Author: KPB Stevens

Luke 23:1-25 The Oddness of King Herod

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

Herod plays a strange role in Luke’s Gospel. Or one might say a mercurial role. He imprisons and beheads John the Baptist because he can’t stand John’s criticisms. Yet members of his court follow Jesus, or at least their wives do, as Joanna the wife of Chuza is named as one of the women who surround Jesus in chapter 8. One chapter later, Herod shows curiosity towards Jesus – he wants to meet with Jesus, possibly to learn from him. By chapter 13, his intentions seem to have changed, as some Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. Finally, when Jesus is arrested and brought before Herod, Luke goes out of his way to tell us that Herod “was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign.” Herod can’t seem to make up his mind about Jesus, yet throughout the Gospel it’s clear that Jesus has made up his mind about Herod.

Herod is like a tycoon who keeps a stack of self-help books beside his bed. He knows that his wealth and power haven’t brought him happiness, let alone joy, and he is seeking, always seeking, for something that can make sense of this. But he doesn’t really want to know why he’s still suffering even though he has everything a man could possibly want. Because the answer is that the very act of having and holding power and wealth is the problem. Desiring the wrong thing has become a habit with him. Yet he lies awake and night and eventually cracks open one of those self-help books. For a moment they reassure him, at least enough to go back to sleep. But the essential insomnia of his soul will never be cured, and he’ll never be able to truly rest.

The problem is that Jesus is not a self-help guru. He could have joined Herod’s court, connived for power, and issued platitudes that unthinking people might accept as wise. But he wants nothing whatsoever to do with Herod, and actively avoids Herod’s attention. He knows that Herod will never give up wealth and power, will never agree to go through the eye of the needle and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Herod will live his life in riotous unhappiness, secretly knowing that he must change, and deliberately resisting that change. Jesus stands silently before him. Thwarted by his silence, Herod mocks him, and sends him away.

It is a small enough incident in the midst of the passion, and yet it speaks volumes. Most of us are unlikely to beat and kill the people who refuse to be interested in our ego-tripping. Yet we are likely to mock and ignore them. How dare they stay silent before our striving? How dare they shrug off our protestations of good will? How dare they refuse to be flattered by our regard? Yet it is these people who might really change us. But they’re not going to waste their time. We will not impress them with our facades. Jesus will only raise his eyes to us when we’re really willing to change.

 

Luke 22:47-71 The Mind of the Martyr

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

I wonder if Jesus was really afraid, and if he really suffered.  I know that there’s some danger in saying this, because we take such comfort from his suffering.  It explains and dignifies our own. But I’m led to this question by my beloved Teresa of Avila, who wrote

After the rapture has passed, the will remains so deeply absorbed and the mind so transported that for days the mind is incapable of understanding anything that does not awaken the will to love.  And the will is so wide awake to love that it is fast asleep to all attachments to any creature…The soul would gladly have a thousand lives to be able to give them all to God. She wishes that everything on earth could be a tongue to help her praise him.  She has this strong urge to sacrifice herself for him, but the power of her love makes the soul feel that what she has to offer is insignificant. She realizes that the martyrs didn’t accomplish much in enduring the torments they endured because with the help of our Beloved such suffering is easy.

If this is true of the martyrs, and I truly hope it is, then how much more must it have been true of Christ, the perfect human soul?  

When we talk about Christ’s suffering as he is beaten and mocked, I think that we need to acknowledge that this is not the kind of suffering that we know.  If we agree with Teresa that the suffering of such torments is easy for a soul that’s aligned with God, then Jesus’ suffering must be something different than physical pain or psychic fear. And yet we assert that he suffered. Teresa helps me see that he suffered on behalf of, not because of. It was not the scourge, the crown of nails, the spit and the insults that made him suffer. It was because he saw that his tormentors were in a kind of agony, the cruel agony of separating ourselves from God. Their cruelty could only arise from fear and deep self-hatred. They could not see themselves as beautiful and beloved, and so they couldn’t see others as beautiful and beloved either. Christ was egoless, but within his tormentors the ego continued to make its fierce and arrogant demands.

When Manet painted Christ being mocked by the soldiers in 1865, he gave Christ eyes that look upward, away from the soldier who is showing him the switch with which he will beat him. Christ is focusing on God, of course, but to me it always looks as if he’s also rolling his eyes. Is this the best that the ego can do? Try to threaten us with the pain that it feels, the shame that it dreads. Doesn’t it know that our our souls have the capacity to move past such pain and shame? For the transcended soul, the Christ-like soul, even the switch that the soldier holds could, in Teresa’s words, be a tongue to praise God.

I write this knowing that I myself am bad at suffering. I’m always affronted and outraged by it. It awakens my dormant ego, as if I had been sleeping and had cold water thrown on me. The ego wakes up shouting. It is true that this diminishes as I grow closer to God. Yet, although my soul has not transcended my ego, it is good to have the example of Teresa, of the martyrs, of Christ, to show me what it would look like if this ever came to pass. I can’t force it through my own actions, but I can hope for it, and be open to the grace that would render suffering irrelevant.

 

Luke 22:24-46  The Urgency of Hope

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

It is hard to read this portion of the Gospel without tears coming into my eyes. I think it’s Jesus saying, “Simon, Simon, listen!” that gets to me – it’s so urgent, so full of passion and hope. Jesus knows that he only has a few hours left, and that if his disciples are going to truly hear and understand, he must prepare them. They don’t understand him, not in this moment, but they try to interpret his urgency. Peter thinks that it’s about the coming trial, so he tries to reassure, to comfort. “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” But Jesus’ urgency isn’t about the crucifixion. It’s about the community that will come after, and how people must behave to each other if his death is going to have practical meaning in their lives.  

I feel this same urgency when I think of my daughter. When I suffer, I don’t want her to suffer also. I don’t need her company as I go to my own cross. What I need is the hope that what I’ve tried to teach her will stick, that, despite my many foolish mistakes, I’ve raised her right, in the love and perseverance that will make her a good person and strengthen her relationship with God. If I were in Jesus’ place, and she and I were sharing our own last supper, I would do what he does, and try to get in a few last pieces of advice. I like to think that my prime concern would be for her, a concern born of love, and not for my own suffering, not for my own fear. I am probably wrong about my capacity for this, but it’s what I hope for, and that hope has its own spirit, its own way of forming and leading me.

Jesus’ hope is not for an individual, but for the community he’s been trying to build, a community that is fit to live in the Kingdom of God. He’s already described this community, multiple times. Now he, and the narrative, focus on three things that this community will have to embrace. It will have to be a community of servanthood, where people set aside their own needs and agendas to serve each other with love. It will be a community that is misunderstood and reviled, but also a community that won’t spend time trying to prove its worth to a world that doesn’t understand it, a world that sees it as a community of bandits. And it will have to be a community that stays awake, that doesn’t hide or turn away from suffering, but accepts suffering with the same clear eyes and open heart with which is also accepts joy.

 

Luke 22:1-23 The Last Supper

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

The disciples knew, of course, what was coming. For weeks and weeks Jesus had been talking about Jerusalem, and how he would be arrested, tortured, and killed there. He also told them that he would rise from the dead, but that was so strange and mysterious that their minds couldn’t rest on it, but instead focused on the pain and death. Then, when they arrived in Jerusalem, they sat with him in the Temple grounds, and the anger that he caused, the long-simmering conflicts that his presence brought to the surface, were palpable. So they knew. They knew that suffering was coming, and they were afraid.

When I say the words of the Institution Narrative on a Sunday morning, when I lift the bread and say “This is my body, given for you, eat this in remembrance of me,” and when I lift the cup and say, “This is my blood, given for you, whenever you drink this, do this in remembrance of me,” I know that I am speaking into an atmosphere of fear. And I know that those words that I say are the great reassurance. The disciples were afraid that they were going to lose Jesus. And Jesus told them that he couldn’t be lost, that he is present in what we eat and what we drink, in the simplest daily actions of our lives. He offered them a glimpse into his continual presence, but not all of them could see it.

I wonder if Judas had really been listening when Jesus talked about God’s love, and attentiveness, and the possibility of banishing fear. It is clear he never repented, if repentance means being of a new mind. His is the old mind, the mind that believes that it has only itself to rely on, and that it must protect itself by controlling others. His actions make this clear. And they are often our actions. We often choose the silver over the reassurance, security over hope. Yet Jesus eagerly desires to sit and eat with us, and participating in this meal is incredibly simple. Just look for him in your daily bread, in the simple, sustaining actions of your daily life.

 

Luke 21:1-38 Be Unprepared

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

We want to be prepared for disaster. We stockpile food and clean water, learn survival skills, build bunkers. Well, I don’t, but some people do. Disaster-preparedness is seen as a positive good in our society, and maybe it is, but it’s worth asking what it costs us. Jesus is very confusing about preparedness in this chapter. On the one hand, we are to be like the poor widow, giving everything away, and when we are dragged before the authorities because we are followers of the way that Jesus is trying to show us, we aren’t supposed to prepare our defense in advance. On the other hand, we are to be on our guard and alert, not dissipated by drunkenness or the worries of this life. Is he saying that we should be attentive, but unprepared?

This passage from Luke parallels similar passages in Matthew and Mark, passages that are known as the “little apocalypse.” The Revelation to St. John is the “big apocalypse” of Christian scripture, but there are Jewish apocalypses, too, such as the Book of Daniel. To quote Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The Last Week, their book on the passion and resurrection, an apocalypse is “a kind of Jewish and Christian literature that reveals or unveils the future in language loaded with images and symbols.” The word apocalypse literally means “unveiling.” And Jesus’ little apocalypse truly does unveil the future. Within a hundred years of his saying these words, the people rose up in insurrection, the temple was destroyed, Jerusalem itself was destroyed, and the tenth legion camped in its ashes.

The things he predicted came true, and it is entirely possible that some of the apocalypses that are being predicted now will come true. But in this passage Jesus doesn’t advocate circling the wagons and stockpiling provisions. For him, the answer to apocalypse is open-handedness, awareness, and deep trust. The problem, as always, is control. Fear makes us want to control our circumstances, to pretend that we can be protected. But, as always, Jesus isn’t interested in control. He is only interested in love. Love must be our response to apocalypse. It is love that leads us to try to avert apocalypse, and love is the posture that we must adopt when apocalypse comes. We tend to think that our temples, our lifestyles and traditions, are all important, that we cannot survive without them. Yet as soon as they are gone, we find new traditions and lifestyles. It is all right to grieve the past, and to be concerned about the future, as long as we manage to practice love in the present.