Perhaps we should give up heaven for Lent.
Like a cleansing diet, it might be a good thing for us to lay aside our notions of an esoteric, heavenly faith. At least long enough to re-root in history, where YHWH’s redemption locates itself and—in its way—turns the world upside down.
Luke the evangelist could hardly initiate us into the story of Jesus’ adult life and work in a more rooted, historically anchored way than the manner he has chosen.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Luke 3:1–3 ESV)
We get Roman history. We get Jewish history. We get geography. We get John.
The gospel’s narrative names names, dates facts, anchors events in contested soil.
Into this mix, the venerably prophetic ‘word of the Lord’ arrives like a thunder clap.
We get the professions, too: real-world jobs, remunerated, food-on-the-table, sometimes graft-ridden occupations of real human beings with dust on their feet and sweat in their armpits. Before the scandalously biting rhetoric of this John, this desert prophet, recognizably employed people whose hearts have been bludgeoned tender by John’s impolitic truths, ask ‘What about us? What should we do?’
And the crowds asked him, ‘What then shall we do?’ And he answered them, ‘Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.’ Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than you are authorized to do.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.’
As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ. (Luke 3:10–15 ESV)
It takes a lot of unpacking and unwinding of long theological habit to work our way back from common Christian notions of ‘heaven’ to the biblical texts that stand at the origin of our journey. It takes a lifetime of unwinding, for some of us.
Yet a modest beginning might consist of refocussing on this world as the normal and customary place where redemptive stories worth their trouble begin, take root, flourish.
And name names.
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