John Mark Hicks

What disciple of Jesus would ever want to hinder children from coming to Jesus? I doubt if anyone would want to do that though the disciples, in the circumstance described in the Synoptic Gospels, did. Perhaps they were protecting a fatigued Jesus from the onslaught of the chaos of playful children….maybe that is what they thought. […]

One formerly unchurched person recently told me about his first experience with the Lord’s supper. He had grown up in the inner city where a gang was his family. Befriended by “good Samaritans” in a time of need, he attended “church” for the first time and sat on the second row with his new friend. […]

The previous posts in this series (listed in the Serial Index under “Biblical Texts”) have focused on exegetical detail within the framework of Luke’s two volume narrative (Luke and Acts). This final post in the series will serve as a summary of what I consider some of the more significant theological ideas embedded in Luke’s […]

On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the […]

My first post in this series summarized and lightly critiqued a piece by Justin Rogers at the FHU lectureship in 2008. Here I turn my attention to the flow of Luke’s narrative which offers us the “big picture.” With Justin I recognize some level of ambiguity, especially in terms of the specific texts themselves. However, […]

Road Trip: Shaped by Mission “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s […]

I have uploaded one of my early articles in Restoration Quarterly to my Academic Page.  The article is a fairly technical discussion of Luke 18:1-8, the Parable of the Unjust Judge or the Parable of the Persistent Widow.  It is available here. At the heart of the parable is a comparsion between God and the judge, […]

One of the most vivid scenes in Luke is Peter’s 3x denial, particularly “the look.”          “The Lord turned around and looked straight at Peter” (Luke 22:61, GNB). The verbs are intensive, descriptive, and full of significance.  “Turned around,” which is actually a participle in the Greek text, involves twisting or reversing; it is turning the back 180% […]

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). “Today this scripture is […]

Rejecting 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 as a prescriptive positive law regulating how the church should give, but embracing it as an arrangement by which the church might be the instrument of God’s grace to others (as so intepretered by 2 Corinthians 8-9), by what hermeneutic do we discern our relationship to the poor or our responsibility to […]