Almost every family has one. You know… the person who remembers the family history, the stories of Uncle… and Aunt…, the in-laws, and the outlaws. They are often the ones with boxes of family photos and letters. In this Vincentian Mindwalk I explore how we are part of that tradition.
Luke, a generation after Jesus, uses Jesus’ stories to help Gentile Christians who faced painful choices. Luke, a Greek speaking outsider himself, wrote primarily to those who, like him, were outsiders to the “in” group. He used Jesus’ own stories to speak to the everyday problems these second-generation followers – rejection from the Pharisees and rejection by their own families.
The story of what Jesus did as a dinner guest of a leading Pharisee challenges me to think about it in today’s terms.
In Luke’s retelling the story he speaks to both fellow Gentiles as well as the Jewish people… and also us today.
Over the next 20 Sundays Luke tells us stories from along the road to Jerusalem through Galilee. But this is no sightseeing journey. Luke wanted to show how all followers of Christ were invited…and challenged by Jesus.
We sometimes hear the words of the Sunday Gospel without understanding the question the evangelist is addressing. The evangelists were primarily pastors, not historians, even if they used what they knew of Christ’s history to speak to the real questions of their readers.
In his Gospel, Luke shifts the early Christian emphasis away from the expectation of an imminent second coming to the day-to-day concerns of the Christian community in their world.
Keepers of memories! Almost every family has one. You know… the person who remembers the family history, the stories of Uncle… and Aunt…, the in-laws and the outlaws. St. Matthew was trying to get his Jewish audience to think about the very unlikely people who played a part in salvation history.