Key Quote

In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

(Luke 24:22-24)

Notes

In the time Jesus walked the earth, in the Ancient Near East, women were among those who were overlooked and marginalised, and yet Jesus had a special place for them. Including as the first witnesses to the resurrection. Jesus always reached out to the marginalised and Alison Lloyd shows us how we can follow him in doing the same. You can listen or read the summary here.

Jesus was able to call the marginalised to follow him because they knew their need of God and their need to change. If we are not going to be those who are comfortable and self-satisfied, and consequently contemptuous of the outcast (Job 12:5), then we also have to realise we need to change. That will mean we will listen to God, we will stay soft and malleable in our hearts and we will lean into God to learn, not relying on our own understanding.

Questions

If it helps, here are some questions to guide your discussion (but don’t be limited by them):

  1. Why did God call and use the marginalised? And who are the marginalised of our age?
  2. What do you find most challenging about the qualities needed if we are going to be open to change?
  3. How might the marginalised amaze us?

For Next Time:

In the next message and Hub Notes, we will be looking at Jesus’s call to deny ourselves and to take up our cross – in other words, the call to come and die.

There is a PDF version of these Hub Notes here.