Mark 7:24-37
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
The Faith of Foreigners audio (4MB) Save
In the previous section of Mark 7 Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees over the issue of washing hands. He responds by pointing out that their reliance on their traditions has blinded them to the much more central issue of purity of heart.
He points out to them that washing your hands won't make you clean. You first need to be clean on the inside. The Pharisees were too concerned with outward appearances and not enough with inward reality.
Well in today's reading Jesus leaves the region of Galilee and travels to the region of Tyre, over on the Mediterranean Sea in what's now modern Lebanon. Now I don't think he's just going off for a few days at the beach to rest and recuperate as you or I might. Rather he seems to be getting away from the places where the Pharisees can come and speak against him; perhaps even try to kill him.
He goes there incognito, obviously trying to avoid the attention of the locals. Perhaps he wanted to escape all the attention, hoping to have a break from the constant demands for healing that he'd experienced back in Galilee. But when he gets there he encounters someone who reflects exactly what he's just been saying to the Pharisees: a woman who would have been considered unclean by the Jews and yet who shows that on the inside she has a pure heart of faith in Jesus.
Mark 7:1-23
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
The Secret to Purity audio (4MB)
I wonder how many of you have been watching the series “Meet the Amish” on SBS over the last 4 weeks. It’s been fascinating to watch a group of Amish young people experiencing the wider world after living a very sheltered life surrounded by a family and community dedicated to maintaining a complete purity of life.
There’s much to admire in the principles they’ve grown up with in their community. They have good reasons for doing things differently from the rest of the world. Yet at the same time I wonder whether the lengths they’ve gone to, to keep themselves pure, are actually necessary or, for that matter, enough.
Of course, God’s people through the ages have always looked for ways of maintaining their purity of life by external structures and rules. The Jews developed a whole range of rules and regulations to govern everyday life, to help people be sure they were being faithful to God in every circumstance. But it didn’t stop with the Jews. The monastic movement in the Medieval Church developed various rules of life to help Christians structure their lives around the worship of God. So in one version, the day was broken up into periods of work or rest separated by times of prayer - not unlike the Muslim prayer times in fact.
In the reformation many of these practices were abandoned because they were thought to promote religion rather than faith. But then they were replaced by other rules that were there to help people stay away from temptation and to remain faithful to God. The Amish come out of that period of time.
In more recent times evangelical Christians have created other rules of life. The daily “quiet time’, reading the Bible and praying, at one stage became a law rather than simply an encouragement to faith. Certain behaviours were considered to be not acceptable: gambling, swearing, smoking, drinking alcohol - particularly beer; even dancing and going to the movies was considered questionable by some when I was growing up.
Mark 6:30-56
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- Written by: George Hemmings
Food and Water audio (5MB)
It’s good to be back, after our little trip to Queensland. We had a great time away, visiting family and enjoying lots of fantastic weather. I can’t say we’ve returned well rested, as Micah & Joshua decided that since the sun rises sometime around 5am, that would be a good time for them to start the day too. And our last 24 hours were something of a disaster, with two trips to the hospital. So it’s good to be home, back into regular routines and it’s especially good to be back with our church family.
Just as we’ve returned, our passage today starts with the disciples returning. You might recall from last week, that Jesus has just sent them out on a short-term mission trip. He gave them power over the unclean spirits and sent them out in pairs. They went out and cast out demons, healed the sick and proclaimed the good news about Jesus, calling people to repent. Jesus trusted them to join in his mission, his work and he even shared his power with them so they could do so. By all accounts they’ve been successful. Now, in verse 30 they’ve come back. There’s a lot of energy and excitement as they gather around Jesus. You can imagine them all pumped up, eager to tell him everything that they’ve done, all that they accomplished in his name. But they can’t quite do this. Mark says there were so many people around them, the crowd is so large the disciples couldn’t even sit down to share a meal with Jesus.
Mark 6:1-13
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- Written by: Ivy Wong
Many successful people have been rejected.
For example, Woolworth’s founder Frank Winfield Woolworth.
He was not allowed to wait on customers when he worked in a dry goods store; his boss said he lacked the sense needed to do so.
Soichiro Honda is the founder of the Honda company, one of the well-known large car companies. When Mr Honda went for a job interview to work for the Toyota Company as an engineer, he was rejected and was told that he was not fit for the job!
Walt Disney was hired to work at the Kansas City Star newspaper. He was later fired from the paper for his “lack of creativity”.
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 years old and did not read until he was 7. His parents and teacher thought he was “sub –normal” and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable.”
Thomas Edison: his teacher said he was “too stupid to learn anything”
Beethoven, his music teacher once said of him "as a composer, he is hopeless".
Jesus did so many miracles; including healing the sick, calmed the wind and sea and brought people back to life. Yet he was rejected by people in his home town.
Jesus is just like these famous people, people rejected them just because they didn’t have faith in them. They didn’t trust them.
Why’s that?
Let’s find it out from today’s bible passage.
Mark 5:21-43
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Faith to Heal audio (4MB)
If you were here last week you may remember that I asked whether you have trouble believing that God still intervenes in the world in a miraculous way. Well, a similar question arises today. Not whether you believe that God can answer your prayers, rather do you believe that he will answer your prayers?
Do you wonder whether God will listen to you because you’re not sure if you’ve been good enough? Do you think to yourself, “I haven’t really been good enough lately to ask him that.” Or do you sometimes make deals with God and then find that you’ve broken the agreement you had so you think you’ve blown it. Well let me suggest that it all comes back in the end to what you think faith is. What is it that faith in God hangs on? Is it something in ourselves? Does God look at us and decide whether we have enough faith before answering? Or is it something else.
In our reading today we find the account of two quite different people who had faith in Jesus. But we find the account cleverly interwoven by Mark so that as we go through it we see a number of contrasts and a number of similarities.
Mark 4:35-5:20
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Power Over Sea and Spirits audio (5MB)
Di & I were watching a show the other day where they were previewing the latest movies and one came up that we decided was just too close to the truth to bear watching. It was based on the tsunami in 2004. Do you remember it? Those horrific scenes of the ocean rolling in and swallowing everything in its path. [video clip] 230,000 people died in 4 different countries. Do you remember watching the news reports and being reminded once again of the awesome power of God’s creation and humans’ inability, despite our great advances in science and technology, to fully control it?
Of course to the ancient peoples of the middle east, the sea, in particular, was seen as the image of unpredictability, of anarchy, of all the forces of evil that opposed God and his people. You can understand why, can’t you? The sea can be a fearsome thing even for those who know it well. [Video clip - the Perfect Storm] [Well the storm on Galilee wasn’t quite a Perfect Storm but] as we’ll see as we go through today’s passage Jesus’ disciples were among those who knew the sea and yet could be afraid of it.
In fact in today’s passage we find two types of forces that people fear. First there’s the power of the sea, which we all understand, but then there’s that other power that so many fear because they can’t understand it or comprehend it. That is the power of the spirit world. [Again there’s something very contemporary about this issue as well. TV shows and movies regularly portray all sorts of supernatural forces that our modern, scientifically trained, minds don’t want to admit. Yet these forces have been known and talked about since the scriptures were first written.]
I wonder how many of us have trouble believing that God still intervenes in the world in a miraculous way. When we pray do we really believe that God can and will answer our prayers? Or do we hedge our prayers to make them more ‘reasonable’, not asking for anything that’s outside the realms of the rational and explainable? Do we asking for patience rather than healing? Do we prefer to put up with the hardships of life rather than ask God to change them? Or are we so overcome by the troubles that we face that we simply forget to look to God for help?
Mark 4:1-20
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- Written by: George Hemmings
The Nature of the Gospel audio (5MB)
Do you see what I see?
When you look at this picture, I wonder what you see? A young lady in silhouette, or a cartoon man playing the saxophone? There’s only one picture, but people see different things. By the end of Mark 3, the disciples must be wondering the same thing about Jesus. How is it that people have such different reactions to him? Some people, including Jesus’ own family, thought he’d gone mad. The religious leaders said Jesus was a monster, that he was Satan or at least on Satan's side. The disciples saw Jesus differently though. He was the one they'd chosen to follow, even if they couldn't understand everything he said or did just yet. To them Jesus wasn’t mad or a monster, but their master. But they must have wondered, why doesn't everyone see this? Why doesn’t everyone follow him?
It's a question we might still ask today. Why are there so many different reactions to Jesus? You might know that the word gospel means good news. The news that Jesus came to restore us to full relationship with God, isn’t just good, it’s great! It’s the best news in the world! But if that’s the case, why doesn’t everyone respond with joy? Why is it that people still reject the gospel?
