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Holiness reimagined

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       Hello fellow saints; hi fellow sinners!   As we saw last time, most of the members of the people of God at the time of Jesus didn’t consider themselves to be “bad sinners”; the really bad “sinners” were the tax collectors and the prostitutes.   Most people probably thought that they were doing pretty well.   Also, sickness was often interpreted as a sign that the afflicted person was a worse sinner than healthy people.      Along with exorcisms and healings, there is another predominant theme in the first two chapters of Mark’s Gospel – the forgiveness of sins.   This had been the essence of John the Baptist’s message – repentance and forgiveness (1.4-5).   Whether John’s preaching was the catalyst of what Mark describes as a national movement of repentance, or whether John simply provided the means for the people to give expression to their repentance (by baptism), the beginning of Mark’s narrative portrays...
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“The King is on the move”

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  “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.    And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  And immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Mk. 1.16-18)        As we saw last time, Jesus proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God.   He also made the kingdom of God tangible through his actions.   As Mark tells his story of Jesus, we see a Jesus who is on the move, who is in a hurry to establish the kingdom of God before the forces of darkness catch up with him.        Following his public “unveiling” as the Son of God and his 40-day trial in the wilderness, the King of Israel began to tour his kingdom and to gather a group of apprentices (i.e., disciples) who would learn his ways and partner with him in his mission.   Jesus had a home in Capernaum (cf. Mk. 2.1; 3.19-20), an...
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“The promised-yet-unexpected King”

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Texts : Is. 40.1-11; Ps. 2.1-8; Mk. 1.1-15 The stories we live in      What story are you living in?   This may, at first, appear to be a rather strange question.   It remains the case that we have all inherited stories from our family, our environment, our culture, our country of origin, etc.   The stories that we grew up in and that dictated the behaviour of the people around us were probably not spelled out very often, except perhaps on special occasions, like national holidays.   These stories provided us with a sense of identity, a sense of belonging to a certain people or place.   Personally, I grew up with an almost unconscious loyalty to England and the British commonwealth.   As a child, I always “knew” that, whatever book I was reading or whatever movie I was watching, the British were the “good guys”.   Since I grew up in a rural area of Québec, this was sometimes a problem, as my Québécois neighbours were living in a...
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“Encouragers in a dangerous time”

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Texts : Acts 4.32-37; 9.26-31; 11.19-26 The only constant is change      Isn’t it nice when things are calm, predictable, comfortable, when there is no anxiety in our hearts, no unknown factors to worry about, no changes to deal with?   Sounds nice, right?   Of course, life is rarely like that – indeed, the life of most congregations is rarely like that.   Most of the time, life is chaotic – full of often unwanted or unexpected changes and various crises, and we often feel woefully ill-equipped to deal with the unrelenting stream of complicated situations that insist on coming our way.   And yet, even though this is what “normal” life is like, we often react as if things shouldn’t be this way.   When chaos erupts, we often respond with shock, fear, hostility and resentment.   We try desperately to hang on to what is familiar and comfortable, to what makes us feel secure and confident in who we are and in what we are doing – to what ...
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