Scripture: Luke 5:15-16
News of him spread even more and huge crowds gathered to listen and to be healed from their illnesses. But Jesus would withdraw to deserted places for prayer.
Thought for the Day: In this part of the story, Jesus has just healed a man and told him to go show himself to the priests – the necessary step to be officially welcomed back into the community. This is a little like a doctor’s note saying you are cleared to return to work. Though Jesus had encouraged the man to not spread the word of his healing, it is clear that word was spreading nonetheless. In my reading of the above passage this time, something caught my attention. It describes the crowd and the blessings Jesus offered. The next sentence begins with the word “But,” which in the Greek is de. What’s interesting is that de can be translated as but, yet, and, so or now. How you translate the conjunction is significant in how one might read the passage. If it had been translated as so, I would have read it as Jesus being responsible to himself and his personal health. Had it been translated as and, it could have been read as just a description of what happened next, with no direct correlation to what had occurred before. Depending on your Bible translation, you will find multiple options for how scholars have translated de. In the Common English Bible (what I have used today), it is translated as but, which feels very harsh to my ears. It sounds as if Jesus is pushing back against the crowd and what they are wanting from him. There is a good chance that we will never know the original intent of Luke. With that in mind, it is important to ask questions about scripture, while always being cautious about assuming we know the feelings or the reason for a person’s actions.
Prayer: As I go a deeper into the scriptures, O Living Word, allow me to see the richness, ambiguity and complexity of the language. May your Spirit continue to act within the words, while always acknowledging the assumptions I might bring…especially those assumptions that may not have much validity. Amen.
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February 16, 2019
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