Sabbath School From Home

The theme of being kind to the poor is well-trodden on this podcast, but we turn to Psalm 41 for new insight.  The Sabbath School lesson falls into a fascinating trap by using fairly heavy "us" and "them" language to describe the poor and needy. We don't claim to be in this category, but it is likely that some readers of the lesson will be. Psalm 41 actually addresses this in a subtle way by switc...

Thinking about "singing the Lord's song in a strange land" makes us wonder what feels normal and what feels strange.  Exile in a foreign land is a substantial theme for many biblical authors, and the lesson this week applies the idea to our sin-bound world. This resonates with our calling to enter God's Kingdom, but it seems possible to get too carried away with this analogy. Is sin becoming more...

Any discussion of how the Lord hears and delivers has to consider the times when he doesn't.  This well-loved Psalm strongly endorses God's protection, and we find the passage to be uplifting and helpful. But it is certainly easy to find counter examples provided by people who weren't kept from all harm, and we discuss how this all holds together. 

The Lord "reigning" is a somewhat antiquated metaphor in our contemporary social and political context.  What does it tell us about God, and is there any helpful alternative imagery? We dwell on Psalm 100 to ponder the greatness and goodness of God.

The Psalms have plenty to teach us about how to pray.  Perhaps the most striking thing about Psalm 44 is the rawness of complaint and accusation against God. Clearly a person of faith must be "allowed" to express their feelings - both in contentment and in anguish. We usually gravitate towards praise and worship, but it is OK to be honest. In fact, we realise that complaint and lamentation can be...

This season we return to the Psalms, and it is good to start by exploring how we can read them.  Our initially general discussion of Inspiration leads to the reasonably profound idea of transferring a thought between two people. There are some interesting insights from mathematics, but some thoughts are not so easy to transfer to another person in high fidelity. The Psalms seem to be the result of...

We attempt to wrap up this season on "God's mission", but it seems there's more to learn and understand.  The lesson poses a question about what the end of God's mission might be, and it is a difficult thing to qualify with thresholds. The metaphors in 1 Peter chapter 2 seem to suggest that God's mission is always ongoing, as He attempts to build His creation into a better temple.

Esther is a complicated story in any context, let alone the theme of God's mission.  This complication arises from the implicit role of God in numerous surprising coincidences, and yet the complete absence of explicit mention of God. It is also difficult to find much helpful contemporary mission relevance for the bloodthirsty conclusion to the story. Fear seems to be a substantial element of the "...

What might it mean to participate in God's mission to the "reached"?  As anticipated, we follow on from last week's topic of "the unreached" by considering what it could mean to be reached. This passage in Jeremiah 7 is one of many that make it quite clear that many who self-identify as "reached" by God still have glaring deficiencies in understanding. 

The "unreached" might need mission, but it is not such an easy category!  We look at the well-known story of Paul in Athens using a statue to an unknown god to launch a conversation about Jesus. The trouble is that the analogy worked because these people were perhaps "partly reached" more than "unreached". In fact, it might be a useful challenge to ponder how reached we are ourselves rather than f...

It's fascinating to explore mission to the powerful.  A number of biblical examples are illustrative, but perhaps the most iconic is the story of Daniel and his friends making a point to King Nebuchadnezzar about their overarching commitment to God.

To explore the topic of "Mission to the needy" we turned to the story of friends lowering a paralytic man through the roof.  This topic is particularly timely for our world, stretched by financial pressure and prominently torn by conflict. It is worth pondering the thought from James 1 that pure religion is looking after widows and orphans.

The topic "Mission to my neighbour" sends us straight to the Good Samaritan.  Although so well-known, this story has so much capacity to challenge us. It provides an excellent perspective on key aspects of "mission", and we ponder what it means for us today.

How to catch the kind of motivation that makes you re-walk a day's journey without resting? Some of the motivations experienced by friends of Jesus in the New Testament don't correspond all that well to our experience as followers of Christ millennia later. Other stories map more closely, and Cleopas walking with a friend to Emmaus seems a great example.

We all have excuses to avoid God's mission, but the most obvious ones are nearly trivial.  Looking at the story of Jonah exposes a much more challenging idea: what if we avoid mission simply because we don't actually agree with God that someone else needs and deserves His mercy?

Abraham challenges God's suggestion of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a challenging picture of "participating in God's mission".

How might we stop "mission" becoming a mirror? Talking about comfort zones in the context of God's mission reminds us just how powerful the pull of comfort can be. Do we get uncomfortable in our inclusive acceptance of people, or do we expect them to leave their comfort zone when joining our Christian community? 

What is the Great Commission again? It's a command to go, make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to obey. All of these aspects deserve to be unpacked a lot, but a somewhat obvious idea is that this task might not involve all that much preaching and Revelation seminars! What if we accidentally turn mission into making people more like us , rather than more like God?

An exploration of God's Mission must start with a focus on the God of mission. This new season will explore the theme of "God's Mission, My Mission", and we have to recognise that the word "mission" means a wide range of different things to different Christians. In fact, our initial reaction to this title probably depends on what kind of mission we are picturing. This idea will need to be explored...

After exploring the themes and some details of Ephesians, does it "feel different"? This episode is a bit of an experiment - does listening to the entire book of Ephesians work for you after 13 episodes exploring it bit-by-bit?

Ephesians closes with almost the same sentence as it began: a blessing of grace and peace. Peace seems at first to be the flip side of the aggressive military imagery of God's armour, but it might not be that simple. The peace and unity described throughout Ephesians is something that must be built up - it does not just appear by default.

How helpful is military armour as an analogy for the Christian life? This passage is perhaps the most well-known part of Ephesians, and yet it actually feels somewhat strange juxtaposed against the deep theme of unity that we've seen throughout the book. We discuss the aggressive aspects of this analogy, and find lots of overlap with our discomfort at the preceding slavery passage.

The theme of unity and submission gets awkward when discussing slaves! It is hardly surprising that the New Testament mentions slavery (it was a cultural norm), but it is a shame that the various authors were not more clear in condemnation of the practice. We explore why some situations do seem to call us to obey and be sincerely respectful of authority, and yet many other situations seem to call...

We've reached the well-known passage about submission in marriage... ...except that after the emphasis on unity that has been observed consistently throughout Ephesians so far, it seems most likely that this part is not talking about submission and power balance at all. It is a radical call to inclusive and united love, and it's actually quite fascinating that Paul suggests marriage relationships...

Ephesians 5 is a call to "be careful how you live". The chapter opens with a stark juxtaposition between "worthless deeds of evil and darkness" and choices "that please the Lord". It is valuable to ponder the inclusion of greed at least as prominently as sexual immorality - an emphasis that has perhaps been lopsided in Christian history. There's also some interesting comments on music which circle...