighting about which of them is the worst. They’re fighting about which one of the is the best. Jesus, yet again, must course correct. Power, greatness, freedom, victory – it won’t be like what they expect. Jesus even has to break the news to the team captain, Simon Peter, that he’s on the verge of failing miserably in the hours to come. Simon can’t believe what he’s hearing, but even through this Jesus offers hope. The disciples might flail and fail every which way, but in the end it’s not their performance that will make the difference. Even in their foolishness and failure, Jesus’ wisdom and victory will come shining through, so it’s in Jesus alone they’ll need to learn to trust. They’ll have to trust him with the pressures they’ll face in the coming years. They’ll have to trust him with the challenges of following his model of a new humanity – the model of humble service. They’ll even have to trust him with their own personal failure. It won’t be easy, but Jesus tells them to trust him and to follow closely. The disciples have come this far, to some degree under their own steam, and they’ve learned to trust a little. They’ve trusted Jesus with the sick, with the Temple leaders, with the demons and even the elements as he’s calmed storms and walked on water. But will they trust Jesus with their absolute and bitter failure? Will they trust Jesus, not just with the external, but the internal too?
So over the meal Jesus pours it all out for his disciples, and it’s poured out now for us too. Our failure is inevitable, all kinds of failure, especially our failure in trying to follow Jesus. But our failure isn’t final, Jesus says, if we learn to trust. We don’t trust in our wisdom or way or resolve. Failure isn’t final if we trust in Jesus alone – his action, his wisdom, his way.
In a nutshell, that’s what we’ve covered together around the table until now, and what we focused on especially last week before receiving communion, where we had the chance of bringing failure, all kinds of failure, to Jesus in trust. And when we bring our failure to Jesus sometimes that feels as though we’re limping forward with gaping wounds, and sometimes that feels as if we’re coming with a thousand little paper cuts. We remembered that if we want to follow Jesus, we’ll need to first learn to face failure, and that a big part of being Christian is learning to admit the existence of failure in our lives. It might be painful or embarrassing, and that’s only natural, because our failure is the bad news. That’s the first step. Facing failure.
But we also heard that we face failure in the power of the good news. We face our failure in the shadow of the cross, because it’s only there we learn that our failure is comparatively miniscule, completely overshadowed by the immensity of the cross. The cross is not a helicopter carrying water, dropping its contents into the forest fire of our lives. The cross is an ocean into which we drop the burning tealights of our failure, the flames extinguished in an instant in its depths of grace. The cross can snuff out every fire we’ve set in ourselves and in our worlds. There’s simply no competition between our failure and God’s love. So we trust Jesus and his cross, even in our darkest moments of failure as individuals and as communities.
We continue today in the rest of the passage, right up to the meal’s end and the narrative shifts to a new setting away from the table and over to the Mount of Olives. I’d like to tell you the disciples start to catch on to Jesus’ wisdom and way, but, predictably, they don’t. Let me read the rest of the interaction in our passage today.
Luke 22.35-38
“Did you lack anything?”
In the wake of Jesus’ predictions about a failure to follow, Jesus asks his disciples a question: when I sent you out to share the good news to the towns and villages and told you not to take anything with you, did you lack anything on the road? No, they reply, we had everything we need. What’s going on here?
First of all, let’s take a moment to pause and ask if maybe here there’s a bit of an exclamation mark on the whole point about learning to trust Jesus’ fully. This back and forth with Simon Peter has come down to the revelation that the disciples will fail, so their trust is best placed in Jesus rather than in themselves. Immediately, then, Jesus takes the group back to the times in which he wasn’t physically with them, but sent them out in teams to share his good news (this is recorded in a couple of different places in the gospels). Now we should point out that up until this point we’ve seen that the disciples were often very backwards in their thinking, struggling to keep up with Jesus. But let’s also notice that this doesn’t mean they’ve been unable to follow Jesus entirely. Jesus had given them a job to do, and they had been doing it – sharing the news of his soon coming kingdom. They’d been on the road with him as he brought this news all over the map. And, on a couple of occasions we’re told he sent them out in teams to share this good news also. Jesus, full of confidence and authority, picks and chooses whom he sends and where. And when his disciples follow Jesus’ instructions and pattern, with his message, full of his power, God’s kingdom grows.
This theme continues into gospel writer’s next volume, The Book of Acts, where we meet a growing group of Jesus’ followers striking out into the world with the good news, full of God’s promised Holy Spirit. And this is an encouragement for us all. We’re faced in this little scene around the table, both with the disciple’s abject failure and with their powerful potential if they follow Jesus’ closely and learn to trust him deeply. Their competency is important, but the foundation they stand on, and the fuel they carry is all from Jesus. So, if we’re worried our failure to follow Jesus perfectly disqualifies us from joining in his work, fear not! What qualifies and empowers us for joining Jesus in his work is… him. His invitation to join, his work on the cross, the gift of his Holy Spirit. That’s what gives us confidence and capacity, not our ability or inability to preform perfectly.
At some point this week I’ll probably unload our dishwasher. And when I do, I could invite our three-year-old to help. If she listens carefully and trusts me as I teach her how to unload the dishwasher, she’ll actually be joining me in that most glorious of tasks. We’ll be doing it together. Of course, it’s entirely possible she’ll drop a plate or a cup, or even try to stab her sister with a steak knife. But, if she listens and follows closely, we’ll be doing it together. You get the picture. Not only do we hear Jesus’ emphasizing the importance of the disciple’s trust in him in their flailing and failing, but at the very same time we hear the echo of that famous Luke-Acts theme: our foundation and fuel for helping to build the kingdom is always rooted in Jesus and the gift of his Holy Spirit, not ourselves. As we hear in John’s gospel during this same dinner scene, apart from me, says Jesus, you can do nothing.
“This must be fulfilled in me”
But of course, there’s something more going on here because once again we learn that Jesus’ words in the gospels are often quite layered. Jesus moves here again into some poetic language, and cites the prophetic book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. The hour is coming for his arrest, trial and death – it’s all literally right around the corner. And remember Jesus cares about his friends, so just as we heard him talk in the Temple about what they should be prepared for in the coming years, he says something similar here. They’re going to need to both trust him, but also to watch out. In this next phase of kingdom advancement, things will look different. The disciples won’t just be sitting in a circle singing cumbia every day, expecting the kingdom to arrive without some blood, sweat and tears. As Jesus has said earlier, following him will mean the potential of real hardship. If Jesus is being hunted and harmed, as his followers they should expect the possibility of the same treatment. All of that is coming to a head now.
But the key to these words about buying and selling, is when Jesus quotes the ancient prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah chapters forty through fifty-five we hear about a strange servant figure. And it’s here around the table, late into the night, that Jesus is further revealed. Jesus has given strict instructions around service and how his followers are to do things, and we know from John’s gospel that at some point he washed his disciples’ feet, wrapping up this teaching in a memorable and intimate moment. But in these words in Luke, Jesus aligns himself with Isaiah’s prophesy and reveals to his friends what will be fulfilled in him. He is the suffering servant, which, among other things, means he’ll be “numbered with the lawless”[ii] in the eyes of many, listed as outcast and a sinner to the extreme. Again, the veil is being pulled back for the disciples.
Of course, missing the point, the disciples take Jesus too literally, missing the themes which are merging together over the table. Given the heightened expectation of a literal militant revolution, they exclaim to Isaiah’s humble servant among them – “Lord, here are two swords”. Now, drawn from eye-witness accounts, the gospel writer has constructed this interaction probably to show how far off base the disciples could be at times. It’s highly unlikely Jesus was trying to trick them with his words. What we’re being shown is that Jesus and his ways are simply lost even on his own disciples. The whole table scene has betrayed this: the questions and bickering about which of them is the worst or the best, Simon Peter’s bravado – it’s at this point in the meal that Jesus knows they’ve gone about as far as they can go, a bit like one of those difficult late-night discussions we mentioned earlier: Alright, says Jesus, that’s enough. And just like that the meal is over. Jesus, further isolated in his mission as a suffering servant, tells them they’re going to the Mount of Olives where he’ll ask them to pray with him because the burden he carries, as Luke tells us, puts him “in anguish”. We’ll hear more about that in the coming two weeks.
“See, Lord, we have two swords!”
“See, Lord, we have two swords!” Reading the gospels can draw out in us a number of feelings. It can b sobering, and revealing, and at times even humours. Jesus’ disciples are right in the middle with him, and they often presume they know what’s going on and what should be done next. It’s sobering and revealing because it’s through the delusion and failure of the disciples we can see ourselves. It’s sometimes amusing because this delusion and failure is never lost on Jesus. Hopefully, it is not lost on us as we read along.
Reading the gospels can be like looking through a window into the disciple’s unique experience, but it’s also like looking at a kind of uncomfortable mirror and seeing our own refection. How much do we really trust in our own wisdom or goodness? If the disciples think the corrupt Temple leaders, the Romans and the local puppet kings are the problem, routinely they are reminded in the gospels that they, the disciples themselves, are part of the problem too. As we’ve said, there are no good guys and bad guys in this story. There is Jesus, and then there is everyone else.
All this is important to keep in mind for those of us who claim to be Jesus’ followers today. Come what may, Jesus’ must be our bearing, the composer and conductor of our attitudes and actions. Some of this may also be important to keep in mind as we’ve just concluded a recent election season both in our country and south of the boarder. And, thinking more widely, perhaps also important to keep in mind on a weekend such as this, as we observe Remembrance Day.
It can be tempting to rashly divide the world up, either historically or presently, into a world of good and bad, right and wrong, us and them. And, wouldn’t you know it, rather conveniently, we tend to routinely cast ourselves as on the right team, and rarely on the wrong. None of this is to say that we can’t call a spade a spade. There are decidedly good and right actions in the world, and we should name them as such. And there are decidedly evil actions in the world, and we should label them clearly also.
But the gospels teach us to hold that question open for a while, and first to ask the tough questions of ourselves. They teach us to reserve harsh judgement, lest we be judged harshly. They remind us that we may be at the ready to follow Jesus and build his kingdom, but how are we planning on doing this? What does winning and losing look like in Jesus’ kingdom, if we’re going Jesus’ way? If we want to follow, we’ll need to ask these kinds of questions, never presuming we automatically know answers simply because we wear a Christian label. Are we in line with Jesus, or do we need some course correction now and then?
“See, Lord, here are two swords” When it comes to power, the disciples thought they knew how to get things done. They’d read all the leadership books from the Romans, they’d attended all the trendy conferences. They’d even thought about starting a leadership podcast titled: “The Greatest Hits: Tips and Tricks from Jesus’ Best and Brightest”, in which of course they’d recount all the cool stuff they’d done in his name. The disciples knew how to get things done, they knew about winning and losing in their world, and when push came to shove at this point in the story, they’re very ready to do some shoving. You know, if we merge the gospels, and we think about when the foot washing happened at this meal, you have to wonder: did Jesus need to gently move a sword or two out of the way to make room for that bowl of water? “See, Lord, here are two swords!” it’s almost funny, because it’s true.
Winning and losing. Power and greatness. Victory and defeat. Failure and trust. Jesus turned all these things so hard on their heads that his disciples are disoriented, and so are we. Which is why, we must pay attention. Jesus is the servant. He’s listed with the sinners. He doesn’t look like a winner. If we don’t overlay the cross onto every pattern of Christian life we draw up, we’ll end up way off course. The cross is a compass, and we need to read it’s bearing closely. Never mind about kingdom expansion, or who looks best doing what. Never mind about our concepts of winning and losing and greatness. Are we going Jesus’ way or not?
Mercifully, Jesus is incredibly patient. We are, as we hear in John’s writings elsewhere, like little children. We’re like little children helping to unloading the dishwasher, and much of the time we should start with simply remembering not to stab one another with kitchen knives.
You might find yourself gathered with others around a cenotaph tomorrow on Remembrance Day, or wearing a poppy. This is a good weekend to commemorate and celebrate Jesus’ attitude of service, and action of sacrifice. And the most compelling service and sacrifice is often done with humility, integrity and rather quietly. For all those who serve and sacrifice in Jesus’ name, keep going. May we trust Jesus more than we trust ourselves, and may we follow his example above and beyond any other. Amen.
[i] Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, p.267
[ii] Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, page 267
Luke Knight 