Angels Were There For Him

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

Mark 1:12-14

The Spirit, the Desert, Satan, Wild Beasts and Angels!

We live in a more or less hostile environment. There is much in the world to pull us down. Whether it is the physical situation, or loneliness, or temptations, or danger.

What we need is angels. God provides Jesus with the help he needs. Neither does God forget us in our need. We are all children of God!

Angels waited on him. Angels attended him. Angels ministered to him. It means they were there for him. That was their purpose. It still is.

Back to Palestine/Israel. There’s an organisation called Ecumenical Accompaniment Progamme in Palestine Israel (EAPPI). EAPPI is a work of the World Council of Churches, set up in response to pleas from Christians in Israel for the church to do something about the conflict in Palestine Israel.

EAPPI provides groups of individuals who go for three months to be a peaceful presence in the region. They stand at checkpoints to support Palestinians, they may report human rights violations, and are a vital part of the efforts to bring peace with justice to the region. See http://www.eappi.org/ for more.

These EAPPI volunteers are among the angels who attend the Palestinian people.

Bible · faith · Political · World Affairs

You Are My Beloved Son

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.E1 Comment

Mark 1:9-11

The first chapter of Mark’s Gospel has the Greek word meaning ‘immediately’ 11 times. (It’s not always apparent in the English translations, because the translators use different words). Here is the first use of the word – ‘And just (Greek – immediately) as he was coming up out of the water …’

As soon as Jesus enters the story, things take off. There’s an urgency about the Mission. But, before the mission can begin, Jesus is baptised and affirmed as God’s son.

To know who we are can take a lifetime. The journey of self understanding can be a tortuous one for many. The most important part of our identity is our place in relation to God. God’s child. Everyone should be able to know this, and be afforded this dignity by others.

I have just been watching the documentary film ‘Occupation 101’ about Israel/Palestine. Palestinians are treated by many Israelis as second class citizens. The are treated by the Israeli state as people with no rights.

They have to stand in line to cross checkpoints to get to work, or school, or hospital. There is a recent documented incident of a Palestinian woman dying in childbirth because she was not able to get to hospital. (Her new born child also died)

I could say much more about this, and probably will. The trauma of living in a war zone in conditions of poverty, and oppression has had devastating effects on the Palestinian people.

The children of Gaza will need an army of psychiatrists to help them if they are ever to live anything like a normal life.

The wall that separates Israeli from Palestinian is called the wall of separation. In South Africa there was no wall, but Apartheid (which means separation) meant that black South Africans were treated as less than human in the same way that Palestinians are treated by Israel.

One small thing that we can do is to treat everyone with the same respect. We all need to know our identity as a child of God

Bible · faith

Setting Out The Whole Gospel

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

Mark 1:4-8

John the Baptist is the link between the Old and the New. he stands in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets – proclaiming a message of repentance (metanoia – radical change) and forgiveness.

John’s prophecy – that someone will baptise with the Holy Spirit – is referred to later in Acts 1:5 by Jesus after the resurrection. The baptism that will take place at Pentecost, with the coming of the Spirit.

So what Mark is looking forward to in these words of John ‘He will baptise with the Holy Spirit’ – is beyond Christ’s death and resurrection, all the way to the coming of the Spirit.

Mark is setting his stall out in its entirety. This is what it’s all about in the end, he is saying. The fulfilment of God’s plan through Jesus, that will culminate in the coming of the Spirit.

Bible · faith

The Importance Of The Old

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.E1 Comment

Mar 1:2-2

What Jesus brings is not a new religion. We have enough of that. More than enough. Jesus was rooted in the Old Testament scriptures, in the faith of his ancestors. What Jesus brought was a fulfilment of the promises made long ago.

These words are addressed TO Jesus ‘See I am sending my messenger ahead of you’

The old is often rejected in favour of the new. The old is often scorned. It’s boring, irrelevant. But this new thing that Jesus does is rooted in the ancient revelation of God through the prophets. Christians (especially evangelical and charistmatic ones) sometimes think that by singing a load of new songs and listening to inspirational preaching, we can get everything we need to feed our spirit.

This is in danger of being Do it Yourself Christianity. There are ancient ways of reading, and praying and living that we miss at our peril

Bible · faith

The Beginning Of Good News

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

Mark 1:1

The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Opening words are important. This is Good News. Whatever else it will be, it is Good News.

The Greek for in the beginning is ‘en arche’ … these two words are at the start of the book of Genesis, and also John’s gospel. In Genesis, the new beginning is creation. Everything has a starting point. ‘En arche’ is about something new.

In Genesis God’s new beginning brings life out nothing. Mark the evangelist is now talking about another new beginning, God’s new creation, which is all about who Jesus is and what Jesus will do.

Me · Uncategorized

Week One Of A Sabbatical

7th May 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

It’s Thursday 7th May 2009. I’m on day 4 of a nine week sabbatical. I thought I’d keep a diary.

For about 6 yrs I’ve been learning about conflict and peacemaking – through Bridge Builders, an offshoot of the London Mennonite Centre. So when it came to thinking about a focus for some study, I decided to look a bit more at conflict and peacemaking in the Bible, and especially think about the cross.

I’ll be spending a month in USA – partly family holiday, partly study at Eastern Mennonite University.

I’ll be doing some related reading, but I also wanted a devotional focus, so I picked Mark’s Gospel to read – a few verses at a time. I’m making some notes on it as I go, with particular reference to conflict, power, oppression, and related themes.

Well that’s an outline … so here goes.

faith

Preparing For A ‘Good Death’

22nd Mar 200922nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

Jade Goody died early today, Mothering Sunday 2009. One of her last decisions was to be baptised, together with her two sons, Bobby and Freddy. She has prepared herself for death in a way that we rarely see these days, and I applaud her for it.

For all the advances in medical diagnosis and treatments, human beings still die. We may sometimes be able to prolong our lives, but we are not immortal. Sadly we are often unwilling to face this truth, and so do not prepare ourselves for death.

In past centuries, one of the roles of the church was to prepare people for a ‘good death’, but all we seem interested in these days is having a ‘good life’. In those days, people would pray that death would not come suddenly or unexpectedly, so that they could prepare for it.

In that time, they would make their peace with God, with their loved ones and neighbours, and prepare to meet with God. Bur even before that, they would live their lives in the knowledge that this life is, at least in part, a preparation of the life of the world to come.

And when that time came, they would hope that their family would be around them to share their final hours in this life, and commend them to God. In those days, a priest would often be called to pray with them as the end came near. In these more secular days, our society has found other ways of preparing for death, and people do not see the need to involved clergy. Interestingly, however, some of the ‘ancient’ ways of the church are being rediscovered, particularly the importance of making peace with others.

I am given hope by Jade Goody, who died peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by her family. My prayer for her is that she found that ‘good death’ for which she was seeking. In her recent marriage, and in her baptism, and in other ways, may she have found peace, and in the end, may she, with the faithful departed, rest in peace to rise in glory.

World Affairs

The Battle Of The Somme

27th Oct 200622nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment

I’ve just come back from a few days away in the Autumn school break. We have been visiting the First World War Battlefields on the Somme.

Those who served in WW1 are remembered in cemeteries all over Northern France, and in museums and sites in the area.

At Beaumont Hamel, soldiers from Newfoundland are remembered in a preserved site that aims to show something of what it was like in the trenches.

There’s a book in which visitors can record their own feelings. Many of those who have written in the book have come to pay their respects to ancestors who fought in the world wars.

Many of the entries are along the lines of ‘Thank you – you gave your lives so that we could have freedom’

I don’t want to take away from the spirit of service that was shown by so many of our service men and women, I just wanted to write in the book ‘What a waste’

There seemed to be a widespread desire that we learn from the two world wars, but we still pursue what we perceive to be honourable ends by violent means.

faith · Political

Confronting Evil By Peaceful Means

29th Sep 200622nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.E1 Comment

We live in a world where it seems that violence can be justified, as along as we can persuade ourselves that it is in the cause of right. We take this ‘truth’ in almost with our mother’s milk as we are fed a diet of cartoons, and then, as we grow older, films, that seem to say – ‘As long as you are a goody, it’s OK to kill the baddies’. I can remember from my childhood the westerns that almost always portrayed cowboys as the goodies and indians as the baddies. More recently we have a multitude of action films starring people like Bruce Willis that promote this view that we can stamp out evil by force.

If we are not careful, we imagine that you can divide the world up into good people and bad people. (we ourselves of course, are always on the side of right!) Today, for example, many people in the West suspect all Arabs of being bad. Imagine that you are in the secret service, and an Arab suspected of being a terrorist, and with possible links to terrorist organisations, is brought in for questioning. There has been a rumour going round that the next terrorist attack will be targetted on a school somewhere in the UK. How far would you go with this suspect, bearing in mind that he denies being a terrorist ? Would you torture him to see if he knows anything ? (Only today, as I write, George Bush has admitted that the CIA has set up prisons outside the US where tactics of ‘co-ercive interrogation’ are used in the fight against terrorism)

The Russian writer Solzhenitsyn wrote – “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

When we attempt to stamp out evil using violent methods, we will always find oursevles compromised, and even the fruit of victory will end up tasting bitter.

So what should we do ? Do we let evil go unchallenged and unchecked. Of course not. The nation of Iraq needed to depose Saddam. But the methods chosen were wrong. The US and Uk governments were presented by a group of Christian activists with a detailed plan of oppostion to Saddam, but they did not pursue it, and chose the option of armed intervention instead.

In the Gospels we see the Christian way. Jesus confronts evil directly, but he deals with it through his suffering and resurrection, and not by force. Even God with all his power cannot stamp out evil if it means going gainst God’s nature to do it. We have some shining examples of the way of Christ in the last 100 years, notably Mahatma Ghandi, himself a Hindu.

May we be creative and determined in our opposition to all that is evil in our world, and be strengthened to follow the way of Christ.

Uncategorized

Jess’s Blog Away In Tanzania

27th Feb 200622nd Jul 2020 Jonnyfun.E1 Comment

My daughter Jessica (18) is in Tanzania, and has just set up her Blog.

This is her latest post.

Aw man, this weekend was SUCH an experience. we went out to mama rhoda’s village to stay with her brother and we were staying in mud huts held up by sticks. they are traditional “wigogo” houses and they are for people that are about 5 ft tall.most of them are very short..so when i was inside i had to tilt my head to one side and crouch down cause i was too tall!! We and mama rhoda(mariam) went to this village 2 hours out of dodoma. We got there about 6.30 on friday evening and as soon as we got there after 2 seconds there was about 50 kids around the car!! we leaned out of the windows and stopped the car and talked to them for about 15mins, and then it was getting dark and we needed to find this invisble house in the darkness..so we drove off and ALL of these little kids, from 3 years old to about 15 yeard old, were chasing our car! its like something you would see on TV!!! with no proper road and it was almost dark we found this little mud hut and mariams brother didnt even realise we were coming! they have no electricity so the only form of communication is sending letters in cars that happen to be passing through!! Even though we were unexpected we were so welcome in their home. along side the bedrooms were 36 goats and sheep, 2 HUGE pigs, loads of chickens and dogd and cats! the space was about the size of a small garden but everything was crammed in! that evening we were all sat in the open space and mariams brother got into the goat pen and brought one out… he said to us that we could take it home as a gift. We were so shocked! to buy a goat is the same amount of money as I would get paid in 1 month.. we really were honoured guests. we siad that we had no way of taking it home… and he said ok, we can either take it to your house in 1 week or you can eat it and we will prepare it for you now… we had not other option than to say eat it now!! so they killed it in front of us and we had to eat EVERYTHING!! we ended up eating the heart, liver, lungs, intestines, testis and all that stuff and even the blood. ewww… it didnt taste nice at all, ut we had no other option reallt than to eat it because this was such a treat. then of course we had to eat the mean too… they watched us eating it … was a bit off putting and it meant we had to keep smiling no matter how horrid and chewy it was!! but we arent poisened yet!!!
anyway, more or less straight after this we went to bed. it was about 12.30 by the time we had finished it. me jenny and mariam slept in a small room on the mud with the cats.. well we didnt sleep much but it didnt matter.
the next day started at 5 am. we had to use the toilet! we had hoped that we could hold our selves… but it wasnt possible! all the loo was, was a small hole in the ground about the size of a baked beans tin, with a wall up to my waist! it was a bit awkward trying not to expose all to the wigogo people, but i succeeded finally. we went to visit some people in the town and then went to see mariams brothers farm. it was quite sad, but interesting. this time of year the maize should be about my head hight by now, but it was only just ankle level. they are really struggling with the rain, but are getting by. it was a 2hour walk each way across the fields every day to the farm for them… i only just managed to get there and back!!!
after thios they cooked us a tanzanian dish called ugali, which is basically maize flower in boiling water to make a white flower jelly.. ill make it for you all one day… it an experience!! anyway, we got ugali… but it was made with millet. it was very different. it was a gray colour and was like sand. its easier to grow with no rain, and so most people grow this if they think the rains wont come. wasnt very nice really, very grainy, but i guess its nutritious and at least they have food!!
after this we went to a fresh water spring! that was amazing! i wont go on too much about that cause ive said lots already! but there was hot water bubbling up from uderneath the ground!!! it was beautiful! people go there to bath and wash clothes (…and by the smell of it goodness know what else they did in there too..! ) and that was so nice.
it was about 5.45 and time to get home before darkness dawned upon the fields and we got home safely afrriving 5mins from home with a FLAT TIRE!!!!! thank goodness we were in town by now! we got 2 guys to change it and they said theyd do it if they could have a soda for it so we agreed and they got it done so quickly. timed to the mili second they took 2 mins 37.126 secs to change our 4×4 patrol car tire! not bad eh?! surely got to be a world record!
anyway we arrived back and it was nice to have our comforts, but it made me realise how much we dont need these things. we have been braught up to be dependent on electricity and elecrical things that we never see what amazing and exciting lives we could live. We are so lucky to have things that we have! its just so amazing – i can post this on here in 5 mins and people 4,700 miles can read it within seconds!
You go to a doctor who you cant pronounce the name of, you get a prescription which you cant read, he tells you to go to a pharmacy you never knew existed, and they give you some pills which you have no clue about how they work….. thats faith!! these guys in the village had sooo much faith in God. they just knew from day to day everything would be good for them. everything would work out ok and they’ll live until God chooses them to live to. they just know… they trust and they are soo happy! HEBREWS 11:1. 🙂
what amazing things God’s shown me this weekend!
have a great week. xx

My Comment:

What an experience for her!!!