11. Dining with Sinners, More Miracles, Taking up Crosses, and How to Understand Grace - LDS Come Follow Me Mar 6-12 (Matt 9-10; Mark 5; Luke 9)

LDS Come Follow Me New Testament

March 6–12

Matthew 9–10; Mark 5; Luke 9

“These Twelve Jesus Sent Forth”

This week has more awesome teachings from the gospels. We’ll talk about what we learn from Jesus dining with publicans and sinners, why some asked Him to leave after witnessing miracles, Jesus’ first raising from the dead, the feeding of the 5,000, what it REALLY means to take up our cross, what the scriptures do and do not say about the Mount of Transfiguration, and a beautiful teaching about grace.

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Books, etc. Referenced:

Interpreter’s One Volume Commentary (my version is fairly old, but I think this link is basically to the new edition of it): https://amzn.to/3ZIekzk

Mindful Faith Insta Account: https://www.instagram.com/_mindful_faith_/

The Universal Christ: https://amzn.to/3Zs1RjF

Original Grace: https://amzn.to/3ZlAR5v

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“The tradition linked the story of the call of the tax collector with that of the meal which Jesus ate at his home. Such a person was considered ceremonially unclean by jewish standards. The disregard of dietary and cleansing regulations is further evident in that there were present at the same meal other undesirables–as adjudged by the official standards of Judaism–with whom Jesus also enjoyed table fellowship. To eat a meal with someone was considered to be the most intimate kind of personal contact, so that a scrupulous Jew would be extremely careful about the company in which he would share a meal. Jesus, however, has no hesitation about such contacts and , under pressure to account for his lax attitude, justifies what he is doing on the ground that this is a part of the mission that God has sent him to fulfill: I came (i.e. God sent me) not to call the righteous, but sinners. The setting of the story, which pictures Pharisees as witnessing the meal, is probably artificial, but the message is doubtless historical: Jesus saw his messianic mission as calling into the fellowship of God’s people the religious outcasts, rather than as confirming the pridefully righteous in their sense of moral superiority.”

Interpreter's One Volume Commentary on the Bible

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“The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the incarnation symbolized by its finality in the cross which is gods great act of solidarity instead of judgment.” Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ

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“Most of us understandably start the journey assuming that God is ‘up there’ and our job is to transcend this world to find him. We spend so much time to get ‘up there’, we miss that God’s big leap in Jesus was to come ‘down here’. So much of our worship and religious effort is the spiritual equivalent of trying to go up what has become the down escalator. I suspect that the ‘up there’ mentality is the way most people’s spiritual search has to start. But once the real inner journey begins, once you come to know that in Christ God is forever overcoming the gap between human and divine, the Christian path becomes less about climbing and performance, and more about descending, letting go, and unlearning.

“Knowing and loving Jesus is largely about becoming fully human, wounds and all, instead of ascending spiritually or thinking we can remain unwounded.” Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ