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| End the Week with CME - July 3, 2009 | 3rd Jul 2009 | View Full Story | Download |
| Plunging your fist into a bucket of water, pulling it out and seeing how the water immediately fills up the space is sometimes recommended as an exercise for anyone who thinks they are indispensable. The bible is full of stories of people who looked indispensable but ultimately were not. (more...) |
| End the Week with CME - June 26, 2009 | 26th Jun 2009 | View Full Story | Download |
| From the sublime miracle of raising a child from death (Mark 5.21-43), Jesus meets a brick wall in his home town, Nazareth. 'He could not do any miracles there – except he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them' (Mark 6.5). Healing a few sick people might have been impressive enough once, but now it's small beer in the light of Jesus' triumphs in Capernaum and beyond. The people of his home town were ready to be astonished at what had happened through Jesus (Mark 6.2). But by the end of the episode it is Jesus who is astonished at their failure to believe (Mark 6.6). (more...) |
| End the Week with CME - June 19, 2009 | 19th Jun 2009 | View Full Story | Download |
| Twelve years is a long time. Long enough for parents to watch a child to grow from being a baby to the edge of womanhood; long enough for a woman to feel her life ebb away into despair with chronic illness. In Mark's story of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood and the raising of Jairus' daughter, one of the themes is faith and hope in the midst of despair. (more...) |
| End the Week with CME - May 22, 2009 | 22nd May 2009 | View Full Story | Download |
| There's a lot of coming and going in John's gospel, sending and being sent. The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the 'comforter' (John 16.5-7). At the end of the gospel the disciples are included in the movement: 'as the Father sends me, so I send you' (John 20.21). In the parable of the sheep-gate Jesus promises the disciples that 'whoever enters through me will be saved; they will come in and go out and find pasture' (John 10.9). This feature of coming and going characterises John's distinctive contribution to thinking about mission – a word which of course means 'being sent'. (more...) |
| End the Week with CME - May 1, 2009 | 1st May 2009 | View Full Story | Download |
| I used to have vine below my bedroom window. In the summer it spread out and made a wonderful canopy, and one of my main memories of that house is lying in bed and listening to the rain pattering on the vine leaves below. Showers rarely penetrated to the ground beneath the vine. The trunk was twisted and knotty, but amazingly resilient. It had been planted by a previous vicar, who had brought the root back from Israel. When you stood beneath the vine in summer it enveloped you, and you felt as if you were caught up in it. (more...) |

