Where are the blind spots?

I remember after 9/11 there was a slogan urging national vigilance - be alert but not alarmed.  I think this is a useful slogan for Christians in these interesting times.We are all living in a cultural soup. It's uncommon to be aware of the metaphoric, ‘water we swim in’.  This is just as true for us as it was for Paul and Jesus. So much of the New Testament comes alive when we know more of the water they swam in.In Luke 13 Jesus is spoken to by a Galilean who feels ripped off by Pilate's violence against his compatriots. Jesus is meant to concur with his outrage - but he doesn't! He says, in effect, You're no better than Pilate. If the boot was on the other foot you'd be doing the same as him. Take a good look at yourself - look deep inside - and repent!It's the same with the Great Banquet parable (Luke 14). The invited guests, for whatever reason, behave as though the host (Jesus) is suspect and abusively insult his invitation to the banquet. They're busy with acquisition, commerce and relational priorities - good things but not if they become blindfolds resulting in missing the invitation of God!Jesus keeps reminding me and you that it's not the stuff you know that's the problem. It's the stuff you are oblivious to that a wise person would pray, "Open my ears and eyes and heart Lord."Luke 19 has a parable about investment. We read it as though the goodies are the blokes who made the most money for their scary master. But it is highly probable that if we read it through the eyes of Jesus' contemporaries the would-be heroes are really wicked, fear-driven extortionists and the true hero is the one who calls the master for what he is - worldly, cruel, greedy and  immoral. "Here is your coin," he says. In Jesus' day this is all a fair person would have expected.Repentance is about seeing things as they really are and being open to change. It's asking God to give insight to ‘the hidden fault’, the blind spots that leave us in La-la land spiritually and potentially eternally.Over the next Sundays we are talking biblically about our financial future here at St Philips. You are an integral part of this conversation. There is no area that people hold more tightly than this. Jesus talks about our relationship to investment, security, generosity, true righteousness and control again and again in the gospels. He knows that our true God is where our heart really lies.Jesus wants all hearts to be unreservedly in intimate, trusting relationship with him for “the things of this earth to grow strangely dim in light of his glory and grace” - for our actions in this life to be transformed by our expectations of the next.May your heart and mind be warmed and opened by the Jesus "in whom are all things" as we head down this road together.BlessingsMalcolm