Confronting our own frailties

Rowan Williams in his reflection on the trial of Jesus in Luke draws our attention to the need to confront our own frailties.

Mark's account of the trial makes us think about the difference of Jesus in terms of God's alienation from almost all our language of meaning let alone success. In this court we are being cross-examined on our readiness to reduce God to a provider of meaning and usefulness in the terms with which we are comfortable. Matthew's trial probes the degree to which our religious fluency blocks out the divine Wisdom and it begins to ask us what we make of those who are left out, or left over by the systems we inhabit. Luke takes us a step further and challenges us not only to stand with those left out and left over, but to find in ourselves the poverty and exclusion we fear and run away from in others - to find in ourselves the tax collector in the Temple, the woman in Simon's house, and both sons in the parable of the Prodigal, with their different kinds of exclusion, guilt and fear. (pp.69-70)