July 22 NOTES FOR REFLECTION Ordinary 16

July 22                         NOTES FOR REFLECTION                         Ordinary 16

This Sunday is designated Social Services Sunday.  The readings for that are given in the Lectionary.  It is also the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene, and readings are also given there for that.  In keeping with my usual practice, I am sticking with the readings set for this Sunday, the 16^th in Ordinary Time, although they could be used quite successfully, I suggest, to say some helpful things about Social Services.  (I doubt if they could be stretched to bring in St Mary Magdalene, but over to you.)

Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Theme:  A bit trickier this week.  All sorts of ideas have suggested themselves; "Running to Jesus"; "Work-Life Balance"; "Of Kings and Shepherds"; "Breaking Down All Barriers"; "Spiritual Globalisation".  After much tedious debate with myself I'm going with "Life in the Real World".

Introduction.  The shepherd motif is an obvious link between the first lesson and the gospel passage.  More generally, the ministry of Jesus in the gospel passage can be seen as the fulfilment of the messianic prophecy in verses 5 and 6 of the passage from Jeremiah.  A less obvious connection between the gospel and the second lesson may be found in the divide between Jew and Gentile, with the lake acting as a physical barrier between the Jewish territory on the western side and the Gentile territory on the eastern side.  [Cue a quick reminder to notice how many times Mark refers to Jesus crossing over to the other side.]  Overall, it could be said that the unifying theme for all three readings is something to do with the whole idea of the scattering and gathering of the people.  In Christ the gathering of the people of the world into one flock (a new humanity) is foreshadowed in the first lesson, explained theologically in the second lesson, and demonstrated in action in the gospel reading.

Background.  The first thing that strikes me about the gospel passage is the "split" reading.  That always leads me to read the bit missed out first, and today it seems more than passing strange.  Why on earth (or "in the realms of Christendom", as Greg King put it) would we want to jump over the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and the story of Jesus walking on the sea?  However, all is not as it seems: there is no conspiracy to reduce the number of miracle stories to appease the Liberals in the Church.  We have these two stories next week, albeit from St John instead of St Mark.

So what's going on?  As always, it's useful to look at the structure of chapter 6.  It starts with Jesus' lament that a prophet is without honour in his own hometown: St Mark states bluntly that Jesus was unable to achieve much there because of their lack of faith.  That's followed by Jesus sending his disciples out two by two to preach, exorcise, and heal.  Then comes a strange interpolation, the account of St John the Baptist's gruesome execution, before the narrative resumes in real time with the return of the apostles as they report back to Jesus.

In other words, the story about John's death is book-ended by reports of ministry carried out by Jesus and the apostles.  This is what prompted m to select the theme I have.  Jesus has come into the world to bring life, and he has commissioned others to continue this ministry with him.  But the world into which he has come, and into which he has sent them, is a real one, full of darkness, division, hostility and ungodliness.  The awful execution of John (whom at least some of the apostles knew, admired and followed before joining with Jesus) serves as an illustration of all that is corrupt in the real world.  It follows the sending out, where Jesus clearly warns them that they will not be welcome everywhere and by everyone.

Sometimes when I am reading Scripture a snatch of liturgy crashes into my mind, and it happened this week as I was pondering the gospel reading.  One of the positives from leaving out the heavy stuff and concentrating our attention on what at first sight might seem relatively inconsequential extracts is to give a graphic picture of the energy and excitement that followed Jesus on his journeying around Galilee.  Twice we are told of people running to him, even arriving before him in the first case.  (Do I detect faint echoes of the famed foot race between Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved to the empty tomb on Easter morning?)  Individual cases (the man lowered through the ceiling on a stretcher and the woman with the blood discharge problem) are now multiplied into hundreds of similar cases: the sick are carried to Jesus on mats and people beg to be allowed just to touch the hem of his robe to be healed.

With this scene in mind turn to pages 456-7 of the Prayer Book and recite the following slowly (out loud):

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator, the love at our beginning and without end, in our midst and with us.

God is with us, here we find new life.

Let us give thanks for the coming of God's reign of justice and love.

Jesus Christ is good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight for the blind, and liberty for those who are oppressed.

Do you see what I mean?  Isn't that exactly what was going on among those people in those two little extracts?

Jeremiah.  God is complaining about the leaders of the people, who are referred to as "shepherds".  We might be tempted to construe that term as meaning "pastors", religious leaders), but that's probably too narrow here.  The target is the leaders generally, remembering that Judah was what we would call a theocracy (Modern Iran may give us some inkling of the mix between religious and secular leadership).  The ideal for the Jews was always King David, the classic Shepherd-King.  They had been falling down in their duty to tend the flock.  It's difficult to avoid the feeling that there is something of a contradiction between verses 2 and 3.  The shepherds are accused of having "scattered my sheep and driven them away"; but in the latter verse God proclaims his intention to gather the remnant "out of all the countries where I have driven them".  Such contradictions are probably inevitable given the underlying theological stance that everything that happens to the people, good and bad, must be attributed to God.

Be all that as it may, the emphasis is on a fresh start.  In the short term God will appoint new shepherds to tend the sheep; but this is followed by the great messianic prophecy, once again invoking the name of King David as the ideal leader.

To get a feel for the role of the shepherd have a look at psalm 23, the psalm set for the day; and the re-instatement of Peter in John 21.

Taking It Personally.

·        What sort of leadership do we look for in our local church, our Diocese. and the wider Church?  Is a shepherd still a useful model for us?  If not, what model or image might be better?

·        What about leadership in our communities and in our country?  How do our leaders measure up against the criteria in verses 5 and 6?  Do they reign wisely, and do what is just and right?  Are our people safe and secure?

·        Take some time in silence.  Notice the random thoughts that buzz around in your head.  Now reflect on the theme of scattering and gathering.  Can you gather your thoughts into some sort of creative and coherent whole, centred on Christ, or are they scattered all over the place?

·        Meditate on psalm 23.  Make a list of the things the Good Shepherd does for his sheep.  How far does your own experience confirm (or contradict) this list?

 

Ephesians.  This one of those wonderful passages that surely makes this epistle one of the most glorious in the whole collection (whether Paul wrote it or not).  It defies detailed analysis: it is best enjoyed as one all-embracing vision of the wonder of God's grace.  It is hard for us, perhaps, to grasp how overwhelming and uncontested the supposed divide between Jew and Gentile was until Christ broke it down.  Remember how difficult it seemed to the early Church to get over the "circumcision" issue.  Imagine how long and how many Commissions the Anglican Communion would have needed to grapple with that!  And try not to think of our three-tikanga constitution with this passage in front of you.  If you do feel the need to take bite-sized pieces, here are three tasty titbits: a new humanity (spiritual globalisation); the Trinitarian thrust of the last few verses; the idea of the people of God being built into a temple to house the Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

Taking It Personally

 

Something a little different to try.  If you have a difficult issue with someone try this.  Imagine a room containing three chairs.  You are seated on one, and opposite you is seated the other person.  The central chair, positioned equidistant from the other two is Christ's seat.  Now imagine yourself putting your side of the argument to Jesus, attempting to convince him that you are right and the other person is wrong.  But whatever you say, Jesus replies, "Yes, but do you love me?"  "Yes, but do you really love me?"  "Yes, but do you truly love me?"  You, of course, respond with Peter (John 21), becoming increasingly exasperated with Jesus.  Then Jesus says, "If you love me you will obey my commandments.  And my commandment is this:  Love one another."

 

If Jesus is our peace, if he is the one who breaks down the walls that divide, we have only to let him.

 

Mark.  There is so much here, even without the middle chunks!  The apostles, after a period of active ministry, withdraw to Jesus.  Something here about accountability, perhaps, but also a need to re-charge, physically as well as spiritually.  Even on Social Services Sunday we see the importance of retreat, reflection and prayer.  So, despite all the need around them, they try to get away to a solitary place by themselves, but are unsuccessful.  As noted above, marvel at the lengths to which the crowds will go to meet Jesus.  (When was the last time you ran to church?)  Jesus looks at them and has compassion "because they were like sheep without a shepherd".  We expect pastoral ministry, don't we?  We expect another feeding miracle, or another bout of healing and exorcism.  So did the crowd, probably, but what he gave them was teaching on many things.  The healing and other stuff comes after the return journey.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

·        Both these short passages lend themselves very well to imaginative prayer.  Run with the crowd.  Who or what are you bringing to him?  What is your request?

·        How do you feel when he starts teaching, instead of doing something practical?  (Doesn't he know it's Social Services Sunday?)

·        What sort of "many things" might he have addressed in that teaching, given that it arose from his compassion for them?

·        Re-read the snippet of liturgy quoted above, slowly, rhythmically, a few times.  Does that summarise for you what you have experienced through your imagination around the lake?

·        How confidently can you stand in your local church and proclaim, "God is with us, here we find new life"?

July 15 NOTES FOR REFLECTION National Bible Sunday

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-11; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; John 5:36b-47

Theme: Speaks for itself this time: "The Holy Scriptures" covers it.

Introduction.  Not every specially designated Sunday appeals to me, but this one is special.  This is our core business.  Usually we are focusing on short passages of Scripture, without giving any thought to what Scripture is (and isn't); or why we read every week from the Scriptures and not from, say, the Collected works of Charles Dickens or the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  So this day gives us an opportunity to reflect on those questions, guided, of course, by today's readings, each of which has important things to say on this topic.  Isaiah shows us the power of God's word to achieve its purpose.  The classic example of that is found in the creation text in Genesis 1, but we have a variation on the theme in today's chapter 5 of John's Gospel.  (Yes, I know we only have to read verses 36b-47, but we're allowed to read the whole chapter, so why wouldn't we?)  Paralysed for 38 years, the man is suddenly able to do what Jesus commands him to do – stand up and walk.  And in between, St Paul gives directions to Timothy that still constitute the preacher's charter today.

Background.  As I write these notes General Synod is once again grappling with issues relating to sexuality, and in particular to those around same-gender relationships.  Leaving aside bigotry, ignorance and all other human failings that seem to surface with particular force in such debates (inside as much as outside the Church), a major part of the issue for those who do want to arrive at Christ-centred solutions is our attitude to Scripture, or, more fundamentally, our understanding of what Scripture actually is.  Some have what I call an Islamic attitude to Scripture.  Just as classical Islam holds that the Koran is the dictated word of God and must be accepted literally, without interpretation or gloss (some even believe that it should not be translated into any language from the original Arabic), so there are some within the Church who believe that the Scriptures are the dictated word of God and must be treated accordingly.

Such a view is open to all sorts of attacks on historical, literary and other grounds, even by people who wish to give a very high value to Scripture, as I do.  But to me the defining objection to that view lies in the fact that the Scriptures themselves contradict it, and I don't mean that by careful search we can find individual cases of specific contradictions: I mean that there are clear indications in the teaching of Jesus and of St Paul that such an approach cannot be sustained logically.  A quick example from St Paul is found in 1 Corinthians 7: compare verses 10 and 12, where he distinguishes between two commandments, one from the Lord and the other from himself.  As for the Lord, we only have to think of his attitude to the Sabbath to see that, at the very least, he believed in "interpreting" the written word, not just slavishly following it.

That is also my answer to the other popular description of the Bible (which really does get up my nose!) as "the Maker's Handbook", a sort of Divine Help Desk to which we turn when we have a problem.  Try that approach with any modern issues and you will soon find yourself in the hopeless bind that General Synod has been in for the last few years and is still in as I write.

So if the Bible is not the dictated word of God, nor the Maker's Handbook, what is it?  Those who have been reading these notes over the last few weeks will not be surprised to learn that I have become more and more convinced that what the Bible is essentially is a collection of accounts of religious experiences, human-divine encounters, individual and collective, collected over centuries, together with reflections on those experiences as the faith communities have tried to make sense of them.  To take just one example here, whatever happened or didn't happen at the Bethesda pool in today's gospel passage we can surely say that the cripple of 38 years had a life-changing experience that was out of the ordinary run of things.  It was personal to him, but becomes part of our tradition through the account we have in John's Gospel.  It becomes part of the record, the canon, by which we assess other experiences, our own or those of other people.  This is part of what makes an experience "religious"; we interpret it within the Christian tradition.  Has anything like this ever happened before?  Oh, yes, here is a record of a similar event in the Scriptures, or in subsequent accounts.

A central feature of this and most other such encounters is the spoken word: the experient hears words addressed to him or her.  When we are considering biblical accounts of people meeting Jesus in the flesh, as it were, we do not find anything particularly odd about that; we focus on what was said and meant.  But we should at least notice how often we are told that the crowds were amazed at what he said, as well as what he did.  He spoke with a particular authority, with great wisdom, and so on.  Where did he get this stuff from?  And, of course, his words were often "performatory" – they achieved his purpose (the storm instantly died down, this man immediately got up and walked).  One of the great characteristics of a religious experience is that it is self-authenticating, the experient "just knows" it is real.  Jesus' own explanation was simply that he did not speak his own words, but those given to him by the Father.

Isaiah.  This is surely one of the most joyful passages in the whole of Isaiah's wonderful book!  He is overwhelmed by the sense of God's bounty, his sheer goodness to us.  God is the source of everything, not just bare necessities, but wonderful treats ("the richest fare") as well.  (For more details of the menu see Isaiah 25:6.  If he was writing today you just know there would be references to chocolate in this passage somewhere!)  And included in the list of marvellous things that come from God is his spoken word.  The key verse here is 11: having referred to the rain and the snow that come down from heaven to water the earth and promote growth, the great prophet (speaking, of course, as God's mouthpiece) continues: so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  Experience tells us that what God promises to do, he will do.  Here that is taken one step further: what God says will come to pass.

Taking It Personally.

·        Take a few moments to consider how you are feeling.  It's natural to feel a bit down in midwinter.  Nothing much is happening in the garden, the abundance and variety of food is diminished.  Lunchtime sandwiches are getting boring – cheese and what today?  Now cheer yourself up by listening to verse 1 over and over again until you have learned it by heart.

·        Ponder verse 2.  Reflect on your own priorities in your life at this time.  Do you need to make any changes?

·        Now verse 6.  Are you truly seeking the Lord?  Do you sense his near presence with you?

·        If you're inclined to try to "think your way to heaven", take verses 8 and 9 three times a day until you are cured.

·        Next time you hear a news item over the ongoing stoush about water rights, recall this passage: water is the gift of God for the people of God.

 

Timothy.  A modern translation of this charge from the old hand, St Paul, to the rookie, Timothy, might be "Stick to your knitting."  As I said at the start of these notes, the Scriptures are our core business.  While Paul tells Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry", the heart of that ministry is summed up in three words in 4:2: "Preach the Word".  Timothy has already begun, so Paul in effect is telling him to stick at it: not to be diverted or discouraged, and not to change the message to please the punters.  He reminds Timothy that he has been brought up on the Scriptures and has been convinced of their truth.  First lesson: no one should preach if they are not themselves convinced of the truth of the Scriptures.  The key verse in this passage is verse 16, which requires careful pondering if we want to have a biblical attitude towards the Bible.  All Scripture is "God-breathed" we're told – a happier phrase would be "inspired by God"; and I would want to say something more about the ways in which Scripture is inspired.  Scripture is only words on the paper unless it is read and heard, when an encounter between the human and divine becomes possible.  Yes, I believe that the writers were inspired by God (through the Holy Spirit) in the writing; but the Spirit also guided those who decided over the years what was and what was not to be included in the Bible, and preserved those documents to ensure that they were not lost to us; and the Spirit guides the listener/reader to hear and receive the message in the Scriptures.

 

And there's more.  The Scriptures are "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness".  We must take them seriously, and seek guidance from them; but in the context it is clear that they are to be used as a teaching tool, not an infallible manual.

One final point before we get to the gospel passage.  In the Collect suggested for this celebration we ask God to grant that by patient study of the Scriptures we may follow more closely the way that you set before us.  We are used to talking about self-fulfilling prophecies; here is a self-answering prayer.  How else might God answer this prayer if we are not prepared to commit ourselves to patient study of the Scriptures?

 

Taking It Personally.

·        Commit yourself to patient study of the Scriptures, say 30 minutes daily for at least a month, and see what happens.

·        Focus on verses 3 and 4 (Chapter 4).  How eager are you to seek spiritual wisdom from other sources than the Bible?  How accurate do you think Paul's prediction is as you look at our society today?

 

John.  And if we really want to acquire a biblical attitude towards the Bible, we need to set aside ample time to study today's passage from Scripture.  And do read the whole chapter to get the full flavour of what Jesus is saying here.  Verse 39 makes particular sense when you understand that this ongoing debate was triggered by Jesus' healing of the paralytic at the pool.  Notice that his critics have turned on the beggar himself because he was seen carrying his mat on the Sabbath!!!  Take a moment to laugh out loud at that.  This guy has been paralysed for 38 years, he's been healed, and all the religious people can say is not "Whoopee!", but how dare he carry his mat home on the Sabbath.  They were treating Scripture as The Maker's Handbook; they were taking literally the Scriptural prohibition against doing any work on the Sabbath.  Yes, we could quibble over their interpretation of the word "work", but that's hardly the point.  The point is they are so focused on Scripture that they have lost sight of God, even though he has now come among them.  They diligently study the Scriptures, says Jesus, because they believe that's the way to get salvation.  There's the warning for all those who focus entirely on the Bible instead of on Christ.  He is the Saviour, not the Bible.

 

One further word on this passage.  It sometimes seems a bit cheeky for Christians to insist that the Old Testament (Hebrew Scripture) is about Christ, as Jesus himself says today.  Yet that attitude comes out of the Christian experience: as they pondered the whole Christ event they looked to their Scriptures for guidance.  We can see this in the Road to Emmaus story and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch.  That is the way in which we still use Scripture to evaluate our own religious experiences today.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

·        If a friend asked you how you felt about the Bible, what would you say?  Is it important to you?  How important?  Why?  How do you show that?

 

8 July NOTES FOR REFLECTION Ordinary 14

Texts: Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

Note.  In the Church Calendar today is designated Sea Sunday.  The readings for that are given as Job 38:1, 4-11; Acts 27:27-32, 39-44; Luke 8:22-25.  However, I said all I wanted to say about that Job passage 2 weeks ago; and today's Ordinary readings are far too tempting!

Theme:  Short and simple this time: I'm going with "Just Say the Word".  [Whether or not anybody listens or takes the faintest notice of what you're saying is beside the point.]

Introduction.  It is sometimes said that Christianity (along with Judaism and Islam) are Religions of the Book.  I prefer to say that Christianity is a Religion of the Spoken Word.  The great prophets were not told to sit down and write something for eventual inclusion in the Bible; they were told to go out and preach (proclaim) the messages God gave them (orally).  Ezekiel is given that clear instruction today.  John the Baptist stood in that tradition, and Jesus, too.  Today Jesus sends his disciples into the world and they start off exactly where John and Jesus began their public ministries, by calling upon the people to repent.  St Paul is famous for his letters, of course, but before he wrote it all down he preached and taught it.  The other common theme in all this is that very few listened to Ezekiel, Jesus or Paul: in the wonderful phrase I associate with Moses, the people were (as we are inclined to be) "stiff-necked".

Background.  Once again we are reminded that all our faith history – and all our theology - is rooted in the human experience of the divine, in what I have been referring to in recent notes as "religious (or spiritual) experiences".  Today we have some further examples, very much towards the "mystical" end of the spectrum.

To grasp today's passage from Ezekiel, we need to read chapter 1.  There is described an astonishing vision of the Divine Being that Ezekiel saw.  Totally overwhelmed (today's much over-used expression "mind-blowing" might really apply here), Ezekiel prostates himself, and it is while he is face-down on the floor that he hears God speak to him.  Perhaps I should pause at this stage to deal with the inconvenient truth of what follows today's passage.  Ezekiel is given a scroll on both sides of which were written "words of lament and warning and woe".  But the interesting thing is that Ezekiel is told, not to read the scroll, but to eat it.  It seems that this is his "ordination service" – he is being ordained to the office of prophet, rather than being given an express message to pass on to the people.  His actual ministry as a prophet doesn't start until seven days later; he needed a quiet period to recover from his extraordinary experience(s).  Perhaps, then, what we have here is a preparation period, beginning with the vision in chapter 1, then his call as a prophet, and his instruction to feast upon the word of God (almost literally – we still talk about "inwardly digesting" something we are told); and, even bigger perhaps, the significance of the description of the words on the scroll (2:10) is that Ezekiel is first to take in to himself God's own anguish at his people; he must enter into the divine "lament and mourning and woe", as the scroll enters into him.  He must take to heart not only the words of God but God's feelings, too.

St Paul's attempt to describe his own mystical experience is wonderfully jumbled – illustrating just how ineffable such experiences are.  He is clearly conflicted as to whether he should talk about it at all: that's why he makes a confused attempt to pretend he is describing an experience someone else had.  It had happened 14 years ago – the implication being that he had never spoken of it before.  And basically he tells us very little about the experience and in doing so conveys its enormity.  He didn't know whether the experience was internal or external (in the body or out of it); he was "caught up to the third heaven" (verse 2) or to "paradise" (verse 4): there he heard "inexpressible things" (presumably meaning he could not put them into words), and even if they were expressible they were "things that human beings are not permitted to tell".

In both cases, the experience was private, uniquely for Ezekiel and St Paul respectively.  {I've seen it written that this is true of all religious experiences, but I remain hopeful that I can find exceptions to that rule, either in Scripture, or in the accounts of others recorded in the archives of the Religious Experiences Research Unit, or elsewhere.  Join the hunt: let me know if you come across accounts where two or more people had a simultaneous vision, or heard the same voice.)  In the gospel stories we have something different: crowds hear Jesus speak, and see him in action.  And yet, for all sorts of reasons, only a few recognise that God has come among them.  The majority in his day – as in ours – were far too clever to believe such an extraordinary idea.

Ezekiel.  Notice that the first thing God tells Ezekiel to do is to stand up.  Why does he need to stand up (he has prostrated himself before the living God, surely an entirely appropriate response – and an involuntary one!)  He is told to stand up as a precursor to God speaking to him.  There is something there about the grace of God and the dignity of humanity in God's eyes.  It is not that Ezekiel's response was wrong, but having made it he is now to be raised up to new life in the Spirit.  (Ring an Easter-Pentecost bell at all?)  Notice it is the Spirit that raises him up: he doesn't have to clamber up himself.  And notice, too, that God does not expect that his people will listen to Ezekiel because they never listen to him either (see 3:7).  That's not important, nor does it mean that Ezekiel should save his breath.  What is important is that "they will know that a prophet has been among them".  His presence among them will be enough to remind them that they are God's people.

Taking It Personally.

·        Read 1:1; notice the specific historical details.  This is not a fairy story – this is something that happened in real time, and Ezekiel can remember the date to this day.  Can you recall any specific incident in your faith journey in such historical detail?

·        Read slowly through chapter 1.  How do you feel about this vision?  What words come to mind to describe it?  Compare it with the vision Isaiah saw in the Temple: Isaiah 6:1-8.  How does it compare with your present "vision/image" of God?

·        Ponder the emphasis on body positions in this story.  Recall that by tradition those being consecrated/ordained as bishops prostrate themselves before the Holy Table.  Why?  Now prostrate yourself and pray in that position.  How do you feel about that?

·        Reflect on the three positions we usually adopt at different parts of a service, standing, sitting, and kneeling.  Do they signify something important or is it just something we do?

·        In what way might your presence among other people remind those people that God is among them?

Corinthians.  Paul, it seems, was constantly subjected to the sort of "who does he think he is" abuse that we see in today's gospel reading when Jesus returned to his home-town.  Paul responded often by feeling he had to prove his own credentials as an apostle, even though he realised it must come across as boasting.  So he starts today's passage by acknowledging that he is boasting, and, in a feebly disguised account, says in effect, well, I do have something to boast about (in addition to his long list of suffering that he had boasted about earlier).  The fact is that this experience he reports today must have been for Paul almost as important – if not equally so – as his more famous experience on the Road to Damascus.  (Now I come to think of it, why is today's story less well known than that other one – does it make us feel more uncomfortable – do we think he is simply bragging – or is that sort of experience best kept to himself?)  Perhaps his diffidence has led him immediately to give the bad news – some sort of affliction that God has refused to take away from him, despite prayer.  (See – even St Paul knew what it was like to have unanswered prayer!  Okay, technically God did answer his prayer, by turning down his request, but you know what I mean.)

 Taking It Personally.

·        Do you struggle with this whole issue of being boastful/ honest about yourself?  How do you respond when someone praises you?  Can you still hear "parental voices" warning you not to get big-headed (blow your own trumpet)?

·        Do you feel St Paul has simply given into temptation?  Should he have held his tongue, turned the other cheek, etc?  Are you put off by his boasting?

·        Are you glad he reported his "spiritual experience"?  Do you find it encouraging or off-putting?   Why?

·        Now reflect on "the mysterious thorn in his flesh".  Have you found yourself wondering what it was?  Why?  What difference would it make?

·        Have you suffered from some recurring illness or condition that might be so described?  Have you prayed for it removal?  Can you draw strength from St Paul's argument here, or is it all just words?

·        Ponder the last sentence: For when I am weak, then I am strong.  Does it make sense to you?

Mark.  Jesus has calmed a storm, healed the sick and demon-possessed, and even brought a dead child back to life.  Even without today's press and social media, news of some of this must have filtered back to his hometown.  Yet when he gets home and is invited to speak at the local synagogue, the crowds take offence at him.  Who does he think he is?  He's too big for his boots.  He's a carpenter's son, not a blinking rabbi!  Despite their amazement at his teaching – and despite acknowledging that he has performed miracles – they couldn't see past their pre-conception of him.  Kids from around here don't reach those dizzy heights.  He's just a lad from the village; while he's been away he has forgotten his roots, but we haven't.  Notice that Jesus is not shocked at their lack of welcome, or their rudeness, but their lack of faith.  Are they really refusing to believe that God can and will do among them and for them what Jesus has been doing?  Do they believe that God heals people, or calms storms, or raises the dead to new life?  Jesus has exposed their lack of faith in God.  He has challenged their understanding of God.  It was into such a world that Jesus sent his disciples two by two.

Taking It Personally.

·        Reflect on the story so far.  Read slowly through chapter 5, then ask yourself as honestly as you can, "Do I believe that Jesus did these things?"  "Do I believe that God was in Jesus doing these things?"  "Do I believe that God in Jesus continues to do such things today?"

·        Would Jesus be amazed at your lack of faith, or pleased by your faith?

·        Ponder Jesus' instructions to his disciples in verses 8-11.  Are you a disciple of Christ?  Do you still want to be?

·        Ponder their response in verses 12 and 13.  Notice the two strands to their ministry, word and action.  What do you take from these verses for your own faith journey?

·        Where in the Church have you seen this sort of ministry being undertaken faithfully?

·        If Jesus was doing an ERO-type review of your local faith community how would he rate it, do you think?