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!
Category Archives: Reflections
Trust and Obey
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 ….
The Plunge
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.
Epiphany: Three Kings and a love for strangers
The three readings today emphasize that we are all welcome in Christ’s church, irrespective of our natal culture. Isaiah prophesied, “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”. The Matthew reading is the story of the visit of wise men from the East, possibly Zoroastrians, to honour the birth of Christ,
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