Week Four

Wild Encounters

Meeting with Jesus 2,000 years ago — and meeting with him today— can lead to wild outcomes! Jesus crossed social boundaries and brought disparate people together. Jesus bust out of all the boxes people tried to put him in. And while we might feel smug, feeling like we know Jesus better, are we not sometimes guilty of putting Jesus in a box too? Of limiting who we think Jesus meets with, and how they meet? Are we only comfortable with a Jesus on our terms, who never surprises us or stretches us? Or are we up for meeting the real Jesus, the wild Jesus, who loves so compassionately and deeply?

SEEDS TO SOW: Are there any ways we have been surprised by Jesus in our lives?

Read Matthew 9: 10-13

Wild Dining!

Here we see those on the margins able to get comfy while those in the establishment start feeling uncomfortable.

What do we learn from God here? What do we see God doing? How comfortable are we sitting alongside those on the margins?

Read Luke 5: 12-26

Wild Healing.

Jesus’s acts of compassionate healing — helping others physically and spiritually — caused consternation and uproar.

What’s your thoughts about the healing in this passage?

Read Luke 19: 1-10

Wild Hospitality.

Jesus breaks protocol! He invites himself round to the house of an unpopular and unloved citizen — and in that very gesture Zacchaeus’s life is transformed.

As a church we are called to be disrupters and stand up for those who are excluded. How do we find our voice challenging unfair and ungodly systems?