Luke 8:4
It is one of his most famous stories, the Parable of the Sower. Jesus was talking mostly to common folk - not wealthy landowners, but the poor laborers who actually sowed the seed and harvested the crops. These were not urban cowboys who thought milk came out of plastic jugs. These were people who knew what growing grain actually looked like, up close and personal.
Parables were a common teaching tool of the day. Rabbis and itinerant teachers in Jewish society loved it as a unique story form that illuminated larger spiritual truths from everyday life. So Jesus was using something common to the culture where he found himself.
Parables are not allegories along the lines of "Pilgrim's Progress," in which the minutest of details has special meaning. With a few exceptions, parables are stories with but one single point. Where we know we have an exception to the rule is when the teacher or rabbi himself extrapolates or draws out those additional analogies, as is the case with this particular parable. Generally, though, the one-point rule applies. Otherwise parables could mean whatever the re-teller or listener wants them to mean.
Sometimes the main point is obvious in the parable itself. Other times the context helps us. And there are parables that have tended to lose meaning the farther we are from the culture in which they are set. Certainly knowing Jesus, his message and his earthly culture help us to understand his parables - and the parables in turn help us understand his message that much more fully.
Jesus loved to teach in parables because, while to the skeptic or closed-minded person the meaning was obscured, to the hungry hearer the good news came through plain, simple and straightforward. Any message or teaching is going to be more transparent to a responsive student. And this parable draws out this very idea that those who are open are the ones who will receive.
According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus has already been teaching in parables. His earlier ones, such as the "Wise and Foolish Builders" tend to call the listener to a response to the Good News. Now Jesus takes this a step further, concentrating on his followers themselves, those who have already responded to the Good News.
In chapter 8, we see him demonstrating and declaring his message in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee, an area called the Decapolis (meaning "ten cities"). As he is going about, he has this flock of followers with him - observing, helping and themselves preparing to minister just as Jesus is now doing.
The disciples don't quite yet know that they are going to be declaring and demonstrating the Good News, or at least they don't know how or what all that means. And so as Jesus goes forth with one eye on the ripe harvest of people desperate to hear good news, he has his other eye on his followers who he is preparing to turn into workers to help even more people.
In sharing this parable, he is talking to his own disciples. Verse 4 explains that while a large crowd of people was gathering, Jesus told this parable to those already there. And who was already there but those who had already chosen to follow him?
Jesus wants his disciples, his followers, to understand what the task of spreading the Good News is going to look like. Not everyone will respond positively to the good news. Not everyone is going to be receptive. And so he is setting realistic expectations for those who will soon be doing just as he is now doing.
When I was a college student in Florida, I attended a large meeting of the healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. Kathryn was unique among faith healers of the time because she didn't have a healing line, where she laid hands on the sick as they came forward. At least in the meeting I attended, she only had those come forward who were being healed right then and there in the meeting, generally at their seats.
Close by where we were sitting, an older gentleman suddenly realized he had been healed in a way that was at once obvious, at least to himself. His friends encouraged him to go forward and he did. After he shared with Kuhlman and the audience that he had been healed, he also mentioned that he was not a Believer in Jesus. When Kuhlman asked him if now that he had been healed he also believed, to everyone's amazement he said, "No." He went back to his seat a healed, yet still unbelieving man.
The Good News comes to all whether they accept it or not. Jesus went about blessing people regardless of whether or how they would receive it and he wanted his followers to share the Good News in the same way.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Break: "Tale of My Two Sons"
I'm taking a personal break today from blogging. Besides being a national holiday in honor of one of my boyhood heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., I am saying goodbye to my son. So instead I've written a short piece on what it feels like for a pacifist-leaning father to say goodbye to his son as the young man joins the army. You're welcome to read my thoughts on my website: "Tale of My Two Sons." I'll be back next week with Luke 8:4ff and the "Parable of the Sower."
Monday, January 11, 2010
Jesus' Many Female Disciples
Luke 8:2-3
Besides the famous Twelve, there were many other disciples of Jesus in his traveling entourage, including, surprisingly, quite a few women. Luke mentions three of these women by name. Mary from Magdala near Galilee Lake, is to modern readers the most well-known of them all as Mary Magdalene. She who had been cured of seven demons seems to have been among the closest to Jesus, being right there at the foot of his Cross and being the first person to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection. Johanna was the wife of a man named Cuza, whom Luke records was manager of Herod's household. Besides having a position of prestige in the Galilean aristocracy, Cuza was a man of financial means. There was also Suzanna, referred to only by name.
As I've already mentioned, there were many such women. Mark in his gospel also includes in this group Mary the mother of James the "Younger" (one of the Twelve) and of Joses, and also Salome. Matthew mentions the mother of Zebedee's sons, James and John. Luke later mentions that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna and other unnamed women were the ones who went to Jesus' tomb on the morning of the resurrection, though Mary Magdalene is the only one to whom Jesus seems to have appeared at the tomb.
These women who were well known to have followed Jesus from Galilee were also with the Apostles and other disciples in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. They were very qualified to act as witnesses of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection, a noteworthy badge of recognition in the New Testament church.
All these women played significant roles in Jesus' ministry, not the least of which was that they supported Jesus and the rest of his entourage out of their own means. As has always been the case throughout the history of the Church, most of Jesus' followers were extremely poor. For while the rich always have so much to lose by publicly following Jesus, the poor receive his good news gladly. "Means" can mean a whole range of things, but the clear implication here is that these women bankrolled Jesus' ministry, covering the cost, for example of basic necessities such as food and shelter.
They were women who had themselves been outcasts, even those who were high on the social ladder, for they had either been sick with some most likely incurable disease or they had been demon possessed. Compare these women with Betty Ford, widow of the former United States President, Gerald Ford, a woman of obvious social and political status, who went through alcohol and medication abuse rehabilitation. As a result of such well-publicized healing, she did much to help others in similar condition. So, too, these women who followed Jesus enhanced Jesus' ministry to others like them.
It is amazing that Jesus willingly attracted people of such questionable reputation. To us more enlightened moderns, physical sickness is not a stigma on the level of drug abuse or demon possession. But keep in mind that, not all that long ago, people with chronic diseases, disabilities and depression were set aside and even denied positions of honor and leadership in our society. Think of Senator Tom Eagleton who was considered unfit to run for Vice President because of previously being clinically diagnosed with depression. Or of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose paralyzed legs were a condition to be hidden lest they become a political liability. While supposedly more open-minded people today would not discredit a child born out of wedlock, a child who suffers abuse as a kid can still grow up to find that there is an air of suspicion attached to such a "record," even one made healthy by Jesus himself.
Jesus welcomed people with such checkered pasts, one and all, and even included them in his inner circle. In fact, it was obvious to a relative outsider like Luke that Jesus purposefully chose people who had struggled with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disabilities. As Jesus said elsewhere, he came not for the healthy but for the unhealthy.
Even healthy women without histories of sickness, disabilities or such were not usually included in follower bands of religious teachers, especially not by name. Here Jesus certainly broke the social code of the day, surprising even his own disciples by relating directly to women. Jesus was all about tearing down access barriers to God's love and grace, regardless of gender and any other human-imposed restrictions.
The term Mark uses in his gospel to describe the work these women did for Jesus is the same term the Early Church later used for what it called "deacons" (cf. Mark 15:41). These women, rescued from lives of pain, oppression and ostracism, weren't just along for the ride. They joined to serve and to make possible the rescue of many others like themselves. In so doing, they to whom Jesus came to minister also became an integral part of Jesus' ministry to others.
Besides the famous Twelve, there were many other disciples of Jesus in his traveling entourage, including, surprisingly, quite a few women. Luke mentions three of these women by name. Mary from Magdala near Galilee Lake, is to modern readers the most well-known of them all as Mary Magdalene. She who had been cured of seven demons seems to have been among the closest to Jesus, being right there at the foot of his Cross and being the first person to whom Jesus appears after his resurrection. Johanna was the wife of a man named Cuza, whom Luke records was manager of Herod's household. Besides having a position of prestige in the Galilean aristocracy, Cuza was a man of financial means. There was also Suzanna, referred to only by name.
As I've already mentioned, there were many such women. Mark in his gospel also includes in this group Mary the mother of James the "Younger" (one of the Twelve) and of Joses, and also Salome. Matthew mentions the mother of Zebedee's sons, James and John. Luke later mentions that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Joanna and other unnamed women were the ones who went to Jesus' tomb on the morning of the resurrection, though Mary Magdalene is the only one to whom Jesus seems to have appeared at the tomb.
These women who were well known to have followed Jesus from Galilee were also with the Apostles and other disciples in the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. They were very qualified to act as witnesses of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection, a noteworthy badge of recognition in the New Testament church.
All these women played significant roles in Jesus' ministry, not the least of which was that they supported Jesus and the rest of his entourage out of their own means. As has always been the case throughout the history of the Church, most of Jesus' followers were extremely poor. For while the rich always have so much to lose by publicly following Jesus, the poor receive his good news gladly. "Means" can mean a whole range of things, but the clear implication here is that these women bankrolled Jesus' ministry, covering the cost, for example of basic necessities such as food and shelter.
They were women who had themselves been outcasts, even those who were high on the social ladder, for they had either been sick with some most likely incurable disease or they had been demon possessed. Compare these women with Betty Ford, widow of the former United States President, Gerald Ford, a woman of obvious social and political status, who went through alcohol and medication abuse rehabilitation. As a result of such well-publicized healing, she did much to help others in similar condition. So, too, these women who followed Jesus enhanced Jesus' ministry to others like them.
It is amazing that Jesus willingly attracted people of such questionable reputation. To us more enlightened moderns, physical sickness is not a stigma on the level of drug abuse or demon possession. But keep in mind that, not all that long ago, people with chronic diseases, disabilities and depression were set aside and even denied positions of honor and leadership in our society. Think of Senator Tom Eagleton who was considered unfit to run for Vice President because of previously being clinically diagnosed with depression. Or of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt whose paralyzed legs were a condition to be hidden lest they become a political liability. While supposedly more open-minded people today would not discredit a child born out of wedlock, a child who suffers abuse as a kid can still grow up to find that there is an air of suspicion attached to such a "record," even one made healthy by Jesus himself.
Jesus welcomed people with such checkered pasts, one and all, and even included them in his inner circle. In fact, it was obvious to a relative outsider like Luke that Jesus purposefully chose people who had struggled with spiritual, emotional, mental and physical disabilities. As Jesus said elsewhere, he came not for the healthy but for the unhealthy.
Even healthy women without histories of sickness, disabilities or such were not usually included in follower bands of religious teachers, especially not by name. Here Jesus certainly broke the social code of the day, surprising even his own disciples by relating directly to women. Jesus was all about tearing down access barriers to God's love and grace, regardless of gender and any other human-imposed restrictions.
The term Mark uses in his gospel to describe the work these women did for Jesus is the same term the Early Church later used for what it called "deacons" (cf. Mark 15:41). These women, rescued from lives of pain, oppression and ostracism, weren't just along for the ride. They joined to serve and to make possible the rescue of many others like themselves. In so doing, they to whom Jesus came to minister also became an integral part of Jesus' ministry to others.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Jesus' Plan of Action
Luke 8:1-3
Luke lays out his gospel with certain passages serving as key transitions where strategy ramps up. In the first few verses of Luke 8 is one of the more significant of these transitions.
In Luke 8:1, he writes that Jesus begins to travel around from one town or village to another, basically all over Galilee. What he does as he travels, Luke records, is to declare and demonstrate God's good news.
Jesus is not alone as he travels, for the Twelve disciples are with him. At this stage, they seem to follow along as observers. Everything that happens in the follow chapter is Jesus doing something with the disciples looking on or listening.
They are not the only ones in the official entourage, for there are, Luke takes great pains to clarify, several women who also travel with Jesus and his otherwise male team. Actually, there are many women who are part of this group, a group that seems to have one thing in common besides being women - they've been cured of various diseases and liberated from evil spirits. Plus freed, I should add, from the curse of being female in that ancient patriarchal society and thus left out of things deemed important to the work of God. They weren't just set free from something, they were set free to serve and minister and to be close to Jesus.
This time of going from one place to another is actually Phase II of Jesus' strategy to declare and demonstrate the Good News. Phase I begins in Luke 4 where in his own home town of Nazareth he sets forth his mission. There he quotes the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling his kin and childhood neighbors that right then and there Isaiah's words are being fulfilled. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he proclaims, "to preach good news to the poor, to set captives free, heal the blind, release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Over the next short period, he goes about doing just that, mostly staying in the vicinity of Galilee Lake.
As he heals the sick and casts out demons and preaches to the poor, he also calls those who he has blessed to follow him. More than just the group we call the Twelve. For Jesus had many disciples. But of the many, Twelve were assigned a specific role as Apostles, specifically tasked with being "sent out". And then there were these many women referred to now in Luke 8:2-3. I'll talk more about them in the next posting. For the moment I want to focus on Jesus' methodology.
Here in chapter 8 Jesus sets out to declare and demonstrate the good news. He does this by fulfilling his mission set forth back in Luke 4 - to declare good news to the poor by proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, speaking specifically of the Year of Jubilee when everything is made right, and to demonstrate the good news by actually making things right as in healing the sick, casting out demons, and freeing captives and other oppressed people. He has already been doing all this, but now he does so overtly with those he has been pulling together, namely the Twelve and these women. This systematic incorporation of his followers is Phase II of his strategy.
Quite often the chapter divisions get in the way of Scriptural interpretation, being added as they were long after the Scriptures were written and canonized. Luke 8-10 is one place where these chapter changes make good sense. For at the beginning of chapter 9, we see Phase III kick in. Starting with 9:1, Jesus sends out the Twelve to do just as Jesus has been doing. Then in chapter 10, we see Phase IV unfolding. Here is where he moves beyond the Twelve to include six times as many people in the work, disciples who are set out in the same manner. This group is known as the Seventy-Two (or Seventy, ancient manuscripts being hard to decipher on this).
Jesus is not only about declaring and demonstrating the good news. He is as much about calling and equipping others to do the same. Part of the good news is that it is participatory. And the plan unfolds one phase at a time as the group swells in size, less a messy mob than an organized team. Jesus doesn't worry about it being too organized, for human management is less critical than Spirit leading. And human hierarchy is not something Jesus fusses over. He apparently is much more concerned that people are communicating and doing Truth rather than that they all have their organizational ducks in a row. At least he doesn't get uptight when James and John shortly thereafter see some stranger exorcising demons in Jesus' name. Jesus cares little for copyright laws and territorial rights. The Good News is getting out and common people are doing it!
Luke lays out his gospel with certain passages serving as key transitions where strategy ramps up. In the first few verses of Luke 8 is one of the more significant of these transitions.
In Luke 8:1, he writes that Jesus begins to travel around from one town or village to another, basically all over Galilee. What he does as he travels, Luke records, is to declare and demonstrate God's good news.
Jesus is not alone as he travels, for the Twelve disciples are with him. At this stage, they seem to follow along as observers. Everything that happens in the follow chapter is Jesus doing something with the disciples looking on or listening.
They are not the only ones in the official entourage, for there are, Luke takes great pains to clarify, several women who also travel with Jesus and his otherwise male team. Actually, there are many women who are part of this group, a group that seems to have one thing in common besides being women - they've been cured of various diseases and liberated from evil spirits. Plus freed, I should add, from the curse of being female in that ancient patriarchal society and thus left out of things deemed important to the work of God. They weren't just set free from something, they were set free to serve and minister and to be close to Jesus.
This time of going from one place to another is actually Phase II of Jesus' strategy to declare and demonstrate the Good News. Phase I begins in Luke 4 where in his own home town of Nazareth he sets forth his mission. There he quotes the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling his kin and childhood neighbors that right then and there Isaiah's words are being fulfilled. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he proclaims, "to preach good news to the poor, to set captives free, heal the blind, release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Over the next short period, he goes about doing just that, mostly staying in the vicinity of Galilee Lake.
As he heals the sick and casts out demons and preaches to the poor, he also calls those who he has blessed to follow him. More than just the group we call the Twelve. For Jesus had many disciples. But of the many, Twelve were assigned a specific role as Apostles, specifically tasked with being "sent out". And then there were these many women referred to now in Luke 8:2-3. I'll talk more about them in the next posting. For the moment I want to focus on Jesus' methodology.
Here in chapter 8 Jesus sets out to declare and demonstrate the good news. He does this by fulfilling his mission set forth back in Luke 4 - to declare good news to the poor by proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, speaking specifically of the Year of Jubilee when everything is made right, and to demonstrate the good news by actually making things right as in healing the sick, casting out demons, and freeing captives and other oppressed people. He has already been doing all this, but now he does so overtly with those he has been pulling together, namely the Twelve and these women. This systematic incorporation of his followers is Phase II of his strategy.
Quite often the chapter divisions get in the way of Scriptural interpretation, being added as they were long after the Scriptures were written and canonized. Luke 8-10 is one place where these chapter changes make good sense. For at the beginning of chapter 9, we see Phase III kick in. Starting with 9:1, Jesus sends out the Twelve to do just as Jesus has been doing. Then in chapter 10, we see Phase IV unfolding. Here is where he moves beyond the Twelve to include six times as many people in the work, disciples who are set out in the same manner. This group is known as the Seventy-Two (or Seventy, ancient manuscripts being hard to decipher on this).
Jesus is not only about declaring and demonstrating the good news. He is as much about calling and equipping others to do the same. Part of the good news is that it is participatory. And the plan unfolds one phase at a time as the group swells in size, less a messy mob than an organized team. Jesus doesn't worry about it being too organized, for human management is less critical than Spirit leading. And human hierarchy is not something Jesus fusses over. He apparently is much more concerned that people are communicating and doing Truth rather than that they all have their organizational ducks in a row. At least he doesn't get uptight when James and John shortly thereafter see some stranger exorcising demons in Jesus' name. Jesus cares little for copyright laws and territorial rights. The Good News is getting out and common people are doing it!
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