Do Not Prepare: Gospel Proclamation for Dummies

Luke 21:5-19, the gospel text for the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, includes a portion of Jesus’ lengthy description of the persecutions that await his followers before the end comes.

Amid this daunting list, Jesus tells his followers that they’ll have opportunity to testify before “kings and governors.” He follows this with a peculiar exhortation: “Make up your minds,” he tells them, “not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you a mouth and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict” (v. 13).

“Make up your minds,” Jesus says. That Jesus instructs his followers to be resolute should not surprise us. Given the variety of persecutions that await the disciples, there are perhaps many things they should “make up their minds” about. Suffering awaits, so they would do well to count the cost. What’s perhaps surprising, however, is that the cost does not include time spent dutifully preparing to testify articulately about Jesus.

What is it about this odd command not to prepare their defense in advance that would sustain the disciples when persecution began? To be sure, Jesus’ words to his disciples derive their staying power from Jesus’ authority, later confirmed by his resurrection from the dead.

Imagine the fearful disciples gathering after Jesus’ ascension, scrambling to piece together in their collective memory the words of the one they followed. What was it that he said about being called before authorities? “Do not prepare”? Are you sure? Sounds risky. Foolish, even.

Perhaps the disciples recalled the command because of the promise that accompanied it: Don’t prepare, Jesus had told them, because I will give you a mouth and a wisdom. Resolving not to prepare doesn’t mean that the disciples would be left speechless before their accusers; instead, their spoken defense would come from an altogether different source.

Perhaps what makes the promise memorable is that it echoes an earlier promise that God made to Moses.

In Exodus 4, when God instructs Moses to gather the elders and declare to them that God would bring Israel out of Egypt, Moses responds with an honest, if unflattering, self-assessment: “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (v. 10).

God’s response? “I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak” (v. 12). These words become the script that Jesus draws from when speaking to his disciples in Luke 21. They appear in the script the disciples consult as they prepare to bear witness to the risen and ascended savior.

Though absent in the flesh, Jesus is present to the disciples in the same way he is present to the travelers on the road to Emmaus: “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27).

In alluding to God’s promise to Moses, Jesus invites his followers not only to embed themselves within the exchange between God and Moses, but also within the ongoing story of God’s rescue and redemption of Israel. Jesus’ words evoke both struggle and deliverance. They call to mind human frailty alongside divine power. They become a source of comfort and strength for the otherwise overwhelmed, uneducated disciples.

In Luke 21, Jesus tells his disciples, “You will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.” His followers don’t have to wait long before these words came to pass. In Acts 7, Luke provides an example of how Stephen testifies in the face of persecution. Addressing his accusers, Stephen narrates significant moments in Israel’s history, including several details from Moses’ life. Interestingly, Stephen omits Moses’ self-assessment that he’s “slow of speech and slow of tongue.”

Leaving out Moses’ inadequacies as an orator, Stephen instead characterizes Moses as “powerful in his words and deeds” (v. 22).

We could forgive Stephen for forgetting about Moses’ slowness of speech. After all, Stephen, obedient to the end, presumably did not prepare his remarks in advance.

But “powerful in his words and deeds”? This characterization of Moses is a stretch at best. It seems Stephen mistakes Moses for God, as though the more Stephen testifies, the harder it becomes to distinguish between human inadequacy and divine power.

Stephen speaks words not his own about another for whom God also spoke. Indeed, it seems something beyond a mere failure of memory is happening here. Rather than bungling the details, Stephen engages in a holy act of “misremembering,” his every word a fulfillment of God’s promise to Moses and Jesus’ promise to his disciples: “I will give you a mouth and wisdom.”

As Stephen stands before his accusers, he testifies to God’s power in a way that none can withstand or contradict. In so doing, Stephen also re-enacts the miracle of Pentecost, where the gathered crowd hears people from every nation under heaven proclaiming God’s deeds of power (Acts 2:11), made perfect in weakness, faltering speech, and stammering lips.