Luke's Wicked Sense of Humor

Good ol' Luke.

I suspect a twinkle in his eye many a time as he wrote the gospel, tweaking the noses of the know-it-alls, and catching the proud (and who isn't?) off guard.

Today's lection, the rich man (Oh Lordy, listen to the trumpets and watch the security detail in their black SUVs) and, oh wait a minute, does the rich man have a name?

And Lazarus, a stinking little man full of sores and sorrow, groveling on the ground for a few of the rich man's crumbs ... friendless, a companion of raggedy street dogs ...

But, wait, he has a name, a real name, and later in the story, this sad mess of sores gets to sit on the lap of Abraham, while the rich man, a critter without a name, a self-serving bag of pride, goes without a name, and he's hot and he thirsty, and still expects Lazarus to come a-running to wait upon him.

He's not worth naming; his worth is in himself, his possessions and his power. He has what he wants, and so he's lost his name. Like all the rich, so full of themselves, a dime a dozen as God sees it.

But it's Lazarus, the man with nothing, who smells to high heaven with sores and disease, likely condemned by the rich man for being lazy, or stupid, why, he has a name.

Precious in the sight of the LORD.

A name.

I think Luke was chuckling to himself when he wrote the story, recalling how Jesus so often tweaked the noses of the rich and the powerful.

Recalling the moment, perhaps, as Luke witnessed it, or more likely, as Luke heard it from others, that Jesus, too, had a twinkle in his eye, a wicked sense of humor, as he made it clear to those who worked so hard to make a name for themselves, that in God's realm, they have no name at all; they've traded it away for goods.

And the stinking man, licked by the dogs, beneath the table of the rich, well, pay attention folks, because he has a name!

Psalm 149

Reading the text is always an unpredictable process ... sure, we can sort of determine what the "original" intent might have been, sort of, but it's our response that's most telling.

I've read Psalm 149 a good many times, with thanksgiving and with reservation, because of the violence ... biblical violence in the hands of the powerful is, at best, dangerous; but perhaps it can be read in another way, and that's what struck me this morning.

V.6, "Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands."

Yes, in the eager hands of the already-powerful, such a verse can be disastrous. The Erik Princes of this world love this kind of stuff, and exult in the love of "arms for christ."

Yet as I read it this morning, it reminded me that our praise of God can never be separated from the tasks at hand, the tasks of living and caring for what it is right and good, promoting the wellbeing of a society, and especially defending those whose voices have been muted by the powerful.

The text goes on: "to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron...."

I think of Bonhoeffer's fateful decision to participate in the bomb plot to kill Hitler, which, of course, is an extreme measure, but Bonhoeffer knew full well that love for the nation, for the Jews, now required a dramatic move to remove the source of the nation's ills.

I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., who made clear that violence was never to be offered to violence. But the text makes clear, I believe, that in the struggle for right, there can be no laying downing and simply taking it.

The Civil Rights demonstrators, while refraining from proactive violence, made it clear to the nation that Black People would not longer "take it," but in their determination to cross the bridge or to order a coke at the local drugstore counter, they "violated" the social boundaries and put chains on the powerful.

Lots of folks told them to go back to church and pray, put it into God's hands, and God would sort it all out. But it became evident that God's hands were tied by the powerful representatives of the Jim Crow, and all the prayer in all the world wouldn't open up voting rights or french fries at the local lunch counter. But only a forceful presence that dared to cross the lines and confront the lies.

Well, the upshot of this is both complex and simple: to praise God with our voice is meaningless unless the sword is in our hand, ready to clear the way, make straight the way of the LORD, and put into chains those forces and ideas that make a mockery of religion and love to hurt the weak.

And, that a sword in the hand, always dangerous, has to be linked to praise, lest the sword become a law unto itself, and violence for good simply becomes violence.

So was my reading this morning of Psalm 149.

Armistice Day

In 1954, upon the urging of American veteran groups, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day.

While it's right and good to remember our veterans, it's also right and good that we remember the larger event, Armistice Day, when "the war to end all wars" came to an end, at the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month.

It was a war of fools, as most wars are - blunders into violence, the love of tactics, and the mindless belief that nations can really conquer nations, that might prevails, and "god is on our side." Everyone fought everyone else with chaplains chanting prayers and the leaders of the nations fiercely weaving a bloody tapestry of faith and nation.

When the war ended, with untold millions dead, nothing was resolved - but only from sheer weariness of killing and dying did the combatants lay down their arms, and while the allies were "victorious," they took it upon themselves to punish Germany (and sow the seeds of WW2) and to redraw the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire (sowing the seeds of today's Middle East chaos).

Armistice Day deserves to be remembered with tears and reverence for the millions of soldiers who were ordered to advance by generals far removed from the front. The solider, with friends and family back home, his face covered in mud and his body crawling with vermin, didn't fight for "god and country." They fought to stay alive, and to protect one another. And millions didn't make it, because of the foolhardiness of the nations.

Let's remember our veterans, but let's not make light of their suffering and death by draping their broken bodies with bunting, but covering them with our tears, and a fresh resolve to see the insanity of war, to work mightily to unmask the craven purposes of the arms industry, and give no heed to the mindless babbling of nations who speak of their own greatness.

Let 11.11.11 be our prayer, our purpose, our work every day of our life, until war be no more.