I grew up in a conservative Christian home. I was taken to church and Sunday school long before I could walk or talk. I said my prayers every night and always prayed before a meal. Of course I knew who Jesus is after all look at my heritage.
However, my knowledge of Jesus was of course flawed. Growing up on a farm in rural Saskatchewan I didn't know any Jews or Asians or Africans or any other racial groups so of course Jesus had to be a white Anglo Saxon male. Now that wasn't really a bad thing but it was flawed.
Sometimes when you listen to celebrities or professional athletes they have their own version of Jesus. A baseball player may see Him as a player sliding into second base to break up a double play. This is just their creation of who Jesus is. I am sure that if Jesus was at the ball diamond the pro athletes would not recognize Him as He probably would be out with the kids trying to get a fly ball but here I go with my own version of "Who is Jesus?"
When Luke wrote his Gospel account of Jesus he did not have that problem. His readers were being introduced to Jesus for the very first time. They did not have a Sunday School version of Jesus and they had never seen His picture hanging in the church foyer. In Luke 9:20 Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Over the next ten chapters Jesus shows His disciples the answer to that question.
When we read Luke's account we should read it as his first century readers would have read it. We are no longer surprised when Jesus identifies with the poor and the outcast but that was not what the people of his day expected. Why did Jesus identify with these people and not the people of power?
...and what does He want from me? As Luke unfolds the story we will see the answer to that as well.
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