Adult
• 4 Sessions of Learner’s Materials
• 4 Sessions of Teaching Materials
• 5 Handouts
1. Luke 18:40-56
2. Luke 17:11-19
3. Luke 18:35-43
4. Acts 9:8-20
Understanding the meaning and method of Christian discipleship is most important for us as a people who faithfully seek to follow Christ and share the gospel with others. But what is discipleship? How does one become a disciple? How does one live as a disciple?
Session One: Our text for today contains two stories, one inside another--a healing within a healing. What is the writer trying to communicate by inserting one story within another? What are we to learn from these stories and this storytelling technique?
Session Two: Jesus is continually preparing the disciples to follow in his ways even after his impending death. Our text for this week, the healing of the ten lepers, is followed by Jesus' words regarding his forthcoming suffering. Jesus is preparing the disciples for the suffering to come. Pointing to the changes ahead, Jesus reminds them to be grateful for their time together.
Session Three: In Luke, Jesus' healing the blind man takes place during Jesus' journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. This story is bordered by other passages about persistence, salvation, and God's limitless power to transform lives. The people included in these accounts are representative of those included in the Kingdom of God. Inclusion of all persons is a favorite theme in Luke's Gospel.
Session Four: This session focuses on Paul's call experience, his encounter with the resurrected Jesus. What was the nature of his personal encounter with Jesus following the death, burial, and resurrection? What does Paul's encounter tell us about discipleship? Paul's experience, like ours, occurs after Jesus' resurrection rather than before his death. How can Paul's Damascus Road experience inform our own more quiet experiences? How can the call of a great apostle speak to God's call to us? Paul may be more like us than we know.
by Frank Granger
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