Lectionary Reflection for Proper 28C on Luke 21:5-19
CHOOSING WHAT WE SEE
On Tuesday, November 4, New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted for a 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, to become their mayor. The message of his campaign and the content of his victory speech both focused on unity in diversity, the need for justice and compassion for those who are usually forgotten, and that true power resides with ordinary people. As Ziyad Motala wrote on the Al Jazeera website,
What distinguished Mamdani was not only the content of his programme, but the candour with which he stated its premise: Government should serve those who labour, not those who lobby. He proclaimed that the city belonged to its citizens, not to developers, bankers and donors.1
On the road to his election, Mamdani faced accusations of terrorism, anti-semitism, and communism.2 Now, in the aftermath of his victory, there is speculation that wealthy New Yorkers will leave their home city and move south to Florida.3 What this reveals is that some people will see disaster in the new mayor’s win, while others will see liberation. The truth, of course, is probably somewhere in between. He will not be the angel of death to the city, but neither will he be its saviour. Like most politicians, he will do some good and he will make some mistakes (hopefully more of the former than the latter). But much of our interpretations of this week’s events, and our assessments of his leadership in the future, are a matter of how we choose to see.
The heart of the message of Luke’s Gospel is the divine value system—the polar opposite of the Roman Empire’s—and the radical hospitality of God’s reign that Jesus preached.4 From Mary’s Magnificat in the birth narrative (Luke 1:46-55), to the prophecies Jesus read in his home synagogue and claimed to have fulfilled (Luke 4:16-21), to the parables and teachings in the travel narrative (Luke 9:51-19:44), the writer has drawn us ever more deeply into Jesus’ message of love and justice for all. And that message has been shown to be more than words, in the flood of stories Luke tells about Jesus welcoming those who are usually ignored, overlooked, excluded, or rejected, and confronting those who seek to preserve their privilege, power, and prosperity at the expense of the vulnerable and marginalised ones. Throughout the Gospel, Luke uses the metaphors of sight and seeing to explain the transforming impact of Jesus’ message and mission on his followers. Following Jesus, for Luke, is about choosing to see God, others, ourselves, and the world through the lens of God’s reign, and then to allow that vision to shape how we live and love.
Now, with Jesus having completed his journey to Jerusalem and facing his execution, the writer highlights the implications of his message. As the people around him praised the beauty of Herod’s temple, Jesus warned his disciples to be careful about what they see and how they choose to see it. Where some saw in the temple a divine symbol of eternal power, wealth, and glory, Jesus saw a temporary structure in honour of human achievement that would ultimately be destroyed by the very forces it celebrated.5 And, as Gilberto Ruiz notes, he diverted their attention back to what God was doing in their world:
In response to their wonder at the temple’s beauty, Jesus attempts to divert the attention of his audience from their fascination with “these things that you see” (21:6). Their focus should be on something else. What, exactly, is not specified, but immediately before this exchange Jesus drew attention to a poor widow in the temple (21:1-4). Perhaps Luke’s Jesus thinks his audience should focus their attention on the poor, not on the temple building.6
Jesus then went on to describe the negative and angry responses that people who embrace compassion, justice, and inclusion get from those who are invested in the power structures of their society. Anyone who challenges systems of dominance and wealth-accumulation that benefit the few at the expense of the many will always, like Zohran Mamdani, be seen as a threat to the status quo and be dismissed as foolish, misguided, or evil. And so, Jesus called his followers to focus on how they were to live, especially in times when the empires of the world collide and our commitment to love and justice is interpreted as a threat.
TROUBLE IS NOT A BYPRODUCT OF THE SYSTEM. IT IS A FEATURE
As in Luke 17:20-37, Jesus shifted into an apocalyptic mode of speaking, drawing on the rich heritage of the prophets, as he answered the question of when the destruction of the temple would happen. This means that, while his words almost certainly related to the sacking of Jerusalem, the language is metaphoric and symbolic and has prophetic value not just for then, but for all times.7 Luke’s readers would already have experienced these catastrophic events, and, as Kendra Mohn notes, “the text is not meant to be predictive as much as meaning-making, for those who experienced it and for those who come after”.8
Jesus began by alerting his audience to the different ways they would experience suffering in the world. Deceptive leaders, claiming to be saviours or new manifestations of Christ, would come and seek to win over as many people as possible. Wars and rebellions would break out, people would fight over their differences, and the earth would be scarred, with natural disasters having increasing impact, and food shortages and epidemics causing great suffering. While it is tempting to read these prophecies literally as signs of the final judgment, what Jesus described has been a normal part of human history for millennia. In apocalyptic literature, whenever God’s reign comes into conflict with the power and principalities of human societies, it is described using these kinds of dramatic, chaotic, and cosmic images.9
When we read Jesus’ words as describing a unique End Times scenario, we lose what Luke was trying to say. Luke’s readers knew from experience what Jesus was describing,10 but so does every generation since—including ours. Luke was not speaking about a unique event that would be an anomaly in human history. He was asking his readers to recognise the truth of what Jesus said to his disciples: that trouble, suffering, and conflict are not byproducts of our human systems of power. They are features of the way our societies are built and governed. When we go through times of great grief, violence, polarisation, and injustice, we tend to think that something has gone wrong and that things will go back to normal soon. But we have the world we have because we live the way we live—and these things are an inherent part of our world. They always have been. And so, rather than circle the wagons and wait for the storm to pass, Jesus calls us to learn how to live compassionately, courageously, and creatively in the midst of the turmoil.
