The sermon below is based on Luke 13. 10-17 The transcript below is more or less the same as the recording (as I never read directly from it) so it's probably easier to either listen or read rather than do both.
By this point In Luke’s Gospel the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had already written him off, they weren’t interested anymore and were constantly looking for any excuse to catch him out or arrest Him. They ask difficult questions and try to hold him to every minutiae of their law, not just God’s laws but the stuff they have added over the top just to be sure.
So Jesus heals a woman who has been suffering for years and rather than celebrating like Luke tells us everyone else is, they condemn Him for the fact that He has ‘worked’ on the sabbath by healing her. They’re so determined to see the bad in Him that they can’t even see the good He is doing anymore, they see everything as negative.
0 Comments
The sermon below is based on Luke 12:49-56 and Hebrews 11:29 - 12:2. The transcript below is more or less the same as the recording (as I never read directly from it) so it's probably easier to either listen or read rather than do both.
The Jesus who speaks in our Gospel reading today may feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable to many of us. ‘I came to bring fire to the earth’, ‘do you think I have come to bring peace? No…but rather division.’ Most of our time interacting with the Bible and especially Jesus we are faced with many things which we find agreeable, if a little confusing at times, usually Jesus is found speaking truths which fit in nicely with our modern disposition. However the words we are faced with today leave a slightly off taste in the mouth. Fire on the earth? Pitting families against each other?
Down the ages we have often, both as individuals and as a Church, swung between two understandings of God, a God to be feared, who is wrath and judgement, who we obey because if we don’t He might smite us. And a God who is cuddly and safe, a God who is love, our best friend God. You may this morning identify with one of those understandings, I have caricatured them a little, but we, and those we meet in our daily lives will fall broadly into one of these categories. God is either terrifying or cuddly. The Jesus we meet in our Gospel today seems to fit far more into the former description whereas we are used to putting Him into the latter. |
AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
|