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    The Upside Down Way: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke
    The Upside Down Way: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke
    The Upside Down Way: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    The Upside Down Way: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke

    By Matthew Ingalls

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    About this ebook

    Jesus' life should turn our world upside-down. His first observers, according to Luke, were routinely seized with amazement, both at the bending of physics--making the blind see and lame walk--and at the ridiculous things he did and taught. A careful look at the Jesus of the Gospels sketches a man completely out of touch with conventional thinking; a man radically devoted to living a shocking life for the sake of the broken and forgotten. In popular depictions of Jesus today he seems to be more concerned with upholding a conventional way of life than with overturning our understanding of ourselves. Jesus' life story should lead more to humble servanthood than to syncopated light shows in church or the triumph of a political candidate or a well-ordered and respectable lifestyle.

    The Upside Down Way is a series of devotionals drawn from the text of Luke. Each devotional is an invitation to a fresh look at the outrageous words and actions of Jesus. Author and pastor Matthew Ingalls combines rigorous historical study with a voice that is unflinchingly bold, reflective, honest, and challenging, in order to elevate Luke's ridiculous Jesus to his rightful position as the fountain of Christian faith.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWipf and Stock
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9781532605376
    The Upside Down Way: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke
    Author

    Matthew Ingalls

    Matthew Ingalls is the pastor of River Street Church of God in Newberg, Oregon--a small congregation dedicated to living the way of Jesus for the sake of its neighborhood. He is a graduate of Portland Seminary where he studied both Biblical studies and the history of Christian theology.

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      Book preview

      The Upside Down Way - Matthew Ingalls

      9781532605369.kindle.jpg

      The Upside Down Way

      Following Jesus through the Gospel of Luke

      Matthew Ingalls

      11628.png

      The Upside Down Way

      Following Jesus Through the Gospel of Luke

      Copyright © 2017 Matthew Ingalls. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Wipf & Stock

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0536-9

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0538-3

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0537-6

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. March 10, 2017

      Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Chapter 1: Questions Are the Beginning of Discipleship

      Chapter 2: Learning to Run Again

      Chapter 3: All the Baptists and Republicans with Me!

      Chapter 4: That Hairy Lunatic in the River

      Chapter 5: Jesus ≠ Power

      Chapter 6: From Marveling to Maleficence

      Chapter 7: Anger in Politics

      Chapter 8: The Credibility of Humility

      Chapter 9: Scarred by Affection

      Chapter 10: Which Jesus?

      Chapter 11: Where Is Your Faith?

      Chapter 12: Fear in the Way

      Chapter 13: Breaking Down the Kitchen Door

      Chapter 14: Money, Health, and Striving

      Chapter 15: Marching up the Hill

      Chapter 16: Swallow Jesus?

      Chapter 17: Yours or Ours?

      Chapter 18: Include Lazarus

      Chapter 19: It Matters Where We Begin

      Chapter 20: The Poor Investor

      Chapter 21: All of Patrick

      Chapter 22: Our Last Table

      Chapter 23: The God Who Suffers and Is with Us

      Chapter 24: An Upside-Down Sentence

      Chapter 25: Suffering, Even on Sunday

      Bibliography

      For my boys

      The Way is not of will, but grace

      Acknowledgments

      To look to Jesus is to look to the community that he has gathered and is gathering around him. The writing journey that follows in these pages is the overflow of my interaction with this big and very old community. I owe thanks to men and women long passed, like Felicitas, John Chrysostom, and Patrick of Ireland. I am also indebted to the kind-hearted contributions of Jesus’ current followers. River Street Church of God, the congregation I pastor, has spent the last six years encouraging me and fostering me in a way that made this book possible. My friend Gwendolyn Leininger offered this work both her impeccable editor’s eye and her bursting theologian/poet heart. Debbie read my first thoughts and coaxed me into believing I had the start of a real book. Arthur spoke light when my spirit went dark. And Ben sacrificed much of his sabbatical to read this and give me another pastor’s perspective. I even stand on the shoulders of my high school English teachers. I would not have known I could write if Mrs. Mullet and Mrs. Helfrich had not told me so.

      I did not launch into this adventure the moment it popped into my head and heart. No, I let it sit there for years, too afraid to make the leap between dream and reality. But as always, it was my wife and her unflinching go for it, that gave me the courage to put the lessons of my soul into these devotionals. Her partnership finds itself quietly dispersed among these pages in ways too sacred to make explicit. I have these words to say, because of who I have become walking next to her.

      And finally, I must thank my parents, who tolerated my incessant questions and never squelched my desire to both understand and imagine. There were many times that the institutional structures of the church threatened the flourishing of my mind, but my parents always insisted on letting me come to Jesus on my own terms. It is to their credit that I have fixed my gaze on Jesus and his way.

      Introduction

      And Mary said,

      My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

      He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

      He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

      Luke

      1

      :

      46

      –

      53

      (NRSV)

      Mary was no queen. She did not rule anyone. There was no throne in her home; no noble privilege, no power for hire, or riches for use. Every other woman from this period who shared her socio-economic status—poor, single, and uneducated—is lost to obscurity. If you were a first-century Jew looking for hope in your world of oppression, you would not have knocked on Mary’s door. You would have ignored her in all your plots and dreams for liberation from the heavy hand of Rome and its surrogates. If it had been up to you, hope for humanity would never have come from the untouched womb of a simple young woman.

      Make no mistake, the Jews of Mary’s age were looking for hope. The Romans occupied the land of Israel, stabilizing it with brutality toward dissenters. The temple and the religious system that revolved around it were corrupted by greed and pagan Roman influence. These Jews lived daily in fear of death. They needed some hope. And lots of people offered it, perhaps none more so than Herod the Great.¹ He had hoped that the Jews would embrace him as their savior—he had, after all, built a world-famous temple for the people and their God. This temple was gigantic, inlaid with gold, visible for miles . . . a truly exceptional mark of God’s glory in the landscape of Israel. The Jews believed that this holy temple was the only place on earth where humans could offer sacrifices to God. They thought that God’s heavenly throne literally penetrated our world within the Holy of Holies. Even if Herod was awful, the temple was where God lived. And truly, Herod was awful. His throne was tainted with innocent blood and overshadowed by Roman influence. Religiously devout Jews heartily ignored him as savior and, for their own safety, tolerated him as king. At the same time, they did indeed put their hope in the grand temple he built.²

      Meanwhile, in little ol’ Bethlehem, through lowly and inconsequential-to-history Mary, God was being born. While the people were looking to the glorious, erudite, and powerful trappings of their religious system God was descending into their world in the humblest of fashions. It’s upside-down. We want God to be golden, shiny, and illustrious. He’s small, a baby, dirty, crying, and wrapped in strips of cloth. We want to know where he’ll be; say, in the temple or church. And when he’ll be there; like the Day of Atonement and Passover or Sunday morning. Instead, he shows up in the middle of the night, noticed only by some unassuming shepherds.

      Again, so upside-down.

      But if you think the beginning is upside-down, just wait for the end. Victory through death? That’s crazy.

      The book of Luke, in particular, is the story of Jesus living a very upside-down life. It is also the story of Jesus inviting people into his upside-down way of life. And not just upside-down for the sake of being upside-down. No, upside-down because the traditional methods for connecting with God were flawed.

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