A little Christmas quiz for those of you who have finished all your Christmas chores Cryptic Sports Stars 1) Hair replacement and stiff drinks needed after ‘e finds his loaf in the fens 2) A merry jape before a kind of ball, but missing the motorbike classic 3) Former Wimbledon champion (short) finds a pair of trousers 4) A dock worker misses what sounds like the exit and ends up with a final resting place along with Lenin 5) Take the noisy dog to court! 6) The real key ring needs to be reconfigured 7) The old field marshal installs silver windows? 8) Over to new york for more banking mistakes 9) Ready, steady ……but sounds like this gentleman is missing most of chariot 10) Inundated with character mugs? 11) After a very short kip I’m missing from the operatic song. Gone for a screw. 12) A nice combination Hollywood greats 13) Add this kind of junction once canal bridge is rebuilt 14) Wag picks up a century among the witch community 15) Prepare french monkfish for the cleaning lady if you can entice her out of the garden? 16) Pythonesque messiah finds a glamourous archaeologist outside her cottage. 17) A slimmed down Nasser strikes like lightning 18) the holy one likes a drink during the chase 19) falling just a little short of the superlative Venice and despite the name unrelated to Frank 20) A marauder from the east finds the light when one of Bacchus’s pets gets shot of a pope

Those who are blessed seem to fall into two categories: both those who choose the difficult or holy option, like the pure in heart, and those who are forced into it through no choice of their own, those who are reviled and persecuted. Some fall into both categories. Those who mourn might be those whose circumstances lead to tears, but it is also likely to refer to those who weep over an alienated culture, the apparent absence of the kingdom, or the failure of God’s children to behave like sons. Those poor in spirit may include those who choose to live with the humility and simple lifestyle of the poor as well as those who have poverty forced upon them. Throughout, there is the sense of rewards for those who want to see a reversal in the status quo: those who strive for peace, those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail. Those disciples who made it to the top of the mountain were to be the agents of the kingdom both by being part of the community, like salt, and separated from it like light. For salt is useless unless thoroughly incorporated in the mixture, where it becomes invisibly part of the texture. Light, on the other hand, is useless unless it is placed on a lamp-stand. The kingdom comes when disciples are both fully totally mixed with the world in which they live, and distinct and separate from it by their lifestyle. In a sense it is easy to be either light or salt: to be holy by living in monastic isolation, or to be invisible by being totally incorporated in worldly living. Jesus was notable for being both salt and light. He mixed with the sick and sinful: with the rich and poor; with the educated and the simple and seems to have blended well with all of them. The group with which he clashed most often was the pharisees who deliberately kept themselves separated from society. Yet at the same time he lived uniquely and powerfully. His true light was seen supremely when three disciples saw him transfigured before them : but what they saw that day merely confirmed what they had already acknowledged on the road near Caesarea Philippi . His disciples were called to be one with the poor and humble. Yet they would stand out so that they would be reviled and persecuted. They were not to be downcast and intimidated, but were to yearn with all their being for a better world; sometimes they would be marked out by their compassion, their tears, and their desire for justice and peace. Always they should be marked out for the purity of their life-style. Without their presence the world would perish. Darkness can never overcome light. The deeper the darkness the brighter the light shines. Light destroys darkness. The suggestion here is that disciples will always be a minority. But better a pinch of salt than a sack of dust, better a small light well displayed, than a multitude of lamps burning themselves out under a meal tub. Those called to be disciples need to be true to their calling . Thus disciples’ righteousness needs to exceed that of the pharisees. They were certainly like cities set on hills: they prayed on street corners , they carried the longeurs of their fasting in the length of their faces and they gave to the poor in a way that everyone knew about it. The disciples were to be just as rigorous in lifestyle yet without letting that rigour separate them from those among whom they lived. Yet they also had to be distinctive. Not by being out of touch or ‘holier than thou’, but by being known as those who love enemies, live lightly with possessions, go beyond the call of duty in being generous to those in need, pray with integrity and intensity, making sure that such treasure that is stored up is of eternal significance. What is needed is a whole new framework of values: righteousness is not just an issue of lifestyle. It is a matter of attitude: or as Paul put it ‘mind-set’ . Righteousness is not just a minimalist keeping of commandments, but neither is it a broad-brush adhering to the spirit of them: it is an inter-penetration with the mind of God who framed them . For example, it is not just a matter of good discipline for a disciple to refrain from murder and adultery: that kind of behaviour should be totally alien to his whole way of living. So a life of righteousness flows naturally from a person totally immersed in the life of God. And so - quite literally - the disciples were to be authentically Christian in the way that Jesus himself was. He was both immersed in God and world, so he acted like salt and light. To be immersed in God is to be God-breathed: to become God-breathed is to pray oneself into God’s life. Prayer and living are not to be compartmentalised. Prayer is the means by which the mind-set is framed. Prayer is the process of inter-penetration. So prayer becomes the source of righteousness. When Jesus talks about ethics he ends up talking about prayer. A prayer is that which you desire with all your being. It should not be just a shopping list of virtues let alone a desire for material prosperity, or a means of twisting the arm of God. It is yearning for his kingdom to come and his will to be done in one’s own life and in the world. So at the core of this teaching about righteousness Matthew places Jesus’s example prayer. Not surprisingly this prayer has many affinities with traditional Jewish prayers, in particular the kaddish which followed the sermon in synagogue liturgy, and the eighteen benedictions. Though it is not entirely certain that either of these prayers was being used at the time of Jesus, they are at least likely to have been based on forms of prayer with which Jesus was familiar. Indeed a Jewish scholar has blended the Lord’s prayer with traditional Jewish prayers to come up with this amplified version: Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thine exalted Name in the world Thou didst create according to Thy will. May Thy Kingdom and Thy lordship come speedily, and be acknowledged by all the world, that Thy Name may be praised in all eternity. May Thy will be done in Heaven, and also on earth give tranquillity of spirit to those that fear Thee, yet in all things do what seemeth good to Thee. Let us enjoy the bread daily apportioned to us. Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned; forgive also all who have done us injury; even as we also forgive all. And lead us not into temptation, but keep us far from evil. For thine is the greatness and the power and the dominion, the victory and the majesty, yea all in Heaven and on earth. Thine is the Kingdom, and thou art Lord of all beings for ever. Amen. However, despite the similarities, the places where Jesus’s prayer differs from the traditional Jewish models that have survived are even more significant. The intimacy of the opening address was most unusual . The close relationship which Jesus experienced with God was not to be totally unique: it was a relationship that could be claimed by his disciples also. Prayer is not some grovelling appeasement of a remote, capricious and potentially hostile, divine potentate, but a close, intimate intercourse with one who carries all the concern and responsibility for his children of a loving father. And in recognising God as ‘our’ father they also would be recognising their family relationship with each other. The word father also denoted his role of creator: the ‘father’ was the origin of life. The phrase, ‘who art in heaven’, draws attention to this. It is not suggesting that God is remote or inaccessible, but rather that he is powerful and creative. Indeed where God is honoured, earth potentially becomes heaven - a major theme of the prayer through his transforming presence. The petition ‘hallowed be thy name’ takes this one stage further. This expresses the deep desire that the presence of God be acknowledged with awe in the world at large. The hallowing of a name is indeed the recognising of the authority and holiness of the person. So this first petition draws us straight into the kingdom focus of the prayer. The gospel song which repeats this phrase after every petition of the Lord’s prayer is close to the spirit of the way it is to be prayed. In all aspects of life, through every culture, and in all circumstances the profoundest desire of every disciple is to see the glory of God revealed, his presence acknowledged and his name revered. It is clear that Jesus saw his mission in terms of ‘bringing in the kingdom of God’ (or in Matthew’s version, heaven). The desire for the coming of that kingdom, therefore, forms the core of his prayer. The nature of that kingdom was explicitly set out by Jesus when he was visited by disciples of John the Baptist asking him: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.’ It was believed that prayer could speed up God’s processes. So grounded right in the core of Christian prayer has always been a yearning for the coming of the kingdom which the church came to see as synonymous with the coming of the king: ‘Maranatha, O come quickly, Lord.’ The implication of the prayer, of course, was also personal. If the kingdom was to come quickly it had to come within the lives of the disciples themselves. The kingdom of God would only come when his will was done, and those who love him must surely be those who do his will: ‘the will of God is done whenever a human being takes upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of God to do it.’ John’s gospel reports Jesus as saying, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work’. So to ask for one’s daily bread could even be seen as taking on the responsibility for doing God’s will. In any event it seems likely that this is not simply a prayer for material provision. There is probably a link with the provision of manna in the wilderness, and possibly with the bread of last supper. Indeed the choice of such an unusual Greek word within the prayer might even have been to point up the eternal significance of the daily provision of God’s grace. We might paraphrase it in this sort of way: ‘Give today not only our bread for today but that bread which is for every day (namely eternity).’ As Jeremias put it: ‘For Jesus there was no opposition between earthly bread and the bread of life, for in the realm of the kingdom all earthly things are hallowed. The bread that Jesus broke when he invited publicans and sinners to his table, the bread he gave to his disciples at the last supper, was earthly bread and yet at the same time the bread of life. For the disciples of Jesus every meal and not only the last one had deep eschatological significance . Every meal with Jesus was a salvation meal, an anticipation of the final feast. At each meal he was the host as he would be at the consummation.’ If feeding on the bread God gives is to do his will, then to do his will is to forgive. The bread which we break is a sign of the body of Christ which is given for us, and our forgiveness. Since his nature is to be merciful, so if we are to live his will we also are to be merciful. Indeed his kingdom is hardly likely to come, his will is scarcely going to be done if we do not forgive those who are indebted to us. Prayer must never be seen as a vast buck-passing exercise to the Almighty. Instead Jesus teaches us that when we engage in prayer we take on mighty responsibility. At the end of John’s gospel Jesus says "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." The suggestion is that if there are people who languish in the hell of guilt then it will be because the disciples have not communicated the forgiving grace of God. Matthew’s placing of Jesus’s saying about forgiveness immediately at the close of the prayer shows his notion of the importance of this part of the prayer. Finally Jesus pleads with God not to bring him to a point of testing so severe that he is likely to fail. The time was to come in the place called Gethsemane when Jesus feared that that was precisely what was happening. But the central prayer, ‘your will be done’ overruled the prayer not to be put to the test. By the time that Matthew’s gospel was written this prayer would have been prayed by many who had faced the sternest test of all - martyrdom. Martyrdom is never to be desired: the appalling picture of the Christian faith promulgated by Nietzsche namely that it is a sick courting of suffering to subdue the human spirit, is a travesty far from the life embracing, health-desiring word of Jesus. But the desire not to be tested is to be balanced by a refusal to give in to the evil powers of the day. At all costs we must never sell our souls to forces opposed to the will of God. This battle with evil will sometimes result in the test being severe: but disciples never court suffering. Nor does God will it upon us. It is now becoming apparent that the prayer is closely linked with the beatitudes which opened the teaching. Prayer emerges as a response to God’s word: Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; do not bring us to the test, but rescue us from the evil one. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness: give us this day our daily bread. For they shall be filled. Blessed are those who are merciful: forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. For they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart. Hallowed by thy name. For they shall see God. To pray the kingdom is to live it. And if the heart of the message of the kingdom is forgiveness then a life of forgiveness must be lived. Christians begin in the psychologically important freedom of being those who have been forgiven much. Those who do not know what it means to be forgiven will always tend to have difficulty in forgiving anyone else. So when you go to make your sacrifice of repentance the mere sight of the altar will remind you of the enormity of your debt to God in the face of which that grievance which you hold against your brother will cry against you. You will drop the sacrifice, return to your brother make peace and then be at peace with God . In the life of the kingdom there is no place for grudges let alone revenge. To be a city set on a hill means that your life has to be above reproach. Purity does not simply mean not doing that which is wrong - but more radically not wanting to do it either. People who do not commit adultery may quite simply be those who would very much wish to but have no opportunity, or even those who lack the courage. Jesus lays down a far more radical definition: the voyeur who degrades women by treating them as a turn on but who is not prepared to take the responsibility of forming a loving relationship with them is not free from sin . At the very least such a severe definition of adultery should prevent most men from casting the first stone. The language Jesus uses is ferocious and led one great Biblical scholar to self mutilation . Of course Jesus was aware that voyeurism is not the fault of the eye, nor theft the action of an unwilling hand: it is quite clearly the case that it is neither the eye nor the hand that is to be punished. Surely there is a sense of ironic humour here. He has already told us that immorality is the fault of the ‘heart’, and by that he does not mean the organ either but rather the seat of the will. If you pluck out your right eye then it is likely that your left eye will continue to wander. If you cut off your right hand, your left will soon adapt. What is needed is wholesale repentance, which is a radical change of heart.

Mark 10 moral issues, riches and power

Many of the ethical issues that Jesus and his followers faced are no longer live issues: some of the issues the church faces today are not adequately dealt with in scripture. But it is clear that Jesus generally took a broad approach to ethics rather than a legalistic one. He tends towards compassion for the weak and is scathing towards those who exploit the law to gain advantage from it. Thus cleanliness rules which make it even more difficult for the hungry to eat, which make it easier for the rich farmers with good facilities to sell their produce and impossible for the poor to take their goods to market, are bad (whatever the scriptures may or may not say); and glosses on the law which enable people to wriggle out of responsibility to care for their elderly parents by making apparently generous donations to temple or synagogue are corrupt.

It appears that if a son made over to God that part of his possessions with which he would normally be expected to support his parents then he would be exempt from keeping them. However, the gift to God seems sometimes to have been a technicality, the son still receiving income from the property thus ensuring that scribes (who may have received a fee for the service) and sons did well out of it - but poor parents suffered. In some cases the son may have wished to be exonerated from the vow (Korban) but the scribes refused exemption (possibly for the benefit of the temple fund) and so they prevented him from making provision for his parents.

Later in the gospel Jesus similarly shows support both for children and for women: again siding with the weak against the strong. The Mosaic divorce law as practised was particularly hard on women. They had no right to divorce or even leave their husbands but the husband could divorce his wife for all kinds of reason: and whereas any affair the wife might have with another man was viewed as adultery, men could only commit adultery against another man by having an affair with his wife. An affair with a widow or an unmarried woman did not count as adultery. Moreover a woman whose husband had divorced her was left discarded, defenceless and impoverished; in a worse position socially even than widows.

Jesus is not prepared to enter into arcane disputes about what constitutes a serious enough reason for divorce. No excuse will ever be adequate to justify breaking apart those whom God has made one flesh. He recognises, however, that the law instituted by Moses was designed to make provision for human weakness; sometimes marriages will break down; when these breakdowns occur it is painful for all concerned and such breakdowns should never therefore be brought about on mere pretexts. Nor can they ever be justified by pulling Moses and divine law into the situation. God’s law is clear: marriage is intended to be for life and indissoluble. However when breakdowns occur, as they will from time to time, he asserts that women have the same rights as men; he maintains, despite the Jewish understanding of his times, that, when men have affairs with other women or divorce their wives to marry another, they commit adultery against their wives. He recognises that women can divorce their husbands - though in so doing they are committing adultery just as their husbands do if they divorce their wives. In other words if men accept the validity of divorce then that validity applies equally to women. In our culture Jesus’s teaching can seem unbending and harsh: but in a culture where men could treat their wives casually and claim to be keeping the law, his teaching safeguarded women and impressed upon both men and women the sacred nature of a marriage covenant. His firm stand on the sanctity of marriage primarily protected women and children: and his apparent equating of the rights of wives to obtain a divorce with those of their husbands protected them against abuse from their husbands.

In his teaching on children, Jesus similarly raises their status. When parents bring children to Jesus for him to bless them the disciples brush them aside. They have no time for such trivialities. Perhaps they were angry at the lingering superstition and folk religion that surrounded Jesus’s ministry: But Jesus has already placed a child at the very heart of his ministry. It has been pointed out that it later became traditional for parents to take their children to the rabbi for a blessing on the Day of Atonement. Throughout his gospel Mark seems only to deal with children as victims. Here once again they appear as victims of the disciples discrimination against them. Jesus, though, turns everything on its head: it is to these children that the kingdom of God belongs. The next two passages make clear that it is not the rich or those with ambitions to sit at the left and right hands of Jesus who will inherit the kingdom: rather it is those who have nothing. Here the children stand as examples of all little ones. And all people who would enter the kingdom must receive it with the faith of such little ones: those who are dependent and vulnerable; those who allow themselves to be lifted and loved; those obedient to the Father; those, hopefully, not yet vitiated with the power games and desire for status of the adult world. On that simple faith the atonement of the world might depend.

The next story provides the contrast that makes the meaning of the incident with the children stand out in sharp relief. A man comes up to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Once he has satisfied Jesus that he has kept all the commandments since his youth Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. The man is unable to do this and goes away sorrowful. In explaining his treatment of the man to his disciples Jesus points out to his disciples how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It is not simply riches that prevent people from entering the kingdom, a whole set of values has to be turned on its head. The prevailing attitude in Jewish theology was that wealth was a sign of God’s favour. Yet this man seems not to have been totally satisfied with this complacent doctrine otherwise he would not have come to Jesus in the first place unless it was purely for reassurance. Those who argue that Jesus, in commanding the man to dispose of his possessions and help the poor was being specific only to this particular case have to wrestle with Jesus’s own explanation to the disciples afterwards. It is apposite to quote RH Grundy commenting on the parallel passage in Matthew: “That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command”. For children who own no property, who are totally dependent on their parents for everything they have, entry into the kingdom is easy: for the rich it is even more difficult than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, despite the fact that the man whose sad story gives rise to the teaching is the only one in Mark’s gospel who is marked out as a man Jesus loved.

Indeed this story is typical of many in the gospels in which everything is stacked up to reach a particular conclusion only to arrive at the opposite. There is no mention of the man being rich at the beginning of the story. He kneels before Jesus much as the leper had done. Uniquely in the gospel he identifies Jesus as “good”. He had the right priority for his own life - the desire for a life of eternal worth. He has kept the commandments. And Jesus looked at him with love. Then came the bombshell. As a man of property, he ends up going away devastated.

Ched Myers draws our attention to a number of interesting features within this story. It may well be that the man is trying to flatter Jesus and that explains Jesus’s sharp reply. He obviously not only thought Jesus was good but wanted to be told he was good in return. He had kept the commandments since his youth and wished for commendation. In Jewish tradition only Aaron and Moses had been credited with keeping the whole law. Jesus gives none. It is likely that the long, compassionate look of love Jesus gave him is meant to be in contrast with the man’s keeping of the law. Jesus’s love is people this man’s love is wealth. To begin with Jesus speaks to him as he did to the leper: “get up and go”. It is as if this man needs to be healed in the same way as the leper was. The last word to him, “come, follow me”, is the same call to discipleship as that offered to fisherman at the beginning of the gospel. It is the second and third orders that are exceptional: to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor and so exchange treasure on earth for treasure in heaven. This the only story in Mark’s gospel of discipleship rejection.

For the disciples with their traditional theology the inability of rich people (those patently enjoying God’s blessing) to enter the kingdom makes entry for anyone impossible. However, the lesson of the story of the sower and the seed still stands true. Despite all negative appearances the kingdom will come. And those prepared to let go of all their loves for the love of the kingdom will see their losses amply repaid in blessings of greater value, though those blessings may also come with persecution. For this turning on its head of all materialist life-styles cannot be achieved painlessly. Nevertheless the disciples are not to despair for what looks impossible in human terms is not impossible to God.

Mark 5 21- 43 dealing with daughters

One device that Mark uses frequently in his gospel is to interrupt one story with another: thus each story shines light on the other. Back in Galilee, one of the leaders of the synagogue is anxious about his daughter who is dying. He asks Jesus to heal her but the journey to the house is made difficult by the crowds pressing in on Jesus and hampering his progress. Meanwhile hidden in the crowds is a woman who has been haemorrhaging for twelve years. By the strict purity laws of the day she should not have been in direct contact with people, but she pushes through and touches Jesus’s coat, believing that even that small touch will heal her. Immediately she experiences healing. Jesus, aware that power has gone out of him, stopped and asked who touched him. The woman steps forward, expecting a rebuke, but nevertheless admitting her guilt. Jesus, far from admonishing her, addresses her personally: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." While Jesus is still speaking, messengers come from Jairus’s house; they say,"Your daughter is dead”. That juxtaposition of the word daughter is as powerful as anything in the gospel.

For many people the life of the unclean woman in the crowd with the 12 year haemorrhage, which had been persistently treated by doctors to no avail, was not worth the same as that of the twelve year old daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Yet by the use of the word daughter Jesus immediately and unequivocally puts a value on that woman as she relates to him as directly equivalent to that of the little girl as she relates to her father. Moreover, Jesus could have allowed the woman to have slipped away into the crowd, healed but unnoticed. By drawing attention to her, by singling her out, by making her step forward and by addressing her so publicly, Jesus makes plain to all around, even to Jairus, that he has been touched by a woman who is unclean. The received wisdom was and always has been that clean is made dirty when it touches something contaminated.
“As dirtie hands foule all they touch,
and those things most which are most pure and fine” (George Herbert)
Here Jesus breaks the eternal rule: instead of him being contaminated he feels power flow out of him, the clean one, to purify the unclean. The damage of the fall has been thrown into reverse.

A challenge has now been thrown down to Jairus. If he wants his daughter be restored to life he has to accept Jesus into his home whether clean or not. His faith overcomes his misgivings. Jesus then clears the crowd, including all but three of his disciples and makes his way to Jairus’s house; at the house mourning rituals are already in motion. Again Jesus clears the house of all but the immediate family: this healing is to be an intimate private affair, possibly out of sensitivity to the child. Gently calling her to her feet, Jesus raises her to life and tells them to give her something to eat, and to respect the private way in which she had been raised.

At this point a number of parallels between the two stories become apparent. First of all the twelve years haemorrhaging of the woman is mirrored by the twelve years of the little girl’s age. Possibly the repeated number twelve is intended to be symbolic of the twelve tribes and the twelve disciples, whose faith seems to have been haemorrhaging away. Possibly the mention of the girl’s age in the context of the twelve years’ haemorrhage reminds us that she, too, was about to begin to menstruate, or perhaps is simply there to indicate the appalling suffering of the woman whose needs had been ignored, indeed whose condition had been exploited by unscrupulous doctors, for the whole lifetime of Jairus’s precious daughter.

The ability of an articulate leader of the local community to come and plead with Jesus for healing on behalf oh his daughter is contrasted poignantly with the woman with no-one to plead her case, who has to approach surreptitiously, hiding herself in the crowd and illegally touch him for healing. Only then, when already clean was she able to come out of the crowd and ask formally in the way Jairus had done, though, even then, only in fear and trembling. In the end it was not the nature of the approach, nor the issue of social class or age, gender or status that was significant: only faith.

The professional mourners who made a living out of death are treated scathingly by the story teller. They have the temerity to laugh at Jesus, the Lord of life. Their mocking prepares the way for the mockery of the Golgotha crowds just as surely as the amazement of the family prepares us for the similar amazement of the women as they fled from the open tomb at the very end of the gospel.

crossing to the other side Mark 4 35-41

It is generally thought that Mark’s gospel was written between 65 & 70 C.E., probably either in Rome or in the north of Palestine. This was a time of crisis for both Christians and Jews both in Rome and in Israel. In Rome Nero’s persecutions were in full swing until he died in 68; during his reign the two great leaders of the church, Peter and Paul, were both martyred. Utter chaos prevailed from 68-69 with 4 emperors taking office in that year. The situation in Palestine was even more fractured: the Jewish revolt was being bloodily put down: in 70, Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple plundered and burnt under the orders of Titus, and eventually the religious and political fabric of the Jewish nation was to be totally dismembered. Whichever provenance we choose for Mark’s gospel, the background against which it was written was stormy and dangerous, particularly for Jews and Jewish sub-sects like the Christian church. At the same time we know from Paul’s letters that the church was rapidly reaching out from its Jewish roots into Gentile communities. This trans-cultural movement in itself caused pain and soul-searching within the more conservative Jewish-Christian groups; this pain could only have been exacerbated by the persecutions in Rome and war in Palestine.

In the early chapters of Mark’s gospel Jesus frequently withdraws to the lake or the hills for prayer, for respite, for thinking-space, or even to coach his team in discipleship. Right at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus establishes a rhythm of frenetic activity and withdrawal. From time to time the order is given to cross to the “other side” of the lake for mission. The gospel stories of journeys to the other side are fraught with danger, difficulty, feelings of alienation and the seeming absence of God: the stories are of headwinds, rough seas, storms and sinking boats. When Jesus is in the boat he seems ineptly unaware and unconcerned: sometimes he is not even in the boat at all.

On the first occasion a huge storm descended upon them in the night: even the experienced fishermen thought the end had come, but Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat. It is not difficult to imagine the first hearers of this gospel listening knowingly to this story. Here they were seeking to take the word of life to other side and yet whenever they did so they encountered trouble: persecutions in Rome and hostility at home. Major figures of the church had been killed including both the radical Paul - the apostle to the Gentiles and the more conservative Peter, with whom Paul had had stand-up rows about circumcision and gentile dinner parties. This going to the other side was indeed a dangerous and lonely business.

The early church had been given courage by the assurance that Jesus would return in triumph. Indeed Jesus’s promise is recorded in the gospel: And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." Yet here these leading figures were tasting appalling death while Jesus seemed to be either asleep, or worse, absent. The outcome of the story, however, was that Jesus silenced the storm and then rounded on the disciples for their lack of faith. They then, in their turn, are more amazed than ever at the authority of the man they are following.

On another occasion they found themselves rowing into a headwind that was so strong that they feared they would die of exhaustion before they reached the shore. This time Jesus was not in the boat; he had sent them on ahead while he went into the hills to pray. Then he came to them walking across the water; the result was the same. The wind dropped and they reached their destination safely.

Journeys to the other side are implicit in the work of the kingdom. Indeed there can be no kingdom without them. Invariably they are going to be hard. In the time of the gospels it meant engaging with the Gentile population on the other side of the lake. In our day they may mean crossing equally deep cultural divides: engaging with youth culture, the homeless, those living in tower blocks and neglected housing estates, people of different colour, different religion, crossing into the world of commerce or industry, or entering into politics. While it may seem on the whole easier to keep to what we know, to be settled within the small circle of our own fellowship, the call is always going to be to take the risk and go to the other side whatever that might mean to us in our situation. Obeying it will undoubtedly lead to difficulty, mistakes, the feeling that we are up against it, sometimes even the sense of the absence of God. It will frequently seem that the hostile elements have the advantage over us. Yet if we are called to do this work then it will not fail. Lack of faith is a greater enemy than the forces ranged against us: for lack of faith may cause us to sink untraced into the sea, though even then, despite appearances, the Lord is close by to save.

In understanding the power of these stories it is helpful to know something of the immense fear and respect Jews had for the sea. They left love of the sea to their neighbours; in earlier times, the Philistines, more recently the Phoenicians and Greeks. They took delight in a God who had closed the sea in behind fixed boundaries. The sea was the unstable and untameable domain of Leviathan; a place of storms and unpredictability. Sometimes that capriciousness worked in their favour as when the waters of the Red Sea came tumbling back and engulfed the pursuing Egyptians. But a huge bronze representation of the sea was kept in the temple as a sign that even those things over which man had no control lay within the reach of God. Job cries out, “Am I like the sea that you have to set a guard over me?” When prophets like Isaiah wanted to proclaim the cosmic breadth of God’s salvation it was to extend it to coast-lands and islands. And here was Jesus able to sleep in the height of a storm at sea, while
They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits' end.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he brought them out from their distress;
he made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.



On another occasion, even more powerfully, he was able to stride across its unstable waters with all the security and control of one walking up a country path. The Jesus who was at peace in a wilderness of wild beasts, is equally at peace in the midst of a stormy sea. Clearly there were not any no go areas for him. It seems likely that it was to point up such theological points as these that Mark referred not to the Lake of Galilee, its usual title, but the Sea.

These stories of crossing to the other side, however, show the disciples in a far less favourable light. Jesus had failed to find faith in the religious establishment and had only just chosen this group to be a new symbolic Israel through whom he could work. He had begun to instruct them in the secrets of the kingdom and now put them to their first test. How would they manage without him? They had panicked and shown themselves to be no more full of faith than his own family: they had rounded on him, accused him of not caring, lacking compassion and being lazy. Above all they demonstrated that they were ultimately just as prone to despair, to give up, to let the sea of evil overwhelm them as the religious establishment had been. This failure at the first test was sadly to be replicated several more times before those shocking last hours when all forsook Jesus and fled, the last of them disappearing naked into the night losing his last vestige of respectability and dignity in the melee of the Jerusalem streets on the night when he was betrayed.

mustard seed Mark 4 31,

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed........

Jesus has much to say about seeds. They are to be scattered freely, even wastefully, not held on to grimly; they are to be allowed to germinate in their own time; they do their work most effectively when they are hidden in the dark fertile soil rather than exposed to scrutiny. Though small, insignificant and apparently shrivelled and dead they carry within themselves latent energy that, in the right conditions, brings forth a miraculous harvest. They are quite capable of producing a harvest even when enemy forces attempt to displace them. They are also reliable and true to type: if wheat is sown wheat is reaped: if weeds are sown then only weeds grow.

With seed size does not matter: authenticity is more important. So the kingdom of God is not about making a big impression. The world has seen its empires come and go: they are lampooned in the prophecies of Daniel (4. 20ff) and Ezekiel (17. 24). They have dominated the world like cedars but the kingdom of God is not like that: its energy is concealed in the humble mustard seed of faith. It will displace the ostentatious mountains of empire and manipulative religion (Matthew 17. 20): and will cast the luxuriant mulberry with its blood-red fruit into the sea of oblivion. (Luke 17. 6)

The mustard seed, when planted, becomes a shrub capable of providing shelter even to birds, which, in the parable of the sower, are the enemies of the seed. But, of course, although the birds of the air swoop down and eat the seed, in turn they spread the seeds through their droppings. The kingdom of God provides shelter for all kinds of people and projects. There are times when some of these even seem hostile - devouring faith. But in the work of the kingdom even the enemies of good turn out to be the allies of the gospel: like the birds nesting alarmingly in the shadows of its branches and pecking away at the seeds even while the bush is still in flower, they become inadvertent spreaders of the seed, providing new growth points in unlikely locations.

In mission we are to be openhanded. Sometimes we feel embarrassed that the projects we can see with the eye of faith, look insignificant in seed and unspectacular in fulfilment. Like the mustard plant. Often the growth of the plants is slow and unspectacular. Sometimes even when they flourish they bring with them alarming side effects which disappoint us. But God sees more than we can imagine: he prizes that which we often disdain. The mustard plant in his eyes is more important than the cedar. He puts his trust in our minuscule faith. To fulfil his dream he hands his kingdom over to us like seed; not for us to cling to and keep within our tight fists, but for us to sow, in promising and unpromising locations.

Through faithfulness, integrity, openhandedness and patience the kingdom of heaven comes with simple grace and humble maturity, not to dominate or to overpower but to provide shelter and peace for all even its enemies. He has entrusted the kingdom to us. Dare we let him down?

Mark 1 40-45 touching a leper

There were times when Jesus, himself, cried out in anguished despair at the state of the world he had come into. The sheer weight of it appalled him and angered him. In the next healing story we find Jesus confronted by a man suffering from a virulent skin disease which alienated him from society. In this meeting we read that Jesus was angry and as he sent him away he was ‘snorting with indignation’. When a man came to him with an epileptic child Jesus was so outraged at the incapability of either the ‘teachers of the law’ or his own disciples to do anything about it that he launched out “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?” In some ways the boy with the demon that makes him both deaf and speechless is symbolic of the religious world to which Jesus came. The disciples ask him how he cast out this demon. Jesus replies: "This kind can come out only through prayer." The religious establishment seems both so complacently accepting and at the same time so utterly despairing that it has come to accept the world for what it is and has either totally lost all hope of a Kingdom of God or pushed it so far into the future that it is distant and irrelevant. Thus the religious establishment - both disciples and scribes alike - have become the means by which the world continues to suffer without any sign of justice because they have ceased to be the channels of God‘s grace and love and the means of his compassion. Similarly, in the story of the man with the skin disease, the way the Torah (law) was interpreted by the priests compelling a man to live as a leper an outcast within a chosen people, with no hope of rehabilitation, left Jesus snorting with rage. The man clearly had already been to the priest for a declaration that he was clean for Jesus sent him back. Jesus trumped the authority of the priest by touching the man, declaring him clean and sent him back to make the sacrifices only a clean man could make, thus ‘witnessing against the system’. But the failure of the man to comply with the law, of course, and instead tell the whole town that Jesus had touched him, marked Jesus out as potentially unclean too. Hence his need to retreat from that area.