Huffington Post article claiming the pais was the centurion’s sex partner produced a little flurry of posts and comment on the biblical blogs. Gavin at Otagosh in Jesus and the Centurion’s boy wrote: “I’m not sure the story actually has much value in terms of current debates on homosexuality.” Is that right? ...
I’d like to sharpen this one. I am trying to explain and illustrate the second step of the five step process. Making reference mainly to Luke 9:1ff.. Any suggestions you have would be welcome 🙂...
Passover was the greatest pilgrimage festival for 1st century Jews, Jerusalem was packed with people (like for a world cup – only more crowded 😉 celebrating the great liberation from foreign oppression that God worked for Moses and the ancestors in Exodus. No wonder the Romans were jumpy, no wonder the Sadducees on the Sanhedrin [&hellip...
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...
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...
