BibleWorm

This week we have our Easter text: Luke 24:1-12, where we are struck above all with the stillness, the slowness of time and discovery in this text. The followers of Jesus can barely respond to his death before it’s Shabbat, the great pause. And when the 3 women arise before dawn the next day to hurry back to do the only thing they know to do, they are met with an empty, quiet tomb, and told --  look to your past to remember what is happening now. We wonder - how can we open our hearts and our imaginations more widely this year, to hold what truths might be possible? What if we take seriously the idea that we already know what we need to know, and search differently? 

In this replayed Good Friday special episode from March 24, 2021, we discuss Luke’s telling of the crucifixion in chapter 23:32-49. We notice the haziness around the question of culpability for what has happened - what people or forces are responsible, and did they ever realize they had this power? We see a lot of compassion from Jesus even as he suffers. And we wonder whether the second criminal is really any more honorable than the first, or whether he’s just more savvy. More importantly, we wonder whether that matters to Jesus.

In this special Maundy Thursday episode we’re reading the story of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples as told in Luke 22:1-27. We notice the many connections between this text and the Passover story in the book of Exodus, as the disciples share a meal on the night before a foreboding moment, aware that the world is about to change but not sure how. We think about the presence of the betrayer at this meal and how the disciples so quickly slip into accusation and arguments about greatness when they realize there is a traitor among them. And we think about the role of remembrance, not only looking backwards toward the Passover but also forward toward the heavenly banquet. When Christians receive the bread and cup on Maundy Thursday, our present moment becomes enfolded in the great sweep of God’s liberation—if only we will remember. 

This week, we read Luke 19:29-44 – a Palm Sunday text that, in Luke’s version, is entirely without palms. Luke paints a picture of the cosmic world, the animal world, the human world, even the stones - shifting into alignment to point to one thing. To hold this wildly powerful moment of this paradigmatically holy man coming into the paradigmatically holy city. As Jesus holds up the fate of the city, we notice that it’s not actually so different from the impending fate of his own body.  How can that be? What does that mean? And why are there no palms in Luke’s story, anyway?

This week we’re reading Luke 18:31-19:10, the stories the disciples being unable to comprehend Jesus’s impending death and resurrection, a blind man asking Jesus to regain his sight, and Jesus inviting himself to the home of Zacchaeus. Each of these stories, we realize, is about perception—who is able to see correctly and whose vision is blocked. The disciples cannot grasp Jesus’s words about his suffering, death, and resurrection, perhaps mercifully so, since seeing clearly what was about to transpire may have been more than they could handle. With some irony, we note that it is the blind man who sees correctly, recognizing Jesus as the Son of David and having the courage to imagine that a new reality is possible for him. And while Zacchaeus famously climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus, it is the crowd who misperceives Zacchaeus, accusing him of being a sinner when in fact he is living a righteous life. Who is it we misperceive, we sonder, and how might we be bold enough to imagine a new reality?

This week we read Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. What a rich and evocative story about wealth, and suffering, and isolation – about excess and need and compassion.  What blocks the flow of compassion in the different scenarios of this story, and in our own world – when is it a chasm, and when is it just a gate? What is the difference between having been told something, and knowing it – and how do we cross THAT chasm? What happens when we build a life that insulates us from all suffering – our own, and that of others?

This week we’re reading the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son as told in Luke 15:1-32. While these stories are sometime read separately, we find that reading them together puts them in a different light, one that draws our attention to the value of each individual, the importance of the whole community, and especially the tendency of the kingdom of heaven to break out into a party. Whoever we are—whether the one who has wandered off, the one who made poor decisions, or the one who feels overlooked and unappreciated—we are invited into the party, too. Come one, what are we waiting for?

This week we read Luke 13:1-9, 31-35, a text that raised the biggest of questions for us. What exactly is the connection between sin and death that Jesus is getting at when he talks about the the Galileans who died at the hand of Pilate, or that freak accident with the tower? How does it hit readers for Jesus to explicitly name his imminent death as central to his purpose in going to Jerusalem, rather than letting us think of it as an unfortunate side effect of his work? We really felt the pull of his lament for Jerusalem – his deep knowledge of what is possible and what is meant for this holy city, and also his awareness of how the world has pressed it in another direction. His outcry rises up from the gaping chasm between them.  And our world, too, is broken in so many ways. So in this broken world, what does the fact of our death mean about how we should live?  

This week we’re reading two stories that are often read separately, the Good Samaritan parable and Jesus’s visit with Mary and Martha as told in Luke 10:25-42. The Good Samaritan has us thinking about the question of our obligations to our neighbors in need. When a lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” Jesus responds with a story that seems to dispense with the category of neighbor altogether, instead insisting that one must show compassion to whomever is in need. The Mary and Martha story leads us to think about the legitimate tasks of ministry and how they can sometimes be a distraction from listening to Jesus, which is the one thing a divine voice has commanded in this Gospel.

Our reading for Ash Wednesday is Luke 9:51-62–a real pivot point in Luke’s story. Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and the story gains a sense of focus, momentum, and urgency. Should we be surprised, then, that he wastes no energy on anger or retaliation when the Samaritans won’t host him? Should we be surprised that he asks people he encounters to follow him right there onthe spot, without a care for the people and responsibilities they leave behind? That’s a hard ask to understand if we’re just talking about your average Tuesday. But Jesus isn’t in ordinary time anymore.