TWEAKING the word order of the primary verse of this Gospel could help to spotlight its reassurance: “It seemed good to your Father to present you the Kingdom, which is why, little flock, it is best to not be afraid.” Tackling the word “little”, though, is indispensable: is it literal (“modest in size/number”)? Or does it suggest affection, like a diminutive (“my dear flock”)?
If it was merely a press release of magnitude — “small in size” — we’d picture a cluster of true believers holding out for vindication when the Kingdom involves them, but to nobody else. That attitude isn’t unknown. Most of us know individuals who imagine in Jesus, yet speak of their fellow-Christians with suspicion, or contempt: “He’s only a Sunday Christian!” “She’s a cafeteria Catholic.”
Despite this, there are many the faithful who instinctively read Luke 12.32 as an indication of affection. That feels truer to Jesus’s compassionate heart. In his eyes, we’re all “little”: vulnerable and dependent (“like sheep with out a shepherd”, Matthew 9.36).
When we wrestle with surface meanings and deeper messages in scripture, it often transpires that words don’t mean what we once assumed they did. In this instance, I should probably drag my attention away from Jesus’s affectionate reassurance (“Do not be afraid, little flock”) and consider as a substitute the half of the verse that I’m less moved by: “it seemed good . . . to present you the Kingdom”.
Those two elements are causally connected (“for”). One objective, then, may very well be to reflect on the linkage between the factual statements: “Do not be afraid,” and “It seemed good to present you the Kingdom.” Once we’ve worked out what the little flock is afraid of, it would equip us higher for understanding the Kingdom that the Father has given to us.
We should still prefer to listen to Jesus reassuring us, as he does here. Every child, of each f/Father, prefers such comfort to the rebukes or judgements that must also come our way, whether as children or as disciples. I used to be surprised to seek out that this way of reassurance (“Do not be afraid”) from Jesus isn’t spread evenly throughout the 4 Gospels. There are two examples in Mark (5.36; 6.50); John has one (6.20); and Matthew records 4 (10.28; 14.27; 17.7; 28.10). In Luke, there are five occasions when Jesus tells an individual — or people — to not be afraid, and three of them are in chapter 12 (5.10; 8.50; 12.4, 7, 32). Luke even shows how Jesus’s solicitude for his “little flock” transcends human existence; for the Lord spoke from beyond his resurrection to inform Paul to not be afraid (Acts 18.9).
Each Evangelist selected from a body of fabric what he crafted into his own Gospel. They didn’t all have access to the identical records and remembrances, and we’ve few clues to the materials that they discarded. Still, it’s interesting that Matthew and Luke — who each record a bit of Jesus’s ethical teaching in sermon form (the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain) — highlight the Lord’s teaching on the importance of not being afraid. They can have preserved this aspect of Jesus’s ministry since it was of their sources, or due to their very own faith-experience.
It is as if Matthew and Luke have seen into our hearts, foreseeing how our lives could be consistently riven by uncertainty inside (“Do I matter?”) and without (“What should I do?”)? But, in fact, it’s Jesus, not the 2 Evangelists, who recognises the corrosive effect of chronic anxiety: the way in which by which it chokes off joy, making us so afraid for the long run that we’re incapable of having fun with the current.
Not all fear is unreasonable. There isn’t any point telling someone “Do not be afraid” in the event that they are about to enter a war zone or have just received a terrible medical diagnosis. But many of the fears that beset us are by-products of our hamster-wheel minds, unable to show the “What if?” switch to “off”. In this Gospel, we all know what the little flock will need to have been afraid of, due to what Jesus offers them as reassurance: our Father will give us the Kingdom.
I still haven’t tackled that “Kingdom” that God has given us. But, if we must wait until Advent to find what that Kingdom is, we will bear to accomplish that precisely due to the encouragement that Jesus has given us: “Do not be afraid.”
