Gospels are not biographies, nor are they just collections of sayings, they focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without either event can’t understand Jesus or the gospel. But we also to see and understand that Jesus is God incarnate and that Jesus is risen else his dearth and the disciples turnaround between end of gospels [&hellip...
The miracle stories in the Gospels (like the ones in the OT) are stories with the wow factor that’s part of all miracle stories – think of the ones we hear on the infomercials on TV 😉 They called this reading “Feeding the Five Thousand” but it comes in a context. Luke (like the other [&hellip...
Everyone loves a good miracle story, the Infomercials are full of them, buy this exercise machine use it just 10 minutes a day and be instantly sexually attractive, sleep on our special magnets and your pain will go away and you’ll feel 30 years younger. Infomercial miracles sell things: it worked for me, you buy [&hellip...
This is a chapter of parables. Remember parabole (Greek) or mashal (Hebrew) means a comparison, so ask ourselves what’s the point of comparison here? One clue is to look at the numbers (no, I’ll not be getting into numerology 😉 Another, Jesus gives us himself. And a third comes from noticing where the climax of [&hellip...
OK this story must be one of the best-known that Jesus ever told, everyone has heard it! And if not (at least if they speak English or French or just about any other European language) they know the main character’s name – The Good Samaritan. Except that, what we know if we know this, is [&hellip...
This week’s readings contain a sample of Jesus teachings. In reading them we will notice two things particularly that will help us better understand: (a) Jesus is a prophet: so the rules we learnt for reading Old Testament prophets will help us understand Jesus. These rules were: Prophets spoke to a context: knowing the who, [&hellip...
How would you take to John as preacher in your church? He certainly had an attention grabbing opening: You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Luke 3:7 If a little lacking in pastoral skills 😉 But for a modern audience it actually gets harder, just as John seems [&hellip...
This is perhaps the chapter of the Bible that more people have partly heard than any other. We have also heard things that aren’t there: like the animals around the manger who don’t get a mention in Luke’s account – perhaps because their presence in houses as well as “stables” they were taken for granted. [&hellip...
The first four verses of Luke set up some expectations for the Gospel. Luke tells us he cares about history and evidence, uses posh Greek words some used by historians (especially Jewish history), yet by naming Theophilus and his use of the first person (I) he also sends other signals. This is history but personal, [&hellip...
What is a “Gospel”? Not a collection of sayings, because they tell more stories, but not a biography, they almost miss out most of Jesus’ life! We’ll get an idea what Gospels really are by looking at how each Gospel concludes (Matt 28:17-20; Mark 16:15-20; Luke 24:51-53; John 20:30-31). Then, the four gospels begin so [&hellip...
