Theological Commentary: Click Here
When I read
Luke 6, I feel a bit of the spiritual whirlwind. I’ll admit that part of the feeling comes
because it is a long chapter with a number of individual stories. I think part of the whirlwind is what is
supposed to happen when it comes to meeting Jesus. If you’ve spend any time pondering
spirituality, you understand that faith and its application are seldom ever
pinned down and understood perfectly.
There are always different perspectives to consider. There are always growing edges. There are always places for us to let go and
embrace the better nature of God.
We begin
with two interesting stories. Jesus
teaches that He is Lord of the Sabbath and then He flies against tradition by
healing – doing work – on the Sabbath. Both
of these stories are clearly present because they fly in the face of the
establishment and seek to get under the skin of the religious leaders. These are anti-establishment stories. Jesus wants to teach us that in order to have
faith and live it out, we have to think and not simply follow what other people
have laid before us. There’s nothing
wrong with tradition, but it has to be meaningful and what God desires of us.
However,
just when we think we have that lesson mastered, we hear Jesus call disciples
and then tell people that the disciple is not above the master. In fact, when disciples are fully trained –
and no longer the disciple – Jesus says that the person will be just like the
teacher. Clearly, mentoring and
imitating the faithful people who have come before us is part of God’s
plan. Jesus did exactly that.
In the midst
of all of this, Jesus is healing the people.
His power is going out among the crowds.
They are responding to Him and continuing to come. They are even seeking to touch Him simply to
experience His power.
Yet, in the midst
of all of this Jesus teaches the Beatitudes.
Blessed are we when we are persecuted.
Blessed when we are poor. Blessed
are we when we are hungry. Blessed are
we when people hate us. While the
Beatitudes certainly fit with Jesus’ experience with the religious elite and
the first couple of stories in the chapter, it seems at odds with the
immediately surrounding passages of healing and acceptance.
I think that
this is why I truly love the witness of the Gospels. Anyone truly familiar with the full story of
Jesus will hear about all of the contrasting perspectives in this chapter and
not be surprised at all. Each of these
stories and perspectives makes sense when we consider the breadth of the
witness of His life.
It’s not
about setting the goal of being liked.
Neither is it about telling off the world, either. It’s not about being loved by everyone. It’s about doing God’s work in the
moment. It’s about being willing to be
flexible enough to do what is required at the time. It’s about having a faith that is broad
enough to apply to a grand variety of contexts.
It’s about being able to reach people through love and challenge.
We can’t put
Jesus in a box. We can’t put mission in
manual and do it the same way every time.
Being God’s people is about God’s plan in a multitude of context.
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