Jesus has a headache
November 2, 2025 - November 23, 2025
There’s so much about being a real live human being that Jesus loves: good food and good wine and good friends to share it with; Sabbath study in the synagogues; lonesome pre-dawn prayer. But during his time with us he did not look away from stuff that gave him a real headache – stuff that goes against the grain of God’s universe, like nails on a chalkboard, like a high-pitched electronic whine that nobody can locate or cut off.
Maybe the stories about things that plainly displeased him can help us diagnose our own spiritual headaches – i.e. why some of the stuff that’s happening in our world makes us feel so sick.
The primary preaching texts for this series will be from Luke’s gospel, including several texts I’ve never preached at Galileo before. Secondary texts will come from the Psalms.
Evil gives Jesus a headache. The demonic forces Jesus exorcised held people captive, so his liberating work meant setting people free from those psycho-spiritual chains. But that liberative work makes privileged people suspicious. Plus, sometimes it doesn’t exactly “work” – seven more troublemakers come in to replace what’s been kicked out. It’s tricky, fighting evil.
Posturing gives Jesus a headache. The VRPs (Very Religious Persons) are doing their jobs: rigorously patrolling the boundaries of their religious community for its protection. But Jesus can see through their surface-level service, right into their self-righteous hearts. Finally, with Jesus, there aren’t any secrets. What would it mean to live life so transparently with everyone?
Blasphemy gives Jesus a headache. There are better and worse ways to talk about God’s power and presence – and there’s a way so much worse that we call it blasphemy. Jesus cautions us to be careful how we talk, how we articulate what God is and isn’t doing in our world. It’s not always easy to know; and part of what we do in church together is practice talking in the better ways we learn from scripture, song, and spoken word.
Money gives Jesus a headache. What kind of dummy goes to Jesus to ask for a ruling on an inheritance? But it’s a good thing someone did, because we got a lot of financial advice from Jesus from that dumb question. His main word to the wise: God provides, and if you think otherwise, you’ll waste your life working and hoarding and imagining you’ve done it all yourself.