Starting to dig into the scripture
It is almost unbelievable to me (notice I said almost) that I’ll be reading scripture and see an immediate link to something going on in my life. I was reading the passage I’ll be using this weekend (Mark 7:24-30) when I began thinking about the applications related to exclusion and inclusion that happened this past weekend with the homeless gentleman at Saint James. (Read my blog “The disconnect between faith and life“) Initially in this passage from Mark, was Jesus saying that there are insiders that rank above the other outsiders? Sure seemed like it when I was reading it. After he talked about the irrelevance of the purity codes, he starts drawing lines elsewhere. Maybe he was just ticked off that someone found him when he was “hiding out” so nobody would find him. Maybe he just had the wrong take on the situation. Maybe he didn’t know that when it came to arguments, the strong love of this woman for her child would trump any logic he could lay out. In the end, Jesus is forced to admit he was wrong! WOW! Jesus was wrong.
This still doesn’t make clear to me exactly how this passage will its way into the message message for the Saint James community this weekend. But if it already has one tie-in, where else may it call us to stretch and re-think our understanding of ourselves and our faith?
