Engage - This WeekSince the start of September, we have been thinking about how we engage as Christians with the world around us. The last few weeks have had us in the gospel of Mark. We have been thinking about how the central themes of the gospel shape our place in the world. We have considered four different priorities: The coming of the Kingdom of God; Jesus’ promise of Forgiveness; Jesus’ priority on sowing the seed of the Word and, in the last session, we considered Jesus’s promise of Eternal Life. These are remarkable promises of hope and good news. But what has been equally remarkable is that while some people receive these promises with joy, we have also seen that many people quickly reject Jesus. The super-religious, Jesus’s own family and (we saw last Sunday in our sermon series) even those in Jesus’s hometown reject him (Mark 6:3). As early as chapter three, people began to plot to put Jesus to death (3:6). That in itself should have been shocking. But then, as Jesus sends out his disciples to proclaim his message, he prepares them for the reality that they also will be rejected (Mark 6:11). Even the story of Herod (Mark 6:14-29) gives us a ‘case study’ of someone wrestling with the message they have heard, but in the end rejecting that message. Of course, if Jesus was rejected because of his message and Jesus’ disciples were rejected because they passed on Jesus’ message, we should not expect anything different when we stand with Jesus and his message. As we engage the world, we should also expect some rejection. But... no one likes being rejected; it is painful, it hurts, it can cause us to doubt ourselves. So, in this week’s session, we have an opportunity to consider how we might respond to the reality of being rejected for following Jesus.
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