Pew Sheet 16th June 2024

Someone asked me last week how we can possibly know about the events recorded in the Gospels which tell us what happened when only Jesus was present, or when his disciples though present, were not watching or paying attention, such as his time of anguished prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane as they slept, or when he was sent out to be tested in the Judaean wilderness immediately after his baptism by John. It is a very reasonable question, and one I often think about. But for me, the answer is hinted at in today’s Gospel passage when we are told immediately after the two stories about seeds, that Jesus explained everything to his disciples afterwards.
The relationship between a Jewish Rabbi and his disciples at the time of Christ was an extremely intense one, and nothing like it exists in the western world today. The best example we have is the medieval apprenticeship, where a child would be indentured to his master for a period of seven years to learn a craft by helping his master at work. To modern ears, this sounds like child slavery, but this was not so. The master became entirely responsible for the child’s welfare, including his moral and spiritual welfare, and for feeding and housing him as though he were a member of the master’s own family under the watchful eye of the medieval Guilds who were jealous to safeguard the wellbeing of their apprentices, lest the supply of new ones dried up.
In comparison to other Rabbis of Jesus’ time, such as Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Shammai, Jesus did not have a comfortable home or household in which to feed and lodge his disciples, but as an itinerant preacher, relied upon the hospitality and generosity of supporters such as Lazarus and his sisters where, in the evenings, I imagine him settling down after the evening meal or maybe during it, to explain the meaning of the things he had said and done during the day, just as he explains the meaning of the two parables to them at the end of today’s passage.
Jesus’ parables contain profound truths about the nature of the world and of the Kingdom which the crowds were not fully ready to understand, but the disciples needed to know them if they were to learn Jesus’ ‘craft’ and be able to continue it after his departure, so I imagine they were just as keen to ask where he had been or what he had been doing on those occasions he had ‘disappeared’ from them, and do not doubt he would have told them.
We unlike they walk by faith and not by sight as the apostle Paul reminds us in Corinthians, and yet we are no less his disciples for that. Many passages in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, confound or even offend our modern sensitivities, but we should remember that they were also often written in the form of parables, especially by the Prophets, of which today’s Old Testament reading is but one example. Some modern Bible translators insert non-Biblical headings into the translation to explain their meaning, but I find this extremely unhelpful.
One such translation describes the Ezekiel passage as a prophecy describing the return of the Jewish diaspora to the modern state of Israel, but I cannot in my own reading of the text see it as anything other than some future event which has yet to occur, for the picture woven by Ezekiel here suggests a wholesome flourishing of God’s people and of the land and its flora and fauna which I simply do not see in the modern ‘Holy’ or perhaps, ‘un-Holy Land’ at the present time. How I wish that we could sit at Jesus’ or perhaps Ezekiel’s feet and ask them the true meaning of such texts; but this too is for a future time; and for the present, we can but grapple with such texts and their meanings (for there is usually more than one) as one might fumble cutting out a length of cloth or learning how to plane a piece of wood properly, for we are all apprentices, and none of us has quite mastered the craft or graduated from our studies as yet!

Collect

God our Saviour,
look on this wounded world,
in pity and in power.
Hold us fast to your promises of peace,
Won for us by your Son,
Our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Ezekiel 17:22-24

Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender shoot from the topmost of its young twigs and I myself will transplant it on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel I will transplant it, and it will produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree; I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken, and I will accomplish it.

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

So; we are always confident, even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive due recompense for actions done in the body,
whether good or evil.
Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people, but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore, all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!

Mark 4:26-34

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Please pray this week for:

All those struggling to make sense of scripture in the light of all that they see ‘going wrong’ in the world today. Pray that they might be able to sit literally and metaphorically at the feet of the one who will explain everything to us in good time; but holds everyone and everything together even as we grapple with these uncertainties in his steadfast hands. Pray for those who struggle to see God as an all-loving Father amid so much pain and suffering, and for those who suffer at the hands of others or through natural and environmental disasters until such a time as the meaning of all things is revealed.

This Week’s Events

Monday (Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 and 1936)

Bell ringing at 7.30pm in St Laurence. Contact Jan on 07835 461361.

Tuesday (Bernard Mizeki, Apostle of the MaShona, Martyr, 1896)

Zoom Morning Prayer at 9am ID: 748 9970 4493 Password: Trinity or contact Didier on [email protected]
Daytime Bible Group (2nd and 4th Tuesdays) contact Paula: 07722 808 988.
Evening Home Groups, contact Jo on 07803 942 687.

Wednesday (Sundar Singh, Sadhu, Evangelist, and Teacher of the Faith, 1929)

Morning Coffee from 10.00-11.45 in the St Laurence Rooms.
Midweek Holy Communion at 12 noon, St Laurence Church.

Thursday

Thursday Home Group at the Peck’s (currently fully subscribed).

Friday

Junior Choir at 6.30 pm followed by full Choir Practice at 7.30pm. Do contact Derry on [email protected] if you would like to know more.

Saturday (Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c250)

Repair Café, every third Saturday of the month except August and December, 10.00 – 12.00 hrs. Bring along your household items or fabrics for repair.

Pastoral Care

Please telephone 07305 271148 or email [email protected]

St Laurence Charity Shop

We often forget to acknowledge how much the shop does to support the work of the parish and the effort it takes to keep it going. At present, Paul Cresswell is looking for volunteers to help keep the shop open. Please do speak to him if you could spare a few hours a month to support this valuable work and meet other people in the process. Thank you!