I've been to church a couple times
recently. One was an old friend I went to visit. He decided to move
the Luke 11 passage a week ahead of the lectionary. The other is a new pastor at my
wife’s church who wanted to meet me. He says only Lutherans and
Catholics use the lectionary anymore. I also heard a podcast that
pulled one line out of the lection.
The old friend, Roger, started out
with an old theme of his, the franchise. By taking the words of Jesus
and making them into a formula, and claiming that these particular
words must be read and understood to get to heaven, we “make Jesus
small”. We wrap him in tradition and ritual and hide the light that
we say he brings. If Jesus is the heart of creation, Roger posited,
then we should find him there. He pointed out that Einstein found
mystery and zoologists find cooperation in the animal kingdom. We
should look for the commonality of mystery and cooperation in
religion, not claim we have the keys while others don’t.
Near the end of his sermon, he said
that Paul (from the Colossians passage), says Jesus is in us. I had
to read to the whole thing over again, passed all the parts about how
glorious Jesus is and his blood sacrifice and the part about evil
deeds. It’s there. It’s between a couple commas at the end. I’m
glad there are preachers who can find these things and make a theme
out of them, but sometimes I wonder how that affects the
parishioner’s view of the Bible.
The tidbit was from Cass Midgley, in
the “Everyone’s Agnostic” podcast was “If you then, who are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more
will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Cass quotes it slightly differently and seemed to imply this says
parents can do just as well as God does for their children. It came
after his guest, Tony Woodall had just discussed how he would never
send his children off to be tortured if they had broken the rules a
few times. Tony is a preacher, but he sees the problems with
fundamentalist ideas, like hell. I agree with that, I'm not so sure
the verse fits that discussion.
This whole section 11:9-13 is about
asking and you will receive. And pointing out how children have no
problem asking, and parents don’t give them snakes or scorpions
instead of eggs or fish. The Matthew version of this, at 7:11, is in
a section about giving and receiving and the golden rule. It is
contained in Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount. It fits
there a little better. Matthew was written before Luke, so maybe
that’s where he got it. In either case, it's a claim of something
that is undelivered. The examples are people giving to each other and
nurturing their children, then it just adds on that God can do it
even better, because he's God.
It's a great podcast by the way. The
bit I mention here comes after the 2 hour mark.
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