Contextualisation

In my journey through blogs of acquaintances, and blogs of friends of acquaintances there was the occasional post that stood out. Some I liked and some were infuriating.

Let’s start with one of the good ones:

Blair Cameron at Bacchus Marsh Uniting writes of the congregations taking Luke’s gospel story of the woman anointing Jesus’ feet and replacing the characters with contemporary figures. With more than one congregation, there was more than one set of substitutions.

This can be a powerful way of relating the bible text to today, making bizarre biblical behaviour understandable.

It raises the question: along which lines do you draw the parallels from Jesus’ time to today? For example is a Pharisee the political leader (as one congregation would have it), the business tycoon (according to the other one) or someone else?