One if the great comedic inventions of the 60’s was Gladys Kravitz and her long suffering husband Abner. Gladys lived across the street or sometimes next door from Darin and Samantha Stevens. Samantha of course is the witch in the TV program “Bewitched, who did her witchery by twitching her nose.
Gladys had a nose of her own and it was always stuck in the neighbors business. She would stare intently at the neighbors house and the comedy ensued when she would witness some magical hocus pocus and try to tell her husband what she had seen.
This closely watching became an obsession with her and she even took to using binoculars. She watched intently to find some weirdness and she was usually rewarded. She could not get anyone to believe her but she saw some strange things.
In Luke 14 the Pharisees are “doing a Kravitz”. They are watching Jesus intently trying to get something on him. The writer to the Hebrews says that we need to keep our eyes on Jesus because He is the author and perfecter of our faith. The Pharisees kept their eyes on Jesus and “watched Him from the side scrupulously and constantly” in order to catch Him up and accuse Him of being a Law breaker. Luke has an interesting use of one word that all of us have either undertaken, or have felt was happening to us. We stare at someone “from the side” to watch if they are behaving in a way that would cause us to make a judgment, or we have the feeling that everyone is watching us to judge us. Jesus enters into the situation where everyone is watching Him and looking for anything to pin on Him that would bring Him down and they do – He hangs around sinners and eats with them. Because of who He is the time will come when God who watches everything and claimed Jesus as His beloved Son will look away from Him as He carries our sins.
