Living the Gospel

Small groups are reading the Gospel of Luke, discussing, deliberating and discerning how to live the good news it proclaims. The groups are a wonderful opportunity to engage our hearts, minds, souls and bodies in communion with others who seek to put their faith into practice.

The groups are reading the texts in a hermeneutical circle:

• World in front of the text: one always begins with awareness of their own contexts and social location and how that is influencing one's reading of the text.


• World of the text: then the task is to focus as much as possible on the text itself...


• World behind the text: and the text in its original context.


• World in front of the text: the final step is to return to our own context and ask how the text is speaking to us in our own situation.

Here is a link to a very interesting article on the Galilean fishing economy as it relates to Jesus' ministry.

From Dr. Pickett: In my experience people usually hear the last phrase of the passage above everything else: "...they left everything and followed him." Hence, the focus is always on what we have to give up. An appreciation of the Galilean fishing economy in the world behind the text shed important light on the passage. These fishermen are living a very difficult life trying to catch enough fish to survive. In this passage they fish all night and come up empty, which means they may not eat. They are held captive from an imperial economic system that keeps them poor and dependent.

What they experience with Jesus is Divine abundance and generosity! They are not giving up much because they probably don't even own their own boats. So it's not a passage about self-sacrifice per se. Rather, the question is what are they gaining by following Jesus. I would suggest that Jesus is renewing village life by teaching alternative values and practices of the kingdom. The hand out has a number of questions for discussion. I am sure you can think of many more. I would think the aim would be to talk how we are embedded in systems that hold us captive and impede us from being free and living the life God intended. What does this text speak to our own transformation? What do we need to resist? What do we need to be released from? What would it look like for us to "push out into the deep?"