Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

Miguel de Unamuno 2

Luke 13

Marsh Chapel

March 16, 2025

Robert Allan Hill

First, Luke

         Our lesson today, Luke 13:31ff., exudes as poignant, as heartfelt, as realistic, and as personal an outlook as one can find anywhere in the Gospels, in its soprano voice of the lingering teaching of Jesus, or in its alto voice of the earliest church’s memory, or in its tenor voice of the gospel author, or in its baritone rendering in tradition.

The highest note is Jesus’ own. The first line, the melody, is a kind of dominical soprano voice, laden with maternal imagery today. ‘Like a hen gathers, would I have gathered you?’ All these lines (31-33) are found only in Luke, and clearly go back to Jesus himself. The nature imagery, the kindliness of the Pharisees, the use of the term ‘fox’( from a country preacher’s lexicon), the gritty undercurrent of fear, the poetry of three days: mirable dictum!, we hear today what Jesus said. His voice, vss. 31-33, carries across two millennia. Go tell that fox…As a hen gathers her chicks…today, tomorrow, the third day… Here is Jesus of Nazareth, in 33ad, facing the tragic sense of life.

         (There also is his frightened, hopeful church, in 70 ad, facing the tragic sense of life. There is Luke, in 90ad, facing the tragic sense of life. And here we are, gathered as partners in the Gospel. Thoreau wrote: “If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ–the history of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills—think of it…”)

         Listen particularly, just for moment, to the voice of the writer, Luke, the third or tenor line, if you will, in this harmonic composition. Luke makes two novel moves, which differ from the interpretation offered by Matthew, with whom Luke shares a use of a portion of this text. Both moves impress us today.

First, Luke uses two powerful, forceful verbs to show the sweep of Jesus’ divine embrace, the gathering motion of the mother hen, the announcement of partnership, divine and human (thelo and sunago). I would have done…I would have done…I longed, desired, deeply wished…to gather, to embrace, to join together, to partner…There is a deeply moving aspect to this emphasis, as Luke has Jesus open the next several chapters of the Gospel of Luke, which include all the favorite and solely Lukan materials. We have the Good Samaritan, thanks to Luke. And the lost sheep and coin, thanks to him. We have the prodigal son, that most Gnostic of parables, thanks to Luke. And the dishonest steward, thanks to him. Luke is probing the partnership of the Gospel, and he begins his own emphasis right here. What we think about God determines how we live. Luke illumines that partnership.

Second, Luke stands Matthew’s interpretation of expectation on its head. For Matthew, the prediction of the coming of the Son of Man was an end of the world prediction. Not for Luke. Matthew looks up, Luke looks out. Luke sees the world a little more as we do, with miles to go before we sleep, with generations to go before we sleep. We have work to do. Here. Now. In partnership. Together. In real unity, not just in passing togetherness. Where Matthew heralds parousia, Luke heralds incarnation, and the coming entry, triumphal entry, into Jerusalem. Here Luke foreshadows what is to come. For him, as George Buttrick wrote, “Jesus was killed by the insurrectionists in the mob and by the reactionaries in the temple” (a good warning about the far left as well as the right). We can learn in our time from this text, and offer a form for its theological explanation.

Second, Unamuno

“Franco’s army is waging a campaign against liberalism”…Unamuno…As is Trump…Marsh is a liberal pulpit, one of the last…”A brand of Catholicism that is not Christian…And a paranoid militarism bred in the colonial campaigns”…

As a member of that group of Spanish authors known as the Generation of ’98, Unamuno was directed by the literary currents of the time also stirred by Baroja, Azorin, Valle-Inclan, Antonio Machado and others. As a Basque, a former student of the Institution Libre de Ensenanza and an anti-clericalist, Unamuno had much in common with these and other authors.  But his best-known works, unlike those of the others, did not directly treat the socio-political situation in Spain.  Rather, he reserved most political comment for his daily columns in South American papers.  While his life was anything but a-political, his writing concerns individual man, and only occasionally social man.  As the owl sees through the darkness while it tracks its prey, so did Unamuno pierce the outer tension of early twentieth century Spain to arrive at what was for him the center, beginning, base and constant reference point of life, the drive toward immortality.

The biggest compliment, thought Unamuno, that a philosopher could hope to receive is that his philosophy is clouded by poetic tendencies.  It is not surprising therefore that the argument found in Del Sentimiento Trajico de la Vida for the immortality of the soul contains very little argument at all. The reader awaiting proof which eluded Plato, Aquinas, Descartes and Kant will find nothing to cheer him here.  Unamuno attempts to touch the psychological root of the work of the aforementioned by claiming that whatever the correctness or worth of the position, the human need of immortality is undeniable.  This ‘nuestro inhelo’, our desire,is the starting point for philosophy and religion, a manifestation of the need Kant had described of finality, and termination of the series. Th need for finality and man’s absolute refusal and inability to accept his own death are both symptoms of his yearning for immortality.  ‘Creo en el immortal origen de este anhelod de la inmortalidad, que es las sustancia misma de mi alma.’

Distinction, individuality, fame, and separation from the mass lure every thinker to the defense of his own work.  This search for singularity Unamuno finds as the universal trait present in all creation, and he may have spent so much energy and space to include thoughts of others in his major work precisely to prove this.  Each author Unamuno cites, in a certain sense, lives on as a part of the Spaniard’s opus; each one wrote to make his own Byronic etching in the sculpture of world history.  Unamuno’s contribution centers on this almost physical craving of eternal life…

Is this not the passion Kierkegaard described in which the Christian must hold together his infinite inwardness with his finite existence.  Indeed the tension that fills every Unamunian protagonist flows out of the author’s insistence here.  Unamuno’s egoistic acclamation of his own eternity explodes in the mind of the reader.  And contemplating the possibility of immortality as it is here energetically posited raises the reader’s thought to a peak from which he can inspect, under Don Miguel’s guidance, the various steps along life’s way.  The key, as in our gospel today, is in the elevation.

Ethical behavior, the Christian love of the neighbor, arises for Unamuno from a deep love of self.   I love my neighbor because I love myself and because I incorporate my neighbor into my being.  He becomes a part of myself, a part of something, someone lovable, and so is lovable himself.  Likewise, I love my children because they are physically me.  For Unamuno, only unflinching self-love can lead to a love of neighbor, and, for him, Catholic dogma best teaches the mechanics of this love relationship.  Hear him summing up, through this perhaps imperfect translation:

Truth, good and beauty are creatures of the inward development of the artist, of each man as his own favorite artist.  As I have said often enough before, a man is ‘tanto mas hombre quanto mas unitario sea’, that is, the growth of a unified personality occasions the production of these aesthetic ideals.  The Socratic ‘know thyself’ and the biblical ‘for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul’ both point up the primary importance of inwardness.  And in the end, it is only in these terms that a man can define the true and the good and the beautiful.  The objective ‘niebla’, mist, in which we exist not only prohibits an empirical search for these ideals, but straightaway  directs us back upon ourselves for the discovery of this treasure. Because these truths are subjective, their communication is often indirect, incomplete and unsatisfying. But a telling feature in any artist’s attempt to communicate his truths is the degree of tension exhibited in his work.

Third, Life

Beware. There lurks in America an abiding appetite for chaos, cruelty, and mayhem, provided they befall others rather than ourselves.  Republicans in Trump have consciously chosen to gain from this, to make political hay from others’ hurt. The ‘bully pulpit’ has fulfilled its name, and now become the torture pulpit.

Sometimes, as Karl Jaspers taught us, and noted it with surprise and joy, the third dimension of life, its transcendence, may be opened to us, strangely,  in liminal moments: change, loss, death, birth, relocation, illness, healing. Let us remember Jaspers this Lent.

         Sometimes, as John Wesley taught us, the third dimension of life, its transcendence, may be provided for us by means of grace: a regular mealtime prayer (do you know one?), a memorized set of verses (do you have them?), a favorite hymn or two (do you hum one?), a pattern of worship (do you claim one?), a church family to love and a church home to enjoy (do you attend one?). Personal goals, life’s length, do not come without effort. Communal changes, life’s breadth, do not come from wishes. Why should we think that transcendence will come our way without attentive effort? Let us remember Wesley this Lent.

                  Sometimes, as Ralph Harper taught us some years ago, we need the height

         of presence: “When I am moved by a painting or by music, by clouds

         passing in a clear night sky, by the soughing of pines in the early spring, I

         feel the distance between me and art and nature dissolve to some degree,

         and I feel at ease. I feel that what I know makes me more myself than I

         knew before. This is how the saints felt about God, and I see in my own

         experience elements that I share with the saints and prophets, the

         philosophers and priests.” (On Presence, 6) Let us remember Harper this Lent.

                  At this very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him,’Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.  And he said to them, ‘Go tell that fox, ‘Behold I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the following day; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem’