n his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul writes these well known words:

 

If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins,and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else. (1 Cor 15:17-19 CEB)

 

Jesus was a great teacher. We can and should base our lives on his teaching. Jesus Christ gives us hope in this life, but it doesn’t end there. Because, as Paul continues:

 

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. (1 Cor 15:20)

 

This Sunday we celebrate the greatest truth that binds the church together. Jesus Christ defeated death. We are not still in our sins, our brothers in sisters in Christ who have gone before us are not gone forever. This Sunday we celebrate the impossible hope of eternal, abundant life that Jesus Christ inaugurates with the resurrection and offers to each of us.

After Jesus is arrested, his friends all scatter. All of them, that is, except Simon Peter. Peter goes with him to the high priest’s house. Then the wheels come off for Peter. Jesus had predicted that Peter would deny knowing him and sure enough, that’s exactly what Peter does. But this story is not the end of Peter, not by a long shot. Peter becomes a great man. Peter becomes “the rock” as Jesus says, upon which he will build the church. Peter’s mistake is not the end of him and neither are ours the end of us. What can we learn from Peter’s mistake that can make us into better disciples of Jesus?

The church was around for decades before there was a New Testament to read and share. There is saying of Baptists that we are “people of the book.” The early church was not. They didn’t have a book. They had a story and they had a meal. From the beginning of the church, the Lord’s Supper has been the way followers of Jesus remind ourselves of what Jesus did on our behalf and the covenant to which we are bound. This tradition began only hours before Jesus was arrested. It’s easy to treat our shared meal as just another thing we do in church, but to Jesus, it was anything but rote. This week, as we draw closer to the cross, we’ll look to the Passover meal Jesus shares with his apostles on the night he was betrayed and we’ll share the meal together to remind ourselves of our place in the covenant.

A lot happens in the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. It’s an important week in Jesus’ life, so we’re going to slow it down this year. To close out the series on Luke, we’re going to spend the last few weeks looking at the events in the last few days of Jesus’ pre-ressurection ministry. And that begins with his entry into Jerusalem. The way Jesus came into Jerusalem was not an accident, it was a statement. And it is a statement that demands a response, both from his contemporaries and from us.

Our scripture for Sunday is a very popular story of the Prodigal Son, also known as the Parable of the Lost Son. It is one of three parables in a row where Jesus demonstrates what it means to be lost, how heaven celebrates with joy when the lost are found, and how the loving Father longs to save people. He is a loving forgiving Father who says, "Rejoice, my son is home. He once was lost but now is found." You can always come Home to the forgiving Father.

Jesus dealt with sinners in a very different way than the religious leaders of his time. Sinners were drawn to him. Why? 

*Sorry for the technical glitches on this one. We were having some wireless mic interference. It's not too bad, just a little weird sounding.

The way our society handles money is broken. Jesus offers a better way.

We begin our focus on some of the parables Jesus uses in Luke with a look at the Good Samaritan. Jesus answers a couple of questions for a legal expert and helps define what it means to be a neighbor.

The Jews were serious about the Sabbath. Sabbath observance was one of the principal ways they were different than their Gentile neighbors. It was a big part of their identity as the chosen people of God. In our passage from Luke 13, a synagogue leader accuses Jesus of violating the Sabbath, but Jesus sees a bigger issue at stake. He has a different idea of what it means to set aside a day to honor God. Jesus interprets the Sabbath and the rest of the Law with a different hermeneutic than the Jewish religious leaders of his day. It gets him in a lot of trouble and teaches us an important lesson about the Kingdom of God.

Jesus' earthly ministry recorded in the gospels primarily included teaching and miracles. The gospel of Luke, like the other synoptic gospels (Matthew and Mark), slowly reveals through its stories who Jesus is and what he is trying to accomplish. There's a lot of mystery surrounding Jesus. Even his followers ask, "Who is this man?" and don't really understand what his goals are. This week we'll take a look at how some well-known miracle stories from Luke 8 help us answer those questions.