The Long Day of Life

Jesus says that he has looked forward to sharing the Last Supper with his disciples.  Jesus tells Judas to bring about the betrayal quickly.  However, it seems scarcely that Jesus has earnestly desired these appendages of his hideous torment--neither does it seem that Jesus, who acerbically discounts his disciples' predictions of their own steadfastness, is rushing forward out of fear of losing his own nerve.  Jesus acts as though he is simply concerned about running out of time.

Jesus knew how to say no to people.  Jesus knew how to tell his mother where to live, and with whom.  And yet, when approached by his mother about the dwindling wine at Cana, he allows her to involve him--after he offers the insubstantial protest that his time had not yet come (and he might have eased the family's embarrassment by some hidden means.)  It does not take much for Jesus to allow himself to be rushed along.

And then there is the Jesus who seemingly lies to his brethren about presenting himself at a festival--and then seems incapable of staying away.  As I have written regarding the multiple temple-cleansings, there is cause to wonder if the smoothings-out of Jesus' story in the Gospels conceal a Jesus who made a habit of throwing himself against the expected lethal wrath of the authorities.  Why?

Perhaps Jesus was telling the truth when he declared that his incarnate self did not know the time of the End.  Jesus, it seems, was aware of the nature of God, but was struggling simultaneously with a human entanglement with time and place.  There is the curious, almost embarrassing episode in which--in a moment of great solemnity--Jesus calls upon God to glorify himself, and God responds that he has already done that, and will do so again.

The crux of the matter is the fact that time and space mean nothing in the substantive teachings of Jesus, even as his incarnate form struggled to translate that reality into human understanding.  The fields are always white with harvest--the notion of rhythms, of hesitations in God's ever-present benevolence, is a conceit of humans, not of God.  So also with judgment--the tolling of the End is witnessed by Jesus' generation because there only one generation of humanity.

And all of this has great implications for the denominations' versions of salvation economy.  Jesus asks his disciples if they can share his "cup" and his "baptism," and they are not promised a "cup" that might be less than a life's trials.  So also might we expect that "baptism" will be a life-long process.  The New Testament prates that Today must be seized upon as the day of salvation--with the implicit promise of a remainder of earthly days under some cloud of assurance.

The Gospels themselves, however, demand a life-long steward's vigilance under pain of unmitigated judgment--all through the long day of life, whether light or dark.