Let Go and Let God.

Luke 12.1-12.

I.

            The crowds are increasing as Jesus makes his way through Judea.  The word Luke uses to estimate the size of the crowd is myriad, meaning many thousands.  There are so many people that they are beginning to step on each other, Luke says.  Jesus doesn’t address them.  He is still fuming over his recent collision with the Pharisees.  He speaks to his disciples.

            “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees,” he says.  Yeast is something added to dough so that it will rise and make bread.  He says that the “yeast” of the Pharisees is “their hypocrisy.”  So their hypocrisy is their inflated view of themselves.

            The Pharisees thought of themselves as the protectors and upholders of the values of their nation and faith.  Without them and their enforcement of the Torah rules, Judaism simply falls apart… according to them.  It was all about tradition and social order.  The details of Law made the Jewish believers different and unique.  It prevented their assimilation into whatever Empire happened to be conquering them that century.  It was a matter of survival.

            So the Pharisees and their job were important.  And they knew it. 

            But Jesus says they are hypocrites.  He says it’s all really about their self-righteousness and self-importance.  What the Pharisees are propping up is not the true Torah, but their own privilege and power.  For the Torah is not about establishing a particular nation and religion, over-against all other nations and religions; it is about establishing the Kingdom of God in one exemplary place so it may from there spread to be a blessing to the whole world.  Maintaining separateness, specialness, and exceptionalism is not the meaning of Torah.  Maintaining equality, justice, reconciliation, and non-violence is what the Torah is all about. 

            But the Pharisees had lost much of that in their enthusiasm for keeping it literally.  So they were very good at strict adherence to the letter of the Law, but ignoring its heart.  And they allowed the letter of the Law to be used to violate its spirit.  It would be like praying the prescribed prayers and keeping the letter of the Law, while passing by on the road a neighbor in need, in violation of the true spirit of the Torah… which of course is the example Jesus had recently used in a parable.

            Jesus says that “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.”  Eventually, everything becomes known.  Eventually, we find out that the strict enforcer of the Law was actually breaking it in spirit.  Eventually we discover that the rigorous application of the letter of the law was actually used by people to do the opposite of what the Law intends: oppress, exploit, subjugate, and dominate their neighbors.

II.

            Then Jesus says, “My friends, don’t be afraid of these guys.  The worst they can do is kill you.  They can’t do anything worse than that.”  I can see the disciples exchanging puzzled glances at this point.  Isn’t getting killed, kind of like, you know, bad?  

            Jesus goes on: “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna.  Yes, I tell you, fear him!”

            I know many Bibles say “hell” here, but the Greek says “Gehenna,” and that’s important.  Gehenna is a steep valley near Jerusalem where some previous kings of Judah performed pagan human sacrifice.  They threw children alive into a fire as a way of appeasing the god, Baal.  Nice.  In Jesus’ day Gehenna is a garbage dump.

            Perhaps the disciples are at this point as confused as we are.  Who is this we should fear?  Does he mean God?  Would God throw people into Gehenna?  No one hates human sacrifice more than God.  Why would God imitate some of the most evil kings of Judah and start throwing people into a sacrificial fire pit?  Maybe Jesus isn’t referring to God here, but Satan.  That would make more sense, except that Jesus tells us elsewhere not to fear Satan.

            Then Jesus goes on to talk about the God who loves and cares for even the most seemingly insignificant and cheap expressions of creation, sparrows.  “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?  Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.  But even the hairs of your head are all counted.  Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”  So here he tells them not to be afraid.

            Certainly God “has the authority” to kill and throw people into Gehenna.  But apparently God does not use that authority.  God loves and cherishes even sparrows who are a dime a dozen; God certainly loves and cherishes each human person.  “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says.  He means that God’s wrath is always tempered if not totally transformed, by God’s love for creation.

            Jesus’ point is that there is something worse than death, and that is cutting ourselves off from the God of love, which leaves us lost and consumed by the fires of evil.      

            It’s like he says, “If you need to be motivated by fear, then fear the one who has the authority to throw you into Gehenna,” which is a metaphor for the fires of condemnation.  “But I would rather you proceed not out of fear at all, but out of love for the God who created us and deeply cares for each one of us.”

III.

            Because Jesus knows that his disciples, like him, are going to be hauled before the principalities and powers of this world, into courtrooms and they will need a quality of courage and strength that is deeper than what we get from mere fear.  They are going to need to be motivated by something much more powerful, profound, and primal, which is love.

            He goes on.  “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.”  Jesus’ followers are to admit and acknowledge that he is the one they follow.  He knows that following him will be threatening to the authorities, and that association with him will be an arrestable, even a capital, offense.

            Acknowledging or denying Jesus before others has to do with having the courage to affirm our own association with him and his mission.  It has to be more than simply saying we follow Jesus when it is a safe thing to do.  If it’s a safe thing to do then I suspect we’re not following Jesus very well.  At some point acknowledging Jesus has to be a risk.  I wonder if Jesus doesn’t expect us to push the envelope of discipleship in our own time and place until we hit the red-zone where it starts to tick people off, especially those in charge.

    It is one thing to do things in the name of Jesus that everyone approves of.  I suspect that Jesus wants us also out there doing and advocating for things that are not popular.  That’s what Jesus himself does.  He almost seems to go out of his way to make himself obnoxious to almost everyone, especially anyone in authority.  Eating with tax collectors?  Associating with prostitutes?  Touching lepers?  Reaching out to Gentiles?  Accepting Samaritans?  Need I go on?  He offends the right; he offends the left; he offends the majority; he offends the leadership; he even offends his own disciples.

            Jesus isn’t afraid of losing followers.  He’s not worried about not being able to pay the bills. 

            The Lord is assuming that admitting we are associated with him will be a very costly and uncomfortable thing.  What are the costly and uncomfortable things we are doing?  Who are the unpopular people we are associating with?  What are the subversive causes we are engaged in?

            My favorite quote from Billy Graham is when he asked the question: “If being a Christian were illegal, and you were arrested, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

IV.

            Jesus continues: “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”  So if the disciples meet  critics who are against them because they follow Jesus, and if they speak against him and his work, Jesus is saying that these people still may find forgiveness.  Just as Jesus himself forgave those who were crucifying him because they didn’t know what they were doing, so he says that people bound in ignorance, who just don’t or can’t know who he is, will find freedom and forgiveness.  They will in the end be free of their misconceptions.  People don’t bring down condemnation upon themselves just because they don’t know Jesus, even if their ignorance of Jesus makes them speak against him.  Eventually they will be freed from their ignorance.

            However, Jesus adds that there can be no forgiveness, no freedom, for people who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.  To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is not just casually mouthing a verbal formula.  No one attracts condemnation for merely thinking or talking.  For blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is itself a rejection of freedom and forgiveness.  It is a refusal to live in the freedom of the Spirit, who is the power of God’s love and goodness and blessing, holding all things together in being.  It is a refusal to live at all, a cowardly and smug comfort in hiding at the bottom of the barrel of our own constricting ego.

            It may not sink to the level of blasphemy, but for too many Christians and Christian groups, the Holy Spirit is absent.  Not denied, technically; but rarely trusted, relied upon, talked about, taught, or experienced.  Do we blaspheme the Holy Spirit when we assent to staying mired in our own addictions?  How about when we refuse to trust in God’s goodness?  If we picture God as purely wrathful and punishing?  If we see God’s creation as evil?  What if we consistently act, or support others who act, in ways that bring death, poison, waste, slavery, pain, and horror into the world?  Are these forms of blasphemy against the Spirit?

            We’d better hope not.

            The Holy Spirit is undomesticatable and cannot be forced into our goals and agendas.  The Spirit is freedom itself.  Unlike a text, we cannot twist its meaning to suit us.  The Spirit will not fit into our definitions and categories.  The Spirit can only be listened to, felt, and moved by.  We blaspheme the Spirit when we don’t listen, don’t feel, and aren’t moved.

V.

            Jesus concludes: “When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.”  Do not worry.  Only trust that the power that holds the universe together is there in you and in everything.  The more you let go of yourself, the more you release your ego, the more open you are, the easier will come the words from the Spirit.

            The word “spirit” of course means breath and wind.  How much would it change our understanding if we were to hear Jesus saying “the breath of holiness will teach you,” or “the holy wind will teach you”?  The Spirit is not to be thought of in terms of law or rules and regulations, or doctrine.  The Spirit is poetry.  Most of the words of the biblical prophets are poetry, which it had to be because their work was that of the Spirit.  They were, as we say, inspired.

            Jesus says his disciples will be hauled before judges and accusers.  He tells them not to worry about it.  He tells them not to fear.  They don’t have to cram and study for the right answers.  They don’t have to commit the right doctrines, or even Scripture, to memory.  They just have to, as people say in 12-step programs, “Let go, and let God.”  Let go and let the Spirit move you.  Let go and let the power of creation itself form the words in your mouth.

            The Spirit therefore welds word and act together; they are the same thing.  Gone is any hypocrisy in which we say one thing and do another.  If we let go of all the things that constrict and bind us: our wants and needs, our hopes and dreams, especially our fear and anger, we will be free enough to let the Spirit, the breath and wind of God, to blow through us.  The universe does not depend on us; we depend on God’s Spirit blowing in and through the universe.  We can’t be about preserving and maintaining institutions, texts, and traditions, like the Pharisees.  We can only be about what Jesus Christ is about, which is participating in the free movement of God’s Spirit, God’s breath, in everything.  Nothing else matters, because nothing else is real.

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