Who Grumbles?

The first main part of this Peterson book is to walk with Jesus through Luke's travel narrative - Luke 9:51-19:44. This section of Luke is mostly unique to Luke and is framed by references to leaving Galilee (9:51) and arriving in Jerusalem (19:11, 28, 41).

In these chapters Jesus travels through Samaria, non-Jewish territory. Peterson takes this as his starting point to look at the stories Jesus told and how they will help us live in the non-Kingdom of God territories we find ourselves in day by day.

On Luke 15, Peterson draws our attention to v. 2, that the Scribes and Pharisees were grumbling. Peterson notes that this word is only used by Luke and that it appears in the Greek OT at Exodus 16:2-3:
Exodus 16:2-3  In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat round pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."

Putting these two groups of grumblers together, Peterson writes,
The people of Israel murmered not because they were bad and evil but because they were good and scared. The Pharisees and Bible scholars [scribes] murmur not because they were bad and evil but because they were good and scared. The murmurers in both cases are reverent and devout worshipppers of God, delivered from pagan superstitions and following God's leader. Both sets of murmurers can be given the adjective eusebeia, godly, righteous. But now something is taking place that turns everything topsy-turvy. Their self-image, righteous, by which they define themselves, is suddenly erased. They are disorientated, lost. They don't like the feeling and so they murmur, diegongudzon. Understandably so. (page 93)

Self-righteousness is a sin unique to to godly. Only within the church do we find self-righteous people who look down on others. When this self-righteousness is challenged, in any way, grumbling results.
The people with Moses, the Pharisees and Bible scholars, are followers, they are on the journey towars God's promise. But they fall into this defensive grumbling.

The first three stories in Lk 15 take that which is lost, in the place where grumbling might begin, and show how grace finds what was lost. The fourth story - of the elder brother - is openended, he is grumbling but we are not told if he will leave his grumbling and come into the Father's welcome and party. This draws the hearer and reader in, how will we respond?

Total Church = Total Community

More from this excellent book.

Chester and Timmis are totally into community. This is the big challenge to church as we've always known it. It isn't enough to speak to new people who come on a Sunday, for Total Church community is much more than that.

On p. 48 we read of how identity as Christians is found in a Christian community, and this Christian community is Christ's new community.

For many of us experiences of church are different from what we hope Christ's new community will be like. We find the old ways of being in community - competition, aggression, fear, gossiping - all the old destructive patterns of life. It is not a new challenge that the church should be a new community, a new kind of community (perhaps for a new kind of Christian!). We have all felt the force of this challenge before. I think in this book it comes with a fresh power and import.

Where do we seek our identity? In Christ. Well Jesus is usually the answer. But, what does this mean? It cannot mean less than the church becoming a whole life community in which we find our new identity in Christ.

I really like the thought on p. 38. A weakness exists in building my own identity rather than receiving one constructed by God's grace.

What freedom there is in not having to find myself, in not needing to be affirmed by any other than God in his grace. This I think is one of the most frightening ideas in the book, I must almost give up my own identity to receive a new one in grace.

No doubt this is included in cross bearing self-denial, but does not demean self or diminsh the worth placed upon me by a God whose Son died for me.

If only church could be a place where genuine grace shaped identity is born and nurtured in a community of those growing in the new, grace-given identities.