luke on Received by God

Gracious God, you receive us in your gentle arms. You anoint us with your healing presence. Help us to be mindful of your mercy, your deep compassion for the wounds of the world, and your willing pres...

Leader: God of love, when we wander away it is your grace that calls us back to you. All: You receive us with mercy, and we give thanks. Loving Christ, when we are lost and lonely in a far l...

Gracious God, we believe our hard work should get us comfort, conveniences, and control. We rely on our abilities to create a life independent from you. Father, forgive us, because we need you more th...

As a shepherd seeks a lost sheep, so God seeks and saves the lost. Like a woman who searches for a lost coin until it is found, so God rejoices over one soul restored to wholeness. As a father r...

Loving Father, You receive all who come humbly before You. Yet we approach You far too often with much satisfaction and inappropriate pride. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. W...

preaching commentary The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, th...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? OT Foreshadowing While Luke’s account of the procurement of the donkey on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem has no precedent in the Hebr...

Context This Sunday’s passage takes place during Jesus’ long final journey to Jerusalem (which takes up over a third of Luke’s Gospel). In the preceding pericope the disciples have asked Jesus to in...

Context This Sunday’s passage takes place during Jesus’ long final journey to Jerusalem (which takes up over a third of Luke’s Gospel). In the preceding pericope the disciples have asked Jesus to in...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Jesus’ Crucifixion, Stephen’s Martyrdom  When Stephen saw “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God,” the surrounding crowd of God’s people should have...

Leader: For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as children, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witne...

The Transitive Property of Welcoming In elementary school math you learn various basic principles of working with numbers…the commutative property, the associative property, the distributive property...

Preaching Commentary A Clash of Kingdoms Just as with the lectionary passage next week, our text takes place in the temple courts during Holy Week. Jesus’ Kingdom of God is now clashing head on wit...

O Merciful God, who came in Jesus Christ with saving power to a world that walked in darkness and in the shadow of death, we praise and bless you for all those your servants who helped prepare the way...

God—Father, Son and Spirit; You are a God of compassion and love. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve known Your love, and experienced Your care and provision. Repeatedly You’ve answered our ...

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

A Clash of Kingdoms Just as with the lectionary passage next week, our text takes place in the temple courts during Holy Week. Jesus’ Kingdom of God is now clashing head on with the religious authori...

Questions for Consideration What does a prayer reveal about a person? What do you most often pray for/about and what might that reveal about you? A Beautiful and Compelling Gospel Prayer The...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all ...

Preaching Commentary Rediscovering the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes familiarity breeds something far less intense, but equally as destructive—co...

Preaching Commentary Setting the Context:  After the introductory tag from 2:14a this week’s text begins with “therefore” in 2:36 (Greek oun , which is the second word in verse 36 in the Greek text...

We understand why Proverbs 31 gets so much attention on Mother's Day. But as we argued in the first part of this series, it isn't actually about mothers. And if you aren't careful, you...

Introduction Our text falls within a larger section (Luke 16) in which Jesus deals head-on with questions of money, specifically the need to choose God over mammon (the worship of money), in other wo...

Context This passage takes a number of turns that may, at first, seem disconnected from one another. Our text is part of a larger teaching discourse of Jesus in Luke’s gospel that has been causing te...

Context If you're jumping into Luke partway through the story, it helps to do one of those "Previously On..." clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series. The most impo...

Setting the Context:  After the introductory tag from 2:14a this week’s text begins with “therefore” in 2:36 (Greek oun , which is the second word in verse 36 in the Greek text), making it especially...

Introduction Our text falls within a larger section (Luke 16) in which Jesus deals head-on with questions of money, specifically the need to choose God over mammon (the worship of money), in other wo...

Context This passage takes a number of turns that may, at first, seem disconnected from one another. Our text is part of a larger teaching discourse of Jesus in Luke’s gospel that has been causing te...

Context We haven’t been following the story of Luke yet. We’re now jumping into Luke partway through, so it helps to do one of those review clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series...

Introduction Leaning Toward the Light What does it mean to lean towards the light of Christ? What does it mean to be open to the work of God? For the Pharisee in Jesus’ time, the answer was clear: y...