{"id":960,"date":"2019-01-19T04:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoikonomist.com\/?p=960"},"modified":"2019-01-19T01:27:14","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T01:27:14","slug":"love-at-the-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoikonomist.com\/?p=960","title":{"rendered":"Love at the Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"text-align:right\"><em>a reflection on Luke 7-8<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>by\u00a0Meridith\u00a0Mitchellweiler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Within this week\u2019s readings, Jesus twice mentions the importance of hearing God\u2019s word. First in 8:15, he explains the meaning of a parable: \u201cBut the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.\u201d He mentions it again in 8:21 in response to a reference of his mother and brother: \u201cMy mother and brothers are those who hear God\u2019s word and put it into practice.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After spending time reading the passages last week, a question kept coming to mind, especially in light of what we have been leaning into Sunday mornings. What does Jesus mean when he says \u201chear God\u2019s word and put it into practice,\u201d and \u201chear the word, retain it and by persevering produce good\u201d?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I believe the only way we can begin to answer this question is to look to Jesus. After all, who could be a better example of what it means to hear God\u2019s word and put it into practice, than God Incarnate? As I was reflecting on the Jesus we have gotten to know through Luke, I was reminded of a quote from a devotional I read earlier in the month. Brian McLaren writes, \u201cOf the many radical things said and done by Jesus, his unflinching emphasis on love was the most radical of all \u2026 Love&nbsp;<em>decentered<\/em>everything else; love relativized everything else; love took priority over everything else\u2014everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As we have seen in the past few weeks, Luke shows us a Jesus who is far more concerned with the weak than the powerful, whose every act embodies a love incomprehensible to the people of this earth. Love was at the core of everything Jesus did and as such his love \u201cdecentered\u201d all worldly concerns and aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this week\u2019s readings, we again see that Jesus\u2019 love and focus on the vulnerable was confusing to the Pharisees and many others. In a class I took in college, the professor presented the thought that perhaps the disciples were disappointed by Jesus at first. Perhaps they expected a new king to take power over the system in play to fix their broken and oppressive society. But they were instead met with Jesus the healer. How was loving the poor, sick, and sinful going to fix the major societal issues?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m coming to discover that Jesus did not come to fix the problems of the world from the outside, as was expected by many. He seemed more focused on the inside, the hearts of the people. Just in this last week\u2019s readings we saw the story of the woman who anointed Jesus\u2019 feet. From the outside, she was marked as sinful, but Jesus focused on her heart instead. What mattered to Jesus was her reaction to his love for her. She expressed that love in the most vulnerable of ways. She came to him in a wealthy and powerful man\u2019s home, used her own tears and hair to clean his dirty feet, and anointed him with an expensive perfume. She didn\u2019t appear to care how it looked. All she cared about was expressing her \u201cgreat love.\u201d Love was at the center of her actions. Everything else was then decentered.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I look at the times when I have felt God\u2019s love the strongest and it has been when I am at my most vulnerable. When I have messed up horribly, like the sinful woman, or when something awful and out of my control has happened to me, like the widowed mother. I think I turn to God in those moments so easily because it\u2019s clear I can\u2019t do it on my own any longer. I need Him. I need His love. In that place, I\u2019ve found I feel strangely at peace. His love takes its place at the center and I merely act in response to that. Everything else goes quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think placing love at the center, whether in accepting God\u2019s love for us or showing His love to others, is what it means to put God\u2019s word into practice. At least it seems that\u2019s how Jesus did it. As Paul says in Galatians 5:6: \u201cWhat matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>artwork:<\/strong> <em>Mary&#8217;s Sacrifice<\/em>, Wayne Forte (2008)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a reflection on Luke 7-8 by\u00a0Meridith\u00a0Mitchellweiler Within this week\u2019s readings, Jesus twice mentions the importance of hearing God\u2019s word. First in 8:15, he explains the meaning of a parable: \u201cBut the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoikonomist.com\/?p=960\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Love at the Center<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,21],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-common-church-reading-plan","tag-devotionals"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Love at the Center - The Oikonomist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoikonomist.com\/?p=960\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love at the Center - The Oikonomist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"a reflection on Luke 7-8 by\u00a0Meridith\u00a0Mitchellweiler Within this week\u2019s readings, Jesus twice mentions the importance of hearing God\u2019s word. 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