Adult Bible Studies Spring 2023 Student

By Michelle J. Morris

A comprehensive Bible study plan and spiritual practices to deepen your relationship with God

Hundreds of thousands of people each week have transformative encounters with God through Adult Bible Studies—Bible-based, Christ-focused Sunday school lessons and midweek Bible studies endorsed by the Curriculum Resources Committee of The United Methodist Church.

Each week’s Student Book lesson lists background Scripture, features key verses, provides reliable and relevant biblical explanation and application, and more in a readable font size that is accessible to everyone. Included to help students go deeper into the lessons are :
A comprehensive Bible study plan with more flexibility in terms of Scripture selection and topics
Observation of the church seasons, including Advent and Lent
Suggestions for developing spiritual practices (prayer, confession, worship, mindfulness, solitude, community, hospitality, neighboring, service, and celebration)
No printed Scripture text allows you to choose your own Bible translation

Additional information about Adult Bible Studies, Spring 2023
Theme: The Life of Faith
This spring, our lessons center around the theme “The Life of Faith.” The language of journey and pilgrimage is commonly used to describe the Christian life. This spring our lessons encourage us to walk alongside Jesus and his disciples on Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem and explore the nature of faith that calls us to follow Jesus despite our uncertainty and doubts. The last unit this quarter looks at the concept of sabbath, the foreshadowing of the rest that God promises at the end of our journey. The writer of the student book is Michelle Morris.

Unit 1
Journey to the Cross
This Lenten season, we follow Jesus’ journey to the cross in Matthew’s account. Matthew’s Gospel stresses in many places that through his crucifixion, Jesus makes clear his perfect obedience to God’s will and the true nature of kingship under God’s reign.
Scriptures: Matthew 16:21-28 | Matthew 20:20-28 | Matthew 21:23-27 | Matthew 22:15-22 | Matthew 22:41-46
Spiritual Practice: Simplicity | Accountability

Unit 2
From Doubt to Trust
We often treat doubt and wisdom as belonging in opposite categories; but often, questioning our wisdom, knowledge, and certitude is a sign of wisdom. As humans, we should struggle to understand. The path forward from doubt is one of trust in God. We are invited to imitate Jesus and let go of our doubt and our competition with God and to trust in God’s love and intentions.
Scriptures: Matthew 26:36-46 | Matthew 28:1-15 | John 20:11-29 | 1 Corinthians 15:12-28 | 1 Peter 1:3-16
Spiritual Practice: Meditation

Unit 3
Intentional Sabbath
In the secular West, the concept of holy days and sabbath have been replaced by days off work or school and vacations. We rest so that we can work harder and earn more money so that we can take vacations away from our community. In the Bible, rest from work had a different purpose. One worked to prepare for the sabbath. On the sabbath, one participated together with the entire community, the livestock, and the land in a shared rest that signified the well-being and abundance that God intended for creation. No one was required to work to make another’s leisure possible. Sabbath rest is a foretaste of the rest that awaits us, and that God will provide in the fullness of time.
Scriptures: Exodus 20:8-11 | Psalm 23 | Matthew 12:1-14 | Luke 4:16-21
Spiritual Practice: Self-Care

Other Adult Bible Study components, sold separately, include:
Teacher/Commentary Kit
The Kit includes a Teacher Book and a Concise Commentary that are both supplementary and complementary to the Adult Bible Studies student book

The Teacher Book provides small-group leaders, teachers, and facilitators with additional biblical background and exposition, and sugge

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cokesbury
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781791020521

Michelle J. Morris

Michelle Morris is associate pastor of First United Methodist Church, Conway, Arkansas. Previously she was Lead Equipper for the United Methodist Arkansas Conference Center for Vitality, as well as serving as pastor to United Methodist churches in West Memphis and Fort Smith. She has a B.A. in English and French and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas. She graduated with her M.Div. from Perkins School of Theology in 2009 and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University in 2014. She also graduated with a certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her dissertation examined the subject of infertility in the New Testament. She was a contributor to the CEB Womens Bible, and she periodically writes for the Adult Bible Studies Curriculum for Abingdon/Cokesbury. Michelle and her husband, Travis, have a son, Soren (not named for Kierkegaard).<

Book preview

Unit 1

The Journey to the Cross

Visitors to Jerusalem find 14 markers throughout the town designating the stations of the cross, starting with the place Jesus was condemned to death and ending at the tomb. Walking that journey, however, is not quiet and contemplative. People are packed all around, going about their daily business. Because it is Jerusalem, a town that struggles with division, an air of tension exists. Residents of the town take little notice of religious pilgrims’ piety and make little space for their journey. Mostly, they hope visitors will keep moving and stay out of the way.

When we read the biblical texts, we can sometimes lose the everyday reality that Jesus was navigating. He knew that profound things were happening. The world around him, however, was missing the message. Even the disciples misunderstood the message too often. Peter seems to have gotten it when he declared Jesus as Messiah, but then Jesus had to correct him for missing the point.

People were expecting a journey to Jerusalem with the triumph like that of Palm Sunday. The day Jesus entered Jerusalem to cheers, a Roman official also came in with the kind of pomp and circumstance expected from one they would call king, but Jesus rode in on a donkey while people waved common leaves. Then he invited them to sit around tables with one another and with him to question the value of prestige and power as the world understands it. It means setting aside expectations of the Messiah. It means a journey that leads to the cross instead of a journey that leads to the halls of power.

However, just like the journey to the cross, we can walk in Jerusalem today where the holy touches the madness and chaos of the everyday, Jesus and his journey reveal to us a God who enters that reality with us. The journey to the cross does lead to the tomb, but only because to put a marker on the site of the Resurrection is to put a marker on the whole world, as we all know the power of the journey of a king who went all the way into death, only to bring us all to life.

March 5

Lesson 1

Sharing in Jesus’ Cup

Second Sunday of Lent

Focal Passage: Matthew 20:20-28

Background Text: Matthew 20:17-28

Purpose Statement: To determine to commit ourselves, as Jesus did, to servanthood

Matthew 20:20-28

²⁰Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus along with her sons. Bowing before him, she asked a favor of him. ²¹What do you want? he asked. She responded, Say that these two sons of mine will sit, one on your right hand and one on your left, in your kingdom. ²²Jesus replied, You don’t know what you’re asking! Can you drink from the cup that I’m about to drink from? They said to him, We can. ²³He said to them, You will drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left hand isn’t mine to give. It belongs to those for whom my Father prepared it. ²⁴Now when the other ten disciples heard about this, they became angry with the two brothers. ²⁵But Jesus called them over and said, You know that those who rule the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around. ²⁶But that’s not the way it will be with you. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. ²⁷Whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave— ²⁸just as the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.

Key Verses: Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave (Matthew 20:26-27).

When I was a senior in high school, I had one of the lead parts in the school play. We had about eight weeks of rehearsal leading up to the performances. Those rehearsals were a blast. As a cast, we developed all kinds of inside jokes. We developed dynamics of relationships similar to the characters in the play, two families who were learning to get along despite differences of culture.

My part was wild. I was playing a ten-year-old professional wrestler wannabe. Her athletic prowess was different than mine, but her fighting spirit matched me well. I worked hard at preparing for the role. This was my first time performing in such a production on stage. After eight weeks, I was sure I was ready. I hadn’t missed a line or a cue in weeks.

Then, the days of performance actually came. The lights were suddenly much hotter and my heartbeat stronger as I waited off-stage for my cues. I hit them all. But then it happened. Standing on stage with only one other actor, I completely blanked. My line just flew out of my head. Then John, the young man playing opposite me who saw the panic on my face, gracefully fed me my line organically and without missing a beat. I picked up his cue, and we made our exit offstage.

I was so grateful for him that day, and I continue to be. He never made fun of me for my failure. He just recognized that we all do better when we succeed together and carry one another along. He understood what it meant to serve instead of what it meant to be the star.

One of the exciting things about watching a play is being presented with a new story. In Matthew 20, Jesus puts a new story before his disciples. It is a story of a new way of being. But was the story so foreign to them that they couldn’t possibly understand it? Let’s see.

Waiting in the Wings

Matthew 20:17-19 marks the the third time in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus announces his upcoming death. The other two are found in Matthew 16:21-23 and 17:22-23. This one took place just before Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. However, Jesus knew the triumph would be short-lived. He knew that triumph would quickly turn to persecution.

In Matthew 16:21-28, we read about Peter misunderstanding Jesus’ mission. In Chapter 20, we find two other disciples who misunderstood: James and John. Since it was their mother who brought a request to Jesus, we might at first think that they got it and only she misunderstood. But after she made her request, Jesus questioned the two of them, and they were the ones who answered. They said that they were committed to drinking of the cup Jesus would drink.

They did seem ready to commit to the mission. They might even have understood that this mission would involve their deaths. They may have been ready for that. Jesus treated them as two who did understand his mission, acknowledging that they would drink from this cup.

However, they seem to have still thought that following Jesus, whatever it entails, would lead to places of privilege. So in this last of the Passion predictions, Jesus told these two, as well as the other disciples (who were angered about John and James’s request), that this path is not a path of power but of service.

But they were not in Jerusalem yet. They were still waiting in the wings. They were on the outskirts. On the outskirts, they had been part of an incredible movement. They had seen people healed. They had seen people gather in large numbers and follow them around. They were still in that space when Jesus pronounced these words. The words may have been easily heard at this moment, but hard to understand.

It was a bit like my experience in the play. All the days of rehearsal were fun. We had the freedom to mess up. But waiting behind the scenes for cues on the days of performance, everything was suddenly much more real. We would need all that camaraderie we had built. The stakes were not only higher, we were going to need one another like we never had. We were going to have to rely on one another like never before. For the disciples, all of that was definitely true.

Would they be able to step into those roles Jesus had been preparing them for all this time? Would they understand what was being asked of them?

When have you prepared for something but been surprised about how it actually played out?

Delusions of Grandeur

John and James may theoretically have been ready for martyrdom. They confessed that they were willing to drink of Jesus’ cup. However, in reality, they were ready for stardom. They wanted the opportunity to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in his kingdom. But did they know what that meant?

Much debate exists about whether the disciples understood what Jesus was talking about when he spoke about the kingdom. Matthew’s Gospel refers to it as the kingdom of heaven instead of the kingdom of God, as we find in the Gospels of Mark and Luke.

Matthew most likely was using heaven here as a way to avoid saying God. Of all our Gospel writers, Matthew is the one who seems to have been indisputably Jewish, and Jews did not say God out of respect. So we should not think, then, that the disciples here automatically thought of the Kingdom in otherworldly terms. They thought of it as being realized here on earth. That was Jesus’ intention, too. However, there seems to have been a disconnect in expectations around exactly how that would happen.

Generally, the Messiah was expected to be a political power in Israel. This would be someone who would overthrow Roman rule and restore the Davidic kingdom. Jesus had been using kingdom language all this time. It is understandable why the brothers might have mistaken things. So if the brothers were expecting to sit at Jesus’ right hand and left hand, yet that kingdom may in fact be here on earth, why were they willing to drink the cup?

It may be that they thought they would have some afterworld power. But it could just as well be that they assumed Jesus would be successful here and they would get power, but they would be under constant threat as they established that rule, threat that they would be willing to fight to the death to defend against.