Christ Church Mandurah Resources

  MARK 5:21-43 I am sure you are by now used to hearing about my favourite stories in the Gospels: today we have another one: I love the stories of the woman with the issue of blood, and Jairus the desperate father, because it speaks of people who have tried everything and now have nowhere else to turn, and it speaks of Jesus power.  We can really sympathise both with Jairus and the sick woman with the haemorrhage; these people are hanging on to life by a thread. And they both teach us about how to approach God. It is also written in a favourite technique of Mark’s Gospel: he begins to tell one story, then inserts another story and then resumes his original story. So we have Jairus and his sick daughter, then we switch to the woman with the haemorrhage, and then we switch back to Jairus and his daughter. To Biblical scholars, this is known as a Markan sandwich: a story within a story. In Mark’s Gospel, we read about Jesus healing Peter’s mother in law, a paralyzed man saved by the fait

Mark 4: 35-41 Today’s Gospel continues the story of Jesus busy day: he has appointed the twelve, been accused of being out of his mind, given the parable of the sower, the lamp on the stand and the mustard seed, and now we find him in a boat with the disciples crossing to the other side of the lake. We know that most of the disciples were fishermen, so we can assume that they were used to stormy seas, but this storm seems to have unnerved even them.   They are panicked and yet Jesus is asleep in the boat, not even noticing the storm.   The disciples wake him and immediately he calms the storm, rebuking the wind and the waves.   For Mark, Jesus power over nature was a sign that God was with him, and that Jesus’s power stretched from miraculous healings to overcoming nature.   Jesus had gone from speaking about God’s power, to demonstrating it. The demonstration of Jesus power is just too confronting for the disciples, and takes them out of their comfort zones.   It shows them anot

Mark Chapter 4:26-36 I read an article recently which advised how you know that you have reached middle-age. One of the signs of middle age is talking to electrical equipment. So if you rant at your computer when it doesn’t understand what you want it to do, or have an argument with your radio whilst listening to talkback programmes, things are not looking good.   Driving back from Busselton some time ago, I found another sign of middle age - talking to road signs.  You know, when it says “Mandurah 75kms”, and then after what seems an age, the sign says “Mandurah 70 kms”.  I found myself say:” you’ve got to be joking; I have driven farther than 5kms since the last sign”. I think that there is also another sign of reaching maturity – you finally learn what you can do and what you have no chance of understanding.  I admit to being geographically challenged – I spend a lot of time searching for the homes of people I visit.  I use a map, but somewhere between reading the directions and dri