During this season of Lent, we are using various passages in worship that come from the Gospel of Luke as Jesus makes his final journey to Jerusalem. Along the way, we will be looking at several familiar stories—the Good Samaritan, Mary and Martha, the fruitless fig tree, the Lost Sheep, Zaccheus, and more.
As modern readers, we sometimes lose the “shock factor” behind Jesus’ words. He describes a stigmatized Samaritan as a good neighbor. He emphasizes the value of 1 sheep in a herd of 100. He dines with a tax collector who amassed wealth through extortion. While dying on the cross, he tells a convicted criminal he will soon find paradise. In these and similar passages, Jesus intentionally highlights the cultural and political polarities of his time to emphasize the radical, inclusive, and surprising love of God.
Perhaps many of the usual ways of drawing lines and divisions don’t really hold up to scrutiny. Faith and works, rest and growth, lost and found, power and humility may not turn out to be exclusive opposites after all. We might begin to see a wide range of possibilities that go beyond one extreme or the other. We might find that God is present in the “in between.”
And so, this season, I encourage you to notice the contradictions and contrasts that typically define our lives. I am convinced that God is waiting to meet us somewhere beyond these differences we usually see in a divided world. This Lent, we can trust that God can found waiting for us in unexpected places if we are willing to go looking.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Steve