![]() He spoke as if God’s word was speaking directly to the people gathered there, which of course was true. Jesus had no need to refer to how others interpreted God’s word. Their teaching would begin by saying something like “This is what Moses said….” Or “This is what the Rabbis say….” When the experts and the scribes taught they referred to the Torah, the Law, and the many rules of life that had evolved from their understanding of how God’s Law should be applied to everyday life. Obviously word had already spread around about this Jesus chap as someone who might be interesting to listen to, which is presumably why he got his invitation to teach.Īnd we’re told that Jesus taught like no one else (in a positive way!) There would be no regular or permanent teacher, any competent person could be asked by the synagogue official to lead the teaching. For a start there would be no singing, just prayer, reading God’s word and listening to teaching about what had been read. We’d certainly find differences in the service held there. The Synagogue.Ī synagogue is not quite the same as a church. Now the question is where does he go next to spread his message of good news? Well, the obvious place is going to be where people who might be most likely to respond might be gathering. So let’s start with Mark and a story which comes right at the start of Jesus’ active ministry, just after he had chosen his first disciples. We suffer and our mission and outreach suffers. It’s interesting to see how each of these distractions are handled and to think about how that might influence our own behaviour when we find ourselves getting into similar situations, because any congregation, big or small, can find itself getting bogged down in issues which really shouldn’t take as long as they do to overcome – and while we’re doing that we can lose track of what we’re really here for. The distraction in Paul’s letter is over what people should eat or not, and in Mark’s gospel Jesus is distracted by a disturbed man shouting out while he’s teaching in the synagogue. In other words, the Church has become distracted, and that’s what people are reading about us in the newspapers.Īnd that seems to me to be an underlying theme in the two readings we’ve got this morning. Over the past few years one of the complaints about the Church, and that’s Church with a capital ‘C’ is that it has been so preoccupied with arguing and discussing issues like women bishops and homosexuality that it’s lost sight of its real mission which is the preaching of the gospel and being seen to be relevant to a generation growing up with no real understanding of what Christianity is really all about. " Let’s not get ourselves distracted from the big picture of what a small number of Christians in a small town anywhere can do when, freed from distraction, they live and share their faith in unity." ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |