Luke 21:1-4 – There’s a lot of commentary on wealth in Jesus’ message in Luke. Maybe I’m just sensitive to it now, but it’s standing out to me.
Luke 21:9 – The end of this Jesus says “… but the end will not be at once.” Taking this as not only the prediction of the fall of Jerusalem form around 70 AD, but also as an end of times prophesy, what could that mean? It sort of negates one view that someday – POW – Jesus returns and it’s all over. Then again, he did say it’ll come like a thief in the night too …
Luke 21:13 – Jesus says “This will be your opportunity to bear witness.” Great! Wait, what will be our opportunity? Persecution, accusation, seizure, prison, hatred and death. Oh.
Luke 21:18-19 – But wait, there’s more:

But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.

They were told that they would be hated, seized, persecuted and some even killed, yet they stuck with him. At this time, I think it was simple They didn’t quite get it, but it couldn’t be what it sounded like after all he’s the savior! It’ll sort it out later. After the cross, however, it was all clear. It was exactly what it sounded like, yet they forged ahead anyway. Why? What could emboldened simple men to rush headlong into certain harm, likely death?
An empty tomb.
A risen and living, yet crucified Lord.
Not only did he promise them death, he had promised them life everlasting afterwards. At the time, they didn’t understand that either, but on Easter morning he showed them exactly what he meant.
Death is not final. It’s painful and traumatic, but not permanent.
And he proved his point with his very life. Seeing Jesus risen, not only finished his work of redemption, it was the final proof of what he had been saying all along. It now made sense and they could carry on, into an uncertain, but definitely challenging, Earthly fate because they knew that wasn’t their ultimate fate. That fate was absolutely certain, and proven.
For us here and now, it means the same thing. We can forge on, no matter what lies ahead, because what lies ahead is small compared to what lies beyond.
“By your endurance you will gain your lives.”
Luke 21:25-28 – I’m sure some see the results of global warming in these verses. Of course, I’m sure at any given point in history, some see the events of their time in this chapter. Nonetheless, should we be discouraged or fearful? No:

Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

Luke 20:1-8 – The implication in the challenge as to where Jesus’ authority came from was that the chief priests were the ones who granted such authority. They certainly didn’t, so what was he doing here? Jesus asking the question about John’s baptism was to answer their challenge with his own. If you think you should have the power to remove my authority to speak, show me that you’re worthy of it. They could not, so Jesus wouldn’t answer to them.
Luke 20:16 – I don’t get it – Why were the people shocked when Jesus said that the owner would destroy the wicked tenants who beat and mistreated 3 of his servants and killed his son? To me, that’s justice and I would have thought the crowd would have thought so too.
Luke 20:17-18 – I also don’t understand the connection of this OT scripture to the parable.

Luke 19:1-10 – As if to prove the point of the rich finding the kingdom, here’s the story of Zacchaeus. How did he find salvation? Through giving away half of what he had. Half. and beyond that, he promissed out of the remaining half to repay anyone he had defrauded. Was it in the act of giving away his wealth that he found redemptions? It’s not possible to say definitively from the text, but I’d say yes and no. The simple act of giving does not save. In other words, the rich who give to seek redemption will not find it. It’s the heart change that made the act not only possible but natural that brought salvation, I think.
Luke 19:30-34 – I love this story. Imagine going into town and finding a convertible along side the road. You hop in to go and bring Jesus into town. The owner comes how, and wonders what’s going on. “The Lord needs it”, you reply. Can you imagine them being fine witht hat explination? 😀
Luke 19:37-40 – This always made me wonder, in light of how in only a few days they would be calling for his death. It makes more sense to me in light of verse 11:

As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

They had been following Jesus, amazed at what he had done, and they expected as he entered Jeruselem to usher in the kingdom. So as he entered, they couldn’t help but rejoice.

Luke 18:1 – The NIV here says “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.“, the ESV says “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Give up or loose heart? At first glance, the difference seems subtle, but I find it profound. The NIV’s “never give up” implies effort, striving, work toward a goal while the ESV’s “not loose heart” implies hope, faith and confidence. I find the ESV’s translation closer to the message of Christ. He did not come to give us a goal to shoot for, rather he came to accomplish that goal and in that give us a reason to hope.
Too often I’ve been taught to “never give up” instead of to “not loose heart.”
This gives new light to the parable as well, and better gels with Jesus lament about finding faith when he returns. If even an unjust judge can be prompted to act, have faith for God cares about you and he will not leave your prayers unanswered.
Luke 18:24 – Living in the USA with my 4 bedroom house, my high-speed Internet, my patio and my toy car, this verse scares the willies out of me. I wonder, how many in the USA, confident of their standing with God, are actually far, far from Him? I wonder sometimes if we can actually see through our wealth and grasp how far we are from where he would have us be. This has to be one of the scariest verses in all the Bible for folks in the first world.
Luke 18:27 – In light of verse 24, this verse gives us hope. God is able. Able to teach us, to enlighten us and to help us see through the blindness that our wealth gives us. We cannot see
how far we are away, but he is able to bring us back.
Luke 18:31-34 – Knowing what happened to Jesus, it;s easy to see how plainly he told the twelve what was to happen (for the third time), yet they didn’t understand. How could they not? It’s easy, however, to have an idea in your head that is so entrenched, it blocks out even the most plain description of something else. Jesus was to be their savior from the Romans, him being beaten and killed didn’t fit with that, so Jesus must be speaking metaphorically. We’ll understand later, I bet is what they thought.
I call this tendency to believe what we already believe Intellectual Inertia, and it’s all over the gospels. People think they know what Jesus is about, or what he should be about, and then act on that misinformation. Sometimes, they just get redirected, sometimes they are rebuked (like Peter). In this chapter alone, the disciples assume that Jesus doesn’t want to be bothered by the children (Luke 18:15-17), the rich ruler thought he knew where he stood (Luke 18:18-23) and those at the front of the crowd assume Jesus doesn’t have time for a blind beggar (Luke 18:39)
Today, it leads folks who claim the name of Jesus to do a lot of stupid stuff in His name, because they assume they know what he wants them to do and can’t see his plain teachings to the contrary all over the Bible.

Luke 17:3 – Jesus here says “Pay attention to yourselves!” That makes me think that I need to watch out for my own sin, but immediately following he says “If your brother sins, …” Clearly the ‘yourselves’ was a collective one, not individual. We are our brother’s keeper. If we sin in another, we are obligated, frankly commanded, to confront it. Not something we like to hear. We like to think of ourselves as having a personal relationship with Jesus. Our actions are between us and him. There’s truth in that, but that’s not the whole truth. Jesus here says that our sin is our brother’s business.
It’s challenging because it puts our relationships on the line. Wouldn’t we rather just walk away, mulling over their failings in our mind? Or worse, gossiping about it with others. This command to rebuke sin is born of love and all the other teachings of Jesus about how to treat people on still apply. We cannot just say “Jesus said to rebuild you, so here it comes.” But we are not to simply let sin go by in each other unchallenged.
Luke 17:5 – The disciples ask Jesus (perhaps in response to his call to confront and forgive) for more faith. Jesus response indicates that they don’t need more faith, but perhaps a better understanding of what faith can do. It only takes a little to do a lot. Isn’t that proven over and over in Jesus’ ministry? Think about the woman who only needed to touch his clothing and was healed, or the man who didn’t even need Jesus to come to his home for his servant to be healed, or the thief on the cross who only needed to humbly acknowledge who Jesus was. All these did was believe that Jesus was who he said he was, and they received huge changes in their lives.
Luke 17:22-37 – This passage brings to mind a familiar image of the rapture. Life going on as normal, the suddenly Jesus comes with a blinding flash. Don’t go back for your stuff! Some will be taken, some will be left behind. I have to wonder if we really understand it at all. I’m sure there are hundreds of interpretations and explanations, but somehow I suspect they all miss the mark. What’s the point? Be ready. Live for God, all your days, as if he were around the next corner or in the next room listening. Because we don’t know. Whether by death or the return of the savior, we don’t know when it will be our time. We ought to be ready to meet him now, rather than looking for signs that he’s near.
But the passage ends with one of those weird Jesus twists that really make me think I don’t get it. After all of this talk of being ready and that some will be taken, the disciples ask “Where, Lord?” Why did they ask ‘where’? All this talk about ‘when’ and they ask ‘where’. It doesn’t follow, it seems disconnected somehow so I wonder what I’m missing. Jesus’ response is even more odd:

“Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

Mmm-kay, that clears things right up then. Anyone have any insight on this?

Luke 16:1-9 – This parable has always confused me. Jesus seems to praise this manager who unethically reduces the debt of several to gain favor for himself upon learning he’s about to loose his job. Jesus (and his boss) call him shrewd, which he certainly is, but I’d also call him dishonest, selfish and unethical. Hardly a good example.
So why does Jesus praise him, or at least use him as an example? he doesn’t actually come out and say we should live and work like this, but he concludes in verse 9 with this:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

I’ve heard people use this passage to justify their using their money to get an audience with prominent people and wealthy people in order to share their faith with them or, more often, to try to get their financial support for some church or charity project. But Jesus says we should make friends for ourselves with our ‘unrighteous’ wealth, not use it to further the kingdom. I’m having a hard time figuring out what he means.
In verse 8 he does say that “the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” which is so true. I’ve seem many Christians (myself included) get burned because we treat those outside the church as we do disciples. They take them at face value, assuming them to have the same standards of respect and consideration that we do. There was a woman, who was an outspoken Christina, on survivor who trusted too easily and too completely. It seemed that she didn’t even think through, in a game where deceit is the norm, whether what they were saying made sense or if they were acting in line with what they were telling her. The said it and she believed them and out she went fairly early in the game.
We need to be more wise when dealing with the world, but is Jesus intending to council us to act as they do or merely making the point that we ought not to be naive?
Luke 16:25 – Is our destiny truly tied to the physical blessings we received while here on Earth? you get your good things now or you put them off until later? I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but it meshes with Jesus’ ongoing theme of downplaying the importance of our worldly possessions and using them for more than just ourselves.

Luke 15:1 – Am I the kind of person that draws “tax collectors and sinners”? Jesus was.
Luke 15:4 – Put it in perspective: The sheep were their livelihood. A loss of one is a loss of 1% of their livelihood. What if I lost 1% of my earning capability? I’d search all over too, and rejoice when I found it.
Luke 15:8 – What it it was 10% of your savings?
Luke 15:12 – “And he divided his property between them.” I had never thought of this before. Did he father actually divide all he had in half, giving half to each son so that he had nothing? If so, he must have known at this demand that he stood to loose at least half of what he had. Even if the older son remained, the father was at his mercy for survival.
Since God is the father in this story, what does this tell us of Him? He has already given us the Earth and all that is in it. We have our share here. He gave it to us ahead of time, before what we would do with it was determined. Like this Father, He knew that some of us would squander it and not return it to Him while others would act with gratitude and use it for His glory.
So, are we, like the prodigal, consuming it on ourselves and our pleasures, or like the older son, do we remain and use it to give back to the father?
Luke 15:22-24 – This is one of the most loved stories in the Bible because it is our story. We all, in some way, have run off from God and that He would welcome us back as this father welcomed the prodigal, is as fathomable as it is glorious.

Luke 14:3 – I think one of the other gospels in the parallel account indicates that Jesus was angry at them for their stubbornness. Turn it around. I imagine that Jesus made the lawyers and Pharisees furious. He kept asking these questions that they immediately knew the answer to, but they also immediately knew their answer was wrong. What really made them angry I bet was either that they didn’t know why it was wrong, or that they were the leaders hadn’t gotten the simple things that this carpenter understood. Actually, more likely what made them angry was that Jesus was exposing their ignorance and arrogance in front of those they were supposed to be leading.
Luke 14:12-14 – Jesus doesn’t simply tell us to serve without expecting repayment, he say go serve in ways that actually prevet your repayment. Seek out those who cannot repay you, and deliberately avoid those who can. Think about that for a moment. We tend to thing that we are serving when we have someone over for dinner or help them wiht some chore. How many of the folks that we do these things for then turn and do the same for us? How much of our service actually would fall under the conditions that Jesus lays out here – folks who cannot pay you pack? Not much, frankly.

Luke 13:1-5 – So many want to read sin into the misfortune of others. Jesus says we all have sin to repent of that will take us in time.
Luke 13:17 – It’s funny how so many thing that religous leaders do in the name of God or holiness, average people can see right through as nonsense. It simply seems like common sense to us today, and it seems to the people at the time, that healing on the Sabath was a Good Thing, not a bad. They couldn’t see that, however. They were too focused on the letter of the law instead of the heart of God.
Luke 13:23 – “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” I wonder what that question meant to them in that day? Today the term ‘saved’ has taken on a life of it’s own, a super spiritual meaning. It’s to make it to heaven. I have to wonder if that’s even close to what they meant. They, after all, showed little sign of understanding the real purpose of Jesus’ mission or grasping his heaven focus. They were focused on the Earthly redmption of Isreal from the Romans. I wonder I they were asking about how many would survive the revolution to come?