Daily Life Notes
I found my glasses. Not earth-shattering, I know, but it helps to see better.
Our life group yesterday had a great time kicking around the story of Jesus calling Peter and Andrew in Luke 5. We collectively wondered exactly what Luke referred to as the people heard "the word of God" (Was Jesus just quoting scripture? Was Luke calling his discourse "the word of God," which might have implications for the act of preaching, as my old friend Andre Resner used to teach?) Then we wondered about the presumption of Jesus to just climb in the boat of these tired fishermen, asking them to put out into the lake a bit so he could continue teaching. No offer to pay them for their time, no gracious "May I please?" He just got in. We wondered what such presumption says about Jesus' personality and character and whether or not such seizing of opportunity might have anything to do with our strategies of dealing with people. In other words, when we see Jesus taking that kind of action, do we just shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's Jesus for you?" Or do we assume he's modeling something, a way of being in the world that we can emulate?
Then we talked about Peter's obedience in putting out the nets again, though all reason and physical circumstance argued against it. And suddenly the whole story becomes a small model of "Not my will, but thine be done." So that even as Jesus lives out obedience, he begins training others to do the very same thing, and in the same vein, Luke uses the story to train those who study it to call us to the same notion.
Then I asked a question that was uncomfortable: are we" fishers of men?" Someone wondered if we should be, and after we all nodded and said we thought so, then it became a matter of wondering what that meant. We eventually said various things regarding our lives being different, a salt and light approach to the question, to which I replied that fishing was pretty intentional, the idea being to go get fish in the boat, whether by rod and reel or by net fishing. All of which finally led to a discussion of Jesus' intention as we went about his business and whether us "being Jesus" meant to imitate his intention with the same directness his life demonstrated, or whether "being Jesus" just meant living good, giving lives essentially trying to replicate his moral goodness.
What does the mind of Jesus as he walked on the earth have to do with us?
And finally, another big question that is haunting our study: how much did Jesus know about what was going to occur on a day to day basis? What was the dawning of his awareness of who he was like? What was his interaction with the Holy Spirit and how did that interaction foreshadow our interaction with that same Spirit? Or to say it another way, what does the humanity of Jesus have to do with my humanity, not only in the realm of sin and--in Jesus case--sinlessness, but also in the realm of power?
Paul told the Ephesians he prayed for them constantly, wanting them to grasp the power that was in them, the riches of their inheritance, the scope of the love of Christ.
We're trying...
7:28:21 AM
