God-with-a-Goody-Bag

Wait just a minute. Is Jesus trying to take stuff away or give it?

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Gospel Reading: Luke 12:32–40

For Sunday, August 8, 2010: Year C - Ordinary 19

Let's try and meet some new girls.

Many pericopes in the lectionary contain within them something so familiar, so known that they become by default what the passage is about. When I read passages like this one from Luke 12 it feels like a bustling cocktail party. I scan the crowded room of unknown eyes and noses and mouths until I see a familiar face. I scan the passage of random verses which all seem so very unfamiliar until bam! I see her: where your treasure is, there you heart will be also. It’s tempting to hang out with the one girl you know. But let’s be honest. EVERYBODY knows her. So, just for tonight, let’s see what the other girls are like.

What not to wear?

Hmmmm, take verse 33 for instance: What’s up with the contradictory fashion sense? Just a couple chapters ago in Luke when Jesus sends out the seventy, he instructs them, "Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals," yet now in verse 33 of Chapter 12 he says that it’s okay to make homemade ones. So which is it? And again in Luke 12:22 Jesus says to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear." Yet here he suggests we have spandex at the ready: Be dressed for action (verse 33).

So how exactly do we take what Jesus says at face value? Perhaps we don’t. I cannot help but assume that when we face a text which contradicts not only itself but also several passages that proceed it, the answer is simple: We don’t actually know what it means. The text simply resists our attempts to domesticate it. It’s not something easily transposed to a tacky coffee mug.

Good News/Bad News

Other texts might seem more promising. Check out verse 32. Now there’s an attractive little number in a party dress. "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Nice. This is fabulous news! A Father whose good pleasure it is to give us the kingdom. I could use a Father who wants to give me stuff. The image of God-with-a-goody-bag is understandably popular and I, for one, would quickly sign up for such a God.

Yet in the very next verse Jesus pulls a bait-and-switch, because now he’s saying we should sell our stuff. And then later Jesus describes himself as a thief: "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." Am I the only one who feels like Jesus just implied that he’s like a thief? Usually Jesus is the kinder, gentler person of the Trinity. Not here. (But I love it when the first and second persons of the Trinity try and play Good Cop/Bad Cop.)

The good news is that the Father’s good pleasure is to give you the kingdom. The bad news is that his son is going to steal from you whatever is left that you haven’t already gotten rid of. Maybe your pride. Or your ambition. Or your obsession with your retirement money. Or your sense of doom. Or your Kia Sorento.

God’s insistence that I have less does not instill in me the greatest confidence that God really wants to give me more.

The Hardest Question

Perhaps it’s time to pop the question – the hardest question in this pericope for me: Does God want to give us stuff, or take stuff away? According to this text, The Father is a giver and the Son is a taker. What’s up with that?