Living the Fat Life

Text: Luke 22:14-23:56

Pastors are advised by the instruction manual to prepare no sermon for today, or at least keep it very short. So while I do not want to leave without commenting on this dual‑purposed Sunday, I’ll keep it short.

We are tempted by beginnings and endings. The temptation is to forget or elide the middle. And instead to condense it into kind of historical concentrate, holding more than its due of hopes and regrets. In the church, days like today aggravate this view that life is mostly about big events, big changes. Today is especially guilty, where in one Sunday we have the triumphant march of Jesus into Jerusalem followed within a few minutes by the horrible execution of Jesus. It is not really understandable. Even though joys sometimes do turn suddenly to sorrows, this does not seem like one of those occasions.

The danger here is not just that we sentimentalize the story of Jesus. Which we do. Or that we pay too little attention to the ministry of Jesus in the world. Which we also do. (Our creed, for example, goes “Born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and was buried.” Is that all there was of Jesus? Born and died. What about the life that Jesus led and the people who heard and followed him? And the great missionary Paul rarely mentions the life of Jesus.) But danger is not there. The danger is in thinking that Jesus has nothing to do with his death. And that things happen without a reason (other than “God wants it”). And that people killed Jesus because he was good and they were bad. Mostly people do not do that. Mostly people do not hate goodness. Mostly they hate being scared.

Life is more than beginnings and endings. Jesus’ life and our lives. What happens to us happens mostly in the middle. This story in Luke, though momentous and important, fits into a larger story of the life of Jesus. This is especially true in Luke, which is really just the first part of a two-part story that continues into Acts (most scholars refer to Luke and Acts together as “Luke/Acts.”) The events of Holy Week are in the center, but there are edges, too. The life of Jesus. The life of his followers.

The twin Gospel readings for today in Luke leave out what happens between the triumph and the tragedy. But the Gospel of Luke does not leave them out. Once in Jerusalem, Jesus stops healing and starts preaching in a major way. And what he says surely scared the people, at least the people who had the power to execute someone. He preaches about the end of the old times and the certain coming of new ones. That means the destruction of the Temple and of the city of Jerusalem. It means that what the people had counted on had always been wrong or was about to be wrong. He preached about corruption in high places. He preached about a culture whose foundation was crumbling, and he preached it with a little bit of regret and a whole lot of satisfaction. And he preached that this would happen soon. In their lifetimes. Be watchful, he said. Be careful.

We cannot help focusing on the end points. The transitions. Because they are times of intense hope and despair, birth and death, adventure and grief. On this strange day, the boundary between Lent and Holy Week, when we hear eager anticipation of the crowd turn into confused unbelief, and we ourselves peek to Easter when it all gets turned around again, we might be as shattered emotionally as we are when sorrow and joy butt up against one another in our lives. But of this time and that, we need to remember that highlights and lowlights make thin gruel.

Our lives are fatter and richer than that. I’m not saying that events like this are not a big deal. They are just not the only deal. Or even the majority deal. We rightly celebrate the peaks, but we live mostly on the plains. We are a plain people.

Between birth and death, triumph and tragedy, we live. And human divine Jesus lives there, too.