This week, we will continue our journey through Luke with Luke 11:29-12:59. In these readings, we encounter Jesus’s teachings on trust and watchfulness. This email is available online and on Facebook.
As we read through chapter 12, we need to be mindful of its context. Jesus has just begun his long march to Jerusalem and the Cross. See, Luke 9:52. This is a military operation in the spiritual realm, and Jesus has been teaching about the high cost of discipleship. Luke 9:57-62. Jesus has also been uninhibited in his condemnation of those Jewish leaders who lack his passion and intensity of true righteousness. In reading these passages, we should feel the immediacy of the tension and urgency.
Warnings: (vv. 12:1-12)
Jesus’s disciples and the crowds have just witnessed his denunciation of the Pharisees. Jesus now turns to them. Jesus tells them that whatever they do has not only immediate implications but also eschatological implications. As Jesus marches on Jerusalem, he needs his disciples’s loyalty to him, his mission, and the group, regardless of the repercussions. There is to be no secrets and no gossip.
In connection with these warnings, Jesus also gives the disciples great encouragement. Jesus says, “Fear not!” for you are of great value. He also tells his disciples not to worry about how they will respond to the coming repercussions of being his disciples because the Holy Spirit will guide them. We will see the power of the Holy Spirit in giving Peter the courage and the words to say when the Temple authorities arrested him soon after Pentecost. Acts 4:8.
(As an aside, Luke’s only mention of “hell” occurs in verse 5. Hell is the Anglo-Saxon word for the abode of the dead and is used to translate the word Gehenna, which was the place name of a valley outside of the walls of Jerusalem. Gehenna was where child sacrifice occurred in ancient Judah. 2 Kings 23:10, Jer. 7:31. In Jewish thought at the time of Jesus, on the Day of Judgement, the wholly righteous would go to the Garden of Eden, the wholly wicked would go to the everlasting contempt of Gehenna. The middling people would go to Gehenna to be purified before going to the Garden. A more thorough discussion of the meaning of “Gehenna” from David Bentley Hart’s New Testament is HERE.)
The Parable of the Rich Fool (vv.12-34)
Jesus needs his disciples to be with him now and not to worry about the future. A soldier thinking about tomorrow will lack the appropriate courage today. Within these teachings, Jesus also wants to divorce his disciples from clinging to the ways of the world and how the world measures success.
This teaching opens with a man coming to Jesus and asking him to arbitrate an inheritance dispute the man is having with his brother. In response, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool. In the parable, a man has an abundant harvest and decides to build bigger barns to store his crops. He tells himself to enjoy his wealth. That night, he dies, and his wealth is worthless to him. He was materially wealthy but spiritually impoverished.
Jesus then gives his teaching on the birds of the air and the lilies of the field that we have previously discussed. (Matthew places this teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:19-34.) Here, Jesus is further instructing his disciples not to place their faith in material well-being, which can easily be taken. Rather, they are to place their trust in God. In having the courage to seek God’s Kingdom today, everything else will fall into place tomorrow. Once more, the disciples are not to be anxious.
A Call to Watchfulness (vv. 35-48)
Over these last several teachings, Jesus keeps building up the responsibilities of being his disciple. 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.
He begins this teaching with a reference to the Exodus and the Passover, where Moses commands that the Passover be eaten with “your loins girded and your sandals on your feet” because God and his salvation from the evil Egyptians is coming. Ex. 12:11. Jesus then tells another parable of servants being watchful for the return of their master. In the story, loyalty and faithfulness are insufficient unless that loyalty and faithfulness are accompanied by watchfulness and expectation. In Exodus, the Hebrew slaves prayed for deliverance, and Moses told them to be ready because their deliverance was at hand. This is Jesus’ message to his followers here.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is chicken bog. Discussion about 6:45. Compline at 8. Hope to see you here!
Oh send out thy light and thy truth;
let them lead me,
let them bring me to thy holy hill
and to thy dwelling!
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise thee with the lyre,
O God, my God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.
Psalm 43:3-5