This week’s readings are all from Luke chapters 14-16. Click here to see a full listing of each day’s reading and the full chapters for this week. Full readings of each day’s smaller segments of the readings will be posted on this site during the week.
Today's Reading
Jesus also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who was informed of accusations that his manager was wasting his assets. 2 So he called the manager in and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Turn in the account of your administration, because you can no longer be my manager.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What should I do, since my master is taking my position away from me? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m too ashamed to beg. 4 I know what to do so that when I am put out of management, people will welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So he contacted his master’s debtors one by one. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 The man replied, ‘100 measures of olive oil.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ The second man replied, ‘100 measures of wheat.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write 80.’ 8 The master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the people of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by how you use worldly wealth, so that when it runs out you will be welcomed into the eternal homes.
10 “The one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. 11 If then you haven’t been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches? 12 And if you haven’t been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you your own ? 13 No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
14 The Pharisees (who loved money) heard all this and ridiculed him. 15 But Jesus said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in men’s eyes, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly prized among men is utterly detestable in God’s sight.
16 “The law and the prophets were in force until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urged to enter it. 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of a letter in the law to become void.
It's funny how we run across passages that seem new, like we've never read them before--even though we have 🤷😅
“The law and the prophets were in force until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is urged to enter it. 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tiny stroke of a letter in the law to become void."
I've been reading this (new 😂) passage in multiple translating trying to grasp it 🤔
@shelley-johnson What is your take on it?
Note also Matthew's version:
From the days of John the Baptizer until now the kingdom of heaven has been-treated-violently [biazetai] and the violent-ones [biastai] have seized [or snatched, plundered] it (Matthew 11.12).
Below are some thoughts from Joseph Fitzmyer on it from his Commentary on Luke. It's lengthy, but it provides a lot of info for approaching Luke's version, especially in relation to how the verb root for "violence" has been used in other places about a compulsion of invitation, even with friends. However, Matthew seems to use the term differently, retaining its negative context of violence. So, interpreters have struggled with this saying's meaning in both Luke and Matthew.
everyone is pressed to enter it. Lit. “everyone is forced into it,” i.e. with a demanding, urgent invitation (of the kingdom-preacher himself). The translation understands biazetai as a pass. parallel to euangelizetai, “is preached.” This use of the vb. biazein is attested in OxyP 2.294:16–17: egō de biazomai hypo philō[n] genesthai oikiakos tou archistatoros Apollōniou, “I (Sarapion) am being pressed by friends to become a member of the household of Apollonius, the chief usher” (at the court of the prefect of Egypt). The sentence is found in a letter written from Alexandria by Sarapion to his brother Dorion in the ninth year of Tiberius, ca. a.d. 22...It is also supported by the middle-voice use (= act. transitive sense) of the [verb] meaning “invite” in the LXX of Gen 33:11; Judg 13:15, and of the compound parabiazesthai in Luke 24:29; Acts 16:15. In a sense, it bears out the saying in 14:23 (“make people come in”) and corresponds to the varied reactions of people to Jesus’ preaching in this Gospel: on the one hand, favorable (4:36; 5:26; 7:16–17; 9:43; 18:43), but on the other, negative (4:28; 9:53; 15:2; 16:14; 19:7). Recall the words of Simeon in Luke 2:34. This passage understanding of biazetai has been proposed since the early part of this century, but not many have adopted it; among those who have are F. Godet, P.-H. Menoud, W. G. Kümmel “ ‘Das Gesetz’ ” (but cf. Promise and Fulfilment, 121–124), J. M. Bover and J. O’Callaghan, C. Spicq (?).
This part of v. 16 has been a crux interpretum for two reasons: (a) the sense of biazetai itself, and (b) the tendency to make it say something like Matt 11:12. The vb. biazein means “to force,” but it is most frequently used in the middle voice, “make use of force,” either in a positive sense (“try hard” [see Epictetus, Disc. 4.7,20–21]) or in a negative, hostile sense (“uses force on/against” [see LXX Esth 7:8; Appian, Bell. civ. 5.35 § 139]). The positive sense, with varying nuances, has been preferred by commentators such as H. Conzelmann, J. M. Creed, F. W. Danker, E. Klostermann, N. Perrin, A. Plummer, K. H. Rengstorf, G. Schneider, G. Schrenk; but the problem has always been to explain how that sense would be true of “everyone” (pas). Subterfuges are used to explain it: Even toll-collectors and sinners are trying hard to get into the kingdom; or people of violence are the ones who get in. But none of these explanations carries conviction. With varying nuances, the negative sense has been preferred by commentators such as E. Dinkler, A. Loisy, A. R. C. Leaney, M. Black, A. Schlatter: “uses violence against it.” But who is meant by “everyone” (pas)? In the latter case, one senses the tendency to make the Lucan form of the saying assert what Matt 11:12 does (the second reason given above). Here the discussions of commentators move back and forth between Stages I and III of the gospel tradition (e.g. I. H. Marshall, Luke, 629; T. W. Manson, Sayings, 134–135) and fail to keep them distinct, as has to be done.
It may very well be that the Matthean form of the saying in 11:12 is closer to the original, and that is why Matthew has made use of it where he does (appended to the testimony of Jesus about John). It means there something entirely different: the subj. of biazetai is “the kingdom of heaven,” and force is used against it: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence (biazetai) and men of violence (biastai) plunder (harpazousin) it.” In the Matthean context the threefold reference to violence (biazetai, biastai, harpazousin) undoubtedly refers to what has happened to John himself, who is a kingdom-preacher in that Gospel. See p. 184. Such a sense ill suits the Lucan context (and Gospel as a whole), and that is undoubtedly why Luke changed the wording of the inherited “Q” saying. See further C. Spicq, Notes de lexicographie néo-testamentaire (2 vols.; Fribourg: Editions universitaires; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978) 1. 189–194.”
Joseph A. Fitzmyer,
The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, The Anchor Yale Bible.
Accordance electronic ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 1117-1118.