Once again, as Jesus steadily walks towards Jerusalem to face His greatest test of obedience to the Father, and greatest expression of love to us, he interacts with Pharisees who need a lesson or two. In this section there are to main ideas that Jesus is trying to get across to them. The first we’ve seen before but we always need a refresher. They were again getting hung up on the idea that Jesus heals on the Sabbath. Jesus exposes the error in their logic by pointing out that they would help their son, or even an animal that was in trouble on this day. Why should Jesus performing a miraculous healing on someone who desperately needs it be any different then? Of course we look at this story and think it’s ridiculous, we would never put such obstacles in the way of someone coming to Jesus.
Many of us in this generation, I think are actually in danger of being Pharisaical about not having any rules. Jesus respected and obeyed the Law, just not all of the extra stuff that people put around it. So how do you follow Jesus? Is it all about you and what He can do for you? Is it about living a regimented life so that you can feel better about yourself? Is it about living radically for Jesus so you can look down on all those who are less committed? Jesus addresses these kinds of attitudes that are often at the heart of where we start to get out of step with Jesus. We start to think that it’s all about us.
Jesus tells us that we need to be constantly be thinking of others as more important than ourselves. This is Jesus’ point in the next two paragraphs. We should consider ourselves lucky just to be invited to a party and not the main attraction, and when we have our own party we should invite all the uncool kids who do nothing to benefit our social status or popularity. Again, because it’s not about us, it’s about Jesus. Jesus wants us to be building the Kingdom now. We will have to answer for how we did and what we did. Did we live for ourselves? Did we look for the credit? Then we didn’t follow Jesus. When we are busy following Jesus we won’t worry about who is following our manmade rules as long as the Kingdom is being built. We won’t worry about who is getting the credit as long as the work is being done. Who do you need to partner with or what do you need to work on that gives Jesus the credit and not yourself? This is how we follow Jesus, and He doesn’t get lost.
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