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Story Time - Week Two

October 12, 2025 0 0

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A feast of stories 

 

This week stories about cultivation, food, and sustenance as we reflect on what we are planting, growing, and investing in…

 

SEEDS TO SOW: What’s the story behind the best meal you’ve ever had in your life?

 

Read Luke 13: 6-9

Fruitless endeavour…?

Jesus dramatically engages us. This parable is somewhat ominous — there’s an axe waiting in the wings! On one level this parable can be read as a galvanising story about realising life is short and the value of a second chance. And that’s it, it’s a story, not a systematic theology flowchart. God is not an axeman waiting for us to hit productivity targets! Jesus is not the vineyard keeper obsessively checking us and ready to call in the chop. And we are not trees judged only on how much fruit we can produce with our assigned soil.

Parables work both as quick hooks and as slow burns. They are not overly literal PowerPoint sermons. In some ways God is like a vineyard owner who longs to see his plants flourish and Jesus is like the groundkeeper wanting to give every tree its best chance. And yes we are a bit like those trees, but these are not direct 1:1 comparisons. Rather we are being drawn into a scene — that stimulates our imaginations.

Q: Take time to picture the scene Jesus is describing, what do you see? How do you picture the vineyard owner, the groundkeeper, and the fig tree?

Q: Then open up a discussion about the role of expectation in our lives: how or our own expectations and the expectations of others can have a powerful effect on us?

 

Read Luke 14: 7-14

Wedding of the year?

Sometimes we try to use hospitality to our own advantage. As guests we think tactically about how to position ourselves to get the most prestige and kudos, to be part of the ‘in-crowd.’ And as hosts we invite people who will return the favour, ideally richer people that we can use to climb the social ladder.

And so, Jesus here is giving us a parable as sitcom. Many TV storylines are based on the premise of someone trying to blag their way into the inner circle/top table only to come crashing back down to earth when it backfires cueing much embarrassment and hilarity. It’s such a recurrent trope because status anxiety is a universal human experience.

Q: Discuss how Jesus could have used tone, timing, and humour to tell this and other parables. How do you imagine Jesus’s voice?

Q: Discuss the implications today of welcoming strangers into your circle of friends?

 

Read Luke 14: 15-24

Five yoke of oxen cancelled your dinner plans?

Q: What do you think the banquet in this story would have been like with such an impromptu guest list?

Q: Then discuss the significance of this parable for our church communities today. What place should food have when it comes to faith sharing? Are our churches empty because we’ve been inviting no one, or the wrong people?