Deuteronomy 21:1-22:30
It feels a bit like CSI. Measuring distances to neighbouring towns at one end of the passage and examining honeymoon bedsheets at the other (can you imagine anything more gruesome than being the parents who scrutinize and then store the bodily-fluid-stained sheets of their nearest and dearest?? Thank God that we live under the New Covenant!). I love the fact that even the editors of this NIV can’t find any logic to why some of these laws were put together under one section so they have just given them the title “various laws”. Hahaha - it is so funny how we like to have neat categories and orders for everything and yet it seems that God just plonked lots of random bits together in this bit. There is a great sense of compassion here though isn’t there? Lots of restraining people from natural inclinations - to ignore straying oxen or prioritising one son over another - in amongst the harsh punishments for trespass. A verse to note though is the bit about anyone being cursed who hangs on a tree. I don’t think it takes David Caruso to work out where that bit of evidence is pointing.
Luke 16:1-18
Has Jesus gone loopy? Has he eaten some bad fish and started advocating criminal behaviour? I think Jesus is telling the shrewd manager story not because he wants people to be dishonest but to be shocked into seeing what shrewdness really is. Shrewdness realises the temporary nature of a situation, it recognises there are but a few moments to exploit it and it is ruthless in doing so. Jesus is speaking into the temporary nature of our life. He is urging his people to be unimpressed by anything we own or achieve in this life, and to fervently and ruthlessly sacrifice it for our own eternal benefit. Jesus doesn’t seem to have a problem with us doing things for our own gain, just with us being suckered by the alluring but fleeting nature of money and status. This is important; this is not asceticism - the denial of the image of God in ourselves and in our personalities and our desires - or hedonism - the submission of all things to the satisfying of our desires. We life for our own benefit but in complete submission to Jesus. We gain by giving away. We don’t justify ourselves but do seek to be justified by God. Jesus does not call us to be doormats but hosts, not letting everyone and everything dictate to us exactly how they want to be treated but rather spending ourselves on welcoming people into the love and the knowledge of God. It’s tricky, but if we ask Jesus to make us shrewd, he can make it work.
Proverbs 9:13-18
Folly is loud.
