Alison preaches on "Seeing Jesus"

This small section is embedded in parables Jesus is telling involving seeds and plants. The theme in these parables revolve around the dynamic and organic growth of the Kingdom of God. In this particular parable, whether the man sleeps or rises, the seeds he sowed grow. This dynamic of growth is a mystery to us.

Jesus does not fit into the social expectations surrounding him, but he rather disrupts them and then redefines what it means to have identity and be family in the spirit-filled Kingdom life. The world is messed up and Satan’s behind it, but Jesus flips the script on it all offering everyone new identity and new possibility in his family structure.

This gem of a statement by Jesus is set right in the middle of episodes in which Jesus’ authority is challenged around fasting and then sabbath. The religious traditionalists are triggered by who Jesus is and what he does. The point Jesus is making is that what He has come to do and fulfill can’t be fit into old forms and traditions. Jesus’s teachings, miracles and authority are unlike what anyone had seen before. Sometimes we can’t move and change until our paradigms change and we pivot.

Jesus disrupts Levi’s life by calling Levi to follow him. Tax collectors were suspect charaters in Jewish eyes, and in calling Levi, Jesus also does life together with him, immersing himself in Levi’s community of “suspect” characters. Jesus came to be with the sinners. He is the good doctor come to touch the ill not the healthy. What does this mean for us?

In the old law, leprosy made one ceremonially unclean and placed that person ‘outside’ of the community. Jesus (reluctantly?) touches and cleanses this man restoring him holistically--bodily, spiritually, and socially. What is this man’s untameable response?

Jesus begins his public ministry teaching on the Sabbath in the synagogue. People immediately recognize him as someone who teaches uniquely with authority, unlike the traditional teaching of the law.

This is a difficult passage: 42 boys mauled by she-bears because they were taunting Elisha. We find this problematic because the punishment does not seem to match the offense. Did they really deserve this?

Jesus curses a fig tree for having no fruit even when it was not the season for fruit bearing. What is up with this? Is Jesus just being human with grumpiness, or is there a deeper meaning here?

Jesus calls Nathaneal as a disciple. The strangeness of this passage is in how Jesus ‘knows’ Nathaneal even as the two had never met before. Jesus simply says: “I saw you under the fig tree.” What was Nathaneal doing under the fig tree?