Living Ground Hog day?

       Was Jesus 'seeing' us today, right now in this passage from Luke? The world seems topsy turvy and I am being generous with that proclamation. Up is down, right is left, facts are now fake facts and science is viewed as an opinion.  The world seems polarized as do families , friends and even couples. 

        I recently watched again an educational film from the US War Department in 1947. It is an anti-fascist film that shows just how much we forget and how we can get conned and duped by twisting facts and playing on peoples fears and ignorance, intentionally or otherwise. So it would seem , here we go again. The scenario looks very much like we are living today, same bombastic politicians and rabble rousers. Have we learned anything?

        Jesus laments that we have learned what a cloud formation means or what a south wind means yet we cannot seem to grasp how we get caught in the mire of repeated acrimony and politics generation after generation. I almost think God is telling us that it will always be so. Will we always be mindless and act like sheep, easily lead and misled?

        That may perhaps be true though I do believe Jesus is trying desperately to show us that there is another way. So desperate in fact, Jesus has so much love for us that to help us he is willing to go to the cross for us. He lived a life of example and made the ultimate sacrifice for us.

         In twisted and demonic ways, some will take the scriptures that God intends as a witness of love and use it for their own agenda. I lament abut this all the time as Jesus did. The Pharisees, the televangelists, the Christian right that seeks their own interpretations and political agenda.  The real truth is that if we see the life of Jesus as he lived and check out his life and actions as lived and reported, we have an excellent template for our lives and the life of the world. Jesus' life is all about love and that trumps ( no pun intended ) all the hate, divisiveness and incivility that we seem to thrive on.   Jesus' love and lived love of our own is what can blow away the miasma of hate, indifference and arrogance.

          Sure we can cherry pick scriptures to suit our own agenda but the essence of the solution is to always read scripture in the lens of love. We must try to see that what scripture is, is always a witness of love for God and while not perfect ( as written by human hands ), it shows our fervent desire to have a relationship with our creator and that is always and forever about love.

Luke 12:49-59

 ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son
   and son against father,
mother against daughter
   and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
   and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’

 He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

 ‘And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.’