Podcast Summaries

Amen. OK, we're going to try the handheld, so I don't know, we'll see. I'm usually a little too with my hands, so we'll see. Nope, nope, can't do it. Yep, OK. So we have been going through the biography of Jesus in the Book of Luke, and we're up to chapters 7 and 8. Exciting stuff happens, so much stuff. These are huge. These chapters are long and packed. Jesus is traveling around. He's healing people, miracles, teaching all sorts of stuff. It may come as a surprise to you, but Erin and I grew up in the States. I am not just a Brit who's really good at an American accent. There's some common British experiences that we didn't have growing up. Our two boys had all kinds of things that we came to understand were really normal, common, typical things that we didn't know about. We did not have pen licenses. That strange climbing frame that's attached to the wall in a school hall. Plimsolls. What is with plimsolls? We had to buy our boys plimsolls every year, and I swear they never wore them. We didn't have uniforms, so we didn't have non-uniform days, and we never read about Biff and Chip. However, I still think there's quite a few experiences that we have in common, not only as children, but as teens and adults. And my guess is that one particular experience that we had in common, we may have experienced that dreaded feeling that comes when you're maybe in a PE class or on the playground and somebody has to pick teams. Oh, see, I heard that sound. That childhood classic, team captains pick your teams, and you go, oh, please don't let me be picked last. Well, that's not the only experience that we may have where someone might feel excluded. They might feel a bit on the outside, maybe hoping to get invited in. So I'm going to have you do a little bit of work for me for just a moment. I'd like for you to turn to just two or three people, really small groups, to chat for just a minute and name some of those common experiences in childhood, teenage-dom, adulthood where someone might feel left out. What are those classic situations where you go, oh, yeah, yeah, I feel that. Okay, so GVC people, if you can be extra hospitable, turn to a few people around you, and I'll get some feedback in just a minute. All right, I heard a lot of chatting, so there's got to be some experiences. I can't rove as easily, so please, over here, what were some things that you just shouted out, and I'll repeat it. Church. Church can be that place. Yep. What else? Anything common experiences where people could feel left out? Pardon? Oh, not having a cool phone, for sure. What? Not getting a job. All your friends are getting a job. In crowds. Oh, yeah, everyone else is staying up late and they're watching that show and you're like, I can't watch it. Yep, yep. Anything else? Party invites. Oh, party invites when not the whole class gets a party invite or when you're a teenager and you find out that some of your friends went out to the shopping or something without you. Oh, there's so many. There's so many experiences that we all have those times where you feel excluded. And sometimes I think everybody has experiences where you feel not quite fill in the blank. Like I didn't quite feel in or you feel a bit on the outside. I think it's a real human condition. You may feel like sometimes you're not clever enough or pretty enough, confident enough, not well-spoken, not athletic enough, and we feel a bit excluded. So coming back to Luke chapter 7 and 8, we absolutely do not have time to look at all the stories, but I am going to do a quick scan of some of the stories and just make a note or two until we get to the end of chapter 8 where we're going to slow down and look in some detail. If you want to open your Bible app or the Bible on the pew, it should be page 83, which is very strange because they start renumbering at the New Testament. So keep going past the big numbers to where it starts renumbering. I think it's on page 83. So starting from chapter 7, there's a story about the faith of the centurion. So that's a Roman officer. Tag that. He has a servant who's going to die, is very ill. And this Roman officer asks Jesus to come and heal this beloved servant. The soldier expresses faith that Jesus can just say the word and heal the servant. And Jesus does just exactly that. Jesus comes across a widow whose only son has died. And Jesus has compassion on the mother, it says, raises her son from death and restores her son to her. If we go along to verse 36, Jesus is at dinner at a Pharisee's house. That's like a local leader of a church, like a pastor. In this case, it's a synagogue. There's a woman and it just says she was a sinner and gives no further details. She pours perfume on Jesus' feet. She washes them with her tears. The Pharisee, the pastor, not impressed. He knows this woman was a sinner. Jesus tells a really pointed story about people who are forgiven. One's forgiven a little, one's forgiven a lot. Who's going to be more grateful? And then Jesus forgives this woman's sins. So skipping on to chapter 8, it's the parable of the sower. But I think it's interesting to clock that in the first few verses of chapter 8, it says that Jesus is traveling along. He's got a group with him. He's doing his ministry. He has his 12 closest disciples with him and he also has a group of women who are traveling with him. It would not have been unusual for women to be financially supporting a rabbi in Jesus' time, like a patron, but a woman would not have been traveling as a full disciple along with the teacher. We got the parable of the sower and the soil, and there's lots of things. But I want us just to clock that a really obvious one, as I was reading through some stuff, the seed is the word of God and God's word, it's powerful. Like the seed takes root and grows and is fruitful. Boom. We got a few teachings from Jesus. Then we got the dramatic story of the 12 disciples on the boat. The storm whips up. They're in danger. They're afraid they're going to drown. They go to Jesus, Jesus. And he says, hey, where's your faith? And he calms the storm and they're a bit like, whoa, whoa. And our last story, just to note before we get to the part we're going to read, is where there's a demon-possessed man. He is homeless. He is naked. He is living among the dead in the graveyard. Jesus tells the demons in this man to go. And then there's this whole demons in the pigs, pigs in the lake. It's all interesting. And then all the people, they see this man clothed and in his right mind. And Jesus sends him back to be with his family. Can I have my three wonderful volunteer readers come up? They are going to read for us at the three microphones the last bit of chapter 8. On the other side of the lake, the crowds welcomed Jesus because they had been waiting for him. Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come home with him. His only daughter, who was about 12 years old, was dying. As Jesus went with him, he was surrounded by the crowds. A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding, and she could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped. Jesus said, Who touched me? Everyone denied it. And Peter said, Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you. Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me. When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble and fell to her knees in front of him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.

While he was still speaking to her, a messenger arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. He told him, your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now. But when Jesus heard what had happened, he said to Jairus, Don't be afraid. Just have faith, and she will be healed. When they arrived at the house, Jesus wouldn't let anyone go in with him, except Peter, John, James, and the little girl's father and mother. The house was filled with people weeping and wailing, but he said, Stop the weeping. She isn't dead. She's only asleep. But the crowd laughed at him because they all knew she had died. Then Jesus took her by the hand and said in a loud voice, My child, get up! Another moment, her life returned, and she immediately stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were overwhelmed, but Jesus insisted that they not tell anyone what had happened. Thank you so much. If I could have my other two volunteers come up for a moment, and you can take your seat there, and then Ben can take your seat there. Thanks. So as we look at these encounters with Jesus, what I have really found striking is that Jesus offers a salvation that heals all parts of our lives. It is holistic salvation. Everything comes under Jesus' restoring power. When we think of salvation, we often think quite rightly that Jesus forgives sins. And that is a huge part of what it means to be saved and to be rescued. We need to be rescued from our sin. We can see this happen with the woman who washes Jesus' feet. Jesus sees her and says, Your sins are forgiven. All the regrets and the poor choices and the wrong and bad things that she may have done and that we all have done, Jesus can see those and take those from us. They are gone. Jesus is the only one who has the power to remove our sins and to make us new people. The promise of Jesus is that he makes us new creations, new humans, these fully restored, slate-wiped clean people. So Jesus heals in forgiving sins. Jesus has power over evil. Evil's real. There is a supernatural power which opposes God. Sometimes it's called Satan, which is the accuser or the adversary. Satan and evil love to accuse us. You did this. You are that. You did not do this. You are not good enough. But Jesus has conquered and has power over evil. We see this dramatically illustrated in the story of the demon-possessed man. Jesus comes and he says to that evil, Out! Out! And the spirit of God in us overcomes evil. In Jesus' name, we can tell evil, Take a hike. Don't come telling me lies about who I am as a child of God, as someone who is redeemed and restored and healed. When we feel we're being accused, then we can call on Jesus to reject those voices. Jesus also heals people. We have a number of stories in our chapters where Jesus does physical healing. There are two people in our chapters that are raised from the dead. I mean, come on, that has got it all going on. This is kind of, in my mind, that's the ultimate healing. It's an ultimate healing that we also look forward to. While death remains something that we have to wrestle with here and now, as someone who belongs to Jesus, I know that death is not something I need to be afraid of. Those who have taken Jesus' hand in life are carried by him through death into new life for eternity. Jesus physically heals the woman who is bleeding. Jesus has the power to heal our bodies. Now this is something that we experience here and now by the powerful work of the Spirit. The Spirit is at work in and amongst us. In this present age, we live and experience the kingdom of God in many ways. It's also true that in this time, the kingdom life is not fully complete. We call this the here, the now, and the not yet. So we are not always healed. Things are not always made right on a lot of levels. And we look forward to when Jesus does make everything right. And at the same time, we ask God to be at work as he is in his world to heal, to make things right. And we try to evidence the same faith that that Roman officer had. Faith in God's power and faith in God's goodness in all situations. So Jesus' salvation heals us. Jesus' salvation restores us to community. Can I ask my two very kind volunteers to come chat with me for just a second? Thank you. What did it feel like staring at the wall? Ben? Is it alright? Yeah. Bit weird? Yeah. Did you feel okay or was it not very nice? It was fine. I was just reading the stuff on there. I'm glad you occupied yourself. Well done. Anna, what did you think? Yeah, a bit uncomfortable. Yeah, I don't like standing out in a crowd, so I feel better back there, I think. Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, in a little way, that's a little illustration. You guys were put out of the community for a couple minutes. A bit on the outside, not included. Thanks for being willing to illustrate that for us. It's a little representation of this amazing thread that I think runs through our passages. That not only are people healed by Jesus as individuals, but in being healed, they're restored to relationship and to a community. The demon-possessed man is literally living among the dead, and as such, he is ritually unclean in his Jewish community. He's not in his right mind as well. He had no people to belong to. Jesus heals this man, and we find him restored to himself. But he's also then, Jesus says, go be with your family. How amazing is that? Go be with your family. The woman who is bleeding, she's ritually unclean the whole time she's bleeding. First century Jewish custom meant that a woman was untouchable from seven days of starting her period. And this woman had been bleeding for 12 years. When Jesus heals her body, he restores her to her community. We see when Jesus comes across the widow whose only son has died, and it says Jesus had compassion on her and raises the son from the dead and returns the son to the mother. Similarly, when Jairus' daughter is healed and when the Roman soldier's servant is healed, they are restored to their families. So Jesus touches and heals the untouchable. In Jesus' time, you couldn't touch some of these people. So many stories of that, and yet Jesus sees them. He reaches out and touches them. And he heals them. And then in that, brings them to complete restoration. So the salvation that Jesus brings is holistic in that also everybody is invited into the kingdom. All are welcome. All are welcome into this new humanity, this people that God is forming and calling his own. Our stories illustrate in really powerful ways that might be a little under the surface, that Roman centurion, he is a ranking officer in the military might of Rome who are the occupiers in the land of Israel in Jesus' time. He's not only a Gentile, a non-Jew, he's a part, an officer in this violent, oppressive regime hated by the Jews. And yet this man believes in Jesus. And Jesus saw his heart and Jesus saw his faith and healed the servant. So I noted that women were traveling with Jesus.

Jesus, there's a lot of times in the New Testament where we see Jesus breaking cultural barriers around women, particularly amongst his followers who are fully his disciples. We have a lot of women who are named and then also not named. We've got Jesus' followers include fishermen doing manual labor. Matthew, he's a tax collector. He's a Jew who's collecting taxes for Rome. Simon, he's an anti-Roman extremist. He's a zealot. He's super against Rome. So they're a really diverse group, but Jesus welcomes everybody. So whoever you are, whatever your background, your gender, your political views, your education, your postcode, the invitation to be a follower of Jesus is for you and for me. No one needs to be on the outside looking in, to be afraid they won't be picked on the team or to be left out. Nobody's excluded from the community of God's family. We're all welcome through the offer of salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the entryway to the kingdom, and Jesus says, come to me. Everybody, come. So the invitation to salvation is open for all. We can come to Jesus with our whole selves, all the bits that need healed. We can find forgiveness for our sins, healing for our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our relationships. In God's kingdom, we have a place to belong. The great joy for us who belong to Jesus is that we've been accepted this invitation and been saved in all the ways that Jesus offers, and then we get to participate in offering that same invitation to other people. When we have experienced Jesus in our lives, we get to point other people to that same salvation so that they can encounter Jesus. We're ambassadors. We're representatives of this new kingdom life. We're filled with the presence and the person of Jesus, who is Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit in us. And it's the work of the Spirit in our lives then that moves through us and brings other people into that life. We join God's Spirit in the world. God has not left his world. God is out there inviting people. He's not absent, but we join God in what he's doing. So we get to be a part of God's big story where God is inviting everyone to come into the family through Jesus. God wants us to experience life in this new reality that we call the kingdom of God. God is at work. Where do we need the touch of Jesus today? Is there some aspect of how Jesus has moved in our encounters in Luke that we feel, I need Jesus to heal me like that? It might be forgiveness of sin. It might be a physical healing, emotional healing. It might be a release from the accusations of the one who lied to us. We might need restoration of relationship. We may need to experience God's invitation into community. God may be moving by putting people in our minds that we can invite in, that we can share our own stories of healing and restoration. Who might be the Spirit moving in us to pray for, to encourage, to reach out to in some way? When we live out and when we share our stories, it opens the door for others to come to Jesus.