| End the Week with CME - June 26, 2009 | 26th Jun 2009 | Download | Email to a Friend |
Welcome to End the Week with CME! This weekly email is sent automatically to Clergy and Readers in the diocese (if you don't want to receive it, please send an email to CovEW-unsubscribe@lists.covlec.org) but anyone is welcome to subscribe to the list, and we are especially keen to pass it on to any interested lay people, especially those who may have responsibility for preaching. To subscribe they simply need to email CovEW-subscribe@lists.covlec.org.
CME Events Coming Up
September 22, 2009 - Spanish Mystics
A Spirituality Reflection Day with Ruth Tuschling, Tuesday 22 September at Offa House, 10am-3pm with an abbreviated repeat from 7.30-9.30pm. Cost: £30 (including lunch) for the daytime course, £12.50 (including coffee and cakes) for the evening. Grants of half the cost are available for clergy and Readers. Book through cme@covcofe.org.
Other Events Coming Up
Ministry Where You Work?
All Readers, OLMs and NSMs in the Coventry Diocese are invited to attend this half-day workshop to explore ‘What Sacraments do I discover at work?’
Saturday 11 July 2009, 9am - 12.30pm at Offa House, Offchurch
Followed by an optional lunch (at own cost) for those who would like to stay (£12.50)
The programme will allow time to talk about what you actually do at work, and to explore how this might be Ministry. In particular, we shall explore the sacraments we discover in the course of our work. As well as talking together, we shall work in small groups and allow time for individual reflection. There will also be time for prayer, focussed on the issues of our workplaces.
Please contact Revd Dr Felicity Smith before 30 June if you would like to attend:
felicity@fandi.me.uk or 01926 492452.
For details of all the events coming up, which have been advertised in recent editions of End the Week, please go to http://www.coventry.anglican.org/ministry/learning/trainingstudy/
Notes on the Gospel Readings for Sunday 5 July (Trinity 4)
Mark 6. 1-13
Meanwhile, Back in Nazareth…
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).
Luke amplifies the story of Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth (Luke 4.16-30), but Mark’s version conveys the same feelings in a much shorter form. The theme of Jesus’ rejection by those who should have welcomed him forms a kind of ‘bookmark’ in the story which Mark is telling – there is a similar marker in Mark 3.1-6, where the Pharisees turn against Jesus. The rejection at Nazareth is an intensely personal one. Jesus belongs to the town, his family is known well (Mark 6.3). He reacts by denouncing them all, including his own family (Mark 6.4).
Yet – and this is perhaps the most important point in the passage – this rejection does not lead Jesus to abandon his mission or even to go more slowly. Instead he ups the tempo. Mark’s phrase ‘he went around in a circuit’ (periegen...kuklo, Mark 6.6) suggests that there was a deliberate pattern to Jesus’ activity. Where before the movements described seem rather haphazard, now Jesus appears to have some kind of strategy in mind, covering the whole of Galilee and perhaps beyond.
But he could not cover such an area on his own. The twelve, who have been with him now for a while (see Mark 3.14), have reached a new stage. Jesus sends them out (Mark 6.7) to spread the news. They go two by two, a safer way to travel, but perhaps also a means of ensuring that their witness to Jesus is not uncorroborated. Clearly the twelve are invested with all of Jesus’ own authority (Mark 6.7) – they are more than messengers. Even their equipment (or lack of it) is symbolic of their mission. They do not need bread or money, not even a change of clothes (Mark 6.8-9), signs of a radical dependence on God rather than human beings. The result is success. In contrast with the meagre effects in Nazareth, across Galilee now ‘many demons’ are cast out, and ‘many sick were healed’ (Mark 6.13).
The way Mark frames these stories shows that rejection and failure are not necessarily reasons to give up. Jesus had a clear picture of what he was called to do, articulated early in the gospel (Mark 1.38). Failure in his home town, the place he might perhaps have expected to make his headquarters, was not enough to deflect him from his mission. However personally painful it might have been, it was a little local difficulty compared to the task to which God had called him and which, with his disciples, he was well on the way to fulfilling.
And Finally... toilet twinning!
CORD’s unique toilet twinning initiative has gone live this week! You’ll find details at www.toilettwinning.org – where else would you get to spend three years of your life? For £60 you can twin your home / office / church / school loo to a latrine in Africa to help support CORD’s water-sanitation work there. In return they’ll send you a framed “I’ve twinned my toilet” certificate to hang in your loo with its own unique GPS reference point so that you can find your latrine on Google Earth!
Bishop Christopher has twinned his loo with a new loo in Burundi. “Its' a bog standard idea with a great message,” said Bishop Christopher. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/8112187.stm
That's all, folks!
Richard
Richard Cooke
Coventry CME
Richard.Cooke@CovCofE.org