“Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
— Jesus, Luke 5
Seeing Jesus (Luke 8:26-39)
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
— Annie Dillard
Discipleship 101 (Luke 8:22-25)
“Whate’er my God ordains is right, Holy his will abideth.
I will be still whate’er He does, and follow where he guideth.
He is my God, though dark my road.
He holds me that I shall not fall, wherefore to him I leave it all.”
— Samuel Rodigast (d.1708)
What Does Faithful Hearing Look Like? (Luke 8:16-21)
“The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us — they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”
— Erich Auerbach
“In the self-assured world of modernity people seek to make sense of the Scriptures, instead of hoping, with the aid of the Scriptures, to make some sense of themselves.”
— Nicholas Lash
The Sower Is a Giver (Luke 8:4-15)
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
— Hebrews 3:15
Entering Through Christ (Luke 7:36-8:3)
“…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. …while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…”
—Romans 5:8, 10
Fully God and Fully Man (Luke 7:11-17)
“Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man…
One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and both concurring into One Person… not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ…”
— The Chalcedonian Definition, 451 AD
Components of Exemplary Faith (Luke 7:1-10)
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
— The Letter to the Hebrews
Proclaiming the Lord’s Death Until He Comes (1 Corinthians 11:17-34)
“When God’s Son took on flesh, he truly and bodily took on, out of pure grace, our being, our nature, ourselves. This was the eternal counsel of the triune God. Now we are in him. Where he is, there we are too, in the incarnation, on the cross, and in his resurrection. We belong to him because we are in him. That is why the Scriptures call us the Body of Christ.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger, December 30
Remember, Listen, and Eat (1 Corinthians 10:1-22)
“How are we supposed to be able to help those who are without joy and courage, if we ourselves are not borne by courage and joy? What is meant here is not something made or forced, but something given and free. With God there is joy, and from him it comes down and seizes spirit, soul, and body. And where this joy has seized a person, it reaches out around itself, it pulls others along, it bursts through closed doors. There is a kind of joy that knows nothing at all of the pain, distress, and anxiety of the heart. But it cannot last; it can only numb for a time. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger, December 28