I. Key Questions:
- How can I love a sinful, urban world?
- What is love not?
- What constitutes love, anyway?
- But doesn’t love cost a great deal, and put me at risk?
- How do I juggle my love commitments to family, friends, God, and mission?
- What does loving lavishly mean in the City?
- What is the cost of love?
II. To Prepare: A Biblical Study
Read 2 Kings 4 and Mark 8:1-13: two different contexts, two different eras, filled with vignettes of desperate and needy people confronted by a holy agent who brings healing, sustenance, peace, and controversy into the human situation, not unlike the chaos and confusion of current times.
From 2 Kings 4:1-7
- Why did bad things happen to this woman? Was she to blame?
- What things happened in the city to force this woman (and so many others) to “pay the piper” (the creditor)?
- What perceptive questions did Elisha ask of this woman?
- What did he demand of her? What resources had she ignored that served as “seed” for her miracle?
- What feelings of shame must she have had to admit need to her neighbors?
- How was she resourced?
From 2 Kings 4:8-36
- In this complicated story, how did Elisha enter into people’s needs? What does this say about incarnational ministry?
- What are modern examples of “resurrections”?
From 2 Kings 4:38-41
- What are the “vines” of the City that produce “death in the pot”? What are suggested Christian antidotes—flour—that neutralizes and makes the brew healthy?
From 2 Kings 4:42-44 and Mark 8:1-13
- How does God meet needs, and then some?
- What do we do with the “leftovers”? Who are they?
- How much of these stories deal with the practical needs of people? What is the spiritual effect of these signs on the recipients?
Continue with Session 6