Week Two

Creativity, responding to crisis

This week we think about creative responses to unprecedented circumstances with the help of Joanna (and the other women referenced in Luke 8:1-3) who bought in to the ground floor ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. What motivated these women to go out on a limb and support him? What can their example show us about how we respond creatively to the climate crisis today?

Read Luke 8: 1-3

What do you think led Joanna and the others to ‘crowdfund’ Jesus’s ministry? It was likely quite an unconventional thing to do. The gospels contain many instances of Jesus healing people but not many descriptions of folk providing for him out of their resources. What do you think it would have felt like to be a woman following Jesus in the early days? What would you have observed and felt?

Read Luke 10: 38-42

This week we’re using Joanna as a lens to look at Jesus’s life ministry.

With Martha and Mary we have contrasted one sister who listens closely to Jesus while the other sister is distracted and busy with a lot of tasks. As Joanna, one of the women who was practically supporting Jesus (providing for him out of her resources) how would you have responded hearing about this encounter? Let’s use our imaginations and imagine what Joanna’s take could have been?

Read Luke 24: 1-12

Verse 11: “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

What must it have been like for Joanna, an integral part of Jesus’s ministry, to be so quickly dismissed by the apostles? Only Peter got up to run and check. What would it feel like to see something so amazing and yet your friends and colleagues don’t even take you seriously?

And thinking of our wider theme this month considering the climate challenges we face, what must it feel for people facing the startling consequences of environmental damage to not be taken seriously by others who feel distant from it?