Text Study for Luke 10:1-20 (Part One)

The lectionary committee has done violence to our text by omitting Luke 10:12-15. Richard Swanson writes that, in omitting these verses, the lection “omits the allusion that clarifies this scene. Woes are pronounced on cities that have not offered a welcome to Jesus and his movement,” Swanson continues, “but before those woes comes a reference to Sodom, the city that exemplifies the refusal of the duty of hospitality” (page 159).

I suspect that the lectionary folks desired to make the reading a little less “PG-13” in its content by excising the reference to Sodom. In addition, the lectionary folks demonstrate a consistent distaste for verses which show Jesus as angry, vengeful, and pronouncing judgment on others. This editorial concern reinforces the notion that the “God of the Old Testament” is one of vengeance while Jesus’ “God of the New Testament” is one of love and grace and mercy.

That simple dichotomy is inaccurate, uncomplicated, and does not respect the authority and integrity of the text. Levine and Witherington suggest that verses such as Luke 10:12-15 “should serve as a corrective” for such simplistic and self-serving (from a Christian perspective) interpretations. In a footnote, they observe that “Jesus has more to say about the reality of Hell (which he calls Gehenna) than Paul, or any other NT writer, save John of Patmos in Revelation” (page 281).

These observations make the universalist hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. However, the textual point cannot be disputed. And it should not be minimized by the fiat of lectionary excisions. It’s in the text, and we should deal with it. That’s especially true when the excised text is necessary for an accurate and fulsome interpretation and reading of the text.

That being said, we can take the opportunity to review the nature of “the sin of Sodom” (whether that actually makes it into the message or not). I will quote Levine and Witherington on the matter. “Regarding the sin of Sodom, which prompted the destruction, the prophet Ezekiel makes clear that the Sodomites were destroyed because of a lack of hospitality, an allusion already prompted by the rejection of Jesus in Samaria (9:54), when James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven. Since,” they continue, “Jesus’ statement appears in the context of households either accepting or rejecting the disciples, the concern for Sodom’s hospitality is here also invoked” (page 280).

Swanson offers these comments. In the ancient Mediterranean world, “wanderers are to be treated as family, welcomed and fed.” This is the principle which is violated if and when any of the seventy are refused hospitality. “thus it was that when the citizens of Sodom sought to abuse and humiliate guests in Lot’s house,” Swanson continues, “he offered them his daughters instead. This is inconceivable in any social system,” he concludes, “except one that places the responsibility for hospitality even above one’s responsibility for immediate family” (page 160).

This connection to the destruction of Sodom puts the the members of the “Seventy Sent” in the role of the messengers to Sodom in Genesis 19. Two messengers came to Sodom, and Lot offered them hospitality. Remember that the Seventy Sent are to travel two by two on their mission. That mission, in Genesis 19, is to offer rescue to those will accept the news of Sodom’s impending destruction. We can see that mission of rescue described in Genesis 19:12. The messengers urgently inquire about the extent of Lot’s family and community. They should get out while the getting is good.

Of course, the two messengers will also bring destruction to Sodom, but not before those who want the rescue have been saved. Swanson’s contention that the omitted verses are critical to our interpretation bear fruit now. The Seventy Sent bear a message of eschatological urgency. The time for “harvest” has drawn near. The message of rescue from destruction is carried by the missionaries and enacted in their healing and preaching. There is still time to respond before the end.

Messengers from Jesus need our welcome. When we include the excised verses in our reading and reflection, I think we get a much more interesting and applicable text for preaching and teaching. If and when someone needs our welcome, we settled folks should pay special attention to what they need and what they say. Of course, that reverses our expectation, especially in our time. We church folks expect to be consumers, not involuntary workers in the hospitality industry. We expect those who bring Jesus’ message to give us something of value before we compensate them with anything approaching hospitality.

Who are those who long for welcome and hospitality in our Christian communities? The mention of Sodom in our text will certainly bring to mind for some in our pews their continuing anxieties and hostilities regarding the welcome, inclusion, and leadership of LGBTQIA+ people in our communities. It should be clear that we cisgender, heterosexual, non-queer people have gotten this all backwards. Those who seek hospitality at our eucharistic table and in our pulpits bring the message from Jesus. If we refuse that hospitality, we find ourselves in the role of Sodom (and all the other villages listed).

That is still shocking to some so-called mainline Christians and many, many Evangelical Christians. It is our refusal of hospitality that is the sin of Sodom. This is old news for many who have been in this struggle for a lifetime and more. But it will continue to be new and shocking information for too many in the pews I have faced over the last forty years.

This can be dangerous work for the messengers, as we can see from the text. It will be worth reading this text as if we are the Seventy Sent, but let’s not jump to that perspective too quickly. Let’s focus on our place, most of the time, as the “home team” rather than the “away team.” What do the messengers bring? They bring first of all the palpable gift of God’s peace to the household. They cure the sick and proclaim the presence of the Reign of God. That presence arrives whether it is welcomed or not (see the end of verse 11).

This could be an opportunity to think about our default assumptions when we deal with newcomers to our worshiping communities. We focus primarily on two things: what we have to “offer” to the newcomers (treating them as church-shopping consumers), and how we can assimilate them into the ways things already are (treating them as potential threats to our status quo — threats that must be neutralized to sustain the stability of the current community). Since these are our default responses and assumptions, it’s no wonder that in many of our communities, newcomers pass through our midst with hardly a notice or ripple.

What if, instead, we would regard newcomers as some of the latest recruits to the Seventy Sent? Those who need our welcome are the ones Jesus sends with important messages. Perhaps that message is information about the needs of the community beyond our walls. Perhaps that message is a challenge to be more responsive to that community and the larger world. Perhaps that message is a new perspective, a new way of doing or seeing things, a new connection to the wider world. Newcomers need our hospitality and bring us news.

I learned in parish ministry to regard newcomers as such messengers. “I wonder,” I often thought to myself, “what new thing the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish among us by sending this new person?” Sometimes that new thing was a creative new opportunity. Sometimes that new thing was a challenge to rethink and revise how we did or viewed something. After all, one of the benefits of being a newcomer is that you don’t know that it can’t be done that way.

Jesus equips the Seventy Sent with power and authority to do just what he commissions them to do. And, as we read in the last part of the text, it works! If we can get ourselves out of the way, newcomers can indeed bring new life and mission into our midst. That will produce change, discomfort, challenge, displacement, and disagreement. That’s a necessary part of the process. But the outcome is another victory in the battle against sin, death, and the devil.

“Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and he invites us to walk with him,” Marilyn Salmon writes in her workingpreacher.org commentary. “His words here speak to every generation of Christian disciples and inspire a sense of urgency about bringing God’s realm near. As we begin,” Salmon concludes, “we are called to examine customs we create to protect our comfort and ease, beginning with the practice of hospitality.”

Well, that’s a start for the week anyway.

References and Resources

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Witherington III, Ben. The Gospel of Luke (New Cambridge Bible Commentary). Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Swanson, Richard W. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C. Cleveland, OH.: The Pilgrim Press, 2006.

Text Study for Luke 9:51-62 (Part Three)

The Twelve carried with them the assumptions, perceptions, and reactions of men raised and socialized in an honor/shame culture. The evidence is close at hand to our text. Malina and Rohrbaugh note, concerning Luke 9:46-50, that “A squabble over honor status would be typical within any ancient Mediterranean grouping” (page 344). The wrangling over who’s the top banana disciple is certainly a prime example of a squabble over honor status.

It’s worth reviewing the highlights of honor-shame societies from Malina and Rohrbaugh’s work. They contrast such societies to the more “guilt-oriented” Western cultures, although I have doubts about that contrast. Nonetheless, “Honor can be understood as the status one claims in the community together with the all-important recognition of that claim by others” (page 310). Such honor is either ascribed or acquired. In Luke 9, the disciples are wrestling with relative gradations of ascribed honor, since they all have been labelled as part of the Twelve.

In our text for Sunday, honor challenges and insults abound. Malina and Rohrbaugh suggest that Samaritans perceive an honor offense because Jesus is merely passing through. His face is set toward Jerusalem. “Of course the Samaritans perceive this as a slight,” Malina and Rohrbaugh argue, “while James and John view such rejection of hospitality as insulting; hence their desire to get satisfaction by ‘commanding fire from heaven’ as Elijah did…” (page 345).

It should be clear that the system is working as designed. The Twelve are particularly primed to react to such an insult, given the conversation they’ve been having. They are tightly focused on their status and the honor such status provides them. That honor is tied to the status of their master. Jesus has been deeply disrespected, and such an insult cannot pass unanswered. The response of the disciples, in this system, is not only plausible but required.

Therefore, the surprising response comes, not from James and John, but from Jesus. Life in the Kin(g)dom of God will be anything but business as usual.

I noted earlier that I’m not so sure about the sociological differences between modern, Western societies and the honor/shame culture of the first-century Mediterranean. Indeed, it appears to me that an honor/shame culture has been driving the cultural and political life of American Evangelicalism for two centuries. I think there’s no question that the culture of the antebellum South was an honor/shame culture, with the wealthy White male at the pinnacle of the social pyramid. The defense of White womanhood, the celebration of chivalry, the culture of dueling, and the need for Black people to make up the base of the pyramid are all signs of that culture.

This matters to me because that’s the culture which came out of the Civil War and embraced the mythology of the Lost Cause. That mythology has undergirded White Evangelical culture since the end of the Civil War and has taken firm control of significant parts of the larger American social dynamic, especially the conservative Evangelical Christian part of that social dynamic.

For a full and clear treatment of this culture and its power in American culture and politics, I would encourage you to read (and re-read) Kristin Kobes DuMez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. “Generations of evangelicals learned to be afraid of communists, feminists, liberals, secular humanists, ‘the homosexuals,’ the United Nations, the government, Muslims, and immigrants—and they were primed to respond to those fears by looking to a strong man to rescue them from danger, a man who embodied a God-given, testosterone-driven masculinity” (page 13). Of course, that “strong man” was Donald Trump.

DuMez notes that many early-twentieth century Christians thought they had a masculinity problem. They were concerned that Victorian Christianity had made Christian men too soft and even feminized. This concern was echoed in the larger culture through the rhetoric of men such as President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had suffered shame as a young man for being a weakling, a fancy-pants fop, and a high-voiced girl. He reinvented himself as a cowboy, an paragon of male rugged individualism, and a combatant in the battles of life. One only has to recall Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech to capture the full flavor of his ideology.

This “crisis of Christian manhood” followed American evangelicalism throughout the twentieth century and continues in the twenty-first. I was taken, for example, by many things that John Eldredge had to say in Wild at Heart. The call to a more authentic masculinity in the face of post-industrial existence resonated with me and many of the men in my life. In the end, however, this perspective always ended in violence, subordination of women, and some honor-based classist and racist hierarchy. Anxieties about the honor of men always risk the call for a fiery end to one’s enemies. For Eldredge, the real model of a Christian man was not Jesus but rather William Wallace (as portrayed by Mel Gibson).

If anything, this rhetoric has gotten far worse and far more violent. It’s no accident that the attention of right-wing domestic terrorists has turned toward the transgender community. The anxiety is always about protecting White Male privilege, power, position, and property. Anything that might complicate that status is “the enemy.” In the 1990’s, the attention was directed toward the gay community more generally. The outcome of that attention was events like the torture and assassination of Matthew Shepherd. The White Male Christian rage expressed then and now is a direct result of the worship of privilege, power, position, and property claimed as the sole possessions of White Christian men.

Let’s be clear, then, that Jesus rejects this understanding of real “honor and shame.” As noted in a previous post, the desire of James and John to punish the Samaritans with a fiery death is not an honorable desire. It is, rather, demonic and receives Jesus’ rebuke. The desire for White male Christian power in our time and space is similarly demonic and requires a similar rebuke. This is not “bringing politics into the pulpit.” Rather, I think we need to respond to claims being made in the culture that coopt and pervert the Christian gospel for the sake of White Christian Male Nationalism.

The disciples cannot perceive the meaning of Jesus’ betrayal and death. We read that in the verses before our text. Nor can many people in our own time. When a nationally-known politician jokes that Jesus didn’t have enough AR-15 assault rifles to “keep his government from killing him,” we know that Christian thinking has gone off the tracks and is completely derailed. I can’t read our text without having this conversation in my head. I’m not quite sure yet how I want to have it in the message I will give. But I know that I can’t avoid the topic.

The “kick ass and take names” approach to following Jesus will get us a rebuke from Jesus and nothing more. The view that following Jesus is one lifestyle option among many on our busy calendar (see Luke 9:57-62) will get us an invitation from Jesus to think this whole thing over again. Neither of these responses is what it means to be a Jesus follower. As a disciple I am called to bear the full cost of Jesus-following in my life and to refuse the temptation to offload some or all of that cost onto others.

I can’t find a lot of “good news” in this particular gospel text. I would like to think that Paul can bail me out in the second reading from Galatians 5, but I’m not sure that’s much help either. I don’t know about you, but I have to sit with this one for a while yet.

References and Resources

Bruce Malina; Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. Kindle Edition.

Kobes Du Mez, Kristin. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Luke 9:51-62 (Part Two)

When I worked with churches in conflict, I sometimes asked a pointed question. “Would you rather,” I would say with some drama, “be right or be in relationship?” For a while, I thought the question was a mic drop sort of query. Then I realized that I was dealing with people who were more honest than I liked. The “right answer” for Christians (as I was assuming) is that it’s more important to be in relationship than to be right. Unity in the Body of Christ is a primary value in the New Testament witness. Some of my conversation partners, however, didn’t see it that way.

“Well, Pastor,” some replied, “of course I’d rather be right. What’s the point, after all,” they continued, “of having a relationship with someone who’s wrong and simply won’t admit it?” I learned that if someone was at that point in a church conflict, the chances that the sides would find common ground and reconciliation were vanishingly small. The desire to be “right” took on existential importance and urgency, sometimes leading to verbal, institutional, and even physical violence.

The first paragraph in our text for Sunday has some terrifying dialogue in it. “When the fulfillment of the days had come for his being taken up,” we read in Luke 9:51-52, “and he fixed his face to go into Jerusalem, he also sent messengers before his face” (my translation). Here we begin the “Lukan travelogue,” the narrative of the way of discipleship that leads from Galilee to the cross in the Holy City. This is not merely a “road” as the NRSV would have it in verse 57. This is “the way” that Jesus has firmly resolved to take.

The lectionary selection and headings in many translations tie together the declaration of purpose in Luke 9:51-52a with the Samaritan refusal in Luke 9:52b-56. However, I think it’s more helpful to see this little section beginning with Luke 9:46. More than that, the declaration of purpose is framed by two discipleship fails, first on the part of John and then on the part of James and John together.

In Luke 9:49-50, we have the Lukan version of the “Unknown Exorcist.” Jesus had commissioned the Twelve in Luke 9:1-6 to go out proclaiming the kingdom and healing. That healing certainly included the exorcism of demons, just as it did for Jesus. It seems that John thought this was a “Jesus” schtick, and they needed to protect their performance rights. “And we hindered him,” John reports to Jesus, “because he is not following us” (Luke 9:49b, my translation and emphasis).

Note what John says here. The unknown exorcist was using Jesus’ name, but he wasn’t following “us.” He wasn’t on the right team, the right side, the in-crowd, the cool kids. He was an outsider who had to be brought to heel. It was more important to be right than to extend the mission of healing in Jesus’ name.

John’s report is a direct response to Jesus’ comments on the interminable “who is the greatest” debate among the disciples. Jesus knows what the argument is — a distraction from all that icky talk about betrayal and a delicious debate about the disciple pecking order. Jesus, therefore, uses the example of welcoming a child in Jesus’ name as a measure of real discipleship. It’s another window into the Lukan “great reversal” theme.

“And as John answered,” we read in Luke 9:49, “he said…” All John got out of the welcoming children example was the phrase “in my name.” With that little prompt he was once again off to the races, seeking to establish both rank and power. Jesus, of course, is having none of it. “Don’t hinder him,” Jesus replies, “for the one who is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:50, my translation).

This is the lead-in to our lectionary reading. While Luke 9:51 is usually regarded as the beginning of the Lukan travelogue, I don’t think we can read verses 52-56 without taking verses 46-50 into account in our interpretation. The one who is greatest is the least. The one who is not against us is for us. Being right is not all it’s cracked up to be.

What will we do to ensure that we are “right”? Tom Nichols wrote a recent op-ed online for the The Atlantic entitled “What Are Trump Supporters So Afraid Of?” Nichols worries that as additional information about events surrounding the January 6 coup attempt comes out, “there will be more irrational anger and threats from people who cannot bear the truth.” That line was immediately ratified by the testimony of Georgia public election officials who, in the wake of their defense of 2020 ballot counts in the state, have been subjected to death threats, harassment, verbal assaults, home invasions, and loss of jobs and peace of mind.

Nichols suggests that the people who engage in such behavior are “less angry than they are terrified.” They are not only terrified of losing political, economic, cultural, and legal power, Nichols continues, although all of that is the case. “I think,” Nichols argues, “the Trump superfans are terrified of being wrong. I suspect they know that for many years they’ve made a terrible mistake,” Nichols continues, “that Trump and his coterie took them to the cleaners and the cognitive dissonance is now rising to ear-splitting, chest-constricting levels. And so,” he concludes, “they will literally threaten to kill people…if that’s what it takes to silence the last feeble voice of reason inside themselves.”

The rest of the column is worth the read, but you get the gist. And perhaps you get the point that strikes me here. In Luke 9, we get an escalation of behaviors on the part of disciples who seem to be protecting their right to be “right.” We’re not going to let some freelancer horn in on our disciple gig. We’ll put a stop to that. Samaritans don’t know enough to extend some hospitality to us on the way (of discipleship, remember)? We’ve got a solution for that straight out of Elijah’s playbook in 1 Kings. Some fire from the sky should put the fear of God into anyone who might contemplate a similar sort of resistance.

Pay attention to the words in Luke 9:54. “But when the disciples, James and John, saw [this], they said, ‘Lord, do you wish that we might call fire down from the heaven and destroy them?'” The Lukan author makes it crystal clear that disciples are offering this suggestion. It happens to be James and John in this case, but it would seem that they represent the consensus of the group. Clearly, the vocation of discipleship doesn’t automatically make anyone less of an asshole. That seems to take a bit of doing.

The Lukan author also makes it crystal clear that this suggestion by the disciples is demonic. “But turning around, he [Jesus] rebuked them” (Luke 9:55, my translation and emphasis). Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves when they threaten the disciples. Jesus rebukes the fever in Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Jesus rebukes demons, and they leave people. Most recently, in terms of our text, that happens in Luke 9:42. Peter rebukes Jesus and gets called “Satan” (I know that’s in Mark, but it’s still the case). This is not a gentle correction of a slight faux pas.

Jesus doesn’t excuse the Samaritans for their response to him. Neither does he blast them to smithereens because they are “wrong.” Based on Jesus’ training with the Twelve, he shakes the dust off his feet and moves on to another village where the reception might be better. Nobody is going to die here today, James and John, no matter how “right” you think you are. That’s not how people who actually “are” right operate.

Tom Nichols puts it this way. “No one who truly believes they are right threatens to hurt anyone for expressing a contrary view,” he argues. “The snarling threat of violence never comes from people who calmly believe they are in the right. It is always,” he continues, “the instant resort of the bully who feels the hot flush of shame rising in the cheeks and the cold rock of fear dropping in the pit of the stomach.” If Nichols is right, then the fiery proposal is not an expression of conviction but rather the insecure response of those who still harbor doubts.

For the Twelve at this point in the Lukan account, I’m afraid that shoe fits all to well. And perhaps it fits too well for many of us.

I find it hard to see how so-called Christians could read our text and then conclude that violence in the name of being “right” is ever an option for Jesus followers. We may indeed find ourselves in a place where we are called upon to die for the sake of the mission (see Luke 9:57-62 for some insight into this notion). We who follow Jesus cannot find ourselves in places where killing in the name of Jesus is ever the “right” thing to do. More than that, doing violence to protect our “rightness” is demonic not disciplic (I know that’s not a word, but it should be).

Text Study for Luke 9:51-62 (Part One)

It’s full on yard and garden season on the Flying Pigs Farm (our name for the urban farm in our backyard). I have cucumbers headed toward the canning jars and tomatoes destined for salads, salsa, and pasta sauce. I canned the small crop of beets we raised, and we’re about ready for the second crop of radishes. Onions are cruising along (delicious), and the okra and squash have started to take off. Perhaps I can get in a few comments along the way, since the afternoons this week and next are too warm for much yard work.

“But Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts the hand upon the plow and looks toward what lies behind is suitable for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62, my translation). It’s best to start at the end of the text. If we can understand the punchline, we may be able to grasp the text and the chapter. Verse 62 isn’t merely the conclusion of the lectionary reading. It is the summation and charge of this whole chapter. Chapter nine is focused on the nature and cost of discipleship, of following the way of Jesus to the cross in Jerusalem and beyond.

Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Pexels.com

The NRSV gives us this rendering: “‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’” That’s a quite serviceable translation. However, I fear that many listeners will misunderstand the meaning of “fit” in the sentence. The Greek word is not about moral fitness, about worth or desert. This isn’t about “qualifying” for heaven. But I fear that’s precisely what many listeners have been formed to hear. So, it may be worth addressing this in a message.

The sentence is really about having what it takes to be on the front lines of the mission. Our text comes between the sending of the Twelve and the Seventy. So, Jesus is coaching up his followers for the work that is ahead of them. This sort of discipleship may be like Nebraska (at least according to the Nebraska Tourism board) — honestly, it’s not for everyone. Frankly, I think that’s a moronic approach to promoting tourism. But it’s a realistic caution when we’re talking front-line discipleship.

Honestly, perhaps it’s not for everyone. Is it for me?

If the punchline is a word of caution to the over-eager and the under-prepared, that makes the preceding verses a little easier to process. On their face, verses fifty-seven through sixty-one sound cruel. But, perhaps these verses are words of caution to people who haven’t thought through the cost of front-line following. These verses may be the way that Jesus (or at least the Lukan author) lets these eager beavers down easy. They haven’t considered what their devotion might cost them. Perhaps they are not quite up to the challenge (at least not yet).

The words in these verses are not, therefore, judgments against those who are not fit. They are, rather, words of caution for those who haven’t quite thought this thing through. I will follow you anywhere, one says. That’s fine if you can stand to sleep out in the open, Jesus says. But if not, you might want to have a re-think on that one. Yes, honoring our parents is a commandment to be obeyed. But following Jesus on the front-lines might require abandoning that obligation. Are you up for that? Family connections are important, but the mission may require loosening those connections. If that’s too much, then perhaps you ought to reconsider your role in the mission.

I think there’s a good chance that Luke 9 has a chiastic structure. If that’s the case, then we can get some interpretive help by looking at the first paragraph of the chapter. Notice the instructions Jesus gives as he sends the twelve on their first independent missions. No staff, no bread, no bag, no money — don’t even take a change of clothes! Stay where you’re welcomed. Leave where you’re not. Stay focused on the mission of proclaiming the good news and curing diseases. That’s what the leading edge of the Kin(g)dom looks like to the Lukan author and community.

After the Twelve do the proof of concept work, Jesus follows up in the Lukan account with the mission of the seventy (or seventy-two) in chapter 10. The author makes an explicit connection to Jesus’ punchline in 9:62. “After these things,” the author declares. Notice the instructions to the seventy in Luke 10:2-11. Again, these are the frontline followers. They are sent like lambs among wolves. No purse, no bag, no sandals — and no frivolous conversations along the way. Bring peace. Stay in the same house. Eat what you get. Heal, proclaim, and test the welcome. This is serious business.

What does this mean for us as listeners and readers? I wonder what our text meant to the first Lukan listeners and readers. Perhaps this is a recruitment pep talk to bring new workers into the mission and to make sure they are well-prepared for the challenges ahead. That would fit with the overall missionary emphasis of Luke-Acts.

It could be, on the other hand, that by the third generation of the church, folks are getting a bit soft or a bit lackadaisical about the mission. “Of course I follow Jesus,” they might say. “It’s not really that big a deal, after all. Be civil. Be kind. Be loving. Stay out of trouble, and love your neighbor. It’s not as complicated or costly as some people want to make it out to be.” I think the Lukan author is dealing with a community that just wants to stay out of trouble after the trauma of the Jewish War and its aftermath. And I think the Lukan author is more than a little impatient with Christians who want following Jesus to be easy, cheap, and an attractive lifestyle option.

Yes, I’m being more than a bit anachronistic here. But I think that’s the way I tend to think about following Jesus these days. It’s not that hard. I may get a little pushback here and there. But really, I’m still in the mainstream of culture. It doesn’t cost me much of anything to call myself a Christian, and I’m happy with that situation. But with that perspective, I’m pretty sure that I’m not a suitable servant on the frontlines of the mission of Jesus.

I’m not sure what that means for me or for a message this Sunday (I’m doing some supply preaching). I don’t hear the good news in this conversation yet (and maybe there won’t be much…). But, at least I think I have a bit more clarity about what’s in the text. The question is, what’s in me?

What do you think?