Scripture Daily

Context No. 1437 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 10:23-27: in context

23Turning to the disciples, he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that you see, 24for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which you see, and didn’t see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and didn’t hear them.” 25Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Turning privately to his disciples, Jesus says something that puts their moment in perspective: blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings longed to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Then a lawyer stands up to test him, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life; and Jesus turns it back on him, what is written in the law? The man answers with the great commandment, to love God with all one's heart, soul, strength, and mind, and one's neighbor as oneself.

The words to sit with are Jesus' blessing on his disciples' eyes: blessed are the eyes that see what you see; many prophets and kings longed to see it and did not. The disciples were living in the presence of the Messiah, seeing and hearing what generations of the faithful before them had yearned for and never received; the prophets who foretold him, the kings who hoped for him, had died without seeing the day the disciples were living in. And there is a real danger, for the disciples and for us, of taking such a privilege for granted. We who know Christ, who hold the scriptures in our hands, who have the whole story that the prophets glimpsed only in shadow, possess what those before us longed for with all their hearts and did not receive; and it is fatally easy to grow so used to it that we treasure it as little as if it were nothing. Familiarity dulls us to the wonder of what we have. The prophets and kings would have given anything to see and hear what we hold so casually, the gospel we can read whenever we like, the access to God we barely use. Jesus calls his disciples blessed for what their eyes see, and the same blessing rests on us, if we will not let familiarity blind us to it. To recover a sense of the privilege, to see what we see as the prophets and kings would have seen it, is to stop taking for granted the treasure they longed for and we hold.

Do I take for granted the privilege of what I can see and know of God, the gospel and the scriptures that prophets and kings longed for and never received, or can I recover the wonder of holding what they would have given anything to see?

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