Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22 Psalm 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
Lectionary Link
Since the Gospel of Luke was not written until three and a half to four decades after Jesus, the life narrative and his teachings are thematic representations of Jesus. These applied representations pertain to the pressing concerns of the Lucan communities more than they represent what was happening forty years prior during the year 30 of the Common Era or so.
Since the Gospel of Luke was not written until three and a half to four decades after Jesus, the life narrative and his teachings are thematic representations of Jesus. These applied representations pertain to the pressing concerns of the Lucan communities more than they represent what was happening forty years prior during the year 30 of the Common Era or so.
The Gospel of Luke is a parable narrative of the life of Jesus, and in that parable life presentation, Jesus also tells parable. Today we have the parable of Pharisee and a tax collector which is told within the parable about the life of Jesus. It is a layering of parables, a parable within a parable. A narrative of the author of Luke about Jesus who is telling a illustrative story about an unnamed Pharisee and an unnamed tax collector.
I hope that we can appreciate the Gospels as the thematic teaching of the early church and not what we understand as historical writing today.
What is something that we cannot conclude from the parable of Jesus? All Pharisees were phony hypocrites. All tax-collectors were humble and contrite before God.
What are the thematic lessons being taught in this Gospel presentations?
1-All people who pray do not do so for the right motive. Some people pray to show people that they are people of prayer.
2-Some people who do not seem to be obvious people of faith, actually do pray with honest hearts with deep feeling about their own short comings and a desire to be better.
What was probably true about the situation for the Lucan communities?
Not all Jews of the various religious parties such as Sadducees and Pharisees became followers of Jesus. If the Gospels seem to present Jesus, a Jew, being rather harsh on other religious Jews, it may reflect more the antipathy which occurred between followers of Jesus and the Jews who did not follow Jesus and remained in the synagogue. In short, the growing separation between the followers of Jesus, and the Jews who did not follow Jesus became retroactively portrayed within the Jesus narratives of the Gospels.
The tax-collector represented a group of people who would come to comprise part of the make-up of the church. There were Jews, like the tax-collector who made their living because they represented the Roman Government and therefore lived without ritual adherence to the requirements of the synagogues for Jews. This group of Jews who lived in places throughout the Roman Empire was a significant populace who were culturally Jews and knew something of their heritage while not being able to ritually participate in the synagogue.
This group was written into salvation history in the writings of St. Paul. They were people who knew themselves to be justified before God, not by believing in their group status or their behaviors but on the basis of their faith in the mercy of God.
The message of the Gospel is that we cannot presume any sort of status before God because of group identity or because we have the cultural training to seem to be good at performing public religious acts.
Our status with God comes when our hearts know that we need mercy, when we gratefully accept it, and when we joyfully promote the God of mercy to others.
This is the religion of Jesus, a Gospel of God's mercy. Let us get in touch with our mercy needing selves today and offer the authentic prayer of contrition. God have mercy on me, a sinner. God, help me to be merciful to my fellow sinners. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment