19 Feb - Luke 7

Hope you’ve had a great start to the week. Today we are reading Luke 7. Here are some thoughts for you:

1. A centurion was a professional officer of the Roman army who was in charge of between 83 to 1000 men. It just depended on what level they were at.
2. I find it interesting that the centurion didn’t even feel he was worthy enough to come to Jesus himself and ask his help but believed enough in Jesus that if Jesus just said the word his servant would be healed. Jesus responds that he hasn’t seen this level of faith even in Israel. This is a big statement because Israel was the home of the jewish people who were the ones who you would expect to have the greatest faith in God; this centurion wasn’t even a jew but he had more faith in Jesus’ power than anyone in Israel.
3. Next Luke records a story of Jesus illustrating his power over even death when he brought a dead boy back to life.
4. Next we read about followers of John the Baptist coming to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah. Luke records that “at that very time” Jesus healed many how had diseases, sickness and evil spirits and restored sight to the blind. Then Jesus says “Go tell John what you just saw,” that’s my lose paraphrase but it’s pretty much what happened. Can you imagine this scene? These guys ask Jesus, “So are you the Messiah we’ve been looking for?” Then instantly tons of people are healed and Jesus looks at them and says, “What do you think?” Ha, Jesus had quite the knack for sarcasm. 
5. Lastly, Luke tells us of an unlikely person to show Jesus honor. Jesus was invited to eat dinner with a religious leader and Jesus accepted. Then we read about a prostitute that came in and starts washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and drying them with her hair and then putting perfume on them. This raises some questions for me; like how the crap did she get in? Did she just walk in or were they eating outside on the porch? And what kind of perfume was it? And was his feet really that stinky? Nonetheless, this woman (who the religious leaders looked down on) loved Jesus enough to show him the greatest honor. 

It’s interesting to me to read the interactions Jesus had with people that most of the religious considered unclean. The centurion was a gentile, someone who was not an Israelite or Jew. The prostitute was considered unclean for reasons even besides the obvious. Yet both of these people easily recognized Jesus for who he was. Then you look at the religious leaders, the ones who were trained from youth about the signs of the coming messiah but they refused to accept Jesus. Jesus was called a friend to sinners. This is encouraging to me because a lot of my life I felt I wasn’t good enough to be welcomed into a church but when I read the Bible I see that Jesus would have and still does welcome me. 

What do you think your response to Jesus would have been? What is your response to him today? Do you see him as just a religious leader? Or is he something much more? Do you really follow Jesus? Do you feel that you are too dirty for Jesus to love? What feelings rise up inside of you when you read that Jesus was called a friend of sinners?