Last summer I spent a few weeks looking after the Anglican Church in Puerto de la Cux in Tenerife. I had a great time there. I met some great people. Among them was Jenny. Jenny was great. If something was going on she was always there. If something needed doing, she was there to do it. There was only one thing she wasn’t particularly hot on. That was, the Bible. She was convinced that it was all made up. “It’s just all made-up stories,” she would say every now and then.
Well, Jenny was asking an important question. Are the Gospels an account of what really happened? Or at they just made up stories? Well of course I want to argue for them as being authentic accounts of the ministry of a man called Jesus two thousand years ago. And when I do that I call chiefly in evidence the story which forms the first part of our reading from St. Mark’s Gospel this morning.
He is presenting Jesus, warts and all.
Not to put too fine a point on it, he makes Jesus look rude and uncaring – It’s a story you couldn’t just make up if you were trying to reflect Jesus in a flattering light. Â
Jesus is confronted by a woman who is desperate. Her daughter is sick. She desperately wants her to be healed. Jesus wants none of it. He is abrupt. He is brusque. He says, no, I will not come to heal your daughter.
But the woman persists. She puts forward a good argument. And Jesus changes his mind. And the daughter is healed.
So Jesus is shown on the one hand as crotchety. He is shown as vacillating, changing his mind when presented with a good counterargument to what he is saying. You can’t help thinking that what we are seeing here is the humanity of the real Jesus. If Mark was just trying to guild the lily, make things up to show Jesus in a good light, and give us a stained glass Jesus then these very human characteristics would have been filtered out. But he doesn’t do that. Surely here in this story, we are seeing the authentic Jesus. Not something made up – if it was a made-up story to show Jesus in a good light then the story would sound very different.
No, it’s the authentic Jesus that we’re dealing with here. A Jesus who is ready to change his mind, to reflect on new and different ways of the Gospel being pronounced, being spread.
In this story, Jesus changes his mind. In this story, the woman is able to convince him that letting people who are not of the Jewish faith know of the treasures of the Gospel, need not deflect from what Jesus sees as his primary task, feeding the children of Israel.
She reminds Jesus that the dogs under the table are able to eat because the children at the table are already being fed. In the households in Jesus’s day it was quite common for the dogs to be under the table and eat whatever fell there, and do that, while people continued to eat. And with that analogy, she is saying to Jesus feeding people who are not of the Jewish faith need not get in the way of caring for those who are of the Jewish faith, you can do both together.
So Jesus changes his mind. He enables a person who is not of the Jewish faith to have her life transformed by the healing power of the Gospel.
This must be an important story for the earliest church, the people whom Mark was writing to. In the thirty years between the death of the rising again of Jesus and the writing of Mark’s Gospel. The ChurchÂhad changed its mind. IT had come to a new understanding of its role. Largely, as a result of Paul’s persuasion, it had decided that it needed to move on from its original decision to only preach the Gospel to those of the Jewish faith. Paul had helped the church see that the Good News of Jesus Christ needed to go out into all the world. And it would have been important for the first readers and hearers of St. Mark’s Gospel to see that Jesus had himself been open to having his mind swayed by those who had different ideas than he had about opening up and widening the body of people to be touched by his love, so that a child who was not Jewish could be healed from all that troubled her.
And it’s an important story for us too, specifically for us in the Church of England, in the early years of the twenty-first century. Because there a bit of a debate going on in the Church of England about where our priorities should be in the coming years. About how the Gospel should be proclaimed. About whether we should move on from traditional ideas about how we operate as a church.
It’s not an either/or. Again, the point that the woman as making to Jesus was that letting others feed at Christ’s table didn’t push out these who were already feeding there. it just meant that others could be fed as well, alongside them, at the same time as them.
So, it’s not a question of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.The fairly venerable baby which is the Church of England’s parish system has served the Gospel well. It has been a way of operating that again and again has enabled the Good News of Jesus Christ to touch the hearts of women, men, young people, and children. The Church of England’s parish of chaplaincy system still has a lot going for it, still needs to be a key part of the Church of England’s strategy for bringing more and more to draw deep from the treasures of the Gospel.
But the Church of England has been encouraging us to think differently as well.
The Church of England nationally has laid out plans to set up 10,000 new Christian communities within England over the next 10 years. Many are led by lay people, based in village halls, cafes, warehouses, empty shops and other unconventional venues. And that’s all very exciting and imaginative initiatives have grown from that, such as the example of the Forest Churches. Where people gather outside to pray, worship, and engage with the natural world.
In the parish of Ludlow in Shropshire where I served a few years ago the local churches set up a cafe church, where people gathered at a set time each Sunday in a local branch of Costa Coffee to hear the Bible read, discuss what was said, to pray and worship together. The lights were on, the windows were large, and all those who walked by could see that something special was going on, and sometimes ventured in to see if they could be part of it.
All living out the vision in today’s Gospel That’s all, not just a chosen few, are invited to feast at the Table that the Gospel of Jesus opens to us.
How that plays out at Holy Trinity I wouldn’t presume to say on my first Sunday here, on my third day on the island.
But what the Church of England is telling us, is that now, like in Jesus’s day, today’s Gospel reading, all Anglican Christian communities need to be ready to change our minds, and operate with a wider vision.Â
We serve a restless God, one who is aways moving ahead of us, calling us again and again never to stand still, but to try new ventures, and new ways of being proclaimers of the Gospel, in addition to what we already do. Asking ourselves how, in addition to what we already have, can we make the Good News of Jesus Christ known in so many good ways. What new ideas, new ventures, and new initiatives do we need to explore?
For the Church of England and for its communities this all seems a bit unsettling at the moment. But this moment in our common life together in the Church of England can also be a time of opportunity, a time of growth and an exciting time. As long as we place our trust in God and allow him to show us where he would like us to go. As long as we are ready to let him broaden our horizons and think new and big thoughts, even if, as it was was for Jesus in today’s Gospel reading, that it means alongside holding fast to what is we already do as good, we take risks, go out on a limb and not be frightened to serve the Gospel by finding new and different ways of being the Church in our way.
And so we need to pray a prayer like this:
Lord God, you call your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown; give us the faith to go out with good courage, not knowing whither we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us to the glory of your name.
God, grant to the living grace, to the departed rest, to the Church, the King, the Commonwealth and all people, unity, peace, and concord, and to us and all God’s servants, life everlasting; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Be among and remain with you always.
Amen