Day 1 (Monday)
Exodus 23:1-26
After God gave the Ten Commandments, and the people asked that Moses hear the rest of the commandments of God and be the go-between for them and for God, Moses went back up the mountain and God gave him various more detailed commandments. He gave instructions about violence and property and restitution, how the people should live both in their own homes and especially in relationship with other people. We aren’t going to read all of this in detail, but in chapter 23 we will see some examples both of what sort of rules God is giving to them, and what sort of promises He is making to them.
Justice for All
23 You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. 2 You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice; 3 nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit.
4 When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back.
5 When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.
6 You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. 7 Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. 8 You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.
9 You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Sabbatical Year and Sabbath
10 For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; 11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.
12 Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed. 13 Be attentive to all that I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.
The Annual Festivals
14 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. 15 You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.
No one shall appear before me empty-handed.
16 You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.
17 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.
18 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning.
19 The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
The Conquest of Canaan Promised
20 I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. 21 Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him.
22 But if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.
23 When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, 24 you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces. 25 You shall worship the Lord your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 No one shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
Discussion Questions
1) What did you notice in today’s reading? What surprised you or what was memorable to you? (Leader can point out the specific laws of justice, especially the directions on how to treat foreigners living among them, the “resident aliens.” The sabbath year, the directive against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, the pilgrimage feasts, and the prohibition against worshiping the gods of the Canaanites, are all important. They reflect above all God’s expectation that His people are to be different from those around them.)
2) What do we learn about God in this story? (We learn the importance of justice, and especially of care for the poor and needy. We also see the details of what God means when He says He is a “jealous God”).
3) What do we learn about human beings in this story? (We see that we have a deep and abiding problem with injustice, and that we are the ones that God holds responsible to do something about it, directly, ourselves, in our own lives.).
4) What do you find difficult about this story? Is there anything confusing about it, or anything that you dislike? (This is an open question, as always. There are a lot of points here that could stand to be explain. I’ll discuss a few of them in the Youtube video for this week. Urge the kids, however, to think through some of the strange requirements and try to figure out why God says what He says.)
5) Does this story make you think that you need to change anything in your life? (The points about our responsibilities to act justly and care for the poor, and to be attentive to the worship of God, and to worship any god but the Lord our God are all challenges that we should take seriously.)
Day 2 (Wednesday)
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom On Prayer and the Absence of God – 1
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was a bishop of a community of Russian Orthodox exiles in Western Europe in the late 20th century. He speaks clearly and beautifully about the realities of the Christian life. The following excerpt is from his book “Beginning to Pray.” He is talking about why it is that sometimes, indeed often, we feel that God is absent when we pray.
First of all, it is very important to remember that prayer is an encounter and a relationship, a relationship which is deep, and this relationship cannot be forced either on us or on God. The fact that God can make Himself present or can leave us with the sense of His absence is part of this live and real relationship.
If we could mechanically draw Him into an encounter, force Him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet Him, there would be no relationship and no encounter. We can do that with an image, with the imagination, or with the various idols we can put in front of us instead of God; we can do nothing of the sort with the living God, any more than we can do it with a living person.
A relationship must begin and develop in mutual freedom. If you look at the relationship in terms of mutual relationship, you will see that God could complain about us a great deal more than we about Him. We complain that He does not make Himself present to us for the few minutes we reserve for Him, but what about the twenty-three and a half hours during which God may be knocking at our door and we answer ‘I am busy, I am sorry’ or when we do not answer at all because we do not even hear the knock at the door of our heart, of our minds, of our conscience, of our life.
So there is a situation in which we have no right to complain of the absence of God, because we are a great deal more absent than He ever is.
Discussion questions:
1) What do you notice about this passage? What jumps out at you? (Each person should answer this question, and then the leader can give his/her answer as well. If this results in a discussion, it’s just fine if the other questions are skipped. Chances are what jumps out will involve answers to the other questions anyway.)
2) What does this passage tell us about God? (Among other things, that He is a real person, and that the laws of our relationship with Him are not so different from those that govern every other relationship in our lives. If we want someone else to be present with us, we have to be present with them.)
3) What does this passage tell us about ourselves, about human beings? (It reminds us that we tend to be very bad at being present in our relationship with God.)
4) Is there anything that bothers, or confuses, or frustrates you about this passage? (This is an open question – it’s important that the leader asks this question and allows it to hang in the air for a little while. If no one else wants to answer, it would be a good opportunity for the leader to share something that he/she had noticed, as a way of encouraging the others to engage in a little bit more self-reflection)
5) Is there any action, any change in way of life, that this passage makes you think is necessary? (Hopefully, everyone will see the importance of changing whatever needs to change in our lives to be more present with God, perhaps in prayer, or church, or service to others, or all of these together).
Day 3 (Friday)
Luke 9:1-17
We talked last week about how Jesus healed the woman with the flow of blood and raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead. In this chapter, we will see Him send the twelve disciples out to preach and heal and cast out demons. Let’s see what happens next!
Sending Out the Twelve
9 Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. 3 He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. 5 Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” 6 They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.
Herod’s Perplexity
7 Now Herod the ruler heard about all that had taken place, and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead, 8 by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the ancient prophets had arisen. 9 Herod said, “John I beheaded; but who is this about whom I hear such things?” And he tried to see him.
Feeding the Five Thousand
10 On their return the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.
12 The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 They did so and made them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
Discussion Questions
1) What did you notice in today’s reading? What surprised you or what was memorable to you? (Leader can point out that when Jesus sends the twelve out, it is effectively their ordination. They were just His followers before, but now they are acting as ministers of His love and His power, and when they return, they are called Apostles, not just disciples. Herod’s confusion of Jesus with John the Baptist, or the feeding of the 5,000, are also worth highlighting. The leader can pick which aspect they want to focus on, of course, if the group doesn’t take the conversation in a different direction.)
2) What do we learn about God in this story? (We see that He chooses to act through human beings, through His Apostles, and that that even applies in the feeding of the 5,000; Jesus multiplies the food, but He begins with what the Apostles have to offer, with the 5 loaves and 2 fish).
3) What do we learn about human beings in this story? (We see the problems that we have that Jesus comes to heal, for one thing: sickness, hunger, demon possession. And we see their potential; human beings are created to be like Jesus, and we see the Apostles beginning to grow and be transformed by the Lord in this passage.).
4) What do you find difficult about this story? Is there anything confusing about it, or anything that you dislike? (The shaking of the dust as a testimony against towns that reject the Apostles is a potentially challenging aspect. The reality that even receiving the Good News of the Gospel is an occasion for judgment, if we fail to receive it, is challenging, but profoundly important, since this is generally how God’s judgment operates. He doesn’t come and condemn us for our sins; first, He comes and calls us to repentance, offers us a better way. But if we reject that call and that offer, then He accepts our decision, and we are left outside the Kingdom.)
5) Does this story make you think that you need to change anything in your life? (This passage reminds us that we are also called to be the vessels and ministers of the love of Jesus Christ; and also that, as we hear the Word of God, it is important that we respond with a good will and a willing heart.)