How not to be that’s guy( petty) but this guy(
How do you feel about change ?
What words come to mind ?
Read the lyrics to these two songs written by Bob Dylan – which one was written when he was young ? and which when he was old ? How can you tell ?
Come gather ’round, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin
Standing on the gallows with
my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting
all hell to break loose
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
The Pharisees are back again, and they stay through the rest of the story
Pharisaism is a religious movement, consisting of lay people (not clergy) who share a deep commitment to the Hebrew Scriptures and traditions.
They believe the Jewish people have not yet been freed from the Romans because of the Jews’ tolerance of sin. There are too many drunks, prostitutes, and gluttons. “If we could just get these sinners to change their ways,” they feel, “then God would send the One who will free us.” They have hated the change that society had undergone. The jews were no longer in charge, The romans ran the world, built on slavery, there was no freedom of religion, the land that they were promised had been taken from them.
Take turns reading aloud some of what the Pharisees say in Luke (Over page). What do they sound like ? What words would you use to describe them ? Would you want to hang with them ?
I think they are being petty, and it worries me that I can see that tendancy towards being petty in my own life. I don’t want to be ‘that Guy (or Gal). So I want to ask how do we avoid becoming petty ?
Read the passage : Luke 5:27-39 (Take turns reading it – each read a verse)
Three suggestions towards being Radical (Holding to the root, or core of something) without being Petty.
1 ) Lean into Jesus. (read Scripture & Pray)
Read scripture, (big hunks, don’t worry if you don’t get it).
The act of reading keeps messing with our self obsession.
Try reading Eph 1:17-23, Eph 3:17-20.
Then say “He eats with tax collectors and Sinners”,
See how petty it sounds ? What slights, or minor hurts or disagreements do you have, that in the light of God’s majestic saving work, we might want to let go of ?
2) Listen to the outsider. (Pull up a chair.)
Jesus’s practise of eating with sinners mean’t that he kept hearing what life was like for them. When we do that we start to understand not just what we look like from outside, but what the world looks like to the fringes.
3 ) Learn (Hold Loosely to what you know).
The pharisees problem is that they think they have all the answers. When we do that, we tend to make ourselves petty tyrants. At any moment in time we do not have all the answers.
The early Baptist church Colin quotes made a covenant agreements to walk in “all his ways , made known, or to be made known unto them”
Where have you been being challenged to learn of late ?
What would you suggest to help you be radical and not petty ?