Year 7, Day 218: Luke 9

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I like to call Luke 9: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  This is a great chapter to have occur smack dab in the middle third of the story about Jesus’ ministry.  The plethora of stories to be found within should encourage, shame, and challenge us.

For encouragement, we have the good stories.  This is how the chapter opens.  Jesus imparts His wisdom and power upon the disciples and they go off and do some very amazing and incredible things.  From the witness of the other Gospels we know that demons are cast out in His name, people are cured of disease, physical disabilities are overcome.  The disciples take nothing with them except the power of God and they prove it to be mighty power indeed.  This should absolutely encourage us.  With God, nothing is impossible.

Or even take the story where Peter proclaims Jesus as the Christ.  Here Peter boldly proclaims a truth that he cannot even fathom.  God imparts in him a wisdom to appreciate something about which he cannot even know the true depth of God’s action!  When we are open to God, He can speak wisdom and obedience into us, even when we do not understand.

On the other hand, we have the bad.  Take the story of the disciples when Jesus is gone and they are unable to cast out the demon from the boy who convulses.  Or take the disciples who doubt Jesus’ words when He tells them to feed the multitude.  Or again take the disciples who argue among themselves about who is the greatest of Jesus’ disciples.

These stories should cause us to pause.  Remember, all of these stories come after the disciples have embraced the power of God and done some incredible things.  This isn’t a case of weak disciples.  These are stories about strong disciples who allowed their focus to lapse.  These are the bad stories.  These are the stories that remind us that we are all flawed human beings who are capable of making mistakes.  These stories tell us that we are prone to mistakes especially after something really cool and spiritual happens!  We can walk with God.  We can utilize His power to be obedient to His will.  But that does not guarantee that we will not get out focus wrong and our priorities out of whack.

And then there is the ugly.  For this story, I see Peter’s involvement in the Transfiguration.  Peter is up on the mountaintop during the transfiguration when he tries to convince Jesus to forego the rest of Jesus’ mission, all the people whom Jesus is going to reach, and even the cross just so that he can stay here with Jesus on the mountaintop.  Don’t get me wrong.  Peter’s heart seems to be in the right place.  Peter just wants to hang out with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.  That’s not inherently a bad place.  But it’s an ugly place because out of this seemingly good intention comes a suggestion that if followed would railroad Jesus’ ministry and bring it to a crashing halt!  Here we can see that sometimes even our good intentions could have utterly undesirable but dangerous consequences.

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