Thinking about today's Gospel reading...

Today’s Gospel Reading (Luke 13: 10 – 17) tells us about Christ Healing a woman in the Synagogue on the Sabbath. The people in charge are affronted by this “work” on the Sabbath and reproach him.

It is the subtext to this story which interests me. For example, the complaint regarding the healing act is not directed at Jesus but at the people in the synagogue. The ruler of the synagogue says, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day." Does this mean that people are attending the synagogue specifically to be healed by Jesus?

Jesus answers in an interesting way, too. He says, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?"

The “work” Jesus refers to is essential stuff you have to do regardless of what else is going on. They are not special activities or major undertakings. They are also about providing necessary care and acting in a responsible manner, perhaps even carrying out an essential duty expected of you.

The final sentence is also curious; “As he said this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.”

What does this story say about what it was like to be in that synagogue with Christ teaching? It suggests quite a lively event. Perhaps the whole thing seemed to be getting out of hand in the eyes of the ruler and his fellow senior members? It sounds like the whole place was charged with a vibrancy, an expectation that anything could and would happen and that people were going to be healed and perhaps it felt like everyone was going to have a great time and come out excited and amazed by the experience. The people in the synagogue would not have normally rejoiced openly when the authority of the rulers of the synagogue was being so openly and brashly challenged.

If you try to put it in context you get quite a different feel to the one you get when you read it as a “Gospel” reading where the synagogue is a foreign and distant place and your whole view is from that of our Christian understanding of Christ as the Saviour. Things were not so obvious then. Try replacing synagogue with “Church”, etc… and see how less acceptable the activities might seem to the people in charge of your place of worship.

Jesus was a truly challenging teacher and activist and he would have been a very unsettling figure to all those in authority and with strict religious views.

There are also echoes between this and the story in the Acts (13: 42-52) where Paul and Barnabas teach in the synagogue and end up with much of the town turning up to hear them, which upsets the people in charge of the synagogue who do not want non-Jews and non-converts in their place of worship.

Again you read between the lines in the text and there are two different things going on. One is the feeling that the synagogue is being taken over and/or the leaders are loosing control. The synagogue is possibly being used for unusual or “inappropriate” purposes from the point of view of those in charge. The challenge is to authority and to a closed view by the authorities. The message is one of universal welcome – the Good News is for everyone, not just the few. Christ really did come to turn the world upside down.

The second is that complacency is a bad thing. Christ’s message demands something more than just sticking to the rules and enforcing them. You have to re-examine what those rules mean. You have to view everything you do in the light of Christ’s teachings and change where necessary. You have to keep asking “Is this good enough?” and “Does this really answer the challenge that Christ is placing before me?” and perhaps even, “How does the way I live my life fit with the teachings of Christ?”

And, of course, if healing is not work but a basic and essential activity, if caring for others is an essential duty that is not an “extra” or a task that can be treated like “work”, what does that mean to us in our ordinary lives?

What are we doing about it?

Some thoughts on the nature of God

What does it mean to say that we are made in God’s image?

The Bible is very specific about this. It is said twice in Genesis 1: 26-27. It is also repeated in Genesis 5: 1-2.

We are all, women and men, made in God’s image.

It does not mean that we are Gods. It also does not mean that we are exactly like God.

To me it is a clue to God’s nature and a very important signpost to what we are and what we can be.

It is as significant a clue as the revelation that God is three in one, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity reveals three aspects of a God that is beyond out abilities to comprehend. Despite our limits, God has decided to engage directly with us, God understands our limits and provides us with the appropriate means with which to engage with God. God becomes accessible to us through this and despite the mind-blowingly complex idea of the Trinity we can encounter and engage with God in these three aspects of God’s nature more easily than we would if we tried to understand God as a completely abstract or overwhelmingly incomprehensibly powerful and all encompassing being.

It was Christ that brought us to this revelation of the Trinity and He also used one aspect of this Trinity to point us towards the nature of God in ourselves.

By specifically teaching us that we should pray intimately to God, and by illustrating this through His prayer to His Father, and by constantly referring to God in this way, Jesus was adding a new insight into this idea that we are all made in God’s image.

Jesus humanises God in a very particular way – as a loving parent – and points towards this as a way of helping us build a more intimate and effective relationship with God. But He is also telling us to look towards ourselves so that we can discover more about both our own nature and that of God’s.

If we are all made in God’s image and Jesus is revealing to us a new understanding of the Old Testament (both of which are true) then Christ’s teaching of the Trinity tells us that it is helpful to understand our God in this way. And if two of the three aspects of God He reveals to us contain human references there must be aspects of the nature of being both a parent and a child in the image of God that is contained within us.

So, we are pointed towards looking at aspects of ourselves as a way of helping us look more closely at the nature of God.

What is it that is valuable, important, good, nourishing and so on about parenthood and being a child?

I have been pondering on this so much! There are so many aspects of ourselves as human beings that are highlighted when we become parents and there are equally valuable aspects of our human nature that are revealed when we see ourselves as children.

I will not list them all here, but they include elements such as unconditional love, a readiness to forgive and to forgive again, trusting in others, the ability to see the best in others, a deep desire to help others become independent and happy and so on.

Consider this; God is so incomprehensibly awesome and powerful that we can never get to grips with what God is. However, every human being that has ever been and will ever be born holds a tiny fragment - a small but completely true aspect of what God is within them. Even when every human being has lived and the new Kingdom comes, the sum of all our parts will not equal the whole, which is God.

But if we live our lives looking for that aspect of God in everyone we meet, how will that change and transform not only our lives but the lives of everyone we meet?
Through revealing this to us and through the rest of His teachings, Christ points us to something wholly new and enriching. Some people say we should look for Christ in everyone we meet. Perhaps we might see a new aspect of the Trinity every time we make the effort to look.