Luke 17 :: Vultures

Luke 17

“Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.”

-Jesus in verse 37

Reading this, and writing this, I have the same feelings I had when I watched The Passion of the Christ.  It was almost unbearable but I had to watch because in my soul I knew it was true.  Verse 37 is like that.  His followers are trying to find the Kingdom of God, which seems like a beautiful thing, and he tells them that his dead corpse will mark the spot where the Kingdom begins.

If Jesus is the dead body, who are the vultures?  The chief priests and the Jewish council, who already want Jesus dead?  Or perhaps Pilate and the Roman authorities, who will preside over his execution?  I think those answers are too easy.  We are all the vultures.  This analogy that Jesus uses is the offensive, gruesome truth of Christianity.  The world will gather around his dead body and find life, spiritual scavengers all.

And Jesus is clear: we are scavengers, not predators.  We fancy ourselves eagles, but no: Jesus gave his life, it was not taken from him.  We don't come to Jesus to take what we need, but rather to receive what he freely gives.  Ours is a humble role, unglamorous, but there is life there.  Jesus would, of course, reinforce this idea at the last supper.

If you can take any more of this, read on.  One of my favorite American poets, Mary Oliver, captures this idea in her amazing poem, "Vultures."

Like large dark

lazy

butterflies they sweep over

the glades looking

for death,

to eat it,

to make it vanish,

to make of it the miracle:

resurrection.  No one

knows how many

they are who daily

minister so to the grassy

miles, no one

counts how many bodies

they discover

and descend to, demonstrating

each time the earth’s

appetite, the unending

waterfalls of change.

No one

moreover,

wants to ponder it,

how it will be

to feel the blood cool,

shapeliness dissolve.

Locked into

the blaze of our own bodies

we watch them

wheeling and drifting, we

honor them and we

loathe them,

however wise the doctrine,

however magnificent the cycles,

however ultimately sweet

the huddle of death to fuel

those powerful wings.