I. A few days before the session, the following text could be sent to the participants in order to better prepare and be active.
1. Luke 4 can be divided:
- a) 4:1-13 – Jesus in the wilderness and his temptation;
- b) 4:14-15 – Jesus begins to teach;
- c) 4:16-21 – Jesus proclaims himself the one who comes with the Good News;
- d) 4:16-24 – Who is Jesus for the citizens of Nazareth – his neighbours;
- e) 4:25-30 – Loosing the chance because of lack of faith;
- f) 4:31-37 – Jesus teach and cure;
- g) 4:38-39 – Jesus in Simon’s house;
- h) 4:40-41 – Jesus recognized by the demons;
- i) 4:42-44 – Jesus went to Judea.
2. Please read the text as a whole or only the text related to one of the above divisions. Which division from above you would like to choose?
3. Regardless of the division chosen, let us try to explain why we chose it, why we consider it an extremely important part for our understanding of Jesus’ mission, right after his Baptism.
4. Please, copy and print the drawing below.
5. In the drawing above, we have as protagonist Jesus, those from Nazareth and ourselves. The letter “N” means inhabitant of Nazareth. In one corner, in a fragment of a circle, is written “My answer”. It is the semicircle that represents each of us. Out of that semicircle comes a cloud with nothing written in it. In the biblical text we saw the way the people of Nazareth described Jesus, shocked by the way Jesus presented himself. Let’s try to complete that “cloud” with the way we would have received or described him if he had been our neighbour, and after a while, he would have come back from a trip and told us that he can save from any evil.
I look forward to meeting you.
Revd. Bernard Noghiu
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II. The following materials are intended for the group leader, in order to prepare the meeting.
– The leader has to prepare the whole text, listing the main events of the story and the main characters.
– The leader will ask the members of the group to present which division they have chosen, to read it and to try to explain why they have chosen the fragment.
– The leader will ask the group to play as one of Jesus’ neighbour, from Nazareth. How they would react if one of their neighbour would come to the church and would introduce himself/herself as our proper saviour, reading the text quoted by Luke in his Gospel?
– The reason of this game is to understand how hard is to accept Jesus as Messiah by those who lived in his time, in his town.