Ancient Anglican

There four questions and one parable give us a preview of the remainder of the Gospel of Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Exaltation.

The essential nature of repentance is not about telling God we are sorry and that we will try harder next time. Jesus is not talking about rule-breaking and punishment. Rather, what Jesus is talking about is being in a relationship with God or suffering the consequences of that absence, which is perishing into non-existence. 

Luke clearly shows us that Jesus enters Jerusalem as a triumphant returning King.

Jesus continues to prepare us for the Kingdom by giving us a story on interdependence and a parable on the necessity of faithful reliance.

Jesus gives two parables – one on prayer and one on humility – to teach us how to prepare for the immediate present of the Kingdom of God.

We are merely trustees of any wealth that is given to us, and therefore, we are charged with using that wealth in the service of others.  

Each of these three parables has the same motif – something is lost, there is a search, the lost is found, the lost is restored, and there is a celebration. The protagonist in each parable is not the lost one but the finder.

Within this section, Luke brings together a series of banquet-themed stories. Within these stories, Jesus imparts his wisdom and teaching on the Kingdom of God.

The issue before us is whether to follow Jesus and his way of peace with a reliant faith in God’s Kingdom or to follow the way of the sword with a reliant faith in political change.

In Jesus’s apocalyptic contest between God’s Kingdom and the powers of evil, Jesus teaches that he needs total loyalty from his followers and that his followers must completely reorder their priorities. Although Jesus just told his disciples not to be anxious, here he tells them they do need to be watchful and ready.

In their policing of social boundaries and correct conduct, the Pharisees’s iniquity was not hypocrisy but in placing themselves as overlords of others. Their iniquity was making themselves great and placing crosses on the backs of others.

Jesus moved the lawyer’s inquiry, which sought to husband God’s grace in isolated security and purity, to one of extending God’s grace to the whole world. In other words, Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s testing shows just how far the mission that began with the Twelve and then the Seventy will extend.