Luke 10: Where Jesus Goes, Hope Follows

Introduction

That evening at Gas Street Church in Birmingham, the message is shared by two voices. Millie Ferguson, a member of the church team for eight years, has spent the last five years at the Gas Street St Luke's site, as part of Gas Street Hope, the church's outreach arm: food bank, debt advice centre, employment support, youth work, community café. More than a hundred families come through the door every week.

Pete Norris, pastor of one of the church's sites, then takes over. Jokingly, he introduces himself as the "support act" who comes on after the main headliner.

The thread of the message is one sentence from Jesus, at the end of the parable of the good Samaritan: "Go and do likewise." Millie Ferguson shows that where Jesus goes, hope follows. Pete Norris then asks how this call takes shape, in practical terms, in the city.

Outline of the Message

1. A World Where Hope Seems to Be Missing

• Millie Ferguson starts with her Instagram feed: a steak recipe, a compilation of cats frightened by cucumbers, then a news headline. You don't have to scroll for long before you run into something hopeless or heartbreaking.
• Across the world, there is division and war. In Birmingham too, a city she loves (she proudly calls herself a "Brummie"), there is loneliness, poverty, grief, and people caught in situations where they can't see a way out.
• She quotes Billy Graham: "Perhaps the greatest psychological, spiritual and medical need of all human beings is the need for hope."
• She tells stories of restoration: a woman so depressed she barely left her home, who has now come twice a week for five years and has made her best friends there; a single mother who told her, "I've never felt at home anywhere, but since I've been coming here, I've realised this is my home and my family"; a man who came for food help, found Jesus, was baptised, and now serves twice a week on her volunteer team.
• But every day, the team also walks with people facing extreme hardship, loneliness, addiction, unemployment, homelessness, exploitation or domestic violence. "We know what it is to look at someone's situation and think: God, how can you even turn this around?"

2. Luke 4: Jesus, Hope Fulfilled

• Faced with that question, she goes back to Scripture: we are not the first generation to wonder whether things can be put right.
• Jesus returns from forty days in the desert, where the devil tempted him. His ministry begins. In the synagogue at Nazareth, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah is handed to him, and he reads that the Spirit of the Lord is on him, that he has been anointed to bring good news to the poor (Luke 4:18).
• He rolls up the scroll and sits down, every eye fixed on him, and he says: "Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:21) Millie Ferguson calls it a "crazy" sentence.
• These words had been spoken centuries earlier over a devastated Israel: Jerusalem destroyed, the temple fallen, exile, grief, disappointment. Generations carried this promise, waited and hoped.
• So Jesus makes an enormous claim: the awaited day has come, "I am the one." It is neither a metaphor nor a parable left open to interpretation.

3. Where Jesus Goes, Hope Follows

• Throughout his ministry, Jesus goes where nobody wants to go, to those who need him most.
• He touches and heals a leper everyone kept at a distance (Mark 1). He hears and heals the blind man Bartimaeus, whom the crowd wanted to silence (Mark 10). He crosses every social barrier to speak with the Samaritan woman (John 4).
• He calls the woman who had been ill for twelve years "daughter," restoring her dignity and healing her body (Mark 5). He defends a woman known as a sinner while everyone else judges her (Luke 7). He shares a table with Zacchaeus, the despised tax collector, who then gives half of what he owns to the poor and repays what he had extorted (Luke 19).
• In Luke 10, he tells the story of the good Samaritan: those you would expect to help pass by, and it is the Samaritan, the last person anyone expected, who stops. He goes to the wounded man, tends his wounds, puts him on his own animal, takes him to safety and pays for his care. Then Jesus says: "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:37)
• "Nobody was too sick for Jesus. Nobody was too poor, too ashamed, too unpopular, too complicated, too far away." For her, it is almost magnetic: he cannot help but go toward people.

4. You Can't Follow Jesus From a Distance

• Hence the question: "Can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus if we don't go to the people he went to?" You cannot physically follow someone without being where they are.
• You can admire compassion from a distance, agree with caring for the poor, preach love for the marginalised, sing "Build My Life" a million more times. Following Jesus means letting your life head in the direction his took.
• We gather in order to be sent out and to be a light for the city. There is no room for telling yourself that someone else will take care of it: "Mission and evangelism go hand in hand." It is sometimes messy, painful, uncomfortable, but that is no reason to stay on the sidelines.
• With people who are suffering, she is often struck by how little she has to offer, other than the hope we have in Jesus. "Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart." (Psalm 34:18)
• She shares that her husband became seriously ill two and a half years ago, and still is. Their life changed overnight: "I had never known despair like it." But Jesus has been closer than ever. "If we don't have hope in Jesus, then what do we have?"
• This hope is not "toxic positivity" or a "you'll be fine." Our hope is Jesus, who died on the cross, rose again, and conquered death, sin and shame. And if Jesus is already with those who are suffering, "that's where I want to be, too."

5. Ready for a Holy Interruption

• In practice, it might mean crossing the street to the woman who is crying even though you're in a hurry, taking five minutes to talk or pray with the homeless person you walk past every day, inviting that irritating but deeply lonely colleague to dinner, taking one more step for a grieving friend.
• "What would our city look like if every person in this room gave their time to serve, to notice and to reach out to those who need hope? What if we lived ready for a holy interruption?"
• Three years ago, in a supermarket car park with the engine running, she senses the Holy Spirit telling her: "Stop. Go back to the high street." At first she tells herself it is just in her head and doesn't want to go. She finally goes, and the Lord draws her attention to one woman.
• This woman had just been placed in temporary accommodation and told her straight away that she was not doing well. They talk, they pray. Over time, Millie Ferguson learns that her circumstances had led her into addiction, then into street prostitution. God breaks her heart for this woman and for other women in the same situation, and keeps breaking it for three years.
• Two days before this message, through doors she describes as miraculously opened, she launched a ministry for vulnerable and exploited women where she lives.
• She admits she has often ignored these "small nudges of the Holy Spirit," out of tiredness, distraction or unwillingness to be disturbed. "I am convinced there is so much waiting for us on the other side of obedience." Everything in us wants to avoid pain: eyes down, keep moving, get through the day. Ask the Lord to show you where to bring hope: "It is almost always inconvenient, but it is worth it."
• She concludes with Matthew 25: "I was hungry, and you gave me food." When Jesus returns, the hungry, the sick, the strangers and the prisoners will be at the centre of the conversation. Those he went to at the beginning of his ministry will still be at the centre when he comes back to wipe away every tear.

6. Choosing to See

• Pete Norris takes over: if you are part of the Church, you are part of God's mission in the world. His role is to push us to think about how this call is lived out in practice.
• Before Birmingham, he lived in a seaside town in Devon, with deep social difficulties and an enormous gap between those who have and those who have not. He noticed that you could see none of it: through the roads you take, the neighbourhood you choose, the places you avoid.
• So tonight's invitation is to "choose to see" the struggles and the places in the city that need hope.
• Bringing hope is lived alone, but also together, as a community. He mentions charities in the city, such as Embrace or Safe Families, before presenting the work of the church.

7. Gas Street Hope: Making Hope Concrete

• Gas Street Hope follows on from "Love Your Neighbour," to place social action at the heart of the church's life and across all its sites. "This is not a little holy project reserved for a few": it is what we sing on Sunday, carried into the streets from Monday to Saturday.
• Six priorities guide the work. First, access to food: in Ladywood, the share of children in relative poverty rose from 39.2% in 2014 to 57% in 2023, and it reaches 71% in Heartlands. A teacher told him about a child sent to school with only a bottle of water and a single biscuit for lunch. The St Luke's community food shop lets a family do the equivalent of a week's shopping for a modest sum.
• Next, community and connection, against isolation: play sessions for young parents ("you are never alone, and yet you have probably never felt so alone"), shared meals, workshops and coffee mornings.
• Then financial support and employment, with a debt advice centre run by a volunteer manager, who is looking for people to walk alongside others in moments of distress and deep loneliness. There is also support for families (free clubs and parties, parenting courses) and work with young people: in 2011, the city had around 56 youth centres, and 43 have closed since.
• The sixth priority gives meaning to the others: offering a space to explore faith. "All this activity means absolutely nothing if it doesn't point to the one who personifies hope." Everything Gas Street Hope does aims to bring someone closer to Jesus, even just a little.
• He warns against an "emotional and spiritual stirring" that goes nowhere, and urges everyone to take action, otherwise "you will go home and forget."

Key Takeaways

• In Luke 4, Jesus declares Isaiah's promise fulfilled: he is the hope Israel had waited for across generations.
• Throughout his ministry, Jesus goes to those whom others avoid. Where he goes, hope follows.
• You cannot follow Jesus without being where he is. Admiring compassion from a distance is not enough: "Go and do likewise."
• Our hope is not positive thinking: it is Jesus, close to the brokenhearted, who died and rose again.
• We need to choose to see the needs of our city and accept the Holy Spirit's holy interruptions, even when they are inconvenient.

Personal Application

1. Which people or places in your city do you avoid looking at, consciously or not?
2. When did you last ignore a nudge from the Holy Spirit because you were too busy, too tired, or did not want to be disturbed?
3. Who around you (a neighbour, a lonely colleague, a grieving friend) could receive a gesture of hope from you this week?
4. What is your hope built on when things are taken from you?
5. What concrete step can you take to serve with your church, rather than letting what you heard fade away?

Verses Cited

• Luke 4:16-21
• Isaiah 61:1-2
• Mark 1:40-42
• Mark 10:46-52
• John 4:1-42
• Mark 5:25-34
• Luke 7:36-50
• Luke 19:1-10
• Luke 10:25-37
• Psalm 34:18
• Matthew 25:34-40
• Revelation 21:4

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "Go and do likewise" mean in Luke 10?

After the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus tells his listeners to act like the man who stopped, tended the wounded traveller, took him to safety and paid for his care. For Millie Ferguson, this is a call to follow Jesus where he goes: to those who are suffering. You cannot follow someone without being where they are.

Why does Jesus read Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4?

At the start of his ministry, Jesus reads Isaiah's promise: good news for the poor, freedom for captives, sight for the blind, liberty for the oppressed. Then he declares that this Scripture is fulfilled today. Israel had waited for this promise for generations. Jesus claims to be the promised hope.

What is a "holy interruption"?

Millie Ferguson uses this phrase for the small nudges of the Holy Spirit that disrupt our plans: crossing the street to someone who is crying, praying with someone you pass every day. She tells how one such interruption, in a car park, led her three years later to launch a ministry for vulnerable and exploited women.