July 21: Luke 4 & 5

Eeek. Behind. Already. Here goes my attempt to get somewhat caught up…

Luke 4

First off, I’ve finally made a decision today. Never again will I attempt to read and blog on entire chapters at a time. This is ridiculous. There are at least eight blog posts from just this one chapter! But that’s for another day…

Let me just key in on one part of Luke 4—the whole thing about casting out demons. Now, there’s a lot going on here, and it raises a lot of questions. Like what is the nature of evil and its presence in the world? In what ways to we understand evil to be personified? How does the Church understand mental illness? And finally, how to we understand the presence of evil AND the very real conditions of mental illness in relationship to one another?

I must admit I struggle with some of the most blatant attempts to personify evil. I believe evil is real and present in the world, but I’m cautious about to easily attributing evil and sin to some being outside of ourselves. I don’t think we ought to be scapegoating our own failings. That being said, there are certainly those for whom their actions seem to be beyond the realm of even what we might rightly understand as human sinfulness. These are the people whose actions seem not “merely” sinful or wrong, but downright EVIL. I think this is what the people of Jesus’ day struggled with as they interacted with people. How do you approach someone whose reaction to others and to life seems so out of sorts? I think for many years, these people are quickly diagnosed as being possessed by a demon.

To be honest, I’m not sure I want to totally tackle the whole demon thing. It all makes me a bit uncomfortable. The Bible talks about demons, but I struggle to place those mentions within the context of the knowledge of the day. There are other parts of scripture (like Joshua 10:13 which tells us the sun stood still) which many, including me, see as communicating a point rather than a scientific explanation of natural phenomena. We know today (though I’m sure some would still disagree) that the sun, not the earth, is the center of our universe. What Joshua was communicating was that the day seemed to last forever.

So I don’t know if the same principle applies to the whole demon thing. Was this is some way at least an attempt to explain what we call mental illness today, in a time when there were not psychological explanations? And will we some day find that even our understanding of mental illnesses today is woefully inadequate? I don’t know. But I do believe that at least to some extent, at least SOME of what was attributed to demons in Jesus’ day almost certainly would be called mental illness today.

Even after years of open discussion about mental illnesses, we still struggle today to see them as medical conditions, like heart disease or diabetes. Like those two illnesses in particular, many mental illnesses will never completely go away for people, they can be (for most) well treated. So much so that they never, or even rarely ever affect a person’s life (other than the treatment needed to maintain mental and emotional health). At the same time, like those diseases, some people cannot be well treated using traditional methods, and others may find that lifestyle changes may have as much if not more impact on health than medications. Each person is different, and their illness and effective treatments will nearly always be different and include a combination of approaches.

In the church, we have too often failed to adequately address mental illnesses in relation to the many factors which impact people and how mental illnesses manifest. And how we handle the wake of those illnesses.

I could write volumes, and I realize I’m leaving this topic far from addressed, but for now, I’ll pause (and try to come back to that in a future blog).

Luke 5

Once again, there’s a lot going on. But I’ll focus in on the calling of the disciples.

Much is rightly made of the inappropriateness of Jesus’ disciples being who they, well, were. Not the scholarly men other teachers of the day would have had (let alone the whole process of the disciples following was fairly backwards).

Today I imagine this would be as if Jesus, rather than calling clergy to be his closest followers and future leaders, instead called men (and today, I believe, he would also call women) from auto body shops, beauty parlors, maybe a bank, a farm, a construction site, etc. This would be, I imagine, very hard for us pastors to swallow, but it’s Jesus’ MO (modus operandi).

The truth is, even today without Jesus calling disciples in such a direct way, Jesus still calls for people to come and follow, and still today, some of the most powerful ministry is done by those who are not professional clergy. Indeed, one of the best indicators of health and growth in a congregation is the active involvement AND LEADERSHIP of the laity. A sure way to start a church on decline is to expect the pastors (or even the paid staff as well) to handle the bulk of the congregation’s work. I know it’s easier that way, it seems. And we pastors LOVE to feel needed. But the degree to which a congregation is lay-led, I am convinced, is key.

Now lay LEADERSHIP and lay CONTROL are very different things. In fact, sometimes, laity exert control in order to control the pastor. For example, check out this story out of England. I don’t mean CONTROL but LEADERSHIP—in the healthiest way possible. So perhaps it is more accurate to say, the strong and healthier the lay leadership of a congregation, the stronger, more expending we would expect that congregation to be.

In the coming year at Calvary, we’re going to be working to grow our training for our lay leadership. While this has great promise for us, it will mean asking even more of our leaders (and those we hope to bring into leadership). But it will, I am sure, bear great fruit! Keep an eye open for more info!