An online presence for St Francis Anglican Church, Tairua, NZ
What kind of God is God?
What kind of God is my God?
What kind of God is your God?
A student training for the ordained ministry went to see his tutor in theology.
“I can’t go on,” the student said. “I don’t believe in God any more.”
“Tell me,” said the tutor, “about the God you don’t believe in.”
The student explained his current understanding of God – who he thought God is and what he is like.
“Well,” said his tutor, “I don’t believe in that kind of God either.”
Mark, in my view, is a gospeller who gets to the bottom of things quickly and doesn’t add any frills. The first chapter begins straight into the ministry of Jesus with our meeting John the Baptist, a direct pointer to the coming Messiah! When Jesus meets John the Baptist amazing things start to happen. At the point of the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist witnesses the heavens opening and God’s voice proclaiming the authority of His Son!
We’ve all heard the verses of today’s gospel reading before, so the challenge for me was to find something that was different, but at the same time relevant to both the time for which it was written and for us today. I chose a paraphrase of verse twenty as the ‘sentence’, because it was the one that leapt out at me when I read it. This verse refers to James and John and it says he called them “and they followed.” It is similar to verse 18 which says, after Jesus had called Simon and Andrew to follow him and he would make them fish for people, ”And immediately they left their nets and followed him”. They are words of obedience and ….
Are you ready for the wild water? Well I hope I will be able to follow my dear grandson’s example in this. Remember the story I told you about Steffan, when he jumped off the Tairua bridge for the first time, aged about 7, and nearly drowned? When I asked why he had jumped when he couldn’t swim, his answer was, “I didn’t know I couldn’t.” Let us, beloved family, have that same trust to plunge forward in the wild water of discipleship, following the way of Christ, bearing his message of love. Let us trust that we too can participate fully in the continuing, Spirit-led, transforming movement of God-with-us in our own time … we are, after all, God’s beloved.
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