Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Lent Bible Challenge | Day 30
March 31
Luke 13:18-14:6

Jesus taught in his day that the kingdom of God - the vision that God had for the world coming into existence through the life and actions of Jesus and his followers - was not a pie-in-the-sky escapist future from the hard, oppressive world of the Roman Empire, but rather a reversal of the world order, in which those that claimed to know God might discover God in the words, presence and actions of the poorest of the poor, the marginalized, what Jesus called the "least of these". His message is a prophetic interpretation of what community, relationship and solidarity mean: the essence of being human. Not just being human, created in the image of God, but becoming human - more human in that existential sense - through our actions, our response to the original creative initiative of God in creation up through the experience of Jesus the Christ and still ongoing and emerging today. Maybe we miss out on the dynamism of that call and this kingdom vision today because we're too quick to close the canon, to say that God spoke "then" but doesn't speak to us in the same way today. Maybe God does?

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