Don't prepare your testimony

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/112316.cfm

Revelation 15:1-4
Luke 21:12-19

Today’s reading from Luke, Chapter 21, verses 12-19, covers quite a few theological topics in 120 words. Persecution, testimony, end times, wisdom, hair, kings, and defense, just to name a few.  

Most often, when faced with these verses, homilists and preachers tend to focus on the topic of persecution. They paint a picture of antagonism felt by Christians in the face of non-believers gone apoplectic. The antagonists are furious, apparently, over the very idea of Jesus, the Christ. These angry folks are rattled into craziness by Satan. They aim their vitriol at innocent Christians. We, the fervent believers, hope we can be courageous in the face of acutely imagined torture and pain. We will be seized and persecuted, say the scriptures. Our friends, relatives, siblings, and even parents will be so angered by our devotion that they can justify having us killed.

Many homilists and preachers love to rant about this stuff. They have lots of evidentiary support for the likelihood of Christian persecution, too.

The lead paragraph by Jesus (verse 12) makes for captivating, attention-grabbing grist for the teaching mill of God’s authorities. The one who sets up this story line for preachers is Jesus himself. An upcoming, inevitable world on fire which peaks with Christians beaten into submission portends an important alert. Jesus warns what his followers will experience right before his return, an exit speech given right before Pentecost that has turned out to be a very long absence. An awful fate awaits us. Destruction, wars between nations and kingdoms, famines and pestilence, and then fabulous displays in the sky that signal Jesus’ coming. Still, he urges them, and therefore us, to not follow false redeemers. Instead, we must “persevere.” Jesus’ watchword for the last twenty centuries of Christians can be translated into, “Hang in there.”

This lead in by Jesus, begun with “Before all this happens,” has made for great and powerful orations. Audiences have shivered. Movies have been made. Books fill the shelves and overpopulate eBooks. Jesus knew what he was doing, because the character of persevering in the face of tyranny and persecution might well be the major underlying personality trait of every great novel.

That’s perhaps the number one focus of what folks often say about this reading.

The second most popular notion of “The Coming Persecution,” as the New American Bible describes this section of Luke, might be the explanation that being hated and killed somehow will still result in the preservation of our hair. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. This curious analogy has brought up discourses on DNA, debates on the growth properties of hair in coffins, and phrase studies on the very same hair analogy in Samuel, Matthew and Acts.

Hair is not as moving as perseverance, but it is almost assuredly the second most talked about subject of Luke 21:12-19.

No research has been done by me to provide data that backs up my ordering of the above subject matter of sermons held over the past two eons. I have taken great license to highlight the history of what I think stands out in Christianity’s greatest minds in this reading — perseverance in the face of persecution, and the curious preservation of the hair of believers. 

Some of you will notice that I cleverly assigned the words “perhaps” and “often” and “might” and “almost assuredly” in my calculations above. I am protected by the careful qualification of “maybe.” I have qualified my emphasis without even using a footnote. In this way I did not have to hire pollsters and produce a trending analysis, drum up out of work theologians to prove a thesis, or do any actual research. I just pondered the subject matter, and made stuff up.

I did this on purpose. In fact, I have a terrific get-out-of-liar/liar jail card. My blatant over reach above is actually an acceptable bait and switch. I fell upon the most gracious gift to a writer ever spoken in scripture. “Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand.” Aha!

That, folks, calculates as the third most popular subject matter that “assuredly maybe might most often” pop out of the commentary on Luke 21:12-19. Legalists and professors, along with armies of authorities (meaning parents and coaches) in charge of just about everything going on in the world often and mightily disagree with anybody being unprepared. And yet, Jesus tells us that not preparing our defense puts us in the rarified air of the kingdom. 

People of responsibility cringe and pull out their hair at the advice by Jesus that something as important as our personal defense in the face of unanswered accusations (that will result in our deaths, by the way) should be defended with a tabla rasa. A blank slate. We are to dismiss the use of paid solicitors, captured audio and video, and hundreds of clever things we’ve learned on all those CSI television programs. We are to bring no defense, in other words, to the testimony at our trial.

Teachers never advise their students to take a test unprepared. Soldiers would never be sent to war with the battle cry, “We are unprepared!” Boxers don’t enter the ring unprepared. Debaters don’t telegraph their answers by saying they proudly have come unprepared. Well, not until recently.

And that, I believe, is Jesus’ point. The testimony at our trial should come as easily as giving directions to our house. We know where our house is. We’ve traveled almost every which way to get there. We are familiar enough to tell anyone how to get there.

Perseverance is the proper character element to bring to any trial where friends, relatives, siblings and parents attack us for being Christians. Jesus says why.

“For I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”  Luke 21:15

Here’s the thing. What Jesus says for us to do is counter intuitive. Everything we Christians have in common is preparation, especially us Catholic Christians. We memorize prayers, try to be on time, save up, give up, and grow up according to sacramental timelines. Finally, we bury each other with particular attention to highly prepared steps of handling our grief and letting people go. Preparation marks our demeanor. “Be ready,” we often quote from scripture.

In the face of extreme persecution, even the most fully prepared words we say ranges from witty banter to blubbered pleading. Listening for words from Jesus rarely leads our thought process. I’m just imagining, since I don’t have personal extreme persecution experiences to fall back on. I belong to the snidely persecuted crowd. At best, those who despise the Christianity which I wear on my sleeve ignore me. At worst, they pepper me with science-based rants they got from Christopher Hitchens and Bill Nye the Science guy, or comedians like Bill Maher. I usually have to go look up what they’ve insulted me with and spend all kinds of time researching stuff.

Some commentators have hinted that Jesus is only talking about extreme persecutions, where preparations won’t help very much. I’ve actually heard the analogy of Jesus call for being unprepared to the training children in the 1950’s to prepare for nuclear annihilation by hiding under a school desk. Basically, this line of preaching suggests that persecution and death are inevitable, and we should persevere to keep everyone else calm. It is kind of like holding hands and praying as the plane flies into a mountainside. In a blink we’re standing at the Pearly Gates.

I believe this is actually good advice, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus’ is referring to in Luke.

The emphasis blatantly noted by Jesus says that he will come to our defense. Somehow, that has become hidden in our understanding of the coming persecution. First of all, just like all sin leads to death, all forms of persecution will also lead to our demise. Our eventual death may simply be hurried up. Our physical and mental health will be slowly chiseled away, and our blood will be ultimately and fatally spilled with a thousand tiny cuts.

That’s not the point Jesus is making. That’s the backdrop for what he is telling us. “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking,” he says. This key phrase sits at the apex of this story. Both persecution and perseverance are cradled by Jesus himself.

In all moments of persecution Jesus attends to our defense. He places his wisdom in the cortex of our brain, that left frontal lobe, where language resides. The distance between the cortex and our lips, motored by the functional action of sending air from our lungs through our vocal cords, is anywhere from eight inches to a foot, depending upon the length of our neck. Throw in caffeinated drugs, our practiced responses to triggered statements from angry people, and the internal stress factors of fright, then we get a moment or two to prepare what we are going to say; or, we simply say what we’ve already prepared to say over a lifetime of bickering and debate.

Jesus says to ignore that tendency to speak out until he shows up and imparts his wisdom. 

Interestingly, we don’t usually talk about Jesus doing such things to us with regularity. We imagine that Jesus is like Superman who first has to get a ping in his radar ears that we’re in trouble, change into his cape, fly to see us, assess the circumstances of our plight, and then print out a script for us to read that properly rebukes our accusers. By that time we’ve already shouted, “Oh yeah?” An opportunity has passed.

In truth, the Holy Spirit resides in more than just the speech portion of our cortex. Our veins run with the Spirit. Our sinews stretch with God’s knowledge of what we are doing. The body and blood of the Eucharist has been feeding our being from the first time we took bread and wine into our mouth. So, the time between an insult and our response makes no difference if we’re already infused with the presence of God who loves us and wants us to acknowledge him at every moment of our existence.

Set aside the antagonists and their antagonism. Set aside the drama of the impending end times. Set aside the tendency to prepare for battle by conjuring up witty aphorisms and convincing pleas. 

We simply need to rest in the love and presence of Jesus, prepared by a moment by moment practice of a relationship that places us in his kingdom right now, and right here. We will know which words are his, because we are used to hearing him. When the opportunity of public persecution takes place, we will have already spoken words he has given us from the first moments of recognizing his presence. We will know his voice. We will already know what he means by “not a hair on your head will be destroyed.”

We can’t prepare for testimony anymore than we can prepare to give directions to a place where we’ve never been. If we live with the Spirit in us, pointing out the brilliance and love of Jesus our friend, and live under the mantle of the Father’s great authority, then the testimony that Jesus wants us to impart will grow within us. Then, and only then, will we give testimony as easily as we give directions to our house.