Luke 19 :: Jesus, the Holy Disruptor

Luke 19

For those of us who think that God is not personal and keeps his distance from us and basically lets us handle everything on our own, today's chapter has to mess with your head a little.  Our chapter today is full of Jesus stepping into other people's business.  He disrupts their lives to accomplish his purposes.  His disruptions push us, pull us and prod us into being something we aren't currently.  His disruptions are holy in nature and have purpose beyond our wants and our comforts and our plans.

Zacchaeus just wants to see Jesus.  Many people have made church services a spectator sport.  You come, sit, watch and move on, never really having to engage much more of your life than just your entertainment senses.  But when God has a bigger plan for you, you cannot just watch for long.  Jesus disrupts his entertainment and he responds with full devotion and action.

Jesus' disruptions are often higher callings.  While he had the attention of the people, Jesus tells them a story about his leaving them and their stewardship of the message he is leaving with them.  He explains that there is opposition. Two of the ten, turned a profit with their investment...they took risks and they paid off.  One did nothing with his, except protect it and he was reprimanded for his lack of doing anything.  It's interesting that we don't hear anything about the other seven who got minas also.  Jesus' disruptions are simply not part of his holy plan for us to sit on our hands and watch.

Jesus' disruptions are for normal people too.  Jesus needs a colt to ride into Jerusalm, but he doesn't have one.  He tells the disciples to go into town and steal one.  As they are getting the colt, the owners are taken aback by this.  Someone is stealing their colt!  But Jesus had something bigger planned for that colt than what the normal, everyday owners had planned.  They weren't just going to watch from the sidelines, but they made an investment, even if they weren't planning on it.

Jesus' disrupts when we are interrupting him.  At the end of this chapter, Jesus enters the temple and disrupts the whole place because people were interrupting his plan for the temple - he wanted it to be a place of prayer, but they had made it a commercial den of robbers.  Even our churches are subject to interruptions when we take the focus off of Jesus and place it on other people or in other things.

Have you had any holy disruptions in your life?  I have had several.  Looking back, I am grateful for every one of them, but at the moment I was not a happy camper.  Is your life getting disrupted right now by the loss of a job?  Maybe the illness of a family member?  Maybe the difficulties of parenthood?  Maybe God is using these things to disrupt your personal status quo.