Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – Luke 16:1-18 (day three)

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.”

Establishment types thought Jesus played fast and loose with the law of Moses, as in this story whose sympathetic central character was an ethics-challenged accountant emerging not chastened but rewarded. Missing the point entirely – that believers must become as expert in the ways of the light as worldly people are expert in the ways of the dark – the Pharisees could hardly contain their disdain: Do we really want our people hearing morally questionable content from one who has such little regard for the law? Knowing the Pharisees’ own attempts to reimagine the law, Jesus responds, “Who’s the real lawbreaker, the one telling stories about wily scoundrels, or the ones trying to make marriage the domain of actual scoundrels?”

Re:Verse passage – Luke 15:11-24 (day three)

“And they began to celebrate.”

There are two types of people in the world: the cynics who like Ecclesiastes, and the optimists who like Ruth. I’m kidding. Or am I? This parable has something for all comers, fortunately. Wherever you find yourself on the life spectrum – world-weary or hopeful – has Jesus got a story for you. The wow factor here, when you consider that Jesus isn’t talking about rainbows and unicorns, but about the God who actually exists, is overwhelming. But when you linger on that last phrase – “they began to celebrate” – the atmosphere grows heavy as foreboding clouds seem to move in. You could stop there (and our assigned text indeed does) but if you can proceed, you’ll discover unfathomable sorrow as Jesus reveals how the heart of God is wrenched by all who will not rejoice with him.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 15:1-10 (day three)

“What woman…does  not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?

Everybody understands that some things command attention and some things simply don’t. So ingrained is the giving or withholding of attention that people adjust their level of attentiveness without giving much thought to it. It’s common to find a penny on the ground; pennies receive little attention. It’s rarer to find a hundred-dollar bill on the ground; that currency receives considerably higher attentive care. And when someone finds a briefcase containing 2.3 million dollars, that’s…only in the movies. At any rate, you don’t care about the penny, and you care much more about the hundred. And it really hurts when it goes missing. You will search hard. This is what heaven’s going through right this moment.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 14:12-24 (day three)

“Go out into the highways and along the hedges…”

There’s a party happening somewhere to which you’re not invited, an A-list somewhere on which your name does not appear. Conversely, you’ve never planned an open house that’s completely open. There are always parameters. Whether it’s finances or social standing or affinity drawing the lines, everybody knows that invitations have limits. The story Jesus tells here upends that convention. It’s unimaginable, really, because nobody’s that rich. And if the host is that rich, the company kept by that host tends toward exclusivity in the extreme. But here we have in this parable a host who’s unfathomably wealthy and, by the end of the story, tearing down the gates to the mansion lest anyone be hindered from partaking in the feast. Will you still insist the host needs you as a bouncer?

Re:Verse passage – Luke 13:1-9 (day three)

“Let it alone, sir, for this year too.”

As “the end is near” stories go, this one stands out for its reassurance of God’s compassion. Clearly, Jesus aims to do more than just issue a sword-of-Damocles warning to those who tell themselves that God’s going to have mercy on them because they’re not as bad as some people. The story takes a turn with the introduction of the vineyard-keeper, who seeks a delay in the tree’s destruction. Both you and the worst person you know have remained alive because of the mercy of God. You’ve received no more of that graciousness than anyone else. In the meantime, when will you let others in on the truth of why they’re still around – that Christ loves them too much to leave them without an opportunity to turn to him?

Re:Verse passage – Luke 12:13-21 (day three)

“Man, who appointed me a judge or arbitrator over you?”

Question: How do you navigate an inheritance dispute with a family member?

Response: What’s at stake in an inheritance dispute?

Let every reader note that Jesus does not engage in conflict shaming here. He certainly knew firsthand about family conflict; his public actions and life’s work placed him at odds with his own family. Indeed, Jesus’s response to the man in the crowd communicated the importance of doing the hard work required by conflict, engaging family members instead of looking for someone to take that hard work off one’s hands. That hard work, Jesus says, always involves the inner inventory of the heart: What am I willing to burn to gain wealth? Such fires have a way of becoming uncontrollable, endangering even your own ability to seek the Lord.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 10:25-37 (day three)

“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do the same.’”

If Jesus points to the socially unacceptable person as exemplary, then the world really has turned upside down. Jesus even concludes the parable by enjoining his questioner to aspire to the character of the reprehensible individual. Two millennia of cultural distance have diluted and dulled the immediacy of the truly ridiculous nature of Jesus’s story structure. To learn from someone you do not like is hard. But to be urged to learn from someone who is spiritually, morally, or theologically offensive to you is a bridge too far. Does God really view the world in such a radically different perspective? Can you actually be that wide of the mark? Perhaps it’s fair to say that if Jesus isn’t shocking you, you aren’t listening.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 8:1-15 (day three)

“Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God.”

What happens when heaven and earth meet? Well, the Bible’s whole content is the exact answer to that question. Journey and suffering and joy and sorrow and redemption and damnation and pain and blood and rescue and loss and wonder. In the course of the Bible’s narrative, priceless treasure is cast aside while empty promises enthrall hearts and minds. The parable of the sower and the seed captures that whole story in a few lines. Don’t be surprised, the Bible instructs us, when people reject God. The witness of scripture is clear: weeds grow; darkness misunderstands; people hide. Seeds fall on stony ground. It happens, and it will happen. But some seeds will germinate. Be ready to respond. Lift up your eyes to the fields ready for harvest.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 6:46-49 (day three)

“The torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.”

How does one become a good person? That question has a long pedigree. The Greeks, who knew nothing of Moses, asked it before Christ walked the earth. The addressing of that question, as those same Greeks knew and Jesus repeatedly asserted, requires nothing less than a devotion to the re-ordering of one’s whole life. But that is hard (see Jesus’s words on the narrow way), and the temptation is strong to condense that transformative quest into a multiple-choice exam to which one must give the right answer in order to obtain eternal life. A right answer is what the Pharisees sought, and still their house fell. Right living, on the other hand, is possible only by apprenticing oneself to the Lord Jesus, the sure foundation.

Re:Verse passage – Luke 5:33-39 (day three)

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins.”

Much has (rightly) been made of this parable – or more correctly, collection of parables. Is the gospel “new wine?” Is Jesus’s way of practicing faith a “new wineskin?” Is the old wineskin the establishment Pharisees? Maybe. Varying interpretations abound. So what’s one more? Here it is: What if Jesus is simply saying that life with him is a life of learning to pay attention to what fits the moment you’ve been given? Jesus says in essence, “Just as everybody has learned that new wine requires new wineskins, so my disciples are learning what is required by the circumstances in which they find themselves.” Feeling overwhelmed by the moment is a point of great pain for you. Jesus can teach you to understand what is most needed in that moment. What a joy.