Luke 14-19
OK, let's be honest! THIS is THE section that I have been waiting on! If I had to pick my favorite chapter of the whole Bible it would have to be Luke 15. How can you not love that chapter, full of such great stories! I was looking forward to hearing this!
I should have stuck with my memories! It is so obvious that I have such selective hearing/memory! This is a horrible section! It so flies in my face, into the face of anyone who considers themselves "religious!"
It starts right off the bat with Jesus call to individuals to follow him. They give all kinds of excuses, and they are so lame! Come on people! Can't you come up with a decent excuse? Just go to any middle school and take a lesson! And yet, how lame are the excuses that I come up with to not doing the things that Jesus is rather explicit in calling us to do?
Maybe that is why we never talk about the real cost of following Jesus. We avoid these passages about "hating father and mother," or at the very least we spiritualize them rendering them almost worthless. I often wonder what those who believe in the inerrancy of scripture do with this passage? At least liberals are used to discounting passages!
The passage where the worthless salt gets thrown out because it really isn't making a difference really hit home today. I got a video that was one of the most disturbing things I have seen in a while, about sex trafficking in the US. And then I realize how we in the church choose to deal with such safe issues, like listening to the New Testament, instead of making a difference in this situation. Ouch! Hope I like the fire!
There are those wonderful stories in Luke 15, but by now I am so disturbed, convicted, and confused! What do we do with the stories when Jesus seems to be holding up the crooks and criminals as examples? What about the 9 lepers who didn't come back to say 'thank you?' Did they get cured anyway? And again, what do we do with all this apocalyptic stuff? There is a really good sermon on the Providence website from February 21 about your options. (OK, maybe not really good, but there is a sermon there that gives you options. Which one do you choose?) Or do we just throw these verses out?
(If I throw out all the verses I don't like, my New Testament is getting really thin!)
The story of the blind man beside the road gives us one of the most compelling questions in the Bible. Jesus calls him and just asks, "What do you want me to do for you?" How would I answer that question? What do I want from Jesus? If I don't know, is it any wonder I don't recognize what I am given?
One thing that hit me in the telling of the servants given the talents--Luke says there were 10! But only 3 give a report? What happened to the other 7? And really, do we have to slaughter those who disagreed? Stacy, you are going to love this! But it does point out (time and time again) that there are consequences to our actions, and our inactions.
And so we come to the cleansing of the temple. In hearing this today, I don't think Jesus was really bothered about the marketplace. He had been there many times before. I think it was just the last straw and he just threw a hissy fit! (Gotta love the South!) So much time and energy and finances were being spent on things that really didn't matter, that really didn't make a difference. It is as if we are back at Chapter 14!
I could go on and on--in fact, I have ranted to my dear wife this morning! Thankfully there is no one in the office today, or they would get an earful too!
Calm down, Don! Just pick up the coins. Ignore the crazy man. Get business back to normal. Get the sermon written. It is just a story you are listening to, right?
1 comment:
Hey, a shoutout in the sermon and now one on the ProvBlog! I'm famous this week! And yes, I just wanted to scream when the story ended up once again with violence. Hadn't I always heard that all the vengeful, angry images of God come from the Old Testament, but the New Testament God is kinder and gentler, blah blah blah? Not so much! Obviously, I and all the people who said that had just conveniently overlooked a whole lot of Jesus's stories. So what does it mean? Is God really like this?
Yet, there are some really good images of God here, too. There's the shepherd who goes out in pursuit of the one lost sheep, the woman (yes, woman!) who rejoices over finding her lost coin, and of course, the father of the prodigal son, who rushes out to meet him and welcomes him home even though he is such a screw up. We want God to be more like that, don't we? And doesn't that seem so different from the character in that other story who wants people brought to him and slaughtered in front of him because they didn't want him as their king? Then there's the story about the dishonest manager, which seems to encourage dishonesty. Huh?!
I'll admit that I "cheated" after listening to these and went to some commentaries finally. There, I read a caution against seeing the stories as straight allegories in which one of the characters directly represents God. Really? Now I'm totally confused, because I thought that's how we were supposed to read them. Wasn't Jesus telling these stories to teach about God?
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