Dead Man Talking

Lectionary reflections for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (C)

by Michael Hopkins

This gospel reading immediately follows the previous Sunday's -- where Jesus is in the synagogue in Nazareth reading and interpreting the scriptures. Together they are an announcement of one of Luke's primary messages: Jesus is the interpretive key for reading the scriptures.

The culmination of this message is the post-resurrection story (unique to Luke) of the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-49). You remember the story. Two men are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus after the death of Jesus, debating what has happened. Jesus himself comes upon them, but they do not recognize him. He does not seem to be aware of what has happened, so they tell him, as much as they are able, because it is clear that they are unsure how to interpret what has happened to them. Luke then says, "Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures."

The Emmaus story is a remarkable one and serves as a sort of bookend to this one that addresses the beginning of Jesus' ministry. In today's story, hearts burned as well, but to a different effect, a burning of rage, rejecting Jesus' interpretation of the scriptures. Here the crowd refuses to see as Jesus sees and seeks to be rid of him. The reaction is very important to Luke, so important that he literally invents a cliff outside of Nazareth over which the crowd wishes to throw Jesus. There is no cliff outside of Nazareth.

Clearly there is something very important here that Luke wants us to understand. . . This good news may cause our hearts to burn, our lives to change, our very understanding of what is sacred to change, and we may very well have the murderous impulse of Nazareth.

But then, there was no such place as Emmaus either. Luke made that up too. Clearly there is something very important here that Luke wants us to understand. Not only is Jesus the interpretive key to understanding the scriptures, but that interpretive key seeks to undermine our own assumptions, subvert them, and replace them with good news, good news that we may want to dismiss, and not just intellectually. This good news may cause our hearts to burn, our lives to change, our very understanding of what is sacred to change, and we may very well have the murderous impulse of Nazareth.

What was that subversion in Nazareth? Jesus reads a passage of great hope from the prophet Isaiah and heightens it by proclaiming that it is not a text for the future, but for today. Thus far it's a "feel good" sermon, but then he goes on. Today this is fulfilled, he says, but do not think that this is about you, about the fulfillment of your own chosen-ness. It is a fulfillment for all, for the Gentiles too. This, too, the prophets pointed toward, but you did not pay attention to that part. The good news is that the oppressed are going to go free, but today this means an end to your special-ness.

Why such an extreme reaction, though? Why does Luke go so far as to invent the cliff? Why wasn't it enough for the Nazareth crowd to be "put off"? Why the desire for murder?

Well, of course, because that is precisely what they end up doing. Even now, Luke is saying, this is a dead man talking, and it is precisely as a dead man that he is the interpretive key to the scriptures. Who is it, after all, who interprets the scriptures to the two men on the road to Emmaus? It is Jesus, of course, who at that point is, literally, a dead man. Risen, yes, but a risen dead man, a resurrected corpse. How important it is for Christian faith that resurrection and resuscitation are not the same thing! The risen-living one is also the ever-crucified one.

The living dead man, the risen victim, after all, does not return in vengeance for his innocent death, neither against the Jews who arranged it or the Gentiles who carried it out, but in forgiveness. And this forgiveness "burns our hearts," re-forges our identities, undoes and re-does our world.

Why is this important? It is a crucial part of the interpretive key that Jesus is. The interpretive key is a living dead man, the risen victim, who is always present to us in the breaking of the bread (which is his own broken body) as divine love and forgiveness. The living dead man, the risen victim, after all, does not return in vengeance for his innocent death, neither against the Jews who arranged it or the Gentiles who carried it out, but in forgiveness. And this forgiveness "burns our hearts," re-forges our identities, undoes and re-does our world. It gives us new eyes to see not only him, but ourselves, our neighbors, and the whole creation.

Among other things, this has profound implications for how we read and interpret the Bible. We read the Bible through the eyes of Jesus, in the presence of the living dead man, with his story as the interpretive key to it all. Any authority the Bible has is the authority of Jesus. This is not an understanding "made up" by modern-day liberals. The church has always taught, at least since the time of the writing of the Gospel of John, that the Word of God is Jesus himself. "The Word was made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). That is the church's ancient way of saying that Jesus is the interpretive key not only to the scriptures, but of God, and of our own lives.

 

The Rev. Michael W. Hopkins is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in Glenn Dale, Md., and is past president of Integrity. He is a Witness contributing editor, and may be reached by email at mwhopkins@comcast.net.