In Gennesaret

Oh, the Good Samaritan! We love that story, don’t we? This self-sacrificial, compassionate stranger who stops to help an injured man that the religious folk couldn’t be bothered with. We want to be that Samaritan – that wonderful, admirable human! But I think we lose sight of the fact that Jesus’ listeners were probably a bit horrified by this tale. They hated Samaritans. HATED them. And lest we get self-righteous about this, they felt like they were quite justified in hating them because the Samaritans were the heretics – the ones who twisted the religious systems of the Israelites and thought they had it right and the Jews had it wrong. (Pause a moment and consider who you look at in our world today feeling quite certain they have it all wrong.) The very idea that Jesus would use a SAMARITAN as a positive role model in one of his parables is absolutely astonishing. It would be like him telling us a story today where the bad guys were an obnoxious TV preacher ( oh, of course – he...

Have you asked Jesus into your heart? This isn’t a gospel presentation; it’s a question about verbiage. If you grew up in an evangelical church (or any church that does not baptize babies), I’m guessing there’s a good chance that it was explained to you as a matter of “asking Jesus into your heart”. Am I right? Particularly if you are at least a Millennial or older. But a recent podcast made me wonder about that language. They were making the valid point that young children are very literal; this description of the concept may not be very clear. One of the podcasters said she’d gotten a question from a kid about whether Jesus can taste the food she eats if he’s living in her heart. Cute, yes . . . but maybe a bit concerning. My kids told me that “asking Jesus into my heart” was the language they remember from their own particular decisions of faith (probably because they heard it from me and their dad). And they don’t remember being confused by it. But whether it’s confusing or n...