At the Heart of the Matter

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Luke 18:9-14

Recently, I saw a meme posted on Facebook which simply read, “Saying Jesus died for me is manipulative.”  The meme also included one of the comments in response to it which read, “To say he rose from the dead is gaslighting.”  That meme pushed a button with me but not because of the antichristian overtones.  Disagreement with or denial of the Christian doctrine of Penal Substitution (in a courtroom drama, Jesus, the innocent one, took humanity’s deserved penalty of death and damnation unto himself and died once and for all earning us an acquittal and enabling reconciliation with God) or, if you don’t like the courtroom imagery, just plain Substitutionary Atonement will do (Jesus’s death was in Humanity’s place for more reason than just moral infractions for which we deserve to be punished),…disagreement and denial of those biblical metaphors which attempt to explain Jesus’ death is nothing new nor is denying his resurrection.  That wasn’t what pushed the button.  I wear big boy pull-up pants these days and I can handle it when someone disagrees with my Jesus-centered understanding of reality.  

What pushed my button was just how loosely if not inappropriately terms which can be classified as “Therapy Speak” get thrown around these days.  Manipulation and gaslighting are terms that come to us from the world of psychotherapy and are particularly associated with the behaviours of narcissistic personality disorder.  We all know how roughly 10 years ago narcissistic personality disorder and the behaviours associated with it (so also the kindred diagnoses of sociopathy and psychopathy) hit the world stage with an unbelievably huge impact as people were trying to come to grips with the behaviour of a certain world leader.  Still today, we can rest assured that whenever certain political figures open their mouths we’re being manipulated and gaslighted.  Regardless, the aftermath of that sort of armchair psychologizing working its way through the news media and social media is that two people can’t have a disagreement anymore without somebody getting offended and somebody getting called a narcissist and somebody getting accused of manipulation and gaslighting just because their narratives differ around the same body of facts (whatever a fact is anymore).  When we accuse somebody of manipulation or gaslighting when that is not the case and we’re just having a disagreement, it only serves to shut down the conversation.  We need to leave the Therapy Speak to the therapists and hope to God they know what they’re doing with them.  Unfortunately, the world of therapy has its vogue pop-culture too.

In thinking about a possible response to the meme I could, in Pharisaical manner, very easily with a high degree of certainty at least as far as I am concerned look down my nose and accuse the meme and the sharers thereof of manipulating and gaslighting me for trying to convince me that my spiritual experience is a figment of my imagination that I use to get people to do what I want them to do.  I could say they have offended me and traumatized me because I have since been having ruminating thoughts because of the meme. After all, I’m writing a sermon about it.  No. I won’t play Pharisee and look down my nose and act all offended that somehow my rights have been violated by someone who sees things differently from me.  I also won’t mask  some sort of condescending, self-righteous rage at “people like them” behind a passive aggressive question in the comment section such as, “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re going to Hell?”  No, I won’t respond like that.  To me and many like me, Jesus’ resurrection and New Life in him by the gift of the Holy Spirit are as real and felt as are death and shame and guilt and suffering.  I can’t fault someone for not having the experiences that I have had in life.

Actually, I’m going to agree with the meme and the person who posted it as far as I can without denying the Truth of the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ death.  I know the person who posted it and I care greatly for that person.  I know where this person is coming from and it’s important to note that this posting came about in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk when American Christian Nationalists and people on the left were having a bit of a tit for tat to put it mildly.  I have some empathy for this person and this person’s views.  I will agree that a certain element of the Christian church truly has been manipulative with Jesus’ death, trying to coerce conversions out of people by guilting and shaming them with the big club of Jesus dying for them.  That big club becomes a battle axe when a person is further told that they aren’t a real believer in Jesus unless they are (and these days the list is) anti-immigrant, anti-Trans, anti-science, anti-climate change, anti-higher education, anti-abortion, anti-vax, pro-US, pro-Israel, and pro-Trump.  That arm of Christianity needs to see through its own delusion and realize they are causing “little ones” who belong to Christ to fall away.  As far as the meme goes, I will agree that Jesus’ death has been and continues to be used  by some to manipulate people, but I won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that Jesus’ death was not in some wonderful way for me, for humanity…actually for the whole creation.

So, how would I respond to the meme if were to ever be able to get beyond the trauma of being called a manipulative gaslighter?  I would ask questions that sound a lot like those condescending “rhetorical questions” that people ask and then say you don’t have to answer.  I would start with “What if it’s true that Jesus died for us?”  What if it’s true that there is something so utterly wrong within the human condition that only God can heal it by becoming human, dying, and being raised from the dead?  

Seriously, what is wrong with humanity?  We suffer alienation from one another and from God.  We hide in shame.  We so often do violence to one another even if it is just a little lying to cover our asses.  We all have nasty little secrets we don’t want anybody to know (but isn’t great when we can trust another person enough to get that shit off our chests and then find ourselves still loved and accepted?). We’re all narcissistic to varying extents.  We’re all addicted to something.  We all do selfish stuff that hurts the weak and vulnerable and especially the people we love.  And, do I even need to mention the things we should have done but didn’t for lack of courage or fear of embarrassment.  This disease of the human mind is so profound and extensive that the whole creation suffers because of us.  As remarkable as we human beings are, we become a deadly virus everywhere we go.

What if the only way for a loving God to heal humanity of this disease is to become one of us as Jesus of Nazareth and thereby infuse God’s very life to humanity and not just humans but even literal physical matter not just the something nebulous called “spiritual” stuff.  And, not just infuse himself and his life into us, but he took human being, including this disease, into Godself, let it run its course in him, and then died with it, and that’s not the end.  Jesus rose from death, healed of the disease, with a new life to share and we discover it in following Jesus in his way of life marked by unconditional love, forgiveness, compassion, hospitality, generosity, and dying to self (which is antithetical to the pursuit of self-fulfillment, self-aggrandizement).  In following him that seed of new life, the Holy Spirit, begins to grow.  What if it is true?

I look at the world around me these days through the lens of this parable.  I see what appears to be just about everybody, myself included, self-righteously pointing the finger at everybody else while claiming to be right and thanking the god they’ve created in their own image that they ain’t like “those people”.  I really don’t see anybody hiding in the corner, sick to death of the way they are and the way they have hurt and taken advantage of others be they friend, family, or foe.  To be frank, we are all at heart tax collectors running around thinking everybody owes us something when in fact we each are the biggest debtors of all…broken, hurting, hiding.

This tax collector for some reason realizes that the cure for his diseased mind, soul, and body is that only God can do something about it.  It’s very interesting what he asks of God…and here comes a Greek lesson.  This tax collector’s prayer is mistranslated in every translation.  In the Greek text, he is not asking for mercy.  The word for mercy, eleos, is not there.  It would be fitting if it was.  That word is from the same word family as the words for olive and olive oil, which they used for a healing balm.  If that word was there, a beautiful translation of the prayer would be, “God, be a healing balm for me, a sinner.”  But that’s not what he is asking.

The word that is there is hilasterion, which means a sacrifice of expiation.  In the world of sacrifices, there were two kinds that the ancient world did to make things right with God, propitiation and expiation.  The driving thought pattern was: “I’m a sinner.  If I come into God’s holy presence, I will deservedly die.”  Propitiation, which the Israelites did not practice, was sacrificing an animal in your place to get God’s favour.  Expiation was a person transferring their sin to an animal usually by touching it.  The animal was then sacrificed, putting the sin to death.  This is similar to a poultice drawing infection from a wound.

This prayer is audacious.  It literally reads, “God, be yourself the sacrifice of expiation for me, a sinner.”  The tax collector realizes the extent of his sin is so great that a simple animal sacrifice of expiation won’t do it.  A human sacrifice would be evil and no cure at all.  He can’t fix it with his own death.  Everybody dies and we will all face God.  His sins, our sins, are so great his only hope for the healing of his diseased mind and being reconciled to God and to those whom he has hurt is for God himself to become the sacrifice of expiation for him.  

It may sound like ridiculous metaphysics, but that is why Jesus, God the Son, in love died on the cross for each of us.  There is healing for humanity in Jesus in the Holy Spirit-filled New Life he has to give.  It is time we check our self-righteous pride at the door and come to grips with how great a debtor we each are.  Jesus paid that debt.  Maybe we ought to give him a chance.  Amen. 

Cry Out...God Hears!

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Luke 18:1-8

Being a widow in Jesus’ day was no cake walk.  Because they were women, widows had no inheritance rights.  If they had sons, the husband’s estate was passed onto the sons.  This was the widow’s best bet for she would go along with the estate and live with the son.  If she had no son’s the husband’s estate including her would be passed onto the closest male kin.  Usually, the estate was taken but the wife rejected.  This left the widow suddenly without resource and often without recourse.  Moreover, there was a religious superstition shrouding widows.  Some believed that if a woman’s husband died before he was old, then he was being punished by God for some unknown sin and thus the punishment should be passed on to his widow as well.  This often led to the ill-treatment and exploitation of widows.  Begging was often the only recourse for a widow.

Regardless of what God’s people did to widows, God himself had great concern for their plight.  Isaiah quotes the Lord bluntly saying that he will bring vengeance on those who abuse the orphan and widowed, “See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her-- but now murderers!  Your silver has become dross; your choice wine is diluted with water.  Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them.  Therefore, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: “Ah, I will get relief from my foes and avenge myself on my enemies.  I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities’” (1:21-25).  (This is a very relevant passage these days as certain governments have removed international aid to poor countries where widows and orphans make up the majority of the population.  Estimates of 300,000 or more deaths will likely result from this action.  Not to mention the removal of funding for affordable health care and other benefits such as school lunch programs and education assistance from the poor in their own country.  According to Isaiah, God will seek vengeance on these governments.)

Those prophetic words set the stage for Jesus' parable here in Luke's Gospel in which he uses a widow’s persistent pleading to a wicked judge to grant her justice against her enemy as an analogy for his disciples to pray continually and not to give up.  The parable immediately follows Jesus giving to his disciples a rather cryptic description of his death and then his second coming and he paints a picture of the time between the two being a difficult time which will certainly test their faith.  The parable seeks to say that the disciples’ prayers and their relationship to the Trinity may seem like this exploited widow who has to continually pester an unrighteous, uncaring judge as the only means for her to receive justice against her enemy.  But God the Father isn’t like that.  He does indeed care for his chosen ones and will speedily work justice for them against their enemies.   

God hears us when we cry out and does indeed work in our lives to put things to right for us, but it often takes time, quite a lot of time.  The image that the New Testament Greek implies is that God doesn’t just make a decree and wave his hand and it’s done.  There must be time for consequences to play out.  People must take responsibility for their actions.  Therefore, we are to pray continually while we wait and not give up on the God in whom we abide.

For further definition of what it is to pray I took a tour of the word “prayer” through Luke’s Gospel to see what sort of thing the people in Luke’s world prayed for and how they prayed.  Since Jesus tells us to pray continually, I think it would help to know what sorts of things we should occupy our prayers with and how and why.  Luke’s first mention of prayer is when Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, went into the Holy of Holies in the temple to do his priestly duties while people stood outside praying for him and the efficacy of his work.  While in there, an angel appeared and told him that his barren wife, Elizabeth, would bear a child (1:10).  This shows a correlation between the people of God praying before and during worship so that those who lead worship will hear a message about what God is really doing in the life of his people.  

Next, after Jesus was baptized by John, he stood there in the water praying and Luke says heaven was opened and we catch a glimpse of God, the Trinity – Jesus the Son in the water, the Spirit descending as a dove, and the Father saying this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased (3:21-22).  Here we see a correlation between prayer and knowing that in Christ through the abiding of the Holy Spirit, the Father does indeed claim us as his own beloved children.  God the Father loves us as he loves his only begotten Son, Jesus, as we have a familial bond with him because the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in us.

Next, we discover that Jesus often slipped away to wilderness places (5:16) and up onto mountains to pray.  One night Jesus spent a whole night on a mountain praying and when he came down, he chose the twelve disciples (6:12).  Another time Jesus was praying alone with his disciples nearby and he asked them who the crowds said he was.  In the conversation Peter makes the confession of faith that Jesus was the Messiah from God (9:18).  Thus, we see here that there is a correlation between prayer and knowing one’s calling and who it is who calls us.  

Another mountaintop experience was when Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain with him and while he was praying, they saw him transfigured in shining white standing with Moses and Elijah.  Immediately, we have another Trinitarian revelation.  A cloud (the Holy Spirit) enveloped them and God the Father spoke to them saying that Jesus was his Son whom he had chosen and they should listen to him (9:28).  Thus, there is a huge correlation between prayer and knowing who Jesus is and what he has come to do for all humanity and even you and me as individuals and once again we see that prayer is a Trinitarian experience with Christ in the Holy Spirit before the Father.

            What does Jesus say we should pray for?  In the first instance he says “Pray for your enemies” (6:28).  Once while Jesus was praying his disciples saw him and came and asked him to teach them how to pray and he taught them the Lord’s prayer.  “Father, in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.  May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us each day our daily bread.  And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from the evil one."  This is a good prayer to try to discipline yourself to pray continually.  Another thing to notice here is that when people see us praying it just might happen that they become inspired to pray and want to learn how to pray.  In our passage today Jesus tells us to pray always crying out for the Trinity to work justice for us against our enemies (18:10).  

Next Jesus talks of attitude in prayer.  In the passage immediately following this morning’s reading, Jesus condemns the prayer of the self-righteous where we thank the Trinity for how great we are and how good we have it and reminding him of all the good we do and so forth.  Have you ever prayed saying “God I’ve done this and that and this for you and I try to be the best that I can be.  Could you please do this for me?”  That’s praying on our merits of which we really have none.  Rather, Jesus tells us to pray the tax collector’s prayer of humble desperation, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”  Actually, in the Greek it says, “God, be for me, a sinner, a sacrifice that removes my sin.”  If we get used to praying like that continually we find that the rest of our lives truly do begin to fall into place.  In the Eastern Orthodox traditions that have what they call the “Jesus Prayer” that they continually recite.  It goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” 

Finally, when Jesus entered into the Garden of Gethsemane with Peter, James, and John, he instructed them to pray so that they would not fall into temptation and they joined with Jesus in his prayers.  To repeat, they joined with Jesus in his prayers.  They fell asleep albeit, but they joined with him in his prayers.  Did you know your prayers are never separate from the prayers of Jesus who stands continually before the Father praying for us?  His prayers become our prayers and our prayers become his.  

To wrap all this up, and emphasize a main point for you, Jesus tells us to pray continually and not give up because it is primarily in prayer that we meet Jesus in the Holy Spirit and in him we share his prayer life before God the Father.  People who pray a lot have a deeper sense of who God is as Trinity, who Jesus is and what he’s done for us.  It takes prayer to know God.  Without it we simply won’t come to know the living God whom we claim to serve.  So, pray continually and don’t give up.  Cry out for God the Father hears as he hears Jesus' own prayers.  Amen.

The Cure for Awful

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Luke 17:11-19

With it being Thanksgiving it’s a given that I’m supposed to talk about being thankful or gratitude as it’s called in theological circles.  Being thankful is good for us.  That attitude of gratitude can conquer a world of troubles.  I’m reasonably sure there would be no problems in this world such as war, poverty, abuse, crime, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, etc., if we were predisposed to pondering on our blessings and feeling thankful most of the time.  Our mental and physical health would be so much better as well.  With gratitude being so good for us, why is it so hard to be grateful?  Why does being thankful have to be something we have to stop ourselves and take the time to count our blessings?  It doesn’t seem to come natural to us.  It takes effort.  

On the other hand, what does seem to come natural to us is feeling awful.  Oddly, we have forgotten that the basic meaning of the word awful is “to be filled with awe”, with reverence, worshipful.  We should be filled with awe.  But due to humanity’s sin-diseased nature, we twist the meaning of feeling awful to feeling absolutely terrible.  Feeling awful includes a lot of not good feelings – shame, guilt, dysphoria, anxiety, anger, bitterness, loathsome, lonesome, unlovable, covetous, greedy – I could go one.  We’ve all had our share of feeling awful. 

Let me tell you about someone who felt awful but found the cure - this here leper. Life as a leper in Bible times was horrible and it’s not so great now either.  If you have ever had the pervasively wicked feeling of “there’s something wrong with me”, then welcome to the world of the leper.  Leprosy was a very misunderstood skin disease which in time made a person look and smell like the walking dead.  Skin lesions, rotting extremities, pale flaky skin, facial features deforming – a person literally looked like death.  And so, people back then believed the disease was a curse on a person for secret sins and so lepers were regarded as being bad people, cursed by God.  Since they looked and smelled like death, they were not allowed to come to the Temple to be in the presence of the God who gives life.  Since people believed the disease was contagious, they made lepers live away from people and usually in small colonies that smelt worse than a duffle bag full of hockey gear.  There was a religious term for the state of being cut-off from the presence of God and from other people – unclean – and being unclean meant they were untouchable because uncleanness could be passed on.  So, people shunned and shamed them and they felt ashamed - awful.

Well, Jesus and his disciples were out in the middle of nowhere, when a colony of ten lepers approached him wanting him to show them mercy, wanting him to do what only God could do, that one thing that would make life right – heal them.  Interestingly, Jesus didn’t do anything specific to heal them like touch them as he had done with other lepers.  He simply told them to go start living the way they would if they were healed and clean.  For a leper, the first thing you had to do if you were healed was to go see the priest who would pronounce you clean.  That pronouncement made it so you could return to life in community and come before God.  Jesus’ cure for them just seems to be if you want to live, then quit acting like lepers and get on with living.  That’s helpful advice for many of life’s situations.  Get on with living.

So, as they took those first few steps of getting on with living as if they were healed, they were made clean.  They had come to Jesus in hope that he would do for them what he had for others like them.  Then, in taking those first few steps of faithfulness to Jesus, by doing as he asked, they were healed.  There was no longer any reason for them to feel shame or to be cut off from the presence of God and from human community.

One of the lepers, upon realizing he was now healed, began to praise God loudly and he turned around to go back to Jesus.  He threw himself on the ground at Jesus’ feet in worship and began to thank him.  In those first few steps of faithfulness to Jesus, this leper found his awfulness transformed into worshipfulness and thankfulness.  So, he turned around to “God”, to Jesus, to go back and give thanks.  In his encounter with Jesus, he discovered that there is a God who does care about him and that there was nothing, not even the death-resembling disease of leprosy, that could separate him from God’s love and healing mercy that can be found in Jesus and his way of life.  

Coming into the present, this is a particularly hard time to live in if you are somebody who truly feels awful.  The world will tell you there is no God so cure your own awfulness by self-soothing and doing what you think will make you happy – be self-minded.  Being self-aware and self-accepting are good because those qualities help us with relationships, but being self-minded tends to backfire with leaving a lot of hurt people in your wake

I might be old school but I think the cure for awful comes from outside oneself and is discovered in a relationship with God and with others.  It is knowing oneself to be a beloved child of the God who actually does care about everything, everybody, and little ole me too.  God loves us each and actually can heal our overwhelming feelings of awfulness.  Turning to Jesus and being worshipful (awestruck) and thankful is crucial to wellness for us human beings whom God created to enjoy Him, and life, and each other, and even ourselves.  

When I hear what happens next in our reading, I am a bit shocked.  Only one of them came back, Jesus seemed shocked too.  What happened to the other nine lepers.  Did they go on to live that healed life?  Did they not realize they were clean and continued to live as lepers?  Did they go to the priest?  Why were they not also moved to worship and to thankfulness?  We’re left hanging.  For some reason, they weren’t moved to worshipfulness and thankfulness as this leper…but hey, such are we most times we’re healed of something.

Jesus says to the man who came back to worship and thank him, “Get up and go on your way, your faithfulness has made you well.”  “Saved you” is what it says in the Greek.  There is a difference between simply being healed of awfulness and living the new life that God has created in, through, and as Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. This man’s loyalty to Jesus expressed by faithfulness in his beginning to do what Jesus said led to his being restored which led to his worshipfully returning to thank Jesus.  Jesus had not only removed the “awfulness” of life that the man experienced as a leper, he saved him, made him whole.  He wasn’t just healed, but more so made alive with the “New Life” we find in relationship to God which can’t help but overflow with the joyful worshipfulness and thankfulness that comes upon us when we realize we are in the presence of the God who made us, loves us as no one else can, and who saves us.

To close, AA has a catchphrase that you often hear people say when telling their story.  It goes “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  Similarly, if you’re sick and tired of being awful, come to Jesus and he will lead you to feel worshipful and thankful; filled with awe at the awesomeness of God.  Amen. 

 

Just Believe?

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Luke 17:1-10

Back in 1985 when I came to faith…let me quantify that statement.  I had been raised in and around the church.  I believed in God.  I believed Jesus died for my sins.  I believed in forgiveness and Heaven and Hell.  I believed that you had to be a good, moral person and that good, moral people went to church.  I also believed that the US was specially blessed by God to bring peace and order to the world (I lost that one in university.).  I believed all that stuff you’re supposed to believe if you’re a Christian in the US.  I lived in the Bible Belt of the Southern US.  Those beliefs were so much a part of that culture that even if you didn’t believe them, you still knew you were supposed to.  If you just believed these things, you were on God’s good side.  

But there was something missing from that blessed magical formula. What I hadn’t come to believe, was that God was really with me, that Jesus was with me and that by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit I could hear and follow him.  In the wee hours of the morning on January 1, 1985 I gave my life to Jesus.  I entered into servitude to him.  I had to seek to know him and to listen for what he wanted me to do throughout this life he has given me and then do it.  That is a markedly different approach to life than just doing what I wanted to do hoping God would bless me for being good and believing the right stuff about him.

So anyway, back in 1985 when I came to faith, TV preaching was in its heyday.  The most prevalent message among the TV ministries seemed to be what was called the Health and Wealth Gospel, or the Name it and Claim It Gospel, or simply the Prosperity Gospel.  Its basic tenet was that Jesus didn’t want his disciples to be sick and poor.  You just have to believe that and claim it for yourself in Jesus’ name and you would have good health and become wealthy.  If you wanted that fry cook job at Burger King you had to say “Fry cook job at Burger King, I claim you as mine in Jesus Name”, then wait for the phone call.  If you were just scraping by, just give money to a TV ministry and what you gave would be returned to you 60, 80, or 100 times as much, so they promised. If you got sick and didn’t get better or didn’t get the job or your gift was returned multiplied, it’s because you didn’t have enough faith.  You wavered.  You doubted.  And so, you needed to ask the Lord to increase your faith.  To those TV folks, faith was a magic power that could be annulled by doubt.  The more you believed, the more you would receive.  Just believe!?

Well, the question for this morning is what did the disciples mean when they asked Jesus to increase their faith.  If we take the passage out of its context, it very nicely fits into the “faith as magic power” school of thought.  It sounds like if you remove all doubt from yourself, you could be like a Jedi warrior in the Star Wars movies and make a tree uproot and go jump in the ocean.  I will admit that in the Greek world and language the word we translate as faith sometimes did get used that way.  Regardless, if we put the disciples' request in the context of what has happened in the previous chapters in Luke’s Gospel, they are not asking for magical power.

They also are not asking for the ability to believe the right things about God and Jesus.  Just like I was raised to believe there is a God, and Jesus died for my sins, and all that, they aren’t asking for Jesus to help them believe all the more what Jews in their day were supposed to believe.  So, what were they asking for?

I hate to tell you this, but I am reasonably sure that we are reading our modern definitions of faith into this passage.  We hear it as if the disciples were asking Jesus to make it so they had less doubt and more trust in him.  Faith means more than just belief and trust as opposed to doubt.  Faith is loyalty, devotion expressed through the fulfilment of obligations.  The weight of its meaning falls more towards what we would call faithfulness not just faith.  Just as love is not love until we do love, so faith is not faith until we do faithfulness.

Moreover, I am inclined to say that “increase” is not the right word.  The Greek word simply means “add to”.  So, “Lord, add to our faithfulness.”  Were they asking for more faith to be added to what they already had or were they asking for something else?  I think they were asking for something else; for more obligation through which to show their loyalty.  Here we go; Randy’s complicated explanation.

In the chapters before this, Jesus has been using parables to prophetically proclaim that God had taken the responsibility of shepherding his people away from the Pharisees because they were abusing their role and authority.  Instead of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with their God, they were power-greedy lovers of money who were using the Law of Moses to control and grow rich off of God’s people.  Their modus operandi was to give the people the false hope that the Messiah was coming and if they wanted a place in his kingdom, they were obligated to keep the Law jot and title… or they would be fined if they were caught breaking it.    

Jesus’ last words to his disciples (albeit within the hearing of the Pharisees) on the matter was simply that people are going to slip up and do something for which they feel guilty and ashamed of but WOE to anyone who causes another to feel guilty and ashamed of themselves.  Inflicting guilt and shame was the business the Pharisees were in.  The Pharisees were like a sycamore fig tree rather than mulberry which it resembles.  The mulberry tree isn’t well rooted and it looks like Cousin It from the Addams family, but its fruit is delicious.  It produces good fruit.  The sycamore fig is better rooted and has a strong trunk that they used for lumber, yet its fruit is inedible, bad fruit just like the Pharisees.  Jesus’ disciples were to instead practice the good fruits of accountability (to the Law of love) and forgiveness as opposed to the bad fruit of legalism.  I am persuaded to say that the disciples, in realization that the Pharisees were out as the shepherds of Israel, were asking Jesus to add obligation to their loyalty, something more to do to prove their loyalty than just following him around as his students.  They thought themselves ready to be the new shepherds of Israel.  

Jesus’ response to them on this matter goaded their apparent lack of humility.  Jesus asked them which of you would bring your servant in at the end of the day and sit them down at the table to eat (which they had been doing all along nearly daily every time they ate with him).  Would you thank your servant for their work?  Would you strip down to your loincloth and wash your servant’s dirty feet and then feed them (which Jesus would soon do for them).  No, you would tell your servant who just came in from a hard day’s work, to make dinner ready for you and then feed themselves when you were done.  You wouldn’t expect your servant to want to be thanked.  You would expect your servant to humbly do what he was obligated to do.

In order to shepherd the people of Israel Jesus’ disciples would have to know humility.  They would have to know how to humbly serve the people as opposed to ruling over them.  They already had loyalty and faithfulness (faith like a mustard seed), they just needed to learn humility.  Unfortunately, they won’t know humility until their teacher has washed their feet, until they’ve seen him die for the people, until they have felt his forgiveness for their betrayal, desertion, and denial of him.  Just believing isn’t faith.  Faith is faithfulness shown in humbly serving one another in love.  Amen.