Year C

Happy New Year! OK, that's happy Church New Year. We are entering into Year C in our Church calendar, and with this comes more readings from the Gospel of Luke. Attend church on Sundays for the next year, and you will likely be hearing a reading from the gospel according to the "other", the non-Jew among the evangelists, the one who tells the story of a Jesus whose wide embrace reached beyond the chosen ones of Israel to often incorporate women, Samaritans, and prodigal sons.

In some ways, Luke's gospel might well be the one written for those who often felt excluded or unheard. He was writing for a Gentile audience; thus there are often times longer explanations of "things" that the other gospel writers didn't need to explain because they presumed those hearing their words were already in the know. Luke is the one who tells of Jesus' birth from the perspective of his mother, Mary. Luke is the only one who gives us a glimpse of a teen-aged Jesus in the Temple asking questions and giving answers that astound his audience. In Luke, we have the teaching about what it means to love your neighbor and the explaination that the "neighbor" is anyone, including a Good Samaritan... a character many Christians are familiar with from Sunday School teachings. But how many Christians would cringe if we were to update the story and instead of a "Good" Samaritan, Jesus would have said that a transgendered person or a lesbian stopped and helped the beaten and bloodied man who was left to die on the road? See, Jesus' point was to tell the self-righteous of Israel that "the one who showed mercy" may be one of "those people" that they so despised who, nonetheless, did the right thing. And it is also in Luke's gospel where we see Jesus, hanging on the cross and in excruciating pain, absolving the thief dying along side him when the man asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. That story has always made an impression on me and has made me see Jesus as one who will listen for the earnest cry of repentance from even the lowest of the low, and will not turn them away.

So, I am happy to be entering into Year C which might well be seen as "The Year of the Lukian Calendar". It will be an opportunity for all of us "others" to hear the call to come home, and to recognize and give thanks for the "otherness" of everyone who surrounds us.