SATURDAY 3.4.23: A Growing issue: “to save life or to destroy it?”
Jesus’ challenge to the status quo made the religious leaders afraid and angry. Luke 5:36 was the first of 14 uses of the word “parable” in Luke. People in Palestine often used goatskins to hold wine and other fluids. As new wine fermented, it would burst a rigid old skin. Jesus said God’s new ways of working in the world would burst old cultural norms. The response to Jesus’ Sabbath healing was one sign of how his work and his message stretched old, rigid spiritual ideas to the breaking point.
• Old ways are neither necessarily bad nor necessarily good. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God was setting up new ways to pursue his eternal mission to bless the whole world. Israel had 12 tribes. Jesus chose, not 8 or 10, but 12 people as “apostles,” a word that meant “an emissary of God . . . with special authority and status in Christ for the sake of the gospel.” 1 It was a clear sign that his followers would embody God’s original mission for Israel (cf. Genesis 12:1-3). How has God transformed you from old ways of living to new ways? How does living out God’s mission to the whole world shape Resurrection’s international mission work?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to respect and value all that is good in tradition. And guide me to also value and respect the newness and fresh energy you keep bringing to human life. Amen.
1Robert Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2006, p. 27