Day 248 (otherwise known as Labor Day; otherwise known as last day of summer vacation mood; otherwise known as the day I set the barbecue on fire; otherwise known as our oldest sons last day in Reedley before flying to CO!)
So I'm chewing over yesterdays preach, the first in our new Prodigal God series. The insulting Jesus. Let's start by calling everybody listening to me "stupid sheep".
Jesus at his blunt best.
Normally I applaud Jesus' subtleness. He always was the 'come in the back door' communicator, the stealth bomber.
(I learned much from that tactic, especially spending much of my time communicating to people who've heard it all before. But come in the back door and you catch them unaware, off-guard and it forces a response - either emotion to reject or emotion to change. If I was teacher of homiletics I'd shout loudly about the need to preach this way 80% of the time.)
But this time - Jesus went front door, blunt, offensive, maybe slightly crude.
Why?
His bluntness, insult in calling people stupid sheep .....was within a series of three parables (Luke 15) that shout GRACE.
Interesting.
His bluntest insult matched His greatest presentation on GRACE.
Maybe the answer lies in the nature of grace.
Is grace not blunt?
Does grace not look every blunder, mistake, failure and yuck we're ever done and say - grace!
There is incredible boldness in grace.
Incredible audacity.
There's also incredible stupidity in grace.
Grace can be badly abused.
Grace can be trampled all over.
The bigger insult is not Jesus calling us stupid sheep; the bigger insult is what we do with grace.
It's got me really nervous, excitedly nervous about next Sunday's preach.
There is something deeply curious and perhaps confusing/conflicting about this Prodigal God.
Going to be quite a week working on Part II.
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