Christ Church Mandurah Resources

JOHN 12:20-33 21 march ccm I may have shared with you before about the very first funeral service I was asked to conduct; I was a very new deacon.   I had been caring for a lady in the parish with Parkinson’s disease, and when she died her family asked me to conduct the service. I think you can imagine how nervous I was; I so wanted to get things right for this family.   After the service, one of their friends came to me and said “the funeral for a Christian is always a celebration”.   I must admit, I was quite shocked and I thought he was nuts.   I couldn’t see any reason to celebrate. But I have learned that he was right – he was right and at the time I just didn’t get it.   Any priest will tell you that there really is a distinct difference between the funeral service for a Christian and for those who have no faith. And the difference is because of Easter.   As believers, we might not understand everything about Easter, we may have trouble getting our heads around the behaviour

 John 2:13-22 7 MARCH 2021 As we reach the halfway point of Lent, things are beginning to take a more serious turn. Jesus is in Jerusalem, and as we read John chapter 2, Jesus begins to be noticed, but for all the wrong reasons. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke have the Temple clearing taking place just days before the crucifixion, but John has Jesus clearing the temple during the first of 3 Passovers he mentions in his Gospel. Jesus certainly had an audience. Every Jewish male was expected to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the week-long festival of unleavened bread, during which the Passover was celebrated. So at this time The Temple was crowded with visitors, and the temple authorities crowded it even more by allowing money changers and merchants to set up their stalls in the outer Court of the Gentiles. We might wonder what made Jesus so angry: it certainly wasn’t his first visit to the Temple and he had surely seen all this before. It wasn’t just that the merchants crow