As a child, the story of Zacchaeus was one which was retold often as a children’s Bible story. I am unsure what made it such a success as a children’s story. Perhaps it was the fact that Zacchaeus needed to climb a tree to see over the crowds, something children can sympathize with. Whatever the reason, the story does have some basic lessons for us.
an eagerness to find God will be rewarded.
Zacchaeus ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus called out Zacchaeus by name.
God accepts us where we are.
Jesus went to Zacchaeus house before Zacchaeus changed his ways.
Showing people love and honor while they are still sinners can transform them.
In response to Jesus coming to his house, Zacchaeus promised to give half of his wealth to the poor and to compensate those whom he had cheated.
I usually try to come up with a way to tie all of the lessons from the passage I want to write about into a coherent whole before I start writing. Then I leave out those things which do not fit. Today I am going to just start with the things I want to cover and see where that leads me.
Jesus told His disciples (and through them us) that temptation cannot be avoided, but we should do our best not to be the source of temptation for others. If someone sins (say, by tempting you to sin), confront them with their sin. If they admit to sinning and ask for forgiveness, forgive them…even if it is the seventh time today. The disciples response to this was to ask Jesus to show them how to increase their faith. Jesus’ answer was that even a minuscule amount of faith can do great things. He further said that the way to build faith was to expect that the only reward for acting in faith was another task to which we would need to apply our faith.
Later in the passage, Luke recounts two parables which Jesus told His disciples. Both of them address the the themes I looked at in the previous paragraph. In the parable of the persistent widow Jesus gives us a lesson on building faith. He points out that even the wicked will grant justice to someone who is persistent enough. How much more will God grant us justice if we persistently pray for it? In the parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus tells us not to think of ourselves as better than others. Instead, when we pray we should recognize our sins and failures and throw ourselves on God’s mercy. Our faith will only grow when we recognize our need for God to transform us.
There is more to Jesus’ teaching about honoring ourselves than is obvious. Jesus gives the example of taking the seat of honor and being forced to give it up because someone of greater significance arrives. Instead, He says that we should take the seat of least honor, then our honor will be even greater when the host moves us to the seat of honor. However, there is more to it than that. There are all sorts of social dynamics revealed here, but Jesus goes on to tell us that when we throw a party we should invite those who are unable themselves to throw a party. So, while there is greater honor in being elevated to a position of honor from the humble position we chose for ourselves, we should not seek to be honored at all. Or, perhaps a better way of putting it, we should seek the good opinion of those whose opinion society does not value.
Luke recounts five of Jesus’ parables here (well, actually six, but the first one is part of completely different theme). Three of them illustrate the importance of befriending and loving the “lost”. The parable of the lost sheep and the one of the lost coin illustrate how much joy and pleasure God takes over sinners repenting of their sin and returning to Him. They also illustrate how that repentance does not happen by chance. It is the result of great effort on God’s part, and perhaps on the part of those who serve Him. I realized today that the parable of the prodigal son is actually more about the older son. The older brother was angry that his father threw such a feast for his brat of a brother. From our human perspective we tend to sympathize with the older brother. He had done everything he was supposed to do, yet his younger brother who rebelled and ran away was given a celebration. However, the parable points out that the older brother experienced all of the good things which come from being faithful. He was not loved any less because his father was overjoyed that his rebellious brother had returned.
OK, I see several things here I want to write about and a common theme which runs through the entire passage. Let’s see if I can make this work. In the middle of the passage, Jesus tells us that He did not come to bring peace, rather He came to bring division. Some will be for Him and some will be against Him. Furthermore, the door to the Kingdom of Heaven is narrow and not everyone who desires to enter it will do so. We must pay close attention to this teaching. All are welcome to follow Jesus, but it is not enough to say that you want to do so. You have to actually do so. Earlier in Luke, Jesus talked about the need to be willing to give up your wants and desires in order to serve Him. And in today’s passage, He talks about not worrying about what we will eat, or drink, or wear. Instead, we should use our resources to aid those in greater need than ourselves.
Jesus speaks about hypocrisy in today’s passage and warns us that what we think we are doing in secret will be made public. When we say something is wrong, but do it any way, we are hypocrites. Worse is when we try to explain why it is wrong when someone else does it, but not when we do it ourselves. Now I am going to try to tie this together with what Jesus has to say about lawsuits and going to court. He tells us that when we are on the way to court with our accuser we should settle things before we get there (by the way, this is the basis for the legal idea of settlements for lawsuits). However, just before He says that Jesus asks an important question, “Why can’t you decide for yourselves what is right?” The question should not be “What is legal?” The question we should ask ourselves, is, “What is right?” And we should not be depending on what someone else says the answer is. We should decide for ourselves, based on prayer, reading the Scripture, and the Holy Spirit, what is right. This may involve asking other Believers what they think on the subject, but ultimately, we are responsible to decide what is right and then to do it. When we know what is right we should do it immediately, so that we are prepared should Jesus return right after.
When I got to Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan I realized something I do not remember anyone ever making note of: In yesterday’s passage we had an account of a Samaritan village which refused to welcome Jesus so strenuously that James and John wanted to call down fire from Heaven on them. Which puts Jesus’ telling of this parable in a different context. Despite having only a short time before having been rejected by a group of Samaritans, Jesus uses one of them as the person we should emulate in a story He told.
Having said that, let’s take a look at the three people who passed the man on the road. First, we have a priest. He would have been trained from childhood on up on the proper ways to worship God and it was his job to care for the spiritual welfare of the people. However, he was also required to keep to a very high standard of ritual purity and if the beaten man were to die while the priest was touching him, he would be defiled and unable to fill his duties. Well, then we have a Levite (the NLT translation says “Temple Assistant”, which for most understanding of this parable is good enough). He would have had similar training to a priest, but would not have had quite as strict purity requirements. However, neither of these men stopped to help the beaten man. Finally a Samaritan, who did not even truly understand how to worship God, came along. This Samaritan, who was despised by the Jews as someone who distorted God’s commands and who thought the same of the Jews, sacrificed his time and money to help the beaten man. Jesus’ instructions to be like the Samaritan applies to more than just helping those in distress. In this story, the priest and the Levite were more concerned with getting the ritual’s correct than with people. The Samaritan’s only focus was on people.
The one problem I have with the current read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan I am using for this blog is that when I get to Luke it is the third time in a short period where I am reading a slight variation on the same story. I really ran into that problem today. However, Today’s passage does contain some insights on what it means to follow Jesus.
We have two sections of today’s passage which shed light on what following Jesus involves. At the end of the passage, Luke tells us of three men who considered following Jesus. We do not know whether they ultimately did follow Him or not, but Jesus’ interaction with them shows us that following Him involves being willing to give up our loyalties and commitments to anything else. Earlier in the passage, when Jesus first told His disciples about His death, He told them that each day they would need to decide to be willing to face suffering and death for Him. Each and every day we need to choose to do that which will please God, recognizing that doing so may lead us to lose that which we desire. It does us no good to get everything we desire if we lose ourselves in the process. Each day we must ask ourselves if we are willing to pay the price to follow Jesus, and each day we must commit ourselves to paying that price.
Luke mentions that Jesus began a teaching tour accompanied by the Twelve and some women He had cured. I suspect that Luke named women were sources for parts of his account. More importantly, Luke was telling his readers that these women, both those he named and the others who were there, were every bit as authoritative as to what it meant to be a follower of Christ as the Apostles.
I really want to explore the story about the homeless guy mentioned here. We usually think of him as the demon-possessed man, and that is fine because that is what the passage tells us he was. However it also tells us that he was homeless. It helps me visualize him to think about the homeless men I have seen in various urban areas. The locals had attempted to help him, but he reacted violently so they eventually gave up. I wrote that because I do believe this passage should influence the way in which we deal with the homeless. I am just not sure in what way.
Now that I started writing about this I want to point out one other lesson. This guy approached Jesus and demanded to know why Jesus was interfering with him. Jesus did not approach the demon possessed man. We will run into such things with people around us. They will come to us, then demand that we leave them alone. That does not mean that they are demon possessed. I just want to point out that we will have to face situations like that.
Having previously caught flack from Pharisees over their rigorous interpretation of the Law regarding the Sabbath, Jesus took the initiative when He saw a man with a deformed hand in a synagogue on the Sabbath. Instead of allowing them to set the terms of the discussion, He did so Himself. The Law said, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. .. On that day no one in your household may do any work.” The Pharisees focused on the second part which I quoted there. Jesus moved the focus from that to the first part about keeping it holy. He focused everyone’s attention on the fact that you do not keep the Sabbath holy by making those in need wait for another day before you help them.
Today’s passage also contains Luke’s account of the teachings which Matthew presents in the Sermon on the Mount. I suspect that Jesus touched on these themes many times throughout His ministry. In fact, these two slightly different accounts of these teachings may actually represent two different occasions (or perhaps more than two). As a general rule, I prefer the more nuanced account given in Matthew. However, I also find an appeal in the much more blunt way in which Luke relates the same teachings. God blesses the poor and the hungry, while sorrow awaits the rich and prosperous. Which puts a whole new light when Jesus says a few verses later that we should love our enemies and do good for those who hate us. We need to think about what Jesus means when He says “give to anyone who asks” when we realize this follows Him telling us that the poor are blessed. Of course, Jesus also tells us elsewhere to be as wise as serpents.
Yesterday I wrote that Jesus’ mother was almost certainly Luke’s source for chapter 2. Today’s passage was clearly based on the recollections of Jesus’ disciples, but not necessarily members of the Twelve (we know from Acts that there were others who followed Jesus from the beginning). A careful reading shows us that while Luke did his best to put the stories he relates into the order they happened he was not entirely sure how stories he got from one set of sources matched up with those from other sources. For example, it seems likely that Luke’s story about how Peter, James, and John came to follow Jesus, which appears at the beginning of chapter 5, preceded the end of chapter 4.
Speaking of Luke’s account of how Peter, James, and John came to follow Jesus (the fact that Andrew is not mentioned suggests that he is Luke’s source for this account) I want to point out something I never thought about before. When Jesus was finished speaking from Peter’s boat, He told Peter to put back out and let down the nets. Peter’s response was essentially, “We fished all night and did not catch anything. There aren’t any fish out there, but I will humor you and put out the nets.” The result was a catch so large that, even after he called James and John to bring their boat out to help, it almost sank the boat. Then Jesus called them to follow Him and told them that from now on they would be fishing for people. The story makes the point that sometimes God will direct us to repeat something we did in the past that failed. To put it another way, we should not give up trying to reach people for God just because they rejected our message in the past.
To this day when I read Luke 2, I hear it in my father’s voice. Every year on Christmas Eve we celebrated our family Christmas and that celebration started with my father reading Luke 2, all the way through the account of Anna. (We celebrated on Christmas Eve because we went to my uncle’s house on Christmas day for my Dad’s family Christmas dinner). It seems clear to me that Luke’s source for this chapter is none other than Jesus’ mother, Mary. All of the stories recorded in Luke 2 are the sort of thing that a mother remembers.
I love the story of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds. God did not send His angels to announce The Messiah’s birth to the Temple and the high priest, nor did He send them to the palace and the king. God did not send His angels to announce Christ’s birth to the high and mighty. He sent them to announce it to the nobodies in the field. The shepherds weren’t the people with the “important” jobs. They were doing a job about which most of their contemporaries would have said, “anybody can be a shepherd.” That is who God thinks are important enough to announce the birth of Christ
