Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Holy Week: Tuesday

Did you ever have story-time when you were growing up?  Maybe it was a time when your parents or teachers read stories to you, or when you picked up books and would read about the exciting tales and adventures from places that only our minds could ever come up with.  Story time was a time filled with joy, and typically, it seems that there was always some kind of point to the story that you were supposed to learn.

We're not told which particular days of the week on which Jesus spoke particular things during that week leading up to the crucifixion.  But one of the things that Jesus did was to tell stories.  Not just random, made up stories, but stories with a purpose and meaning.  He would tell the story of a group of people who rented out a vineyard, but refused to pay their rent to the landowner.  They beat his servants and even killed a few of them, causing the owner to send his own son.  Then, the renters conspired against the son, thinking that they would get to keep the inheritance for themselves if he were no longer in the picture.  (Read Luke 20:9-18 for this particular story.)

Jesus loved to tell stories.  They would describe God's kingdom or what He came to do, but would do so in a way to make people think about what He said and arrive at their own conclusions, even if they didn't like those conclusions.  Take the story above.  The religious leaders didn't like what Jesus was saying because they understood that He was saying that they were the renters and were scheming against God's Son.  In the verses right after that story, it says that they got angry and really started looking for ways to get rid of Jesus.

Stories are powerful.  Jesus told powerful stories, talking about who He is, what He came to do, and why He did what He did.  Overall, the whole Bible tells the story of God and His interaction with a broken, fallen, sinful world.  God's point: that He loves that creation and wants to make it new, and did so through Jesus and the cross.

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