Luke 5:33-39

 Luke 5:33-39

In the context of Jesus having dinner with Levi and the tax collectors, the religious elite contrasts the righteous behavior of their disciples and John's to the behavior of Jesus' disciples. The implication being, “If you were good your disciples would not share a party with bad people, but would spend time in fasting and praying”. Jesus responds that in the company of the Lord, i.e. the bridegroom, the reasonable and appropriate behaviors are celebrations. 

Jesus often uses the metaphor of marriage for the life of a disciple. This is perhaps the most often repeated metaphor for the Lord's relationship with His disciples and the church.

We have devalued marriage to the point that we missed the power and the beauty of this picture. For a young Jewish couple the apex of life was marriage. Money, power, and success were not as obtainable for the average person in Jesus' day as they are today.  So they did not pursue these things the way we do. For many, if not most, or indeed almost all, the apex of life was marriage and family. The week of the wedding was a once-in-a-lifetime feast. Sexual purity that was expressed in abstinence could in marriage be expressed in consummation. Marriage carried with it these two expectations and it still does. Those expectations are joy and adventure.

One of the challenges in our culture is that the joy and the adventure of young love, that often coincides with marriage, begins to fade as we enter middle age and the senior years. The expectations of responsibility and the fading energy as we age cause us to tend to gravitate towards the safety of the past and the predictability of routine. We think they can give us joy and adventure because we are serious and responsible. But what is the joyous adventure to which Christ calls us? If the Lord calls us to joyous adventure what pains will we endure to play it safe? What loss of life will we experience by living in the rut of the way we have always done it?

“Lord, grant that I will never become so ‘mature’ that I will loose my love for Your joyous adventure. AMEN”