Tag: Alden Thompson

Putting the Past Behind You

• Lesson 6 for the week of January 31 to February 7

Relevant Passages John 5 Putting the Past Behind You. Today’s lesson takes us to the story of the man whom Jesus healed at the Pool of Bethesda, a man who had been sick for 38...

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The Struggle to Be Real

• Lesson 5 for the week of January 24 to January 31

Relevant Passages John 4:43-54 The Struggle to Be Real. The “living parable” which is the focus of today’s lesson involves Jesus’ return “home” to Galilee and an encounter with a royal official whose boy was...

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Grace Is All-Inclusive

• Lesson 4 for the week of January 17 to January 24

Relevant Passages John 2:23-4:42 Grace Is All-Inclusive. The two major incidents studied in last week’s lesson contrasted Jesus’ leisurely experience at a Jewish wedding with the intensity of his anger in cleansing the temple. This...

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Something Better

• Lesson 3 for the week of January 10 to January 17

Relevant Passages John 2:1-22 Something Better. After the highly abstract prologue, John continues his Gospel with two down-to-earth stories in chapter 2 Jesus’ week-long stay at a wedding and his cleansing of the temple. Both...

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Jesus Is the Best

• Lesson 2 for the week of January 3 to January 10

Relevant Passages John 1:1-18 Jesus Is the Best. The Gospel of John opens with a magnificent cluster of verses establishing both Jesus’ full divinity and his full humanity. In addition, Jesus is compared with two...

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The Unique Purpose of John’s Gospel

• Lesson 1 for the week of December 27 to January 3

Relevant Biblical Passages Luke 1:1-4; John 15:1-8; 17:20; 20:24-31; 21:20-25 The Unique Purpose of John’s Gospel. Our studies for this quarter take us to the fourth Gospel, often called the “beloved” Gospel because the author...

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A Picture of God

• Lesson 13 for the week of December 20 to December 27

Background Considerations: Ways of accessing God’s portrait in the story of Jonah. A straight-forward hearing or reading of Jonah conveys a picture of God as repentant and forgiving, as characterized by the vocabulary of grace...

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The Sign of the Prophet Jonah

• Lesson 12 for the week of December 13 to December 20

Background Considerations: Jonah outside the book of Jonah. The contribution of the story of Jonah to Old Testament thought and practice must have been a real surprise, given its attention to the wider world of...

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The Last Word

• Lesson 11 for the week of December 6 to December 13

Background Considerations: Sense of an ending. Does the story of Jonah end? Is there what some literary analysts call “a sense of an ending” to this biblical book? Do we have closure on the plot?...

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A Wind, a Worm, and a Plant

• Lesson 10 for the week of November 29 to December 6

Background Considerations: Literary considerations. Again, we reflect on the literary features which not only give the story of Jonah richness and character, but teach us theologically as well. What about irony? Any of that in...

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Conversing With God

• Lesson 9 for the week of November 22 to November 29

Background Considerations: The section of Jonah that we consider here is perhaps the most important to the point of the story. It speaks of a prophet whose success angered him precisely because of divine grace...

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Jonah, the Amazing Evangelist

• Lesson 8 for the week of November 15 to November 22

Background Considerations: The nature of prophecy. The popular definition of prophecy is almost always tied to predictions of the future. But the future is only part, in fact a small part, of the prophets’ arena...

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Second Chances

• Lesson 7 for the week of November 8 to November 15

Background Considerations: Structure of the book of Jonah. As we enter chapter 3, something becomes apparent upon a close reading of the story: chapters 1 and 3 begin the same way (the command to Jonah...

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Salvation Is of the Lord!

• Lesson 6 for the week of November 1 to November 8

Background Considerations: Poetry in the Old Testament. A high percentage of the Hebrew Bible comes to us in the form of poetry. The most important feature of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, which defines the way...

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