To take on retribution is to take on God’s role of judge. Paul spoke about this in Romans (12:19). There we’re told to love our enemies, feed them, and give drink to the thirsty. (Rom.12:20-21) Our temptation is to repay in kind. It is the role of wisdom to call us to restraint. Once we restrain our natural instincts we open the way for a redemptive response and leave judgment to the One who judges righteously.

Is there ever a time to disobey government? It was Rev. Martin Luther King who said that the one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty. He knew the only way Afro-Americans could change unjust laws on segregation in the 1960s was to lay down their safety and bodies and sometimes even their lives.

On the other hand, Paul exhorted early Christians under the thumb of an emperor as corrupt as Nero to, ‘Obey the rulers who have authority over you.

Popular culture offers various views of what may happen to our spirits after we die. Many are entertaining even to the comical point of a cartoon-like image of the dearly departed floating upward to settle on a cloud with cherubs playing harps.

The Sadducees didn’t believe that people would rise to any new life.

David was just the second king Israel, a fledgling nation that still had birthmarks of being set apart for God. But when David set up the Ark of the Covenant and made Jerusalem Israel’s centre of religious worship and political power, it became Israel’s golden age.

Israel’s so-called shepherd-king was far from perfect.

We’re always trying to determine what counts and what doesn’t. It isn’t big enough or important enough, it’s not the right colour or fit. It wasn’t in time. It’s always about measuring up to some standard or using ‘the count’ to demonstrate where we are in the so called pecking order.

But Christ introduces a new measurement standard in the New Testament.

Probably it’s both.

This section in the Gospel of Luke reads a bit like a modern day newspaper. A temple is destroyed! Ominous trouble clouds with threats of trials and jail! Cities destroyed forcing refugees to take cover! And finally the need to pray for a spectacular escape and rescue!

God sees me. Before I was born he saw my unformed body. And now, he sees even my unformed thoughts.

How awesome is that!!

One of the deepest desires of the human heart is to be known for who we are – not for who others think we are.