Relationships

Familiar but Fresh – An Excluded Woman

Posted by David Ward on 11/06/2025
Posted in: Bible, Personal thoughts, Prayer, Relationships. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

But he went on asking, looking around to see who had done it. The woman, knowing what had happened, knowing she was the one, stepped up in fear and trembling, knelt before him, and gave him the whole story. [34] Jesus said to her, “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.”
Mark 5:32-34 MSG

Here is another invisible woman…this time one who wants to stay that way so that no-one notices her! I’m sure you know about the purity laws of the Old Testament (you can read the relevant bit in Leviticus 15: 25-27). Her prolonged bleeding made her ceremonially unclean; she wasn’t able to mix freely in her community and join in public worship. Anyone she came into contact with was also considered to be ritually impure. In short she was excluded from her community.

She was probably fairly well-known, so she took a big risk being in a crowd of people. She took an even bigger risk when she touched Jesus. She must have known that touching him would mean that he shared her impurity.

However, Jesus didn’t just share it…he took it! He sensed that healing power had gone our from him an she was healed.

He wanted to meet her. He was surrounded by crowds and on his way to the home of a synagogue leader who had begged him for help, but he wanted to meet her, to hear her whole story and to commend her risky faith.

She was frightened that he would be angry, would despise and exclude her like everyone else. What a surprise she got!

Sometimes we have things in our lives that trouble us, that maybe we’re too ashamed to bring to Jesus, that we want to stay hidden. And the fact that we know that he knows anyway doesn’t help us to stay close to him in our prayer lives. Sometimes Jesus even responds to our unspoken and silent prayers when he sees our need, senses our tentative reaching out and hopeful touch.

And we too are surprised by the grace and love of Jesus, who far from excluding us, welcomes us back.

Familiar but Fresh – Simple yet Comprehensive

Posted by David Ward on 08/05/2025
Posted in: Bible, church, Community, discipleship, Personal thoughts, Relationships, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: “Which is most important of all the commandments?”
Mark 12:28 MSG

Theology…at best a way of trying to help us make sense of God and God’s mysterious ways, giving us a common understanding and language to talk about these things.

Until our human tendency towards bias and personal interpretation get’s in the way… at worst leading to division, confusion and preventing people from even considering becoming a follower of Jesus.

I wonder if you remember from my first post that I embarked on this study of the Gospels in order to simplify my life from the cultural and theological baggage gathered over a life-time of following Jesus. I have much sympathy for the question-asker in this story.

Being a scholar of religion meant that he was studying theology and had looked at its most intricate details. He was probably frequently caught up in debates and disputes over relatively minor issues of interpretation and personal preference. I sense a weariness and a desire to simplify (maybe I’m biased!).

In Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus this encounter happens in the week before Jesus’ crucifixion, and in the context of a lively question and answer session between Jesus and various religious leaders and teachers (Mark chapters 11 and 12). All the main Jewish theological factions (Pharisees, Sadducees and teachers of religion) are represented in the questioning of Jesus, for an equally varied set of motives. The scholar’s observation of how Jesus has handled the debate leads him to believe that Jesus may have a solution to his seeking heart and the theological wrangles that have brought him to this place and time. He’s tired of nit-picking arguments over minor issues and wants Jesus to give him the bigger picture.

Jesus answer demonstrates his deep knowledge of Torah. He puts together part of the ‘Shema Israel’ (roughly translated Listen, understand and obey O Israel) from Deuteronomy 4:6-9) that would have been familiar to everyone and a part of a less well-known verse from Leviticus 19:18 – “Don’t seek revenge or carry a grudge against any of your people. “Love your neighbour as yourself. I am God.”

Love God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy, and love others in the same way that you love yourself. For the teacher of religion the curtain opens and he sees beyond the rules, offerings and sacrifices of the Torah to what lies behind them…he knows “A wonderful answer!” when he sees it, and Jesus recognises and commends his insight.

It might seem naïve, but when I reflect on the struggles within churches, denominations, and between believers, I can’t help but wonder—if we truly lived by Jesus’ greatest commandment, wouldn’t we find ourselves much closer to God’s kingdom?

Love isn’t selective. We don’t get to measure who is worthy or decide how much love they receive. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan makes it clear—our neighbour includes the overlooked, the despised, and the forgotten. To love as Jesus commands is to extend that same grace to all, just as we would want for ourselves.

Familiar but Fresh…Mix with Outsiders

Posted by David Ward on 15/04/2025
Posted in: Bible, discipleship, Mission, Personal thoughts, Relationships, Spirituality. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Jesus…shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”
Matthew 9:12-13 MSG (quoting the prophet Hosea 6: 6)

How do we define an “outsider”? Is it someone who doesn’t fit in to our group or our culture? Is it someone who chooses to keep themselves to themselves, to not mix or join in? Is it someone who thinks or acts differently to the way we thing people should, someone who’s just not respectable, or who’s lifestyle is anti-social?

In my case being a bit of an outsider has recently resulted from a simple geographic move of 64 miles, which has also meant moving from one country and culture to another. For 16 years we lived in a village in The Scottish Borders and have recently moved back to a small town close to Newcastle in England. Now you’d think that as theoretically both areas are part of the UK that things wouldn’t be so different, but in reality some things are done differently each side of the border. Add to that the web of relationships and familiarity left behind and it’s very easy to see how a simple thing like a move might turn you into an outsider for a while at least.

In the Jewish world of Jesus time, outsiders were easily classified…if you weren’t Jewish you weren’t in! The religious authorities also classified the degree of people’s outsider-ness…some people were worse than others.

And Jesus chose to mix with them all…foreigners, women, children, collaborators, adulterers, tax-collectors, corrupt politicians, prostitutes and sinners of all kinds…were all worthy of his company and his love.

I don’t seem to spend much of my time in the company of the kind of people that Jesus seemed to spend much of his time with, and moan a bit about trying to fit in at church…and to be honest, I find it really hard to befriend people who are not like me!

Even as I typed that last sentence, I was reminded of times when I have been an outsider, even in my family and church community, sometimes because of the life I lived (positively, I hope) and sometimes because of the people I stuck up for or cared about.

I was the only follower of Jesus in my family, which sometimes caused friction as I was growing up. I remember my parents saying they wished I was like everyone else on a number of occasions. Then when I was in my early twenties there was a time when I didn’t really follow Jesus for a while…my parents said they wished I was the way I used to be!

There was the time I stood up to the well-educated elders in church who disqualified a builder from leadership because he ‘wasn’t educated enough’, and the time when we were hounded out of a church because I supported and encouraged women in leadership and ministry. Or the time when I was sidelined because of being divorced and remarried (more of that in a future post), and criticised for believing that Jesus could love gay people (I think they said, “How dare you suggest that my Jesus could love such filthy people!”…’their Jesus’ must be different to the one I know).

Jesus lived freely and lightly with the people around him (and promised his followers could too…another future post), and didn’t seem to be picky about who he associated with. It sounds as if children loved to be around him…that says a lot.

The only ones who struggled with Jesus were the religious and powerful. Come to think of it. It’s often been those people who’ve struggled with me too. I hope that despite that, I’ve tried to associate with them, finding reasons to rejoice in our similarities and respect the things we disagree on. I’ve sometimes enjoyed the company of people who have no faith or are of a different faith and respected mine, more than I have the finger-pointing people who say they’re followers of Jesus but spend their whole time ticking boxes to decide who’s in and who’s out, which is not really our job anyway.