Episodes

Everyone loves a party, especially if we like the hosts and the interesting guests they always invite. Throughout his narrative Luke observes that Jesus of Nazareth was someone hosts and hostesses liked to have on their guest list. Jesus has always intrigued people. Even today people indicate they would love to have him on their guest list. But Jesus often proved to be an unpredictable guest, saying the unexpected in the course of a meal. And while the religious establishment were threatened by...

No one likes a hypocrite. The English word hypocrite has its origin in the Greek word for actor and like actors, hypocrites typically love the applause of the crowd – as they say one thing and do the opposite Come with me to a scene we find in Luke’s Gospel as Jesus traveled towards Jerusalem. The details speak of its historical authenticity – a woman crippled with an incurable sickness and a pompous leader of a synagogue with his high-minded rule-keeping. The scene unfolds in Luke chapter 13, ...

Don’t Waste Your Life is the title of a book John Piper wrote in 2003. Recounting something of his own teenage and early adult experiences in the late 1960s, he observes, ‘existentialism was the air we breathed. And the meaning of existentialism was that “existence precedes essence”. That is, you first exist and then, by existing, you create your essence. You make your essence by freely choosing to be what you will be. There is no essence outside you to conform to. Call it “God” or “Meaning” or ...

I have a simple question: What is your ambition in life? With the celebration of the seventy-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, attention has been given to her commitment to serve her people. Service, not self-service, has been a characteristic of her reign. The themes of royalty and service stand out in Dr. Luke’s record of the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. One of the constant features of Jesus’ public life is his service. Although, he is God’s king, he never used his divine powers out o...

In A Call to Spiritual Reformation Dr. Don Carson comments: ‘When it comes to knowing God, we are a culture of the spiritually stunted. So much of our religion is packaged to address our felt needs­­ – and these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of our own happiness and fulfilment. God simply becomes the Great Being who, potentially at least, meets our needs and fulfils our aspirations. We think rather little of what he is like, what he expects of us, what he seeks in us’ (pp.15f). T...

In a world of turmoil and injustice, conflict and suffering, we long for a day when all will be put right. A scene in the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth helps us. They arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he (Jesus) stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs… (Luke 8:26-27). While today the man would be probably diagnosed with some form of psychos...

It’s often said that God is love. I suggest this is glibly said because for God to love he must have someone else to love throughout eternity. In a highly patterned and repetitive piece of writing, the first book of the Bible introduces six stages of God’s creating work with, ‘And God said, “Let there be…”’ However, in the second part of verse 26 of Genesis chapter 1 this symmetry is broken. A significant plural verb is introduced, “Let us make…”. The break is emphatic. The us is not simply a r...

With disturbing events in the world such as the invasion of Ukraine and the shooting at the school in Uvalde, Texas, we feel the pain of the suffering and wonder where we can find help. At the beginning of John chapter 14 a dark cloud was hanging over Jesus’ disciples. For three years they had been with him and had come to believe he is God’s Son. All their hopes were focused on what they felt would be his victory over the powers of evil and injustice in the world. But now he was telling them t...

Over the last twenty years or so God’s people have been increasingly put on the defensive about their faith. In a climate where people of faith are dismissed as intellectually inept, many are fearful of speaking up about what they believe. Come with me to a very important scene that occurred on the day Jesus rose from the dead, recorded by John the Gospel writer (John 20:19-23). That Sunday evening, the first day of the week, Jesus suddenly stood in the midst of his disciples. John doesn’t expl...

Sometimes one person’s life has a great and lasting impact for good. This is certainly true of the man who made an extraordinary impact on his immediate world in the three short years of his public life. The effects of Jesus’ life didn’t cease when he was put to death. In fact, the reverse occurred, for some two millennia later, the impact of his words and actions, his death and resurrection, continue to grow throughout the world. The closing chapters of the Gospel of John focus on Jesus’ words...

Have you ever wondered why you sometimes feel God is distant and doesn’t seem to care? Come with me to John chapter 14. The chapter forms part of the record of Jesus’ final hours before his arrest and crucifixion. The meal he had with his friends that night was the last meal with them before his death. The reality that a separation was about to occur was hanging like a pall over them. The disciples were puzzled and frightened. On the one hand Jesus was saying that he was soon to be ‘glorified’...

Occasionally someone says, ‘Show me proof that God exists and I will believe’. But will they? Frederick Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat (1966) wrote: ‘We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof we tend to want – scientifically and philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all – would not in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. ‘For what we need to know is not just that God exists, but that there is a...

In this Easter Season it’s helpful to reflect on the deeper significance of Jesus’ resurrection. Indeed, so life changing is it, that it’s also useful to be equipped with answers to questions about it. Ken Handley, a retired Justice of the Court of Appeal in New South Wales, Australia, has commented: ‘Most people who reject the resurrection do so with a closed mind without looking at the evidence. This is irrational and foolish. Jesus, the Son of God, who died to make us right with God, is call...

The story is told of an Easter dawn in a Russian prison camp in the days of the USSR. A voice called out, ‘Christ is risen!’ and, despite the command for silence, a chorus of voices responded, ‘He is risen indeed!’ The events of the first Easter Day awakened the world to the dawning of a new era and with it the assurance that there is more to life than our experiences now. In our troubled, conflicted and war-ravaged world, how encouraging this is. The resurrection of Jesus reveals that death n...

A Maundy Thursday / Good Friday Reflection Why? Why, despite all the hopes and dreams that with globalization the world would become a better place, is there an aggressive and intrusive war against a peaceful neighbor, Ukraine? Why is it that the four freedoms defined by FD Roosevelt in 1941, ‘freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear’, are in danger of being subverted in varying ways in the spheres of politics, the media and social media, education and famil...

Eleven years ago this month the world watched William and Kate’s wedding. More than 2 billion people took time out to view this royal event with its rich pageantry and ceremony. It was all that we would expect of a royal occasion. How different was Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. As Luke’s narrative unfolds, we find that Jesus’ mission has been a movement towards Jerusalem – the city where the Temple symbolized God’s presence with his people. It was inevitable that Jesus’...

In the 1989 film Dead Poets Society a young English master at a New England Prep School is portrayed pointing out photos of past students to his class. ‘They’re all dead now,’ he says. ‘Carpe diem, seize the day,’ he advises. ‘Seize the opportunities you have before it’s too late.’ Moving from his report of the events surrounding Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-44) and the ensuing plot of the Jewish religious leaders to kill Jesus (11:45-57), John the Gospel-writer records that ...

Eugene Ionesco’s, Exit the King is a clever play about life and death. Reportedly, the Romanian-French Ionesco who died in 1994, said about the play: I told myself that one could learn to die, that I could learn to die, that one can also help other people to die. This seems to me the most important thing we can do, since we’re all of us dying men who refuse to die. The play is an attempt at an apprenticeship in dying. Now I don’t want to be morbid, but I raise the subject for two reasons. First,...

With the continued missile onslaught on the cities of Ukraine we feel the pain and the suffering and the loss of life. ‘Why this evil and suffering in this 21st century?’ In his 1940s book, The Problem of Pain,CS Lewis considers the question of pain and suffering from the perspective of the meaning and purpose of life. He comments: If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself,...

In the midst of the turmoil of the West, the evil invasion of Ukraine, and the threats to a law-based world order, where is your hope for the future? Come with me to the Letter of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, chapter 3:12 through 4:1. In verse 12 we read: But I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press ...

Human relationships on the personal and international level must rate as the greatest challenge for the world’s future. The cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine reveals an oft unspoken issue that confronts us: flawed human nature. The Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once commented, If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the he...

The breaking news is that Russian troops have entered Russian separatist sections of Ukraine, purportedly as peace-keepers. Is this the beginning of a changing world order championed in a recent meeting between Russia and China? In the midst of divisions and uncertainty around us, what can we do? Where can we find assurance and hope? The answer to the question, ‘What can we do?’ is pray! In 1 Timothy 2:1-4, Paul the Apostle writes: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, interce...

The voices around Valentine’s Day say that ‘love is everywhere’. It’s a wonderful thought but is it true? Where there is disagreement today, we find hostility, bitterness and anger. Rarely is genuine, thoughtful conversation exploring points of difference welcome. If someone disagrees, they are considered an enemy. It is not without significance that Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Plain: “But I say to you that hear, love your enemies” (Luke 6:27). Moses had commanded, love your neighbor (Le...

For the past two years it seems that all the news has been bad news: international tensions, leaders constantly verbally attacking one another – especially during a pandemic when unity would seem to be a better way for countries to address the crisis – bitterness and anger, blame and vitriol being spewed in the media and social media, together with divisions in the western world. We can feel overwhelmed, swamped and beaten down by what appear to be unsolvable situations. Over these weeks we are...