Scripture Text: Psalm 87

Sagar Mekwan

Quotes for Reflection

Erich Zenger

There the nations, together with Israel, are to learn the peace that brings creation to its goal, namely to be a house of life and joy for all.

Application Questions

1. What makes Zion secure and firmly established, and how should this truth bring us encouragement and comfort?

2. What are the glorious things spoken about Zion, the city of God, in verses 4–6?

3. How should we live today in joyful anticipation of the coming glory of God’s kingdom?

Quotes for Reflection

N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone

At the heart of Luke’s picture of the cross is the mocking of Jesus as king of the Jews, which draws into a single stark sketch the meaning expressed by the various characters and the small incidents elsewhere in the narrative. Jesus has stood on its head the meaning of kingship, the meaning of the kingdom itself. He has celebrated with the wrong people, offered peace and hope to the wrong people, and warned the wrong people of God’s coming judgment. Now he is hailed as king at last, but in mockery. Here comes his royal cupbearer, only it’s a Roman soldier offering him the sour wine that poor people drank. Here is his royal placard, announcing his kingship to the world, but it is in fact the criminal charge which explains his cruel death.

John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 32

David having largely and painfully experienced what a miserable thing it is to feel God’s hand heavy on account of sin, exclaims that the highest and best part of a happy life consists in this, that God forgives a man’s guilt, and receives him graciously into his favor. After giving thanks for pardon obtained, he invites others to fellowship with him in his happiness, showing, by his own example, the means by which this may be obtained.

David Brooks, How to Know a Person

There is no way to make hard conversations un-hard. You can never fully understand a person whose life experience is very different from your own. I will never know what it is like to be Black, to be a woman, to be Gen Z, to be born with a disability, to be a working-class man, to be a new immigrant or a person from any of a myriad of other life experiences. There are mysterious depths to each person. There are vast differences between different cultures, before which we need to stand with respect and awe. Nevertheless, I have found that if you work on your skills—your capacity to see and hear others—you really can get a sense of another person’s perspective. And I have found that it is quite possible to turn distrust into trust, to build mutual respect.

Application Questions

1. Recollect a hard conversation, recent or from the past, that didn’t end well. Why did it get stuck?

2. In Luke 23, practically everyone turned against Jesus. What about the gospel helps you move toward reconciliation with another person?

3. This week, where can you apply the subtle yet reconciling power of Jesus?

Scripture Text: Luke 22:14-46

Bryan Buck

Application Questions

1. When it comes to the Lord’s Supper, what have you been missing about its centrality to a gospel-centered life?

2. How do you particularly struggle with a self-centered existence?

3. How does gospel-surrender result in greater gain than the world can ever offer?

Scripture Text: John 2:1-11

Jason Curtis

Quotes for Reflection

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

You would think that believing that Jesus is God among us would be the hardest thing. It is not. It turns out that the hardest thing is to believe that God's work--this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings--is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories, with blind beggars and suppurating lepers, at weddings and funerals. Everything that Jesus does and says takes place within the limits of our humanity. No fireworks. No special effects. Yes, there are miracles, plenty of them. But because for the most part they are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life, very few notice. The miraculousness of miracle is obscured by the familiarity of the setting, the ordinariness of the people involved.

Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Application Questions

1. What does the story of the Wedding at Cana reveal about God?

2. What do you make of the fact that Jesus didn't announce the miracle to the entire wedding party? What implication does this have, if any, for our life and worship?

3. What are some normal, mundane activities that seem trivial to us where God might be actively forming us and others through us?

Scripture Text: Luke 21

Bryan Buck

Quotes for Reflection

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

Darrell Bock, The Gospel of Luke: NIV Commentary

When one looks at a powerful nation, it is easy to think that it will exist forever. Most people at the height of the Roman empire would have found it difficult to imagine that it would one day be relegated to the pages of history. Other institutions also take on this air of indestructibility, one of them being the temple. In Jesus’ day, it was in the midst of a grand rebuilding program. Starting about 20 B.C., it continued until A.D. 63–64. So when Jesus spoke in A.D. 33, the program was well underway. Certainly a building so grand would have a long life. After all, it was decorated by gifts from many of the surrounding nations and was a building that had received notice around the Roman world.

N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone

Why study an old book, they say, that’s never done anyone any good? The answer is the same for us as it was for the Jerusalem Christians nearly a generation after Jesus. Keep alert. This is what you were told to expect. Patience is the key. Pray for strength to keep on your feet. There are times when your eyes will be shutting with tiredness, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, and when you will have to prop them open. This is what it’s about: not an exciting battle, with adrenalin flowing and banners flying, but the steady tread, of prayer and hope and scripture and sacrament and witness, day by day and week by week. This is what counts; this is why patience is a fruit of the Spirit. Read the story again. Remind one another of what Jesus said. And keep awake.

Application Questions

1. When you read the prophetic words of Jesus, what emotions or memories do they evoke?

2. Where might your heart be too fixed on something of this world?

3. The fact that Jesus spoke about spectacular realities and then returned to mundane responsibilities is telling. What does it tell you?

Scripture Text:

Luke 20:19-26

Quotes for Reflection

Augustine, The City of God

What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with a fortitude that finds its strength in faith.

Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?”, 08/16/1967

Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!” when nobody will shout, “Black Power!” but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future….

N.T. Wright, The Gospel of Luke

The challenge to Jerusalem, the Temple, its rulers, and their hypocritical underlings, are all concentrated in the second half of the command: give God back what belongs to him. Jesus’ own accusation against his contemporaries is that they have consistently failed to worship their true and living God, and to live as his people before the world. The very Temple itself, the place where Israel was supposed to come and give to God what was his own, in worship, prayer, holiness and sacrifice – the Temple had become a brigands’ lair. Put that right, and the question of Caesar will in the long run sort itself out.

Application Questions

1. How are you experiencing a power that feels overwhelming?

2. What is one area of your life that needs to be aligned with the permanence of God’s kingdom?

3. How can the gospel save you in playing the long game on a particular issue?

Scripture Text: Luke 19:1-10

Bryan Buck

Application Questions

1. How does gospel-centered humility specifically help you love others?

2. How can you use summer to slow down and hear God’s voice?

3. How can God’s blessing flow through you this week?

Scripture Text: Luke 18:1-17

Andy Tobin

Quotes for Reflection

Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience In the Same Direction

God sticks to his relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it. The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination; it is the result of God’s faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.

J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Do we ever feel a secret inclination to hurry our prayers, or shorten our prayers, or become careless about our prayers, or omit our prayers altogether? Let us be sure, when we do, that it is a direct temptation from the devil. He is trying to sap and undermine the very citadel of our souls, and to cast us down to hell. Let us resist the temptation, and cast it behind our backs. Let us resolve to pray on steadily, patiently, perseveringly, and let us never doubt that it does us good. However long the answer may be in coming, still let us pray on. Whatever sacrifice and self-denial it may cost us, still let us pray on, 'pray always,'—'pray without ceasing,'—and 'continue in prayer' (1 Thess, 5:17; Col. 4:2). Let us arm our minds with this parable, and while we live, whatever we make time for, let us make time for prayer.

Paul Miller, A Praying Life

The difficulty of coming just as we are is that we are messy. And prayer makes it worse. When we slow down to pray, we are immediately confronted with how unspiritual we are, with how difficult it is to concentrate on God. We don’t know how bad we are until we try to be good. Nothing exposes our selfishness and spiritual powerlessness like prayer. In contrast, little children never get frozen by their selfishness. Like the disciples, they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. They seldom get it right. As parents or friends, we know all that. In fact, we are delighted (most of the time!) to find out what is on their little hearts. We don’t scold them for being self-absorbed or fearful. That is just who they are. . . . This isn’t just a random observation about how parents respond to little children. This is the gospel, the welcoming heart of God. God also cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, “Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.” No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.

Application Questions

1. What is something that has caused you to lose heart that God is calling you to continue praying about?

2. What misbelief about God is keeping you from prayer? How might the gospel reshape your thinking?

3. What would it look like for you to come to God messy this week in prayer?

Scripture Text: Luke 17:1-10

Bryan Buck

Quotes for Reflection

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus…No one wants to know about your faith or unbelief, your orders are to perform the act of obedience on the spot. Then you will find yourself in the situation where faith becomes possible and where faith exists in the true sense of the world.

J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke

When do men cause others to sin? They do it, beyond doubt, whenever they persecute believers or endeavor to deter them from serving Christ. But this, unfortunately, is not all. Professing Christians do it whenever they bring discredit on their religion by inconsistencies of temperament, of word, or of deed. We do it whenever we make our Christianity unlovely in the eyes of the world by conduct inconsistent with our profession. The world may not understand the doctrines and principles of believers, but they are very keen-sighted about their practice.

Timothy Keller, Forgive

Forgiveness gets down to the bottom of things—to the alienation we feel from God and from ourselves because of our wrongdoing. Jesus was saying: “I want to show you that the deepest need of your nature is for me. Only I can bestow perfect love, new identity, endless comfort, hope, and glory. And the doorway into all of that is to know forgiveness.” It’s time to open that door and walk through it.

Alan Jacobs, “Vengeance”

When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness. The great moral crisis of our time is not, as many of my fellow Christians believe, sexual licentiousness, but rather vindictiveness. Social media serve as crack for moralists: there’s no high like the high you get from punishing malefactors. But like every addiction, this one suffers from the inexorable law of diminishing returns. The mania for punishment will therefore get worse before it gets better.

Application Questions

1. How does faith and obedience work together in your mind?

2. Jesus calls for obedience in three areas: temptation, forgiveness, and faith. Which of these, in particular, deserves your attention right now?

3. How can the mentality of an “unworthy servant” change the way you live this week?

Scripture Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

Bryan Buck

Quotes for Reflection

Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary

Flannery O’Connor once told a young friend to “push as hard as the age that pushes against you.” The church is to be a radically alternative people, marked by the love of the triune God in each area of life. But often we are not sure how to become this sort of alternative people. Though we believe deeply in the gospel, though we put our hope in the resurrection, we often feel like the way we spend our days looks very similar to our unbelieving neighbors—with perhaps a bit of extra spirituality thrown in.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call ‘myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop.

N.T. Wright, Paul for Everyone

When Paul speaks of us as being ‘in Christ’, the centre of what he means is that, as in some Jewish thought, the king represents his people, so that what happens to him happens to them, and what is true of him is true of them. Think of David fighting Goliath (1 Samuel 17). David was representing Israel; he had already been anointed as king, and it wasn’t long after his victory before people realized that he was the one who would lead Israel into God’s future. So with us: Jesus has won the decisive victory over the oldest and darkest enemy of all, and if we are ‘in him’, ‘in the king’, ‘in Christ’, we shall discover step by step what that means.

Michael Reeves: Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith

It is by the Spirit that the Father has eternally loved his Son. And so, by sharing their Spirit with us, the Father and the Son share with us their own life, love and fellowship. By the Spirit uniting me to Christ, the Father knows and loves me as his son; by the Spirit I begin to know and love him as my Father. By the Spirit I begin to love aright—unbending me from my self-love, he wins me to share the Father’s pleasure in the Son and the Son’s in the Father. By the Spirit I (slowly!) begin to love as God loves, with his own generous, overflowing, self-giving love for others.

Application Questions

1. Why is the Trinity important for our fundamental understanding of God?

2. How might the triune God be the answer to our deepest longings—especially in a culture of isolation, anxiety, and self-focus?

3. Where in your life this week could the love of Father, Son, and Spirit make a difference?