Tag: Eugene Peterson

What a delight it was to begin the Advent Season on December 2 by watching the children of our church present their Christmas play that Sunday morning! From listening to the energetic choir of young voices belt out Michael W. Smith’s Emmanuel, to smiling as the little girl wrestled with her star costume, to tearing up at the singing of Silent Night, each moment brought back memories and ignited excitement about Christmas.

One of my Christmas memories, one that is undoubtedly shared by many, is of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) each year. Last year, we popped in a DVD and viewed the remarkably relevant story of searching for the true meaning of Christmas in a world of distraction and commercialism, a story that leads up to the gang’s Christmas program, highlighted by Linus’ brave moment of dropping his security blanket to the floor and reciting the King James Version of Luke 2:8-14:

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

During December, my husband and son and I have been opening the Bible each evening to read a chapter from the New Testament’s gospel of Luke. I love listening to one of them read and often notice words or phrases that I have not paid attention to before. We talk a little about the events described or the teachings of Jesus and close the day with a prayer.

I think that Luke is my favorite of the four gospels. It describes many healings and quotes many parables, including The Prodigal Son. I like the way Eugene Peterson (1932-2018) introduced Luke’s gospel in his Bible paraphrase The Message //Remix:

Most of us, most of the time, feel left out – misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, “insiders” who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded. One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are “in” and the others “out.” The clubs range from informal to formal in gatherings that are variously political, social, cultural, and economic. But the one thing they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life.

Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules, of shrinking the vast human community to a “membership.” But with God there are no outsiders.

Luke is a most vigorous champion of the outsider. An outsider himself, the only Gentile in an all-Jewish cast of New Testament writers, he shows how Jesus includes those who typically were treated as outsiders by the religious establishment of the day: women, common laborers (sheepherders), the racially different (Samaritans), the poor. He will not countenance religion as a club. As Luke tells the story, all of us who have found ourselves on the outside looking in on life with no hope of gaining entrance (and who of us hasn’t felt it?) now find the doors wide open, found and welcomed by God in Jesus.

-Eugene H. Peterson, The Message

Christmas time is here. Most churches, including ours are holding Christmas Eve services, many with candlelit singing of Silent Night and a reading of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. As we sang Silent Night in church this morning, the words “dawn of redeeming grace” touched my spirit, for truly that is the “Good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” (from Luke 2:10)

While we are only at chapter 18 in our reading, I couldn’t resist peeking at the ending of the book. I was delighted to find the words “great joy,” words that bookend the remarkable story of the holy infant who grew in stature and wisdom, walking the earth with ordinary people, teaching about the Kingdom of God, healing hurting people, confronting religious snobs, dying as the sacrificial lamb of God, appearing alive on Easter morning to women who were grieving.

Christmas day will soon pass. I hope that our family’s Bible reading will continue. I invite you to join the joy of getting to know Jesus by reading the Gospel of Luke, too.