A New Word

I am studying through the book of Luke with the kids in my youth group and last night we talked about the Sermon on the Mount. As we were talking one of my older students brought up how, because of our familiarity with the passage, we might hear it differently than Jesus' original audience would have.

We've grown up with Jesus' teachings but for his original audience this would have been really revolutionary stuff. Not only that, but it would have been rather confusing.

One can't help but wonder if many of the conversations on the walk back to the village sounded something like, "What did he mean by that?"

So when we talk about Jesus' words we sort of view them as the final word on the issue.

Jesus says it

That settles it.

Right?

But for the first listeners Jesus would not have been giving the final word on the issue, but in some ways the first word.

Or maybe even a new word.

Jesus isn't really answering the question. It's more like he's opening up a whole new set of questions that people hadn't thought about before.

Jesus is inviting people to wrestle with God and to do so in the context of community.