BREAKING BARRIERS:

Something To Think About Barriers:

With a bit of hyperbole, the Apostle John tells us “there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books” (John 21:25).  From the vast selection the four Gospel writers, directed by the Holy Spirit, selected, arranged, and adapted the material to present their unique portraits of the Lord.  There is much that each of us can learn from each of them, but probably if you take the time to get familiar with the four presentations of Jesus you’ll find one of them that particularly rings your bell.  I like Luke.  He wasn’t a Jew, but it very well could be that he had become a “lover of God” before he came to know Christ.  In spite of the insulation that the Jewish religious establishment had wrapped around the message of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Luke got the truth.  We know that when he heard about Jesus Christ, the Messiah Isaiah predicted, Dr. Luke became a follower of Christ.  Maybe it was because Luke had once been an outsider to the religious establishment that he championed others who often had to look in from beyond barriers that shouldn’t have been there.  A simple word count will reveal Luke’s emphasis on women.  He mentions them about twice as often as the other Gospel writers.  At the very beginning of his Gospel we meet Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna.  Throughout he elevates the status of women.  Even more obvious, though, is Luke’s reaching across a cultural mote to the Samaritans.  Only Luke records the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (10:30-37), and he alone tells us that out of the ten who were cured of leprosy only a Samaritan returned to show gratitude (17:11-19). We live in a day in which the temptation to prejudice is growing.  Political candidates pander to our fears.  We see stories of horrendous deeds and we are pushed to think that all “those people” are like that.  They aren’t.  In the midst of all that is swirling around us, I encourage you to read the Gospel of Luke.  It will be a couple of hours well-spent.  Read it with an open heart.  Are there groups of people whom I have wrongly put on the outside?   Here is one that doesn’t take a stretch.  Tax-collectors have never been among the most admired.  Yet Jesus felt he had to go to Zaccheus’s house for dinner.  At the end of the account Luke quotes these words from the Lord, “. . . the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).  Even Samaritans and tax-collectors.  Stay tuned, but clearly He sent us to continue the task. It’s STTA.