+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 15:1-3,7-23, Acts 9:19b-31, Luke 23:44-56a

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last… And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.
Luke 23:46, 48-49

First off, forgive me that this post is very late for me. It’s 9AM on the East Coast and I’m just starting to write.

Secondly, you’re going to think I’m a total dolt, but just now is the first time I’ve ever noticed that neither God does forsake Jesus in Luke nor do his Apostles run away and abandon him. Peter denies him, yes. But Jesus never screams out, “My God! My God why have you forsaken me?” And there’s never those odd scenes where the only folks left are Jesus, Mary and John.

I’m wondering why: not which one is true but rather why the story is different. I’m wondering what this tells us about the Church to which/from which Luke was writing. I’m wondering why it was important for Matthew and Mark to have Jesus utterly abandoned, even by God, and why it was not important for Luke and John to paint the same picture. Of course we have a composite image of Jesus - the four Gospels plus 2000 years of good and bad teaching, good and bad theological declarations, good and pad political actions and also our own internal interpolations of all of those. Since Jesus is not present in his person, the Jesus I conceive/imagine as a result of all my personal history is different from the Jesus you conceive/imagine as a result of your personal history. (It dawns on me that this is comparable to internet dating. It’s risky until the parties meet in meat space - until that moment the person in one’s head can be more real than the person in real life.)

But putting aside that composite Jesus, why is Luke’s Jesus so well loved? His God never abandons him, his friends never run away and, in fact, this entire passage is filled with friends in horror who helplessly watch and wait, loving from afar, until the powers that be are done with their dance. Then everyone moves in and does what one is supposed to do when a beloved friend dies: provide a tomb, prepare the body, mourn. The scene in the Garden where Jesus sweats drops of blood is the only scene that seems out of place and some scholars think this is a later addition to the text to force harmony with one party in the church over other parties.

This is the same Gospel, of course, that brings us some of the most beloved stories: the Annunciation, the Angels and Shepherds of the Nativity, all of the Gospel Canticles.

No answers in this late post, I’m sorry. Only questions. I could add some more: how does the God who is so in love with us in Luke come from the God who gets angry at Saul for not killing everyone as commanded.

I love the image of the Bible as a conversation in which we, today, participate. Not as having the Bible be a final ending to which we must respond, but rather a multi-millennium discussion of humans with their loving God. The conversation continues today not as from a base set two thousand years ago, but rather as live and as on-going as talk radio. And the entire conversation is sacred.

Passages like this - when compared to the other ones, equally true - lead me to believe in the conversation model.