The passage this week is about a healing Jesus carries out in a Synagogue during the Sabbath. Sometimes known as ‘the cure of the bent woman’ it is similar to a slightly later story about the healing of a ‘dropsical man’. I’m interested in the setting of the story, and suggest that it indicates that it is an account based on a historical tradition which demonstrates Jesus’ interest in, and strategy of, changing customs and practises in first century Palestine.

This week I am looking at the passage in Luke which showcases some of Jesus less ‘meek and mild’ attitudes: “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!… Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Rather than accept the prevailing, imo rather shallow, sense that this has to do with religious identity, I see this as a critique of the oppressive power of the family unit in first century Palestine.

This week’s reading is a passage from Luke’s gospel where Jesus tells his people not to worry about having enough. It includes the line: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” There’s a lot of upside down thinking in this passage, and I’m going to say it reflects an ‘alternative narrative’, or a different way of looking at the world to the conventional narrative of economic scarcity.

This week I look at the parable in Luke’s gospel known as the ‘parable of the rich fool.’ Usually this story is used in one of two ways, there’s a prophetic approach (“this story is telling us don’t be greedy, share your possessions,”) and a ‘sapiential’ or wisdom approach (“this story forms part of the wider strand of Biblical teaching which relates to death and possessions.”) Rather than focus on the content of the parable itself, I’m going to comment on the way that Jesus takes a ‘relational’ approach to the issue, which is out of step with the ‘individualist’ approach that dominates the majority of our thinking and our theology.

This week I look at the passage in Luke’s gospel where Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray, but has some explaining to do about why even the most basic prayers sometimes fail to get an answer. I explain how I, as an open and relational theologian, address the issue of God’s apparent unwillingness to answer prayer.

This week I challenge the accepted tradition of seeing Mary and Martha as representing simple ‘binary’ opposites and suggest that there are problems with such readings, just as there are alternative reasons to say that, for Mary, silence was the ‘better way.’

I’m at the tail end of the URC General Assembly, where the days have been long, intense and at times emotional, and the nights have been (by my standards anyway) unreasonably late. Nevertheless - here’s my take on the lectionary gospel passage (The Story of “The Good Samaritan”) - please forgive any minor slips which can be blamed on too little sleep.

Although Pentecost is generally attributed as ‘the birthday of the Church’, if Luke’s narrative is to be trusted here it’s clear that the Church was already pretty well developed prior to Jesus’ execution. Indeed it does seem that this is the case, given the network of supporters who enabled his journey Jerusalem

I’ve two fairly quick things to say about this morning’s passage, which is the story in Luke’s gospel of the start of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, during which he passes through some Samaritan villages.

I’m not preaching this week, which is a shame because I love this passage - it’s Luke’s version of the Gerasene Demoniac story. Mark’s version of this story got an honourable mention in my first ever lectionary post on this substack.

The gospel reading for this week is John 16:12-15, a short passage which has Jesus saying:

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you…”

A strange conundrum was at play by the time the writer of John’s gospel put pen to paper - how to explain the enduring nature of a Messianic sect, when - several decades after his crucifixion - the Messiah in question was no longer present?

I don’t really think that the writer of John helps himself, very much, when it comes to being understood. He mixes complexity with irony, humour with elipticism, and as a result produces looping texts that defy straightforward interpretation.

A short reflection today on the story of the healing at Bethesda, as I’m officially on a day off for reasons with which I shall not bore you.

Whether or not the gospel of John and the epistles of John were written by the same person, or people, is something that has been argued about for some time. My preferred idea is that these come from a ‘John community’ where certain teachings form the core values that feature prominently throughout.

Is there a more frequently reoccurring metaphor than that of the shepherd in the Bible? To be honest I don’t know - there are other contenders, the vine, perhaps, or ‘light’. But in any case the shepherd is up there, naturally enough, one might say, given the importance of agriculture in that time and place.

There are two dominant traditions about what happened in the aftermath of Jesus’ death in the early Christian writings. Effectively they comprise the ‘appearances’ tradition, and the ‘disappearance’ tradition. The latter first crops up, for us, in the gospel of Mark where we learn that Jesus’ body, buried after his execution, was found to have disappeared.

“We’ve got to be a bit cautious about security,” a protestor told me as they explained they’d be taking part in an organised piece of civil disobedience. “So you might not be able to get hold of me…”

The writer of ‘John’ just couldn’t help himself - he loved to instil symbolism, irony, and shocking double-entendres into his stories. In this week’s passage, his rewrite of the very familiar story of the anointing at Bethany, he adds a certain amount of ‘spiciness’ to the familiar story found in Mark and Matthew.

Although the lectionary starts at the beginning of Luke chapter 15 with a set up contextualising Jesus’ series of parables about finding things, it jumps the ‘minor’ stories, and goes straight for the big one, the story variously referred to as ‘the prodigal son’, ‘the lost son’, ‘the forgiving father’ and so on.