“Friend, go up higher.”
In the ninth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Luke tells us that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem”, but it won’t be for another ten chapters that he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. What happens between his intention to go up to Jerusalem and his getting there? And it is a “going up” to Jerusalem, as Jesus makes clear in the 18th chapter in a passage which is familiar to you from Quinquagesima Sunday on the cusp of Lent. The words from the parable which Jesus tells in this halfway point of his journey echoes both passages; “Friend, go up higher.”
The ‘going up’ is equally a ‘going down’. “Friend, go up higher” can only happen if you have first taken the lower seat. The parable is a check upon human presumption and self-promotion, on the one hand, and a testament to the divine intent and purpose for our humanity, on the other hand. This is captured in the concluding words which equally point us to the radical meaning of Christ’s Passion for us: “whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
What happens in between prepares us for the meaning of Jerusalem in terms of Christ’s Passion. It does so through a series of critical teachings by Jesus as he makes his way through the villages and towns and rural landscape of Israel. It is preparation by way of instruction to the disciples and us that entails at times a trenchant criticism of our humanity in general and of Israel in particular. And it is very much about the nature of our pilgrimage in terms of two seemingly opposed but complementary motions, ‘going up’ and ‘going down’.
The readings and Collect for today remind me of a wonderful aphorism that has come down to us (pardon the pun) in a fragment from the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. “The way up and the way down are one and the same”. The movement of our souls to its principle, God, is the same in some sense as our movement from that principle, God, in the living out of our lives with God. Our going to or up and our going from or down is really about our being with God. The Collect prays that God’s grace “may always prevent” – meaning going or coming before us – “and follow us” – come after us in the activities of our lives which, by definition, are seen in terms of our being with God.
The Epistle reading from Ephesians exhorts us to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called” and to do so “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love”, not in pride and self-promotion which seeks to get ahead of others. Humility is seen as the condition of our vocation, our calling, and thus to our being awakened to a profound spiritual truth about our faith: God “is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
This brings us to the Gospel. Jesus goes “into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day”. The whole scene turns on the question of the Sabbath and this, in turn, illuminates the meaning of the parable. As Luke so economically puts it, “they watched him.” He is under critical scrutiny by the Pharisees about the law with respect to the observance of the Sabbath.
“Behold,” Luke tells us, “there was a certain man before him who had the dropsy.” It is the only time where this particular illness, extreme swelling of the limbs and body, is mentioned in the New Testament. What will Jesus do? The long, slow journey to Jerusalem has been marked by the teachings of Jesus, particularly against the Pharisees, but also by miracles of healing. They come together in this scene. Jesus addresses directly the presumptions of the Pharisees about the Sabbath. He asks them: “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?”
The question and what follows recalls us to the story of Creation in Genesis 1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is the opening statement. What follows is the unfolding in time, we might say, of what belongs to simultaneity of creation itself. There is no before and after with God. The opening statement is comprehensive and inclusive of all creation, both the formless and the formed. There is no pre-existent matter. The chapter confronts us with the limitations of human thought and language. The litany of creation unfolds in time what is eternally one in God. The account in Genesis 1 which begins with this magisterial statement about the whole of reality ends with the Sabbath rest of God, yet not as another created ‘thing’, but as capturing the meaning of the whole of creation in relation to God and, ultimately, to us as made in God’s image. It is at the end of the sixth day, after all, that “God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good”. What then is the Sabbath? It is God’s ‘resting’ from the work of creation. What does that mean? Another kind of activity than doing. It is the activity of contemplation; in short, God’s taking delight in that which he had made.
This powerful idea carries over into the various laws and customs about observing the Sabbath which are about honouring God and creation. But often as not we misconstrue its radical meaning. Jesus corrects our misunderstandings of the Sabbath which turn it into something onerous and which negate how the Sabbath belongs to the goodness and wholeness of our humanity. As Jesus puts it elsewhere. “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk. 2.27).
The Pharisees do not respond to Jesus’ question; they “held their peace”. They have no answer. Jesus then immediately heals the man and points out to them that they themselves would undertake to save or take care of their ox or ass on the Sabbath without question. How much more so, then, should we take care of those in need. He is at once instructing us and correcting us about the meaning of the Sabbath. Our rest in God is about our end or good as found in God in his rest and delight in creation. As Luke simply says, “they could not answer him again to these things.”
This in turn brings us to the parable which is a critique of human presumption and the pride of ambition, of putting ourselves before one another in a pretence of superiority. In contemporary terms it is a bit like those who confess their privilege in order to protect their privilege while judging others. Looking back to Genesis 1, this means negating the idea that we are all made in the image of God before whom we are radically equal. Thus the parable is a critique of human pride which denies who we are in the sight and purpose of God. “Friend, go up higher” is about our vocation to love and serve God; our end is in God. “The way up and the way down are one and the same” because they are both about our primary relation to God. Our pilgrimage is all about a kind of circling around and into the mystery of God, about the forms of our being with God in his will and purpose for our humanity.
One cannot help but recall Augustine’s words at the very beginning of the Confessions: “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee”. These words complement the very end of the Confessions in his profound reflection on Genesis 1. God shall rest in us in whose eternal goodness we find our rest and good. “Friend, go up higher” is our hope and calling but only through the humbleness of looking to the goodness of God’s will and purpose for our humanity.
“Friend, go up higher”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 17, 2024