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.
\nLuke 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"