Jesus doesn’t seek only people like us. We are socially acceptable, at least to ourselves. But Jesus intentionally also sought outsiders and outcasts. He searched for people whom everyone else had given up on, because Jesus never gave up on anybody.

On the issue of biblical law, there is a tendency among ultra-conservative people to minor in majors, and to major in minors. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23:23-24 when Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” They put too much emphasis on minor things, and too little on major things. They put the em-pha-sis on the wrong sy-llab-les. Conservatives focus too much on swearing and sexually provocative clothes and sexual behavior, and too little on seeking justice for the downtrodden and being fair to awful people and taking care of the poor rather than telling them they must take better care of themselves.

This Lent we are following Jesus on a long, slow journey he took on his way to Jerusalem, and Palm Sunday, and Good Friday, and Easter. Along the way, he said and did some things that are not recorded in the other three Gospels. Luke recorded several parables on this journey not found in the other three Gospels, the best known being the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Here is my hypothesis: Luke perceived the ministry of Jesus to be more directed to outcasts and outsiders, people such as himself, than did the other three Gospel writers. Luke never knew Jesus, and was probably thirty or more years younger than Jesus. In some fashion Luke heard the story of Jesus from other people, certainly including Paul, because he traveled with Paul on missionary journeys.

All four of the great patriarchs of Genesis have fascinating stories associated with them, but Joseph’s story is the most amazing of all. Perhaps more intriguing things are said about Joseph than about his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather put together.

Of the four patriarchs of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, Jacob was without question the sleaziest. He was the most scandalous. He was the most scurrilous. He was a self-indulgent, self-centered, self-absorbed serpentine scalawag. He wasn’t esteemable, either.

Years ago I wrote a book called A Light-Hearted Look at Genesis. It was intended to show some of the unintentionally humorous sections of the Bible’s first book, but also to portray the serious themes initiated by that humor. I called the chapter on Isaac Isaac-in-Between.

By the traditions of the peoples of the Middle East, Abraham is the father of both the Arabs and the Jews, the Arabs by his son Ishmael and the Jews by his son Isaac. But Abraham didn’t have any sons for a very long time. He and Sarah were living in Canaan when a famine came, as happens every so often in the Middle East. So they went to Egypt, where the Nile River was, and where there was no famine. Then, when conditions had improved in Canaan, Abraham and Sarah returned there. Once again, God told Abraham that He would give Canaan to Abraham’s descendants, and once again Abraham reminded God that he had no descendants. Nonetheless, Abraham trusted that God knew what He was doing, and so he went forward in faith. Many questions in his mind went with him, however.

Texts – “And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”… “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.’” – Luke 15:20, 31 (RSV)

Prior to Jesus, no one in human history had ever used the unique phrase, “the kingdom of God.” If that had been the case, the term would be found in the Hebrew Bible, which Christians strangely call the Old Testament. After all, the Jews were the only monotheists up to the time of Jesus anywhere in the world. And since no writer of any book in the Old Testament ever spoke of the kingdom of God, we may appropriately assume no one else ever used those particular four words before Jesus used them during the brief three-year ministry that forever altered the world.

During Advent we have looked at how Jesus perceived the individual self, and how he understood the world. Today we shall consider a couple of episodes in the Gospels of how he conceptualized himself. Next week, on Christmas Eve day, we will look at some of the statements through which Jesus explained his concept of God. All of these subjects are extraordinary in themselves, and Jesus’ ideas about them were also extraordinary.

There is nothing that Jesus perceived that anyone else ever perceived in exactly the same way. Each of us is unique in our own thought processes, and thus we have our own unique thoughts. But Jesus thought about things in a manner never even closely duplicated by any other person in the history of the human race.

Jesus expressed what appear to be totally contradictory ideas concerning every human individual. On the one hand, he proclaimed that every one of us is of infinite value to God, and that we should feel that way about ourselves as well. Of children he said, “Let the little ones come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” “You are the light of the world,” he told us. You and I: we are the light of the world. Of the least likely among us, Jesus said, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge me my generosity?” There is no one whom Jesus considered to be ultimately lost, no one who was “beyond the pale.” Everyone was infinitely precious to him.

Americans are getting older. Of course everybody is getting older, even newborns. However, by means of advancements in medical care, nutrition, and physical activity, many millions of Americans are going to make it into old age, whether they like it or not. Are we thinking about that? Are we consciously and conscientiously preparing for it? Or shall we just let it happen, come what may, with little or no thought given to it and what it might portend?

American culture is in decline. Anyone who does not recognize that is probably not yet old enough to observe the decline. The rest of us can certainly see it if we dare to look.

What was so distinctive about Christianity that it succeeded where the others failed? Here is a distillation of the basic concept that set Christianity apart from other western religions in its early centuries, and it was also distinguished from Judaism by this idea. The early Church came to teach that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of the one and only God there ever was, ever is, or ever shall be. That God is the God who revealed Himself to the Jews, but He became divinely incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

To refer to The Lost Cause in glowing, romanticized terms is to imagine that the Civil War was primarily an attempt by the Confederacy to perpetuate traditional agrarian southern culture. That meant an imagined chivalric code, a fierce spirit of independence, an abiding aversion to a strong federal government, and above all, the maintenance of what had been known for generations as “the peculiar institution.” The peculiar institution, of course, was slavery.

For all the years I have been preaching, I have had my sermon themes planned ahead for at least two or more months at a time. Because that is the case, had I known all that was coming, I would have called this sermon Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria, Climate Change, and Flood Insurance. This has been the worst year in history for Atlantic hurricanes, and it isn’t even over yet. Incidentally, if you think “Flood Insurance” was thrown in just for laughs, it is the most alarming part of this sermon for people living on a fragile barrier island on the coast of South Carolina.

“The kingdom of God” is a term that is used by Jesus dozens of times in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. It is used only a couple of times in Matthew and John. Why, I don’t know. On the other hand, Matthew tells us that Jesus used the term “the kingdom of heaven” many times. But in every context in Matthew in which Jesus used those particular words, Matthew seems to have meant exactly what Jesus meant when he was quoted using “the kingdom of God” in Mark and Luke.