Category: Red Letter Year

Red Letter Year: 8/26

Luke 17.20-37

20 One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?”

Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. 21 You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.”

22 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see the day when the Son of Man returns, but you won’t see it. 23 People will tell you, ‘Look, there is the Son of Man,’ or ‘Here he is,’ but don’t go out and follow them. 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so it will be on the day when the Son of Man comes. 25 But first the Son of Man must suffer terribly and be rejected by this generation. 26 When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 27 In those days, the people enjoyed banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 And the world will be as it was in the days of Lot. People went about their daily business — eating and drinking, buying and selling, farming and building — 29 until the morning Lot left Sodom. Then fire and burning sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. 30 Yes, it will be ‘business as usual’ right up to the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day a person out on the deck of a roof must not go down into the house to pack. A person out in the field must not return home. 32 Remember what happened to Lot’s wife! 33 If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it. 34 That night two people will be asleep in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding flour together at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.”

37 “Where will this happen, Lord?” the disciples asked.

Jesus replied, “Just as the gathering of vultures shows there is a carcass nearby, so these signs indicate that the end is near.”

Comments

By now, Luke has taught us that the Pharisees aren’t asking serious questions. They ask, not to understand, but to judge. Such is the case here. Jesus has been saying for quite some time that the kingdom of God is here, it is now, it has come among us with his coming. By asking when it will come, the Pharisees are rejecting Jesus’ claim. The answer Jesus gives teaches both sides of what we have come to call the already/not yet. The first thing Jesus does is rebuke all approaches that focus on seeking and reading special signs. The only signs of the already of the kingdom are people being healed, delivered from demons, raised from the dead, and empowered by the Spirit to do the first three. Jesus rejects everything else with what he says in verses 20 and 21. People who run around all over the place looking for special signs miss the kingdom of God that has come right among and in them. The kingdom is already here.

But that does not mean we are at the end of all time. Starting in verse 22, Jesus makes it clear that we will know when the end of time is here. This is not the same as the kingdom coming now, it is the kingdom coming in all its fullness and the end of all things. It is the not yet of the kingdom. You won’t have to guess when that arrives. It will be quite obvious to everyone.

So what are we to do? Keep doing the work of the kingdom. Keep praying for the sick to be healed. Keep loving the poor. Keep speaking deliverance and wholeness into people’s lives. Keep raising the dead. Keep bringing justice into reality. Keep being filled with the Holy Spirit. Keep laying hands on people so they can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Keep enacting the reversal Luke has been teaching us about. Keep doing all that Jesus taught us and modeled for us. It isn’t always as fun and exciting as running after the latest signs. Often it is quite a grind. Kingdom work is hard work. Like all hard work, it is very rewarding and produces actual results. But it is still hard work. Don’t run around playing with spiritual things and think you are advancing the kingdom. Do the work of a disciple. Do the hard work of the kingdom. There is no harder call. There is no higher call.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Red Letter Year: 8/23

Luke 17.1-19

1 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! 2 It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. 3 So watch yourselves! “If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive. 4 Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.”

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.”

Good excuse as any for van Gogh’s Mulberry Tree (one of my favorites).

6 The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it would obey you! 7 When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, does his master say, ‘Come in and eat with me’? 8 No, he says, ‘Prepare my meal, put on your apron, and serve me while I eat. Then you can eat later.’ 9 And does the master thank the servant for doing what he was told to do? Of course not. 10 In the same way, when you obey me you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants who have simply done our duty.’”

11 As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. 12 As he entered a village there, ten lepers stood at a distance, 13 crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

15 One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, “Praise God!” 16 He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done. This man was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 And Jesus said to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.”

Comments

The first thing to pay attention to in today’s passage comes in v.1 – Jesus is talking to the disciples here and this is another “woe” directed specifically at them (remember the ones in the Sermon on the Plain in ch. 6 were for them too). What follows is pretty demanding stuff. Followers causing other followers to stumble is bad. Jesus demands that we watch ourselves and watch out for each other. If we see one follower sinning and hurting other followers, we have an obligation, a mandate, to speak up. We fail at this responsibility far too often (the first person plural there is quite intentional).

But we are also to be quick and continuous with our forgiving. The grammar here in Greek is really close to what was in the Lost Son story where he repents and the father forgives him. That passionate compassion is an important part of speaking up when one brother or sister is hurting another. Ideally it is both together, though in practice this can be hard to maintain, especially when people resist correction.

Which makes the explanation of the servant here apropos. Could there be a clearer depiction of how the kingdom is not all about me? We are here to serve, not be served. There are amazing benefits to being a follower of Jesus, just like there are great perks of being on the personal staff of a billionaire (at least I imagine there are: yacht rides, polishing fancy sports cars, exotic locales – sure there’s work involved, but there are benefits, right?) But perks are called perks for a reason. They are side benefits, they are not the main focus of what’s going on. Way too many Christians are in this for what’s in it for them, for what personal sense of whatever they gain from it. As odd as it sounds, here Jesus is saying, ‘So, you’ve worked hard all day in the fields, working for the kingdom? Great! Now make me a sandwich.” Some of us need to figure out the working hard in the fields all day, that is shock enough. Then comes the kicker: that is us just doing what’s expected of us. Serving in the kingdom is almost never the above-and-beyond we make it out to be. Those who need constant praise for what they’re doing are among those who are prone to making others stumble. Let’s do our work with eagerness and humility and leave the glory to the One it belongs to.

The healing story at the end drives this whole point home and also balances it nicely. Ten are healed – not because they earned it or deserved it or for any merit-based reason at all. Jesus knew nine of them weren’t coming back. Maybe they thought it was all about them or they were too busy enjoying their personal experience or whatever, but they were healed out of Jesus’ passionate compassion, nothing else. We serve because it’s our duty, we worship because we were made to do so, but what we receive from God is not tied to our service or our worship. We can’t earn our way to a healing. We can’t worship our way to a healing. The grace of God is free. Always. Even healing grace. All ten trusted Jesus enough to start walking toward the priests. That minimal amount of trust in God’s grace – just enough to act on it – is all they had to have. And that’s enough to throw mulberry trees into the sea. Or onto a canvas.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.