Tag: Luke

One of the little angels at my home church in Bury came up with these questions for her Sunday School…

Jesus was an agitator, not a pacifier. He started fires to bring justice for all. God’s love causes division because it makes people uncomfortable.

In Luke, we’ve had Jesus the Son of Man, Jesus as King, Jesus the bringer of good news to the poor. Today he is the man who calmed the sea.

This is what Jesus often describes; so much so that the good news can be seen as an ongoing story of the reversal of fortune for many.

Perhaps we all need to be more expressive in our greetings and relationships to reflect the good news and the blessings we have received.

Or maybe, she had the confidence and strength now to be the person who she needed to be. Strength to be a sanctuary for someone very special.

If our welcome is to work, if it’s to change things for people and yes, bring them back again, it has to be accepting and affirming of all.

Which local valleys would you fill and which hills would you make low? For this is a word of God for us here and now, in this time and place.

Jesus was ‘doing’ God. And we are called, challenged, purposed to do the same. We should be ‘doing’ God too. If Jesus wombled, then God wombles – and we should be wombling too.

I love this story of the road to Emmaus. Scholars don’t seem to know where Emmaus actually was – but that’s not really important. It was far enough to make a good story – and close enough to get back and share it with others…

We are the inheritors of the salvation Simeon proclaimed. We are carrying hopes and dreams of a time when God’s kingdom will fully come and God’s will be fully done, on earth as it is in heaven.

When I first looked at our readings for today, I thought “O Good, the gospel of Luke. It will be a nice parable. But Oh no. A very difficult piece –and when I read the other passages it did not get much better” I didn’t get it. It was doing my head in.

The Beatitudes in Matthew are essentially attached to what you might call inner, spiritual qualities – things like meekness, righteousness and mercy. In Luke they are attached to external, physical conditions of poverty and suffering. Both lists are a series of bombshells.