This blog provides a meditation on the Reformed Church daily readings along with a headline from world news:

Spanish unemployment tops 6m

Luke 6:39-49

J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)

^39-40 Then he gave them an illustration—“Can one blind man be guide to another blind man? Surely they will both fall into the ditch together. A disciple is not above his teacher, but when he is fully trained he will be like his teacher.”

^41-42 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and fail to notice the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’ when you cannot see the plank in your own? You fraud, take the plank out of your own eye first and then you can see clearly enough to remove your brother’s speck.”

^43-45 “It is impossible for a good tree to produce bad fruit—as impossible as it is for a bad tree to produce good fruit. Do not men know what a tree is by its fruit? You cannot pick figs from briars, or gather a bunch of grapes from a blackberry bush! A good man produces good things from the good stored up in his heart, and a bad man produce evil things from his own stores of evil. For a man’s words will always express what has been treasured in his heart.”

⁴⁶ “And what is the point of calling me, ‘Lord, Lord’, without doing what I tell you to do?”

^47-49 “Let me show you what the man who comes to me, hears what I have to say, and puts it into practice, is really like. He is like a man building a house, who dug down to rock-bottom and laid the foundation of his house upon it. Then when the flood came and flood-water swept down upon that house, it could not shift it because it was properly built. But the man who hears me and does nothing about it is like a man who built his house without a foundation, upon the sand. When the flood-water swept down upon it, it collapsed and the whole house crashed down in ruins.”

Jesus is shown dealing with issues of authenticity in in matters of faith.

1. The temptation to exercise authority without knowledge or experience. This is still very common in all walks of life. Jesus dismisses this as the blind leading the blind.

2. The temptation to condemn the smallest faults of others while ignoring our own bigger faults. Jesus likens this to removing a speck from our brother’s eye while there’s a blooming great plank in our own.

3. The temptation to piecemeal improvements in behaviour. Jesus points out that this doesn’t work; a change of heart ( Greek: metanoia)  is needed. If the whole system is diseased it will produce poor fruit; if the system is healthy, good fruit.

4. The temptation to religious hypocrisy. We cannot bypass obedience by devotion.

5. The temptation to intellectual assent in place ethical practice. Jesus sees that a character built on theory without a solid basis in practice will be unable to withstand the storms of life.

The remarkable thing about this teaching is that it is neither religious nor theological. Jesus looks shrewdly at a range of human behaviours, spots their contradictions and exposes them in a common-sense and humorous way. He doesn’t “take advantage” by claiming more knowledge about God that his disciples; he starts from where they are, argues his case, and wins the argument fairly. In this he gives a good example to Christian people in their public discourse; they should be able reveal the truth without using the bible or church tradition as a weapon. That’s not to say that faith is irrelevant to Jesus’ teaching here. On the contrary, Jesus’ knowledge of God sharpens his human wisdom.

I have a special affection for the Spanish people and am grieved that so many of them are unemployed. Hard-working honest people have been betrayed by criminals in banking and housing scams. This is a situation which cries out for the kind of human wisdom displayed by Jesus.