For the past two weeks, the pastor at the church I've been going to (which I would call "my church" if I could commit to it for a long period of time...but my entire life is too up in the air, and that truly is unfortunate) has spoke on two remarkably well known passages: The Great Commission last week, and The Good Samaritan just today.
Both times, he's said something about the context I've never heard, but it was quite illuminating.
Last week, with the Great Comission, it was the fact that "go into the world and make disciples of all nations" could be accurately, perhaps even more accurately, translated "while you are going into the world make disciples of everyone, not just jews" The not just jews part wasn't at all new...that's kind of the point, but the "while you are going into the world, making it something you're just doing, something that's just happening as you live life...that struck me. It made it a lot easier to apply it to everyone. The former argument had just been "trust me, Jesus didn't just say this for these guys or missionaries and pastors today, but for everyone." But the truth is, we're all already going into the world. It's just life... we're not living a sequestered life with other Christians 100% of the time. I've always said that you should take Jesus with you everywhere you go, and that's kind of my catch-phrase sometimes (which I probably stole from someone, I admit), but now, Jesus said that too...directly, to everyone.
Today, with the Good Samaritan, the ground-breaking insight had to do with the priest and the levite that passed the mugged-man by.... because they were going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, they weren't on duty. There was absolutely no real excuse for them to not touch the guy... I've often heard that they didn't want to have to purify themselves before they could get back to work, but the way things worked was that if they were headed toward Jericho, then they already had a few months off, since the priests and Levites lived in Jericho but worked, in multi-month shifts in Jerusalem. Jesus was basically saying that these men were upstanding and moral, or should have been... their station in life was a key to their presumed character, not some kind of out we like to give them, looking at it with limited Biblical knowledge a lot of the time.
-Zack
"And how could such a thing shine it's light on me and make everything beautiful?"
-David Crowder
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