GPS Guide - Week of March 17, 2019

Trusting

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WEEKLY SCRIPTURE READINGS FROM THE GOSPEL OF LUKE
from Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C – A Daily Devotional by N. T. Wright

MONDAY 03.18.19 Luke 7:1-17 (focused on 11-17)
Supposing you’re there, in the crowd, that day at Nain. As you are walking slowly along, to the burial-place outside the city, you’re aware of a change in the mood over the other side of the crowd. It’s that prophet and his followers, the ones who’ve been going around saying that it’s time for God to become king! What’s he doing? He should know you can’t touch dead bodies. It’ll make him unclean… Jesus doesn’t just touch the dead man. He speaks to him. And then… He’s alive! God has come to rescue his people! God has raised up a prophet! It’s all true! God is becoming king!

• Pause, and think, and listen. Jesus has a particular word for you today. You can turn away, if you like, and pretend he isn’t talking to you. But you might be far better listening to what he says. Then think and pray about what it means for his life-giving kingdom to come into your village, your family, your life.
 
 
TUESDAY 03.19.19 Luke 7:18-50 (focused on 7:18-28)
Imagine people standing around waiting for Jesus to say something that, whispered to the authorities, will get him into trouble. So he answers their question not by saying something but by doing something; doing, in fact, what the Bible said the Messiah would do when he came: open blind eyes, unstop deaf ears, even raise the dead. ‘Draw your own conclusions,’ he seems to be saying. ‘And think about this: God’s blessing will fall on those who are not shocked by me, not ashamed of the fact that I’m not exactly what they were expecting.’

• Try to be quiet for a moment and think about Jesus saying to you, ‘And a blessing on the person who isn’t shocked by me!’ Does Jesus shock you in what he says or does? Talk to him about that.
• Lord, give me the courage to understand what you really want to do for the world, for my community and for me.
 
 
WEDNESDAY 03.20.19 Luke 8:1-39 (focused on 8:22-39)
How do you pray inside a story like these? It may be easy enough to imagine yourself on that little boat, tossed this way and that by the sudden storm that sweeps down on the lake. At times like that there is no shame in praying, ‘Master, we’re lost.’ But in the second half of the story – and Luke, as he often does, puts things together because they make a natural set – is harder again. In this instance – and there are reported cases like this today as well – it seems that the poor man in the middle of the story was overwhelmed from within by what he calls ‘Regiment’ – the Roman ‘legion’, a troop of four of five thousand soldiers, well equipped, professionally trained killers. Some have speculated that his condition had been brought on by the trauma of seeing soldiers trampling through his country, polluting it with their pagan ways, crushing rebellions with casual brutality. So how do you pray inside a story like that?

• Sit with the scene in front of you for a while and pray for all those who, today, see violence sweeping through their village or their region. Pray for all those whose anger and fear have turned in on themselves until they have forgotten who they are and can only think of the terrible enemy. Pray for the power of Jesus to dispel the demons, whatever they are, that grip so many people in anger and fear. Ask for wisdom to look into the depths of your own heart and tell Jesus what names are haunting you just now.


THURSDAY 03.21.19 Luke 8:40-56
We in the Western world are used to comparatively sedate behavior and crowd control, but there was nothing sedate or controlled about people when Jesus was around. We have to imagine a seething, pushing crowd, like people spilling out of a football stadium or like shoppers on Black Friday. Everyone wants to get close to where they think the action is. Then suddenly Jesus wheels around and asks, ‘Who touched me?’ Peter protests. ‘What part of “this is a crowd” don’t you understand?’ Jesus knows better. ‘I felt power go out from me.’ Even those of us who’ve been Christians for many years find it easy to lapse back into thinking of Jesus as basically just another great teacher, even as the one who died for us; but the thought that he had that kind of power, and was conscious of it going out from him, that’s hard to imagine. By ordinary rules, we should make Jesus unclean, pressing upon him with our messy and muddled lives. But when we come to him in faith, it works the other way. His power makes us clean again. That’s near the very heart of the gospel. Come in faith!

• ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Jesus had said. ‘Just believe.’ Is this the moment to stop in your tracks, to face your fears and give them to Jesus? Trust him, and his power can and will bring new life where it’s needed.
 
 
FRIDAY 03.22.19 Luke 9:1-36 (focused on 9:18-27)
There are some questions that, depending on your answer, will change your life for ever. ‘Is this the path we should take to get down the mountain?’ Get the answer wrong and you could be heading for disaster. ‘Is this the person I should marry?’ Get that one wrong – either way – and you face lasting unhappiness. And so on. Jesus’ question about who his followers thought he was is a question like that. It wasn’t just a quiz, sitting round the campfire one night and seeing what people think, but then going on much as before. He needed to know that they had got the message, that they had worked it out. Are you ready to take a deep breath and blurt out the conclusion that Peter and the others were coming to? ‘You’re God’s Messiah!’ You’re the King, the Coming One. You’re not just a prophet. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for! That answer has immediate consequences. If you think Jesus is the Messiah, then you are committed to following him, even when he tells you he’s off to the big city to die.

• Imagine that you are sitting around the fire and listen to Jesus asking you, ‘Who do you say I am?’ Tell him your answer. Tell him how much you love him, and what things you find difficult. Ask him to give you a share in his courage, to follow him wherever he leads and whatever it costs.
 
 
SATURDAY 03.23.19 Luke 13:1-9
Ever since that opening sermon in Nazareth, Jesus had been telling people things most of them didn’t want to hear. They wanted a rabble-rousing, let’s-go-and-bash-the-Romans sort of leader. Jesus went about healing people, talking about a few seeds producing a lot of fruit, and warning the rich and the self-righteous that their cosy world was under judgment. And now we begin to realize what was going on. He could see, more clearly than most of his contemporaries, that Israel was poised on a knife-edge. One false move, one classic piece of anti-Roman activism, and the Romans would come and stamp on the nation once and for all. Jesus is desperate to save his people. He will go ahead and take the full force of Rome’s anger onto himself. Anyone who follows him will find that a way of escape. But if they don’t – if they embrace the way of violence that he has set his face against – then they are signing their own death warrants. The fruitless tree is asking to be cut down. Stern situations need stern warnings.

• Pray that Jesus’ warning about the dangers of violent nationalism may be heard in our world, which still needs those warnings so badly.