Welcome to the Heart of Our Ministry
Dear Home Gathering Host, We are thrilled to embark on this transformative journey together as we embrace a new model of ministry at Riverfront Family Church. This innovative approach places the heart of our community within the intimate setting of Small Home Gatherings, with a monthly Corporate Large Group worship to foster a deeper connection with God and one another. As a Home Gathering Host, your role is pivotal in making this vision a reality. Your warmth, hospitality, and open home will create an inviting and nurturing space for spiritual growth and fellowship. Here are your key responsibilities: 1. Open Your Home with Open Arms:
Your home will be the sanctuary where our Small Home Gatherings unfold. Welcome between 6 to 12 people each week, fostering a sense of intimacy and community.
Ensure your space is clean and conducive to spiritual discussions and reflection.
2. Provide Basic Hospitality:
Create an atmosphere of comfort by offering simple refreshments such as coffee, tea, and water. These modest offerings will enhance the sense of togetherness.
You need not be a gourmet chef or barista; the essence is in the shared moments around your table.
3. Extend the Gift of Welcome:
As the Home Gathering Host, your friendly demeanor will set the tone for each meeting. Greet everyone with an open heart and a warm smile.
Make an effort to get to know newcomers and make them feel included. Your role is to foster a sense of belonging.
Key Distinction: Facilitator vs. Host:
It's important to note that your role as a Home Gathering Host is distinct from that of the group facilitator. While the facilitator guides the discussions and activities, your role is centered on creating an inviting environment.
The Power of Your Contribution:
As a Home Gathering Host, you play a vital part in our church community. You are the guardian of the sacred space where faith is nurtured, relationships are deepened, and lives are transformed. Your commitment to opening your home, providing hospitality, and offering a warm welcome contributes immeasurably to the success of this ministry model.
Support and Resources:
We value your dedication and will provide you with resources and support to help you thrive in your role. Regular meetings and training sessions will be available to enhance your hosting skills and address any questions or concerns.
Conclusion:
In this new model of ministry, you are not just hosting gatherings; you are fostering an environment where people can experience God's love and grow spiritually. Your contributions will be cherished, and your dedication will be the cornerstone of our church community.
Mark 6 tells the story of Jesus coming back to Nazareth and teaching in his hometown synagogue, and his sending of the disciples out into Galilee to carry out his mission program and build the kingdom community. Sandwiched into this narrative is the story of John the Baptist’s beheading. Mark makes this insertion for a reason I will note below. Already in Mark, Jesus’ family has thought him deranged (3.21, 31-35). Here they are scandalized by him (skandalidzousin) (6.1-6; cf. Luke 4.16-30). In chapter 5, Jarius and others laughed at Jesus, here they sneer at him. After all, he comes into the synagogue and astonishes the congregation by his teaching—while at the same time they remember him as a boy, growing up in their village, working as a laborer with his father. How can he be a prophet and a common laborer? Jesus was a peasant. Does he really have so much to offer?
Years ago, Keith Green sang a song about this:
Isn’t that Jesus? Isn’t that Joseph and Mary’s son?
Well, didn’t he grow up tight here—he played with our children.
What?! He must be dreaming—thinks he’s a prophet.
Prophets don’t grow up from little boys. Do they? From little boys. Do they?
The derogation of Jesus’ honor from his own family and friends is the ultimate put-down. Being identified as the “son of Mary” is a put down. It was expected that one would be identified by his father’s lineage, “the son of.” Identified as he is calls some things into question. Where is the father? Is Jesus illegitimate? Has his father repudiated him? Jesus is not exactly being welcomed back with open and appreciative arms. Throughout the Gospel tradition, miracles typically end with expressions of astonishment. Here, however, the astonishment belongs to Jesus. He is amazed at the “stubbornness of their unbelief” (6.6).
Two weeks ago in our Sunday morning worship, some of our members noted that they are “defensive” among some family and friends who cannot understand why they are Christians and belong to a church. Last Saturday, Shekhe talked about the danger of being a Christian in the part of Nigeria where she and Danladi are raising their children. There has been more than one attempt on Danladi’s life, and there is no assurance such threats are over. We worship and follow a Lord who told us, “If they persecute me, they’ll persecute you. You should expect nothing less” (John 15.20-21). So when we read of Jesus so badly received by his own, we can know that here too, he has gone before us, and walks with us in our own estrangement, alienation, or hostile treatment. We should never forget that following Jesus means painful choices will have to be made, and loyalties will have to be declared. Our allegiance to Jesus will rub some people the wrong way, or worse.
Immediately following the scene at the synagogue and the sneering skepticism cast his way, Jesus sends the Twelve into the region to extend his ministry. This is the one place in Mark where Jesus calls his disciples “apostles” (“sent ones”). Mark and the other Gospels show us that these men are always on the way to understanding, but up to the end of the gospel, will have never fully understood. They try to obey and follow Jesus and sometimes in some ways, succeed. But their failures are perhaps more to be noted than their achievements. Yet, Jesus does not wait for them to have full understanding or admirable discipleship before associating himself with them, indeed, tying himself to them. Flawed as they are, he sends them out. How does he dare send them? How do they dare go? How does anything good come from such a problematic operation? Here too, the story should sound familiar.
This is the Marcan version of the missionary discourse expanded into a full chapter in Matthew 10 and split in Luke 9 and 10 (Lk. 9.1-6, 10.1-16). The emphasis is on the connection with Jesus’ mission empowered by his authority (authority is a form of power). The disciples are an extension of Jesus’ own ministry. He charges them to travel light, given the urgency of the situation and their need for trust in Jesus’ power and provision. The passage closes by recording the response of the Twelve and their success in offering Jesus’ ministry of healing and liberation. Perhaps this mission strategy was one of setting up a network of safehouses, where Jesus’ followers could find hospitality, refuge, and security as the Jesus movement grew and became ever more troublesome to its adversaries. In times of persecution (as with Mark’s church) where could safety be found? The reason Mark has inserted the story of John’s murder into this narrative now comes evident. Jesus has begun to communicate the cost of following him. A powerful signifier of that cost is indicated by John the Baptist’s beheading (to be discussed in our next essay).
These 13 verses raise important questions for us. Among them are these.
Mark reports that because of the unbelief he encountered in Nazareth, Jesus’ “great works” or miracles, were diminished (not brought to a standstill, as he continued to heal the sick). What? How can our lack of faith limit God’s work in the world? God is inexpressibly stronger than us, right? Well, we do know this. Our faith takes form in praxis—in the doing of God’s work in the world. God works through those who work for peace and justice, healing and liberation. If we do not believe that God will work through us, and embody that belief in our servanthood, far too little of God’s work is going to be done in this world.
Jesus’ family and friends were astonished and scandalized that Jesus claimed to be more than an ordinary laborer (or craftsman). Like most people, they thought of God as a Power that showed up in the spectacular, the fabulous, the mysterious extraordinary. But the gospel tells us that God shows up in laborers and in labor, in the most ordinary aspects of life and in ordinary people. And if God doesn’t show up in the radical ordinary— God doesn’t show up at all.
And last, Jesus told his disciples to travel light, depend upon the hospitality (or grace) of others, and the power of God. Is this a call unique to these first disciples, or a call to us as well? We have, of course, good reason to conclude Jesus speaks to us here too, but what can this command mean for rich Christians who live in wealthy societies? What does it mean to travel light as a “sent one” and sojourner, for a property-owning Christian embedded in a capitalist system? If my wealth imperils my trust in God (as the New Testament makes clear), what should I do? How does God dare send us? How do we dare go?
There are no easy answers found in this passage—nor in the Gospels themselves. But the call to participate in God’s work in the ordinariness of our everyday lives, and trust God, seems like a sure foundation for exploration into answers that may await us.
Thanks for reading,
Michael
This scene in Mark’s story of Jesus (Mark 5.21-43) finds the New Human Being and his disciples back on the west, or Jewish, side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has shown his power over a storm and a legion of demons, but what will he do when he encounters two persons, each in their own rapidly descending journeys toward death?
First, let’s grasp the idea of ancient Judaism as an honor culture. One’s status determined to whom one could speak and how to interact with others, regulated social rules and transactions, and circumscribed mobility and access to others within the system. In this part of the story, Jesus once again disrupts—and therefore challenges—those very dynamics, rules, and roles. For example, women were not to be assertive and synagogue rulers were to engaged with bowing and scraping, kowtowing deference. But (again) Jesus subverts the status quo in order to create new possibilities of human community. And once again we look at ourselves: our honor code system is not identical to this one, but in what ways does Jesus challenge ours, and therefore, call us to resist and transform it?
Jesus has returned to Jewish territory and is approached by a member of the Jewish ruling class (Jarius), but while in a tightly-packed crowd, he is interrupted by a woman who has been hemorrhaging money and blood for 12 years. She has paid doctors over and again to be healed or saved from this physical ailment (in Greek, “healed” and “saved” is the same word)—and the social alienation, loneliness, and shame it has brought her. The doctors have taken her money but not helped her. Jesus heals her for free. This woman, poor and outcast, shamed, exploited, alone, comes to Jesus. Hiding and hoping, she makes her way through the crowd, wanting to touch, if nothing more, just his clothing. When Jesus notices and accepts her highly inappropriate touch (according to the honor culture), she falls at his feet (.33).
Moments before, it was Jarius who fell at Jesus’ feet (as he asked for the favor of his daughter’s healing). An important symbolic reversal is being demonstrated. Jesus puts this woman’s need first, above the needs of the synagogue leader and his innocent 12 year-old daughter. The woman is from the bottom of the honor scale, Jarius is at the top of it. But by the end of this scene, she becomes the “daughter” at the center of the story. Jesus then tells her, “My daughter, your faith”—her sheer audacity!—"has saved/healed you, go in peace and be of full health, free of your scourge” (.34). Her faith is honored by Jesus—in contrast to his male disciples who are “without faith” (4.40).
Jesus then exhorts Jarius (a leader of the synagogue!) to follow the example of this lowly, shamed, unclean woman! Jesus tells him: “Do not fear, only believe” (.36). But when Jesus tells him that the girl is not dead, but only asleep, the remorse turns to derision, which of course, is a signifier of too little belief (i.e., trust).
Mark shapes this story to juxtapose the two extremes of the Jewish social scale/honor system. Presumably, the girl has enjoyed 12 years of privilege, yet is now “near death” (.23). The woman has suffered 12 years of pain, destitution, loneliness, and shame by way of a purity system and its (religious and medical) doctors. She could not enter a synagogue and participate in religious rituals, could not have sex with a husband, could not be touched by others. She was violating taboos when she squeezed herself into that crowd.
Ched Myers concludes that “The object lesson can only be that if Judaism wishes ‘to be saved and live’ (.23) it must embrace the faith of the kingdom: a new social order with equal status for all.” At the end of the story, the narrator observes that the girl is 12 years-old, added as though it were an afterthought. But of course, there is intentionality here. The number 12 links the woman and the girl, the two “daughters” of Israel to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps the woman represents tradition-bound, “mother Judaism”—unclean, isolated from the world, oppressed by a myriad of laws and honor codes—but saved by the New Human Being, the Anointed One (“Christ,” in the Greek). Perhaps the girl represents the New Israel, offspring of the synagogue and its Pharisaic heritage, on the verge of bearing children and thus, bringing new life into the world. Resurrected from the dead, saved/healed by Jesus, she can now fulfill her calling and destiny.
Notice that Jarius asks Jesus to do nothing more than just touch his daughter and that the woman believed if she just touched even his clothes, she would be healed. One way to hear this part of the story is to judge with ideas shaped by modern science, and a set of modern and contemporary prejudices that holds such child-like, magic-like faith in contempt. How naïve, childish, unsophisticated! But are we to imagine that God will only meet us, touch us, and respond to our needs if we approach God with a sufficient level of philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge and sophistication? As Dan pointed out in our discussion, isn’t it the case that whoever reaches out to the Christ, however educated, knowledgeable, and sophisticated—aren’t we are simply seeking, more or less, to just touch Jesus… and be healed?
Thanks for reading,
Michael
