Luke 11:27-32
If you can’t find a Bible, the passage is here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2011%3A27-32&version=NLT
This passage starts with this random-feeling interaction between Jesus and a woman in the crowd. Luke tells us a woman shouts from the crowd something along the lines of, “Wow, your mom is so lucky to have had you.” Or maybe she meant, “ I esteem your mother for raising you.” I’m guessing her underlying thought was “I wish I could have been your mom.” Either way Jesus basically responds, If you want to be blessed, let the word of God get into your heart and change your life. We know that those who hear the word of God and obey it are children of God, members of the kingdom Jesus had come to teach us about. So in a way he was saying, “Don’t just wish! You are welcome in my family.” But let’s never mistake that for a dismissal of Mary’s role in Jesus’ life and in the whole salvation narrative. She was somebody very special. God had specifically chosen Mary for the role of being Jesus’ mother. She was a remarkable woman, no doubt. And she knew she was blessed, she said it in her poem of praise when she was pregnant with him. But her blessing came with horrific hardship. Jesus knew most moms would not be prepared to pay the price associated with that blessing. If we ever worry that Jesus was disrespectful in some way to his mom, we need to remember that she was addressed by God’s messenger as “you who are highly favoured.” Jesus knew his mother was someone special, but this woman from the crowd was kind of missing the point here and he was reminding her, We are talking about the kingdom of God.
Moving on to the heart of this passage!
Jesus is gaining in popularity and the crowds are growing. They have heard about the impromptu picnics with thousands fed from nearly nothing. They heard about demons being cast out and diseases and chronic conditions like blindness being healed. Everyone wants to see him perform.
It’s become a circus and Jesus is all three rings. But Jesus isn’t here for the performance or the fame. He has come to warn people that they are heading in the wrong direction. They think that when they stand before God they will be welcomed into his kingdom because they followed the law by making the appropriate sacrifices when they fell short. But Jesus is teaching that the kingdom of God is not about paying enough to cover evil. The law was an explanation of God’s standard for a life that is in relationship to him. If God’s people didn’t follow the law perfectly, God could not live with them. The sacrifices for sin prescribed in the law were a symbol demonstrating that disobedience to the law led to death. Jesus had come to talk about the kingdom of God, the kingdom in which God could live among his people. Israel was not God’s kingdom. Even with all the sacrifices, they were not living pure lives that met his standard. There was a big problem. What the people of Israel needed to do wasn’t comb through the law for more loop holes. They needed to acknowledge that they had failed. They had disobeyed the law. They had no business being in God’s presence. Jesus came to warn them that they needed to be sorry for their sins, not kill a goat to cover them. Jesus called them to repentance as John the Baptist had before him. God’s kingdom was coming and only those who understood and truly regretted that they had broken the law had any hope of entering the kingdom. Because the fact was, they didn’t need to work harder to demonstrate their strict adherence to the law, they needed divine intervention. They needed to recognize their helplessness and beg for the kind of help they had absolutely no means of earning.
So how does this relate to the the story of Jonah? Well if you aren’t well versed in the story of Jonah and the Whale, let me clue you in. The whale/big fish part of the story isn’t the main event. Jonah was sent to warn the people of Nineveh that God had had enough and he was about to judge them. And the verdict was already decided. They were guilty and he was taking them out. Interestingly, Nineveh was the primary city of the Assyrians who were an enemy of Israel. They had persecuted the Jews mercilessly and would have happily exterminated them. So Jonah was all for God judging the Ninevites, and didn’t really want to warn them. He made a pretty dramatic effort to avoid it actually, and God equally dramatically insisted. Cue the big fish. So even when he finally got around to it, his sermon was half hearted at best.
But this was Jesus’ point. The really wicked, horrible Ninevites heard Jonah’s lamest attempt at sharing a warning from God, and it terrified them, and they repented. They understood how thoroughly they had violated God’s standard and they literally begged him for mercy. They fasted and sat mournfully in piles of ashes dressed in rags as a demonstration of their repentance. As a result, God’s judgement wasn’t unleashed on them – because they changed their hearts.
They didn’t try to pay for their sins or cover them over with good deeds. They knew that ship had sailed. They did what Jesus kept telling everyone that God wanted. They repented. So Jesus is telling these curious crowds, Nineveh was wiser than you people. When God sent them a warning, they repented. When God sends you the warning that I’m bringing, you just come to see the show.
