And They Call This GOOD News?

Luke 17:20-37
“Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:37). Of all the sayings of Jesus that we might quote on a day to day basis, this is certainly not one of them. I doubt that many kindergarten Sunday School classes have ever been taught this verse. It’s certainly not something we would tell our children as we tuck them in at night. Nor are we apt to use it at the bedside of a hospital patient. (How horribly inappropriate would that be?) So what is this verse doing here in Luke’s gospel, in the “good news” of Jesus Christ?

Actually this verse makes perfect sense. No, it is not appropriate for all times and places, but it is profound in its simplicity and directly on point. The disciples have asked Jesus where the people of God will gather when the end times come. Jesus ignores that question—it’s not really important for them to know that bit of information––and instead warns his followers to be about the work of God here and now, today, because when the time comes they will know it, but it will be too late to put their houses in order.

In his poem “Grass”, Carl Sandburg speaks of the human tendency to forget even the most horrific of events:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all….

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Jesus doesn’t want us to forget who we are or whose we are. Jesus doesn’t want us to forget what it is that we are supposed to be doing. Be aware, he says. Bear good fruit in your lives, be about God’s work lest you come to realize someday that the vultures are circling and it is too late. The where and the when are in God’s hands. In the mean time we have important work to do.

Prayer: Lord, help us to be about your work and to trust you and your care for us. In Jesus' name. Amen.