Month: August 2019

Read Luke 10: 25-37 We’re jumping forward to involve children church.  (Did you enjoy the drama ?) Many of us are familiar with this story that Jesus tells. In it there are three groups of people who react to the victim. Group 1 ) The robbers  They believe “Your Stuff is My Stuff” and will use force to take it. Their T-shirts say “Here to hurt”.   Most of us like to think we are not like them. We do sometimes have people we want to hurt or to have bad stuff happen to.  Group 2) The Passersby. They believe that their stuff is their stuff and they stand apart wearing T-shirts saying “Here to hold”. Their goal is to…

Read Luke 5: 17-25 In the healing that happened in the story before this an individual approaches Jesus. This story is more about communal responses. The friends who bring  their paralysed mate, the pharisees with  a fixed view of how things should work.  NT Wright says “The Pharisees were a pressure group, not an official body.” “(For Everyone NT 18 Vols.) The Pharisees’ kingdom-plan, in line with plenty of earlier Jewish aims and ideals, was to intensify observance of the Jewish law, the Torah.” Essentially that mean’t that they thought if they could just be religious enough then God would bring the messiah. Unsurprisingly they also thought they were right. We too have religious groups who believe this.  The friends…