RCL - Proper 8C - June 27, 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Charles Mizelle, n/OHC

RCL - Proper 8C - June 27, 2010

The Most Important Verse “Not” In The Bible

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Luke 9:51-62

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

Today’s lectionary readings are some of our richest texts on the Christian life. We began with Elisha modeling what it means to be a true disciple, a life of devotion to following Elijah, and Elisha’s reward of receiving a “double-share” of Elijah’s spirit. This text perfectly mirrors our Gospel reading.

Our New Testament reading took us to Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he reminds us that we are free in Christ, to “stand firm” in our freedom, to live by the spirit, and then that classic text where Paul compares the works of the flesh to the fruits of the Spirit.

Then we have the Gospel, the inhospitality of the Samaritans, James and John wanting to call down fire from heaven to destroy them and three would-be followers of Christ.

In fact there is so much richness in these texts the challenge for the preacher is to decide what to preach about. So you may find it odd that I have decided to preach on the text that is not here, the verse that was left out. In fact it just may be the most important verse that is not in the Bible

If your Bible has footnotes you’ll see that some ancient manuscripts insert an extra verse in today’s Gospel at Luke 9:56. When Jesus responds to James and John’s plea to call down fire from heaven and consume the Samaritans, Jesus says this: “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

Was it ethnic hostility on the part of the Samaritan’s that they did not welcome Christ and his traveling companions? Most likely it was. James and John exploded in rage with the desire to simply obliterate them. Hopefully they were speaking figuratively, not literally, about calling fire down from heaven. But that is little consolation given their desire for revenge. Instead of rebuking the Samaritans who rejected him, Jesus rebuked James and John who defended him. And then comes that extra verse that shouldn’t be in the Bible: “And Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son the Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’”

Here’s a quick lesson in Apologetics. We have close to 6000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, some of them only bits and pieces of papyrus, some of them complete books. No other ancient text, like Homer or Aristotle for example, enjoys anything remotely close to this avalanche of manuscript evidence. When textual scholars--God bless them--compare, contrast and cross-check every last one of these manuscript fragments of evidence, they reach an overwhelming consensus that the Bible we read today is a mirror image of the texts as they were originally written. It’s true, we don’t have the original documents that Luke wrote, nor do we have the original text of any New Testament writer, and there are variants among the manuscripts. But with the volume of overwhelming evidence we have we are assured that we are not reading some corrupt approximation of what the original New Testament writers wrote. We are reading the real McCoy. (If we could only have such assurance in interpreting what is written.)

Unfortunately for me, this unprecedented textual evidence leads experts to reject my favorite addition to the Bible. So where did this extra verse come from. Most likely a later copyist inserted his own gloss at a much later date. So the way to read this verse is as a one-sentence commentary on Luke’s narrative. “Jesus didn’t come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” James and John’s rage at the Samaritans is now turned into a teaching moment by Jesus. It is the sentiment of this non-verse that the narrative hinges on. Here is where we have the shift in energy, the shift in emotion, and the change in action. In fact this entire narrative story is considered the moment of shift for Luke’s entire gospel. The reading begin’s “When the days drew near for him (Jesus) to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” From here forward, the rest of Luke’s gospel is moving toward Jerusalem, moving toward the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

Even though I have to concede that Luke most likely did not pen this verse I can rest assured its sentiment was known to him. Fast forward to Luke 19:10 and you’ll read “The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.” Compare this to John 3:17 “God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.” And Matthew 18:11 has it own textual variant “The Son of Man came to save what was lost.”

When James and John invoked divine wrath on the Samaritans, they betrayed an attitude diametrically opposed to everything Jesus said and did. Right before this story, we have the story of John wanting to stop an exorcist from healing a person because “he was not one of us”. It seems these over-zealous disciples wanted Jesus’ love, and therefore God’s love, all for themselves. They transformed the good news of God’s unconditional and limitless love for all peoples into the bad news that God had it in for them. They were the in group so they got the “good news” of Christ love. The bad news was for everyone else.

Today, we have no shortage of religionist wanting to call down fire from heaven to destroy those they see as the out group. We have no shortage of those who are angered and enraged knowing they are in the right. And there is no changing their conviction that God is on there side and against everyone else. Most likely everyone here today has been on the receiving end of this message. The good news for us is that the message and sentiment of our non-verse is as true today as it ever has been. Thomas Keating has put this one-sentence commentary of Luke’s gospel into modern language by saying “You don’t have to win over God’s love, you have more than you know what to do with.”

Today’s Gospel text is really the turning point of the entire Gospel story. Jesus has “set his face toward Jerusalem” knowing what awaits him there. His days are numbered in getting his disciples to understand the real meaning of the good news. He wants his disciples to completely understand that the words of the Psalmist are to be claimed by all--for in Psalm 56 it says “this I know, that God is for me”.

Jesus was not a religionist. He was not a theologian. And the gospel writers give us account after account that Jesus had little patience for the religionist of his day. He often had little patience for his own disciples as demonstrated in today’s gospel. He came for a single reason: to put a stop to religion being an “exclusive club” for an in-group. He came to change hearts, heal lives, to make us whole, and to help us discover we are never away from God’s love. For Jesus the only thing, the entire thing, the greatest thing is to know you are loved by God. The additional verse added to the text of Luke 9:56 is clearly spurious, but the authentic voice behind its message is unmistakably original: “the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

Amen!