Radical

I have been reading a paragraph from the book of Luke each day for about 3 months now.  Last year, I read through the Bible in a little over 90 days and that was awesome, but I wanted to study Jesus in depth, soaking on each word he had to say.  Today I came to Luke 13:10-17 and I came away with this one thought: Jesus was a radical!

Jesus was a radical.  He didn’t function as this nice guy around all of the people that were supposed to be churched and had it all together.  He was a radical.  Sometimes, it can read like he did things to make the religious people mad.  Really, he was just doing what was right and by him doing the things that were right, it ticked people off because it made them look and feel bad.  Why did it make them feel bad?  Because THEIR HEARTS WERE IN THE WRONG PLACE.  Their faith had become all about them and how close they could seemingly get to God.  Jesus sought out the last, the least, and the lost at all costs, regardless of whether or not it was the socially acceptable thing to do and when he did that, he did it solely out of love for those people.  Because he did that, the religious people got mad.  He came to serve.  The religious people had no idea of service, it was all about them.  They were just consumers of religious information.  Jesus didn’t necessarily target the religious people or try to make them mad.  He made them mad when he focused on actually DOING something for those that were unfamiliar with God, those that were in need.

How many times are we focused on the last, the least, and the lost?  How many times are we only focused on consuming religious information ourselves and we could care less about others?  How often are we out just to make people mad?  These were questions I came away with from my reading about the radical Jesus, the one I want to get to know better.

Thoughts?