3rd Sunday of Easter
Texts: Luke 24:13-35;
THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF
GOD
Clearly, there's more than one way to tell a story. Jesus -- on the
road to Emmaus with two
fellow Jews -- takes their Jewish story and tells it according to
himself, according to what has
happened to him over the past several days.
Love Wins, the book by Rob Bell that we are studying between the
worship services gives a
splendid example of this principle, that there is more than one way to
tell a story. (1) He presents
the parable of the Prodigal Son as multiple stories within the same
story. The sons in this story
have a way of seeing their own life stories, and the Father offers them
a different way to tell the
same story. When the Prodigal Son, for example, is ready to return
home, he tells himself his
own story. He rehearses the speech he'll give his father. He is
convinced he's "no longer worthy"
to be called his father's son. That's the story he's telling, that's
the one he's believing. It's
stunning, then, when he gets home and his father demands that the best
robe be put on him and a
ring placed on his finger and sandals on his feet. Robes and rings and
sandals are signs of being a
son. Although he's decided he can't be a son anymore, his father tells
a different story. One about
return and reconciliation and redemption. One about his being a son
again.
The younger son has to decide whose version of his story he's going to
trust: his or his father's.
One in which he is no longer worthy to be called a son or one in which
he's a robe-, ring-, and
sandal-wearing son who was dead but is alive again, who was lost but
has now been found. There
are two versions of his story. His. And his father's. He has to choose
which one he will live in.
Which one he will believe. Which one he will trust.
Same, it turns out, for the older brother. It's an even more stunning
difference than for his
prodigal brother, but I won't recount Pastor Bell's rendering here. I
continue to encourage
everyone to read this book, not only for such brilliant treatments of
the stories in Scripture, but
because he is gently and compellingly helping us to see that the way
we've told our Christian
story in recent generations may have gotten off track -- badly
off-track, as a matter of fact.
I think we can get our own take on the Elder son in Luke's parable
through this morning's
masterpiece Gospel story, because the two disciples on the road to
Emmaus are close to the Elder
Son's position. They have had their own way of telling their Jewish
story which gets off-track,
and Jesus tells that same story according to himself to correct it.
Here's what I mean. "We had hoped," they tell Jesus without recognizing
him, "that this Jesus of
Nazareth was the one to redeem Israel." They have heard reports of
Jesus resurrection, but they
are slow to believe because the hopes had been dashed on Good Friday.
In their minds, in their
way of telling the Jewish story, the Messiah doesn't redeem Israel
doesn't by suffering on the
cross. More likely, the coming of the Messiah should mean that their
enemies suffer. According
to the usual human way of telling the story of political power, being
free means being free of
someone forcing you to lead a life in subjection and shame, a life of
oppressed suffering. It
means being able to turn the tables and make your enemies suffer.
Jesus responds, 'How foolish you are and slow to believe.' And he tells
them another way to tell
the same story, a story of liberation, but one in which the Messiah
himself suffers and is raised
from the dead, in order to show the fruitlessness of that entire way of
human politics in which
you make sure that it is someone else who suffers, not you.
Now, there's at least two ways to understand how Jesus corrects those
disciples understanding.
One way might be the way recent generations of Christians have
understood it. I think we've
been tempted to tell the story as about denying politics are involved.
Clearly, these two disciples
have real world politics in mind, one where they come to power over the
Romans. One way to
see Jesus' response might be to say, 'Well, the cross isn't about real
world politics at all. It's
about the world of eternity where there's a heaven and a hell to go to
after you die. It's all about
going to heaven someday.
But there's at least two problems reading our Gospel in this way.
First, it's simply not Jewish.
There's nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures about going to
heaven when you die. Luke tells us that
Jesus took the Jewish story and tells it according to
himself. Jesus didn't say, 'Hey, you two, we
have scrap our Jewish story and replace it with a brand new one.' No,
he took the Jewish story,
which is all about the politics of rising and falling empires. It's a
story about being freed from
slavery, rising to power under kings David and Solomon, and then
falling into disarray,
oppressed by a centuries long succession of neighboring empires.
Yes, Jesus is a prophet in a long line of Jewish prophets who are all
about politics. It's just that
the God of Israel's politics are so very different than human politics.
In human politics, it's
always assumed that there's a scarcity. Someone is going to be left
out. Someone is going to
suffer, so you make sure it isn't you. But if God is truly love, that
way of politics isn't open.
Instead, the Anointed One of God, the Messiah, must come as one who
takes on the suffering of
our human politics in order to show its futility. And God raises him to
new life to show forth the
abundance of God's power of life in the face of our gloomy expectations
of scarcity.
When Jesus says "How foolish!" to the disciples on the road to Emmaus,
he specifically follows
that up with, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer
these things and then enter into
his glory?" Several hours later, with all the apostles, Jesus repeats
the same point:
Then he said to them, "These are my
words that I spoke to you while I was still
with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the
prophets, and
the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand
the
scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah
is to suffer
and to rise from the dead on the third day...." (Luke 24:44-46)
Luke is very careful in making sure we understand that this is still
all about the story of the
people of Israel, a very this-worldly story. There is
absolutely no hint of it being changed to an
other-worldly story.
So you might ask, 'How then did so many generations of Christians come
to make it mostly an
other-worldly story about going to heaven when you die.' Glad you
asked! Because the most
recent generation of biblical scholarship has shown that it doesn't
come from the Bible! Could it
be that we have so badly lapsed back into human politics of scarcity
that creating our own
version of the story as being about other-worldly politics conveniently
misses the point of God's
conflicting politics of abundance?
But let's conclude with the second aspect of today's Gospel story that
shows forth God's politics. The Emmaus disciples finally recognize
Jesus when he breaks bread with them. This recalls the
night before his suffering and death. But it also recalls one of the
well-known miracles of Jesus,
the feeding of five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish.
Everyone there that day saw a
scarcity -- except Jesus. He gave thanks to God, presuming an abundance.
In Wisconsin, I was invited to a very nice conference at a local
Christian college, where the
economics professors saw it a ministry to teach pastors about
capitalism. I'm afraid I was not a
very cooperative student. On the first day, in the first hour of
classes, the teacher covered axioms
and principles of capitalism. He said that capitalism assumes a
scarcity, such that economics
needs to develop principles of fair distribution. I raised my hand and
cited the Feeding of the Five
Thousand as an illustration that Jesus did not live by the assumption
of scarcity but rather of
abundance. I was told that capitalism cannot rightly proceed without
the assumption of scarcity.
I've used the word "politics" today in connection with God. But if
you're uncomfortable with
that, how about God's economics? Our word economics comes
from the New Testament words
for law and home. Economics is the "law of the
household," which in God's case is the whole
world. God apparently has a very different economics than we human
beings do. God presumes
abundance not scarcity, and that makes a huge difference. God presumes
that there is enough for
everyone, because the world was created that way. We presume scarcity
so that we can carry out
an economics where some people have to be left out of the bounty. And
the politics that go with
it are a politics of making sure those left out are someone else, not
us.
As we come to God's table once again in a few minutes, hosted by our
Lord who let himself be
one of those left out, can we leave to go about our business this week
with a different
economics? Fed with the abundant life of the Risen One who gave his
body for us, and poured
out his blood for us, can we follow in his way of giving ourselves for
others?
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, May 8, 2011
Notes
1. The next several paragraphs are an
edited version from Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book about
Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
(HarperOne, 2011), chapter 7, "The
Good News Is Better Than That."