Today’s scripture: Luke 5:27-32 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Tommy Chittenden):
The more I study the Word of God and do nothing about what I learn — the easier it is to study the Word of God and do nothing about what I learn. The next thing I know is that I have created a habit of studying the Word of God and doing nothing about what I have learned! I hope you understand what I’m saying.
Over the years I’ve listened to many sermons and read articles based on today’s passage and my experience has been that most of those messages and writings slant toward Matthew (Levi) becoming the main character usually under a heading like, The Calling of A Tax Collector Into Discipleship. I get that, and I’m grateful for the insights about the “cost of discipleship.” But today I feel prompted to focus more on what Jesus had to say in response to the Pharisee’s and religious scholar’s dismay over Jesus’ intentional mingling with other “tax men and disreputable characters” while dining at Matthew’s home.
Can anyone relate with a decision to devote our life to Jesus because we were scared to death of hell, or even because we wanted crowns in heaven as we walked streets of gold? But with that decision, I believe, we missed the essence, the goodness, the incredible love of the main character!
My study, my meditation, and my life experience have convinced me that organic Christianity spreads best not through force but through something akin to fascination. The past few decades of Christianity, at least in America, has become less and less fascinating. We have given atheists less and less to disbelieve and the sort of Christianity found in mass media and too many churches looks and sounds less and less like the Jesus we read of in today’s text. As some may recall, in 2011 Life Journey Church posed a simple question to the greater Indianapolis community: Who Stole Jesus?
While that question was intended to raise even more questions, and to perhaps re-engage anyone who disconnected from the Body of Christ, it also served as a wake-up call for me, perhaps you too! Are there areas in my own relationship with Jesus that had become dormant or passive? Have I been studying the Word of God and doing nothing with what I learned?
At one point Gandhi was asked about Jesus, and is reported to have said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” So the Body of Christ has been experiencing a bit of an image crisis, and much of the reputation is well-deserved. However, God always survives the embarrassing things we do in God’s name! At the core of the Good News (the Gospel) is the message that Jesus came “not for the healthy. . . but the sick.” The astonishingly beautiful message of the Gospel is so much more than about where we go when we die — it’s about bringing the Kingdom of God to where we live. Jesus taught us to pray that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” On earth.
Bringing the “kingdom” to tax collectors, prostitutes, to the homeless, widows, orphans, those in prison, the sick, the lonely, addicted, and well, you get the idea. . . if we, individually or as the Body of Christ are not engaged in the work of verse 32: inviting outsiders, not only insiders to a changed life, changed both within and without, might we today look at the reflection in the mirror and hear the question as it return to our own ears: Who Stole Jesus?
Prayer for the day: God, while it is true that often the biggest obstacle others experience in getting to You is us, today, in this moment we can remedy that! Let us wake us up and decide to engage in the magnificent privilege of bringing Your Kingdom to earth!
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.