Strangely, Jesus is mostly absent from today’s story. Jesus speaks in verses 1-7 and 35-41. He is present in the remaining verses that constitute the bulk of the story, but not in person. But he is there, the subject of the action. And if I were to summarise verses 8-34 it would be something like:  1. People wondered about the man and his healing. Is it really him? The...

A Certain Ruler Luke 18:18-30. Oct. 27th, 2022 Verbatim fragments  This certain ruler must have been quite excited when Jesus said, "There is still one thing lacking." Only one thing! After a life of disciplined obedience the ruler might be able to work himself into eternal life?  Just that little bit of faith is all we need? Really? We can't manufacture ev...

 It is tempting to make the two people in the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector into characters in a kind of 19th century pantomime. The Pharisee is the bad character and we should boo him when he comes on stage, but have the opposite reaction to the poor, misunderstood, tax collector. But that’s to miss the point. The Pharisee’s explanation of himself before God is...

The TextThere are a few idiosyncrasies in the text that, when explained, help in understanding the story of Jesus healing ten lepers.1. Jesus tells the lepers to show themselves to the priest. The priest will declare them to be clean/free of leprosy. However, strangely, they are not cleansed at this point! As they were on their way to the priest, they were healed.2. Why did they...

How is it that ‘faith’ has come to mean believing something unwarranted, as though faith is intellectual acceptance of a proposition with no proof? This kind of view tends toward seeing faith as irrational. But faith is not groundless. Faith might look at the world differently than those without faith, but that doesn’t make faith groundless. I find Christian faith more rational ...