Today’s chapter is Mark 7

Tom writes:

Mark’s gospel is probably a record of the teachings Peter gave to the early churches across the Mediterranean. As such, it gives a great vision of what Jesus’ own disciples focused on when it came to making disciples. Until now the gospel has been about getting us to follow Jesus and to live as compassionate, authorised missionaries. But here we see a Very Interesting Thing: Peter wants to make sure Jewish Christians would embrace Gentile Christians as co-equal members of the Jesus community. This - for Peter - was a major part of discipleship. Hmm. What Peter taught the early Christians was that Jesus’ global vision for his Kingdom (every tribe and tongue gathered around the throne) needed to be something that they actively embraced in their day to day life. The followers of Jesus needed to be in the habit of stretching out their hand and touching people from different cultures, eating with them, praying for them, treating them as brothers and sisters in their church.

Peter knew how challenging this would be for ordinary believers to accept - he has to really spell it out in brackets so people can’t ignore what Jesus meant (v3,4,19). And yet, for most of my faith I fear I have ignored it. Like a deaf and mute man I thought I could follow Jesus on my own, or at least just do discipleship with people who were most like me. Ephphatha! Real life comes into our faith when we do Kingdom stuff with people we previously avoided. Be Opened! Real “loosening” of our faith comes when we stop being so dull, when we abandon our man-made traditions and deliberately, intentionally follow Jesus with people from different cultures. So, who do you pray with? Who do you invite round for food? Who is in your small group? Do they have a different skin colour, a different accent? Do they make you feel uncomfortable at times? It is when we push into cross-cultural discipleship that we often hear the true beauty of Jesus, when our ears are opened to draw in the true teachings of God, and not just the traditions of men.

Question for reflection

Jesus was a Jew from what we call the Middle-East. What would he make of our modern, Western church?

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Mark 7 - Wednesday 10th April