What Spirit do you have?

Intro

Greetings, dear spectactors. My name is João Relić Macedo, I am a theologian, originally from Portugal. Over the next three evenings, I will be your host as we continue our series Isusov život. This weekend, we will be studying one short but quite important text from the Gospel of Luke. Now, before we start, I must say that this is not one of the most famous stories about Jesus. Actually, I don’t think I even remember hearing a sermon about it . So, it might be quite foreign for you as well. But still, it plays an important part in the context of the entire Gospel of Luke. We can find this story in the Luke, chapter 9 (nine), from verse fifty-one (51) to verse fifty-six (56). And today, I would like to invite you to read just one verse with me: verse fifty-one (51). I will be reading my own translation from Greek to Croatian, which will probably be slightly different from whatever version you have at home. But the story is, more or less, the same. The text says the following:

51 And it happened, when the days for his ascension were fulfilled, that he set his face to travel to Jerusalem.

Body

It is a work morning, just like many other work mornings over the last seven (7) years. A certain designer at the company — named Burt G. — is about to be shown a short farewell video. After all, this is his last day working at the company before his retirement. Burt is clearly divided between the emotion of leaving his coworkers for good and the joy of never again having to come to work day in and day out.

His coworkers gather around a small TV screen where their manager is about to show the retirement video. Everyone is in good spirits, celebrating all the good work that Burt has done in the company. But this video does not contain the type of things that we are used to see in videos of this kind. There is no highlight of the best moments of Burt at the company. There is no recorded testimonies from his coworkers and managers wishing him all the best in his retirement. There is no photo slideshow of shared moments between coworkers in company retreats, picnics and lunches. There is simply a video message from Burt to Burt.

You see, the issue is that Burt G. is a worker at Lumon Industries, a fictional company in the successful TV series Severance. Like all of his coworkers who are also part of this fictional world, Burt G. has been submitted to an experimental brain surgery. A surgery that, in effect, creates a complete separation between Burt’s memories of his personal life and his work life. Burt G. the worker has no idea about what Burt G. the person does in his after-work hours. And Burt G., the person, has no idea what Burt G. the worker does during his work hours. They are the same person, but with completely separate memories.

So, that retirement video is simply a message from Burt the person outside of work congratulating Burt the person inside of work and saying goodbye to all the coworkers of 7 years that, in a way, he never met. And at some point, he says something that I find really interesting. He says the following: “I am certain that you will remain with me in spirit, in some deep and yet completely unaccessible corner of my mind.” In other words, even though I might not known or be able to recognise that we are coworkers, I’m sure that, somehow, you will stay with me in spirit.

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I have to say that, as I studied the text from Luke, chapter nine (9), verses fifty-one (51) to fifty-six (56) in preparation for this sermon, I also wondered if, in some capacity, what we are dealing with here is not similar to the situation between the two Burts in Severance. And the reason why I say this is because this passage marks the separation between two different phases of Jesus’s ministry. Almost as if the Jesus we will find from now onwards will be different from the Jesus we have found so far. Let me explain.

From a literary point of view, the Gospel of Luke is divided in four (4) major sections. The first (1st) section is an introductory one, and the fourth (4th) and last section focuses on Jesus’s activities in Jerusalem, around the time of his death. The two sections in between are the sections of Luke that mostly deal with Jesus’s public ministry on this Earth. The first of these two sections, which starts in chapter four (4), deals with Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. And the second, which starts in the passage we are studying this weekend, deals with Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem.

So, even though, as I said at the beginning, this passage of Luke might not be one of the most famous stories of Jesus, it plays a significant role in the context of the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Luke. This marks a new starting point. So far, we have seen a Jesus that is mainly preoccupied with preaching the good news to those in need. That has been the main focus of Jesus from the beginning of his public ministry. But, from this point onwards, the main focus will be on getting to Jerusalem. And yes, of course, on the way there, Jesus will still do the same kind of things he has done so far. You could say that the spirit of Jesus’s actions before and after this point will still be the same. But, just like Burt G. after he submitted himself to that surgery, there will now be a second Jesus. A Jesus that is much more focused on fulfilling his life purpose of dying on the cross for our sins and resurrecting on the third day than he has been so far.

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Now, this being the case, I must highlight just a couple of aspects before we proceed. The first is the fact that, although other evangelists also include Jesus’s departure from Galilee in their Gospels, Luke is the only one that mentions Jesus’s final destination: Jerusalem. And this is significant not because it provides us with a precise geographical location. It is significant because of what that geographical location means. In the Gospel of Luke, Jerusalem is repeatedly portrayed as a city that is not kind to prophets. It is only in Luke, for example, that we find (a couple of times), Jesus’s famous lament on the city… Luke, chapter thirteen (13), verse thirty-four: “Jeruzaleme, Jeruzaleme, ti koji ubijaš proroke i kamenuješ one koje ti šalje Bog! Koliko sam čeznuo da tvoju djecu okupim kao što kvočka okuplja pod krila svoje piliće! Ali vi to niste htjeli.” In other words: by giving this dangerous city as the final destination of Jesus’s journey away from Galilee, what Luke is doing is basically saying: Jesus knew that the city of Jerusalem was dangerous for people like him. And still, he decided to take that journey.

And this brings me to the second aspect I want to highlight here: the significance of a certain expression that appears here in the original text. You might not find it in most modern translations, because translators are trying to convey its meaning to modern audiences instead of doing a literal translation that would be difficult to understand. In the Suvremeni hrvatski prijevod, for example, it is translated by “Isus se odlučio uputiti u Jeruzalem.” But in

Conclusion