READING LUKE-ACTS, PART XLV

Above:  Avenge Me of Mine Adversary

Image in the Public Domain

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Luke 18:1-14

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Luke 18 is a well-composed and arranged study in contrasts.  The first contrasts play out in the two parables that open the chapter.

The Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Corrupt/Unjust Judge (vs. 1-8) exists within a cultural context in which widows were vulnerable.  The widow in the parable has to defend her own rights because nobody else will.  She threatens the judge with a black eye, thereby convincing him to grant her justice.  God is the opposite of that judge.  God readily secures the rights of who petition for them.  Therefore, pray persistently and faithfully.

Certain scholars of the New Testament debate whether some texts refer to tax collectors or to toll collectors.  For my purposes in this post, that is a distinction without a difference, though.  So, as I turn to Luke 17:9-14, the collector of taxes or tolls (It matters not which one.) is a social pariah because of his collection duties.

Let us be honest–brutally so, if necessary.  Spiritual pride may be a sin with which you, O reader, are familiar, even if only by knowing someone who has it.  Clarence Jordan, in his Cotton Patch Version of the Gospel of Luke (Jesus’ Doings), changes the Pharisee to a church member and the tax/toll collector to an unsaved man.  That updating of the parable hits home, does it not?  Those who know their need for God are open to God.

Recall Luke 17:7-10, O reader; humility before God is the proper attitude.  One may also remember Matthew 5:3:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

—The New Revised Standard Version (1989)

“Poor in spirit” is a translation that may be so familiar as to seem trite.  Other options exist, however.

Clarence Jordan has “spiritually humble.”

David Bentley Hart translates this Beatitude as:

How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens….

A note in Hart’s The New Testament:  A Translation (2017) indicates that the connotation is that of a cowering or cringing poor man or beggar.

La Bible en Français Courant (1997) reads:

Heureux ceux qui se savent pauvres en eux-mêmes, ….

In English, it reads:

Blessed are those who know they are poor in themselves….

That is a fine translation, too.

Perhaps the best rendering in English comes from J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English–Revised Edition (1972):

How happy are they who know their need for God….

We are all poor in ourselves.  We all need God.  How many of us know it, though?

May we humbly and persistently walk before God and with God, trusting in God.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 27, 2022 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINTS JEROME, PAULA OF ROME, EUSTOCHIUM, BLAESILLA, MARCELLA, AND LEA OF ROME

THE FEAST OF SAINT ANGELA MERICI, FOUNDER OF THE COMPANY OF SAINT URSULA

THE FEAST OF SAINT CAROLINA SANTOCANALE, FOUNDER OF THE CAPUCHIN SISTERS OF THE IMMACULATE OF LOURDES

THE FEAST OF CASPAR NEUMANN, GERMAN LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF MARY EVELYN “MEV” PULEO, U.S. ROMAN CATHOLIC PHOTOJOURNALIST AND ADVOCATE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

THE FEAST OF PIERRE BATIFFOL, FRENCH ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST, HISTORIAN, AND THEOLOGIAN

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What will happen to me now?

Above:  The Parable of the Fig Tree, by Jan Luyken

Image in the Public Domain

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For the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, Year 2

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Lectionary from A Book of Worship for Free Churches (The General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches in the United States, 1948)

Collect from The Book of Worship (Evangelical and Reformed Church, 1947)

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Lord, we pray thee, that thy grace may always go before and follow after us,

and make us continually to be given to all good works;

through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth

with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

—The Book of Worship (1947), 214

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1 Kings 17:17-24

Psalm 116

Acts 17:16-34

Luke 7:11-17

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The readings from 1 Kings 17 and Luke 7 share a theme:  the raising of a widow’s son.

Widows were some of the most vulnerable members of society during the times of Elijah and Jesus.  On top of the usual grief of a parent for a child was the dread of,

God is gracious, Psalm 116 tells us.  God has been patient, St. Paul the Apostle said in Athens, Greece, in Acts 17.  Recognition of God and faithfulness to God has never been a guarantee against harm and disaster.  However, as Psalm 116 tells us, the faithful do not suffer alone.  Those oblivious to God do not know what they are missing.  They condemn themselves.

One may legitimately ask how God is present with the faithful who suffer.  God is present both directly and indirectly.  I know from experience that God speaks directly sometimes.  More frequent, though, is the experience of others–humans, mainly, but cats, also–functioning as agents of divine grace.  The existence and the caring nature of God does not absolve anyone of the responsibility to function as an agent of divine grace.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 23, 2021 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT JOHN THE ALMSGIVER, PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA

THE FEAST OF CHARLES KINGSLEY, ANGLICAN PRIEST, NOVELIST, AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF EDWARD GRUBB, ENGLISH QUAKER AUTHOR, SOCIAL REFORMER, AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF JAMES D. SMART, CANADIAN PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR

THE FEAST OF PHILLIPS BROOKS, EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS, AND HYMN WRITER

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