Giving Thanks to our Great God
This Sunday we thank God for his care of our faith community. As we renew our 8am, 9.15am and 11am Sunday gatherings we mark a significant milestone in our journey forward from the Covid Pandemic
Thanks also to you
Thanks must also go to you, our members, for supporting our interim Covid-Safe service arrangements up until now. Thanks also to our Wardens and Parish Council for guiding us through this season, for seeking Jesus’ wisdom and direction, and seeking to prioritise our welfare in all decisions.
We continue exploring Jesus the Merciful, in Luke’s Gospel
The parables of Jesus are more than just earthly stories with moral lessons, but they convey a vision of the inbreaking reign of God in Christ. This Sunday the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18.9-14) conveys such a vision, completely reversing our normal view of the world. The respectable righteous one may seem favoured by the LORD, but in the end he is not. The very grounds of our confidence before God, and people, is not at all what we thought. In the end, only divine mercy justifies. This brings a whole new perspective on self, community, God, and life.
Reflection Questions
1. Consider the characters in recent movies or media coverage of current affairs. Can you identify times when those who are ‘more virtuous’ have acted with arrogance or an attitude of superiority over those who have morally failed?
2. Read Luke 18.9-14. What do you think is the key verse in this parable, and why?
3. How is the Pharisee’s image of the Tax Collector similar or different to the reality?
4. What does the Pharisee trust in for his confidence before God?
5. Why is the Pharisee’s statement in v12 so offensive to God?
6. Why can we have great assurance that prayers like that in v13, on the lips of the Tax Collector, will be answered?
7. Is it possible to be a progressive Pharisee? Trusting in fashionable, new, contemporary, good works, and looking down on those who don’t share that passion? What might that look like today?