Chapter 9 starts off Jesus’ journey from the rural province of Galilee to the spiritual capital, Jerusalem. As he travels through a region called Samaria, some of his disciples who have gone ahead into a village are rejected by its inhabitants.

After 2,000 years in which the Church has become a settled part of society, one of the risks we face is that Jesus becomes rather domesticated. He was not really like that, though. Here we read about him chasing out merchants, money-lenders and assor...

The history of the island of Ireland and mainland Britain makes very painful reading, of which the Troubles of the 1960s to the 1990s were the latest instalment. More than 3,500 people died, approximately 60 per cent of whom were killed by Republican...

Luke continues his ‘Samaritan theme’. In yesterday’s passage they were the baddies. Today we read about a Samaritan helping a Jew in need. People can behave both badly like the unwelcoming Samaritan villagers in chapter 9 and in an exemplary fa...

I don’t know if you have ever been on the end of a con-artist or trickster. In this text we find Jesus on the end of an underhanded attempt to get him into trouble with the authorities. The Pharisees are on the attack. Under whose authority did Jes...

Queen Elizabeth had a deep knowledge of the Bible from reading it regularly and hearing countless sermons based on it. For her, as for all Christians, the Bible is a key source not only of doctrine but of comfort, hope and inspiration.

This long chapter contains most of the lead-up to Jesus' crucifixion, ending just before he is taken before Pilate. It has his betrayal by Judas, the institution of the Lord's Supper, and his arrest. Things are rushing towards their conclus...

This is a chapter all about lost things. We see references to a sheep, a coin and a son who asks for his inheritance in advance and squanders it. If we focus on the lost sheep, we find a story that has been labelled by William Barclay as ‘the gospe...

In this passage Jesus enters a village and has an encounter with ten people with leprosy who are crying out for mercy and healing. He tells them to go to the priests and ‘show themselves’. One of the roles of the priest was to declare whether som...

I think we see two things in this small piece of Scripture. First, the spirit in which something is given is of tremendous importance to Jesus. A gift given begrudgingly, or for the sake of self-importance, loses so much of its value. Second, there i...

Prisoners are asking for Bibles. They’re desperate to experience God’s love. You can help turn a life around today.

The shops have already been full of seasonal products for the last few weeks, but we don't read the stories around the birth of Jesus in churches until Christmas; and then they tend to get squeezed into the format of carol concerts and family se...

The story of Jesus' encounter at Simon's house is very moving, and very challenging. A meal for guests at that time, perhaps held in an open courtyard, would have been more accessible to uninvited strangers than it would be for us today. Am...

Yesterday’s passage, Luke 7, ended with Jesus showing respect to a woman of ill repute.  Chapter 8 picks up where chapter 7 left off. Tormented and marginalised by disease and spiritual affliction, a number of women are set free by Jesus and join ...

Songs of praise in The Gambia as the Jola people receive their Bible

In Luke's story of the Resurrection, it is women who are first at the tomb. They are the ones who will minister to Jesus' body, as they think; a traditional role. It's hard to imagine their feelings as they approached their task: they ...

Jesus called 12 men to follow him and become the nucleus of the Church. They were, to put it mildly, a ragtag bunch – fishermen, a tax collector and possibly even a terrorist among them. We don't know how he chose them, but it looks from the s...

By the time Luke wrote his account, the Gospel message had begun to spread and cause controversy. Imagine a Jewish convert hanging out with the Jesus sect on a Sunday, suggesting to his family that yesterday’s Sabbath worship was no longer good eno...