Proper 22 Year C

Proper 22

Habakkuk 1.1–4; 2.1–4
2 Timothy 1.1–14
Luke 17.5–10

This central section of Luke’s Gospel is full of very uncomfortable reading. It starts at 9.51, when Jesus ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem’, and the ministry enters a new phase. Now everything he says and does is being scrutinized with suspicion and hostility by the religious authorities, and he is constantly in the spotlight. Even conversations with the disciples seem to have a wider audience, or else are quickly relayed to others. For example, Luke 16 opens with ‘Jesus said to the disciples’, but by verse 14, it is the Pharisees, not the disciples, who are reacting to the story. The stories that Jesus tells in this section are provocative and puzzling, often with a sting in the tail. There are only one or two healing stories in the ten chapters that follow 9.51, and even these have an edge to them. Conflict and the expectation of worse are the setting of this whole section...