The Jesus we meet in the pages of Luke's Gospel narrative is always upsetting people's expectations, sometimes to their great and overwhelming delight and sometimes to their great dismay and anger.And it could very well be that the reason many in the West have lost faith in Jesus is because the Jesus they are presented with is exactly the Jesus that they expected. We have fed them tradition and dogma and platitudes when they wanted truth. We should never mistake dogma for truth. Truth is alive with flesh and bone. Dogma can be simply a cold, lifeless, summary of truths. One gives life, the other merely has the capability of pointing to the source of life. But in the hands of the wrong disposition, dogma is a weapon.
Jesus seems to go from controversy to controversy, upsetting the Apple cart, breaking cultural boundaries, and turning convention on its head. This isn't because Jesus is a rebel without a cause. This is because the image of God has been so falsified by the human race that at point after point, the real thing shocks and surprises us. This is what the Gospels are all about. God, in the flesh of Jesus, is becoming King and revealing the fullness of His heart. We live in a world that is constantly accusing one persons solutions as being the source of another person's problems. Maybe what we need is someone who is truly outside the box, with a different perspective altogether? Enter Jesus and the Gospels. This is what we need and we need it constantly. Let us read the Gospels for all they are worth.
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