Luke 12:4-13

     Please Note:  After today, the Bible Study will be taking a 2-week break - and will be back on May 4.   
    No doubt because of the gathering enmity, Jesus talks about priorities to his disciples. At this point he may also be addressing the crowds who’ve come to hear him. They need to keep priorities straight. Ones who can hurt or kill the body can do nothing more than that. They need to keep their eyes on eternity and the one who presides over it. Though he uses a fearful image of hell here, he goes on to speak of the more tender compassion of God watching over the sparrows that from a human aspect are sold for almost nothing. Even the hairs on a perso’s head are counted by God. He ends this little teaching by saying they should not be afraid, for people are of more value than many sparrows
    Note the use of the image of fear. Jesus spoke of “fearing” God who has charge of eternity, yet a few sentences later tells them not to be afraid. There are, of course, two kinds of fear. There is the kind we feel at pain or loss or approaching danger or disaster. But fear as the bible speaks of it in relation to God is something different. Respect and aw are closer in meaning here. In other words, we should feel tremendous respect and breathless awe for the lord who made heaven and earth, and who presides over eternity. But we need not tremble with any other kind of fear because of that. We are valuable to that same God.
     Jesus promises to represent his followers to God. His words are difficult to understand about forgiving those who speak against him but not those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, especially as elsewhere the impression is given that a loving God is prepared to welcome and love the returning sinner. One scholar suggests that the attitude of blaspheming the Holy Spirit is to be in a state in which no forgiveness is wanted nor could it be communicated to such a person. That might more sense in the context of the larger picture of God’s love. A person might voluntarily separate him/herself from God and forgiveness would mean nothing to this person in that state. But if the state would change, (as in the prodigal who came home) then a new possibility might present itself.
     Jesus goes on to speak of what seems to be another subject, related only by its connection to the Holy Spirit. When brought before the powerful of the world, they should not worry about what to say, because the Holy Spirit will teach them in that hour how to respond. In its own way, these words of Jesus are equally challenging. Many who have faced a difficult question or confrontation on their faith look back and wish the answers had come more easily and had been more effective or meaningful. Although Jesus could have been directing these words solely to his first set of disciples and the special challenges they would face, it seems unlikely it would have been recorded in the bible if that was the case. We generally have a conviction that what Jesus said to his first followers applies to all those who have sought to be his disciples.
     It is all right to have questions and not neatly package up something from the Bible as ‘understood and dealt with.’ In fact, nothing should be--we should always remain open for further growth and understanding. A passage we never “got” may suddenly gain meaning in certain situations. A passage we have loved but thought had nothing new for us may come to challenge us or raise new questions. It is a process of growth. One of the possible ways to approach these particular words is to remember that we can’t anticipate the times Jesus was saying his followers would meet. Our answers in such situations can’t be canned or said by rote. We can only prepare by trying to grow in God’s spirit and trusting in God rather than ourselves.

What things are fearful to you?
How do you discern the activity of God’s spirit in your life?