Luke 7:22-23: Jesus tells the disciples of John the Baptist to go and ‘tell John what things ye have seen and heard’ – such as Jesus healing the blind, the deaf, the diseased, the lame, raising the dead, and preaching the gospel to the ‘poor’.  The English term ‘poor’ here comes from the Greek word meaning the extreme opposite of wealthy, but more in the sense of being completely lacking in resources, and therefore helpless.  

Jesus then goes on to say: ‘And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.’  ‘Offended’ here comes from the Greek meaning ‘to set snare’ and therefore to cause someone to ‘stumble.’  So, setting some kind of trap, as it were, something which will make someone trip and divert their gaze from what is good, from the larger picture.  It’s interesting that the word ‘offend’ has these connections.  It doesn’t so much mean ‘to get hurt’, as it does to trip and to stumble.  In this sense, if we are offended, we are the ones who trip, we are the ones who suffer, not really the person who causes the offense.  Jesus is talking here about taking offense, not about giving it. 

It’s not that ‘giving offense’ is ok, but the point here is that when you are offended, you have to pay attention to the way it adversely affects your progress.  And to be offended by Jesus – to reject Him in some way, to be offended by something in the gospel perhaps we don’t yet understand – is to stumble and hinder the most important progress of all.  So, blessed are we when we do not fall for the trap, when we avoid the snare, when we continue to grow in our faith despite things that might make us stumble, if we let them.

I think taking offense is something very common to human beings.  Maybe it’s just wired into us, and we have to learn how to defuse it.  It does seem to be rooted in something rather primal, rather instinctual.  Just recently I heard of something quite serious and hurtful that a Church member said about other Church members.  I know too much about the damage that comes from taking offense – it will drive you out of the Church if you let it – so I consciously decided not to be offended.  Thankfully, I was able to understand that this person probably wasn’t fully aware of the seriousness of what they were saying, and also hasn’t had the opportunity develop a certain kind of wisdom that comes with life experience. 

Still, none of this is easy. And it doesn’t help that, in our contemporary culture, taking offense often seems to be applauded as an expression of our own righteousness, of our occupying the moral high ground. Taking offense in this sense is a way of marking yourself out as ‘good’, and separating yourself from ‘the bad’. The main problem with this approach is that, ultimately, it doesn’t provide a lot of functionality when it comes to the second great commandment: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’.

So, it seems like to not be offended often seems to require a deliberate, intentional use of our agency.  Blessed is she who understands that someone else’s imperfections and mistakes must not be the means of her own spiritual undoing. And blessed is she who keeps her heart and door open to those who cause offense, choosing mercy over condemnation.

In Luke 9:51-54, Jesus is going about teaching, and he sends messengers to a Samaritan village to announce that He is coming there to teach, too.  Jesus finds out that the village does not want him to come.  His apostles James and John ask Jesus if they should ‘command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did’.  Jesus says no, and tells James and John that they do not know ‘what manner of spirit ye are of’ – basically, in asking whether they should destroy this village for rejecting Jesus, they don’t know what they are asking.  Then Jesus says ‘For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them’.  This is so important:  Jesus did not come to destroy people, He came to save people. 

This reminds me of the scripture in John 12:47, where Jesus says ‘And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not:  for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.’  In both of these passages, you have Jesus referring to people who either will not hear Him or will not believe Him.  And, please note, He does not destroy them.  Furthermore, He does not even judge them, or ‘condemn’ would also work here.  What does it mean to preach, but not to condemn?  Is it that you speak truth, pursue truth, but you do not pronounce condemnations on people who disagree with you?  Would a judgment be to ‘classify’ them as either an enemy or a friend?  Is Jesus saying that He came to preach, but not to ‘classify’ His hearers? Is this a ‘keeping the door open as long as possible’ policy?

At any rate, Jesus lets those who reject Him go their way.  He does not pursue them, harass them, or reject them when they come back to ask Him more questions.  But Jesus Himself keeps going about His Father’s business – teaching, blessing, healing, calling to repentance, and speaking with grace so that His words invite and uplift, rather than exclude and demean.

There are two more scriptures to bring in here, I think.  First, from Luke 4:22: ‘And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.’  I love this.  The word grace here means kindness, and also refers to ‘God freely extending Himself, reaching to people because He is disposed to bless, or be near them’.  So when people listened to Jesus, they were amazed at His kindness, His reaching out so freely to them.  They sensed that Jesus wanted to be near them – this seems to mean that Jesus did not reach out with hostility, judgment or moral superiority, but in truth and in love.

So, to read these passages together in applying them to us:  like Jesus, we should be free with our kind speech; we should let grace proceed out of our mouths.  Jesus says He does not judge if we do not ‘keep’ or ‘watch’ his words, but He does keep speaking to whomever will listen.  Free with grace, free with truth, and long on forbearance, eating at the table with sinners/those with whom we strongly disagree as much as we can.  And maybe these things together will help us to stay away from the darkness.

And one more point:  James and John wanted to destroy those who would not hear Jesus.  Earlier in Luke 9:37-42, we read that Jesus’s disciples could not heal a child possessed by an evil spirit.  The child would cry, foam at the mouth, and hurt himself.  The father was distraught, and asked Jesus to try to cast out the spirit, because the disciples had been unsuccessful.  I wonder if there is a connection here – the tendency to want to engage in destruction rather than edification might also reduce our power to bring good things into people’s lives.  In this age when destruction is all about us, I think we need to be very intentional, very aware, of building people up.

Reading Luke 9:18-26.  Here, Peter testifies that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, after Jesus asks ‘But whom do you say that I am?’  We know from the account in Matthew that Jesus is happy to hear Peter say this, telling him that he is ‘blessed’ because no person has told him this, but rather he has this testimony through the Holy Spirit.  But here in this account in Luke, Jesus goes straight from asking His apostles regarding their testimonies, to then telling them of His impending death and resurrection: ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be slain, and be raised the third day.’  The word ‘rejection’ stands out to me here.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, ‘You believe in me as the Messiah, and that is good, blessed are you.  But there are going to be many people who will reject me, and will not believe in me as the Messiah, including people who have a lot of power.’ 

Furthermore, this rejection will play a central part in Jesus’s mission here on earth.  One of Jesus’s main messages in the scriptures is this idea of disbelief, this idea of rejection.  Blessed are those who believe; those who do not believe are not blessed – at least, not in the same way.  But this rejection is going to happen:  not everyone in this mortal life will accept Jesus as the Messiah. 

The emphasis seems to act both as an invitation and as a warning.  First, we are invited to believe in Jesus – it is up to us as individuals to ‘come unto Christ’.  No one can force this belief on us; we have to come to it on our own.  In the Philosophy of God course that I teach, we look at a piece by the philosopher Anthony Flew called ‘The Presumption of Atheism.’  The argument is that when it comes to the interaction between believers and non-believers, the presumption should be that God does not exist.  It is up to the believer to ‘prove’ to the non-believer that God exists, through giving sufficient evidence, which the non-believer will then examine (and probably reject).  The argument is that there have to be ‘good grounds’ for believing that God exists, and until the grounds are given, the only reasonable position would be that of atheism.  This strikes me as wrong, not because there aren’t good grounds for believing that God exists, but because I think that, ultimately, the individual has to come to understand the existence of God for themselves.  ‘Good grounds’ for God’s existence given by other people can be important and helpful and even necessary for a person’s faith, but they will never be sufficient.  The grounding has to come from the individual’s personal experience with God, and that indicates that the individual must be at least willing to seek out God for themselves.  Seek and ye shall find, etc.  The presumption of atheism does not follow God’s pattern for getting a testimony.

Second, we are warned that when we do accept that invitation to believe in Christ, we should expect that not everyone is going to be happy about this.  Just as Jesus was rejected by many, so we should expect to be rejected by many for our belief as Christians.  It really won’t be easy to be a disciple of Christ.  I find it interesting that Christ emphasizes so often the distinction between believers and non-believers.  These groups are fluid, of course, but the point is that this mortal existence is never going to be unified.  I guess there is a sense in which we always have a choice as to which group we are in.  Again, it is a choice which the individual has to make.  And also, please note, a choice which one cannot escape.  To not make a choice is to make a choice.  In this sense, I agree with the Christian existentialist idea that the decision to believe in God, or not believe in God, is a heavy, inescapable burden carried by each individual. 

And perhaps this is why in the next set of verses, Jesus tells his followers that ‘whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life’ for Jesus’s sake shall find it.  The word ‘life’ here is actually the Greek word psyche, which means ‘soul’.  So, blessed are we when we commit our souls to Christ – when we love God with all our heart, might, mind and strength.  When we hold things back, or reject Christ in favor of ourselves – our desires, our ambitions, our limited understandings, our disbelief – there is no flourishing, there is no abundance, there is ultimately profound loss.  And indeed, this is how Jesus finishes the passage:  ‘For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, but lose himself?’

Reading Luke 8, on the Parable of the Sower.  I love the idea of the quality of the ‘soil’ of one’s heart, as it were.  The parable is interesting in that Jesus talks first about external conditions that would prevent the seed of the gospel from taking root, but then ends up focusing on the soil itself.  So, seeds sown on the wayside just stay on the surface, and won’t be able to take root before the birds come to eat them.  Seeds sown on the rocks spring up fast, but have no root.  Seeds sown among the thorns are, in a sense, just sown in the wrong place – they might take root, but there just isn’t room for them to grow. 

Seeds sown on the wayside are those with quite hard hearts – they just won’t let the gospel sink into their souls, for various reasons.  Seeds sown on the rocks are those who do embrace the gospel with joy, but when they are tested – that is, when they face adversity of some kind – they cannot thrive in the gospel.  So, tribulation and persecution can make us unfruitful.  Yes indeed.  In this parable, the persecution scorches the plant, which has already sprung up, but which does not have roots deep enough to access the water and nourishment that it needs. 

Seeds sown among thorns are those who do initially flourish in the gospel, but other things – such as ‘cares of the world’, or a love of riches, an excessive focus on pleasure, choke out a love for the gospel.  First, thinking about the word ‘choke’.  The Greek word here means to choke in the sense of putting pressure on something.  So the idea here is that something is pressing down on us – that is, there is pressure.  Pressure from the outside, and pressure from the inside.  Pressure because the cares of the age are real and difficult and demand answers which we might not have, and also pressure from the inside – anxiety, self-doubt, the importance of appearances.  And the idea here is that the seed fell among thorns, and then the thorns sprung up.  So it’s like there was something in the heart that was already there – a propensity to conform, to propensity to compete, to care unduly about what others think, a propensity to love the world, maybe.  So the seed falls where there is this propensity to love the world, and then the love of the world puts pressure on the plant; it chokes the plant, so it does not bring forth fruit. 

Second, thinking about the word ‘cares’.  ‘Cares’ is from the Greek word merimna, which can also mean ‘worries’, ‘anxiety’, or ‘distraction’.  It refers to the idea of a person being divided or fractured into parts.  So, when you are taken over with certain worries or fears, it is hard for you to be ‘all in’ the gospel, as it were. 

And the passage here says that when someone is taken over with worry, anxiety, or distracted by a focus on riches or pleasures, then they will not mature in the gospel – with ‘mature’ coming from the Greek telos, which means ‘end point’, or ‘final flourishing’ of a thing.  And indeed, when we get to the ‘good soil’ part of the parable, Jesus says here simply when the seed takes root in a ‘good’ and ‘fine’ or ‘noble’ heart, and that person ‘holds fast’ to the gospel, or ‘takes possession’ of it, then that is the person who will bring forth fruit in the gospel.  For them, the gospel will mature, and they will flourish in their testimonies.  Notice, too, that the word ‘mature’ or ‘flourishing’ can be used in two slightly different ways – to ‘flourish’ in the gospel, or to have the gospel ‘flourish’ in you.  It becomes one and the same thing. 

But back to the ‘quality of the soil’.  Jesus says here that it is the person with the good and honest heart, basically, where the gospel can take root properly.  The Greek words are agathe and kale – meaning ‘good’ and ‘noble’ or ‘fine’ – which are both used in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to describe the virtuous person.  The idea here is that the ‘good’ and ‘fine’ person has become that way through some kind of good moral habituation, which takes place over a period of time, through a series of experiences.  So, the terminology here referring the ‘good and honest’ heart makes me think of a person who has been prepared to hear the gospel in one way or another through a series of life experiences.  And here is where the wonder comes in regarding God and the way He prepares us in all sorts of ways to either accept the gospel, or to grow in the gospel once we accept it.  Our agency in this is to allow our hearts to continually be prepared for further growth.

Matthew 4:1-11: the temptation of Jesus.  The temptations of Satan and Jesus’s answers:

1) Prove yourself by turning the stones into bread; Answer:  Man shall not live by bread alone.

2) Throw yourself off of a high tower to see if the prophecies are true about you, such that the angels will come and save you because you are the son of God; Answer:  Thou shalt not tempt the Lord your God – ie, demand of God that He prove Himself to you in the way that you think He should.

3) Worship me, and the all the kingdoms of the earth will be yours; Answer:  Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all the heart, might, mind and strength, and Him only – that is, you are not supposed to worship anyone else other than God.

So in the first response, Jesus points out that He doesn’t need to prove Himself over bread – bread is not sufficient for human spirituality and a close relationship to God. And although we are incarnate beings, we are first and foremost spiritual beings. In the second response, Jesus points out that you don’t ‘prove’ God’s power or get angels to come help you when you are involved in something vain glorious and selfish.  God reveals Himself to us and sends His angels to us in His own time and in His own way – it’s not ‘on tap’ for unrighteous reasons.  In the third response, Jesus points out that the first and great commandment is to love God with all your heart, might, mind and strength.  It doesn’t matter what follows from that, because you will have the most important thing, which is your relationship with God, your heart turned towards Him.  So, conversely, it doesn’t matter what benefits you have in your life if you don’t worship God, or decide to worship other things instead.  Everything that truly matters flows from keeping the first great commandment.

The take-away: our spirituality must be prioritized over material goods and political power.  Also our spirituality and access to God’s power can be accessed, but only in certain ways.  So we can’t take on the world’s ways and myriads of demands and expect God to be in our lives. Note that after the temptation, the angels did come and minister to Jesus.  So they came after all.  Satan had nothing to do with it, nor could he have made that happen.