LK 9: 51-62 

Laterally Luke…Pentecost+3…Revised 2019 

It may seem a bit over-imaginative, but good preaching - & teaching - is imaginative. Was there ever more imaginative a Teacher & Preacher than Jesus Himself? So, that said, imagine our passage as two sandwiches. Each put together with someone caught in between. The first, in vv.51-56 is made up of a slice of racial intolerance on the one side, & one of religious intolerance on the other. Jesus & His disciples are then the  ‘meat in the sandwich’! Aren’t racial & religious intolerance as alive today, if not more so, as they were back in the days of this episode? Is calling down fire from heaven on the perpetrators, though, likely to do anything other than fan the flames & intensify them? Jesus knows this only too well. What can we learn from His Wisdom today; & how might we preach it to encourage each other to discern & practise ‘the Jesus Way’ rather than James’ & John’s ‘heavy-handedness’?

What follows is another ‘sandwich’. This time the slice of bread on one side is those who volunteer or are called to follow Jesus, & on the other side, the conditions each set for their following. The ‘meat in the sandwich’ is Jesus himself. There's nothing wrong with any of the things the three would-be followers want to do before setting off with Jesus wherever He might lead. There’s everything wrong, though, in their timing. God's time is always Now! Not tomorrow! Not the next day! Not when it suits us! God is always the God of Now! And, as Jesus makes clear, demands a Now response.

A question we might ponder, & pose in our preaching, is ‘What kind of bread slices are we being?’ &, who or what are we sandwiching in our congregation? Why not discern & preach whether the quality of life in our church, & its leadership, would be more Jesus-like if we applied the lesson of our sandwich? How much more Godly might our church life become if, we called more to be the slices of bread & the filling in our sandwich? Bread is a constantly recurring theme in the Scriptures. Why not, then, explore the idea of bread & its fillings imaginatively to illustrate how Jesus becomes the Bread of Life for us all today.

Brian

Afterthought: I here confess I’m a keen home-baker of Bread! There’s nothing like the smell & taste of freshly baked, home-made bread, filled (or spread) with our choice of toppings. Our local library actually has on its shelves, in the cookery section, a book called, ‘The Filled Loaf’! Maybe they should move it to the Theology section?! 

LK 8: 26-39 

Laterally Luke… Pentecost +2 …Revised 2019 

What a contrast between our Celebration, last Sunday, of God as Three Personae in One, &  today’s story of a man whose persona is so ‘split’ they liken him to a Roman Legion! Preach that God’s gift of Jesus' Spirit to make us whole is still as available to us today as it was to ‘Legion’ back then. Preach in the present tense, towards meeting the needs of today’s ‘Legion’s, rather than focusing overmuch on the original one.

Despite Jesus’ self-understanding that He's sent first to His own Jewish folk, He still ventures into Gentile territory on occasion. If it’s OK for Jesus to do it, why not us? How far are we prepared to go beyond the security of our personal ‘borders’ for others? Even if it means getting our hands dirty & our reputation sullied, like Jesus.

I’m not into ‘demon possession’! We don’t need to think as peoples of Jesus’ time - including Jesus Himself - did. The earth is neither flat, nor is it at the centre of the universe, to take two examples! As I understand them, ‘demons’ can arise from inside us, or from outside sources. Wholeness, though, stems from the Oneness of God as we let God ‘possess’ us. How can we positively address issues like mental illnesses, drug -abuse, relational breakdowns, over-reliance on alcohol, PTSD, homelessness, not having enough, &c, being ‘demons’ so that victims can be made whole as ‘Legion’?

‘Legion’ - what is his real name, as a child of God, I  wonder? Does he remember it himself, even? How many of us does he represent today? Not ‘categories’ into which someone can slot us, but victims of  that ‘Fall’ from which YHWH God through Jesus & by His Spirit wants to restore us? How many of our fellow human-beings are fall-ing into homelessness, as ‘Legion’ finds himself? Living among all kinds of ‘tombs’.

How many of us need to re-discover our true self,  'clothed & in our right mind’? How many of us need to choose, or re-choose, to 'sit at Jesus' feet’ - made whole? Jesus tells the new ‘Legion’ to stay where he is & tell the good news at home? Might that be God’s intended starting place for some of us? To feel more valued, & help others feel less out-cast, & ‘at home’? As they find God cares through you & me? 

Jesus being told ‘go away' leaves Him, at the end of our story, where Legion was at its beginning. There's a lot to take on board here, as we take discipleship seriously. The ‘ins’ ending up ‘out’ & vice versa, is one of those great Gospel paradoxes. Not  for us to resolve through any short-cuts, but, by living out God’s Grace from within. As we cross the lakes of life, & run into our various Legions. Including our own inner ones, there.

Brian 

Afterthought: With all that noise & excitement going on, it wouldn’t take a demon to make me run down that hill to get away from it all, either!