B238 Pentecost 16

[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast, preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Hello, I'm Robyn Whittaker, and joining me today as our guest co host is Reverend Alastair Macrae, a uniting church minister now enjoying retirement, but well known preacher here in Melbourne. Welcome, El. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you, Robyn. Great to be with you. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Good to have you back on the podcast. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Thanks. [00:00:38] Speaker A: So we're going to be discussing some of the readings for Pentecost week 16, starting with psalm 125 and then the epistle James, chapter two, kind of verses one to 17, although the lectionary gives you some options there. And mark 724 to 37. So our Yden. Let's start with the psalm. What do you notice what's in the psalm this week? [00:01:04] Speaker B: Well, I like using the psalms liturgically. Are we allowed to breach over into liturgy from Titus? [00:01:14] Speaker A: We can talk liturgy. We don't have to be strict about preaching. [00:01:18] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. It's a beautiful psalm. It's one of the songs of ascent. There's a number of psalms between 120 and 134 that apparently were used as songs for pilgrims approaching Jerusalem for the high and holy days. And this is one of those. And it starts off as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds God's people both now and evermore. So, beautiful image. And I was thinking, if I was designing liturgy, I'd probably use that just before the benediction. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Oh, at the end? [00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, at the end. And then flow into a benediction. This idea of God's arms surrounding us and upholding us is a really good one. And mountains suggesting agelessness, protection. And that's a possible preaching theme, too. The Bible quite commonly uses physical objects to suggest that they're connected to God and to some degree revelatory about the nature of God. And I think particularly with the influence of indigenous theology, it's reminding us of this dimension that typically in modernity and post modernity, we've separated the physical and the spiritual in a way that the Bible doesn't. [00:03:01] Speaker A: No, particularly the Hebrew Bible. Right, exactly. These things are infused and it's right. [00:03:06] Speaker B: Through the psalms, the heavens declare the glory of God. I think that's next week's psalm. So that could. That could be a possible preaching theme and invite people to reflect on their experience of God's creation and what it has taught them. And if you were going to do some more research here to draw from indigenous theology, Gary Devrel's book, Gondwana Theology. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Yes. Is excellent. [00:03:35] Speaker B: It would be very helpful. Stan Grant's lecture at last year's preaching. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Conference, the Indi Mari. Yep, yep. [00:03:44] Speaker B: Touches directly on this. So that's a possible one, isn't it? [00:03:49] Speaker A: I think so. I also really like in this psalm that this idea that the language is old fashioned, but the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land. There's a sense that. Yes, there's wickedness. Right. We know about that. But it won't get to settle in the land. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:07] Speaker A: It's temporary. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:09] Speaker A: And then this. I also see resonances with where we're going to go in mark seven and the woman who is pernicious and knows her self worth. Do good, o Lord, to those who are good. This sense of, actually, we can petition God for things. We can demand God, you know, that's a strong word, but we get it all through the bible of people who actually call on God to be special in the psalms. Yes, exactly. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Exactly. They don't hold back. So our prayers can be pretty beige and tame, can't they? Compared to. [00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we're a bit polite sometimes. I think. [00:04:49] Speaker B: I think perhaps we don't need to be. [00:04:51] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:53] Speaker A: And if you use it liturgically. I was thinking you said near the benediction, but you could even bookend a service with this, because I think sometimes we go to church, and I'm guilty of this myself. It's such a familiar space if you're a regular church goer. We forget we're entering the presence of God now. Of course we might. God is also outside the church. I'm not saying God is only found in church buildings, but to actually walk in conscious, we're walking into a space surrounded by God. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:05:19] Speaker A: We're walking intentionally into the presence of God when we come to worship, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that. [00:05:26] Speaker B: That's a good point. It's a dedicated space. [00:05:30] Speaker A: Space to be. Yeah. [00:05:32] Speaker B: Hopefully concentrated holiness or something that helps us notice God's presence everywhere else. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Interestingly, it also closes with a very abrupt benediction, peace be upon Israel. And it just struck me when I was reflecting on it this week, I'm sure we're all preoccupied with the lack of peace in and around Israel. So surely our fervent prayer in these days is that peace based on justice be secured for all communities. [00:06:14] Speaker A: That's right. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Who live in the land of Jesus. [00:06:17] Speaker A: And at the risk of being political, we might want to add to this, peace be upon Israel, peace be upon Gaza, peace be upon. Add the names of other places in our world. Yeah, for sure. This is how we can call upon God. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:06:31] Speaker A: All right, let's turn to James. [00:06:33] Speaker B: James. [00:06:42] Speaker A: I feel like James is the little author in the New Testament. People like to hate. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:47] Speaker A: And I like James. [00:06:48] Speaker B: I love James. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Oh, good. Yeah, there you go. So we're talking about James, folks. Chapter two versus the lectionary says one to ten with an option for eleven to 13 and then 14 to 17. But if you're going to preach on James, just read the whole chapter. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah, and read chapter one first. Because he sets up his themes in chapter one. [00:07:09] Speaker A: Exactly. So the tradition, I mean, just for people who don't know much about James, the tradition, you know, we don't really know who wrote this. There's an association with James, the brother of Jesus, James the Elder. I mean, we don't really know the author. In verse one calls himself James, a servant of God to the twelve tribes. So it is a jewish filling text, and it's not really a letter. It's actually moral exhortation. It's about how to live life as a moral Christian. So it's got some quite concrete, I guess you'd say, advice. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I suspect it, within traditions like ours, it would be generally well regarded. It's pretty much practice what you preach. Don't be a hypocrite. Don't claim to believe in Jesus and not live the way Jesus taught us to. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And the theme in this particular passage, I mean, it begins very strongly with favoritism. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:13] Speaker A: And, you know, probably reflecting the tensions within early christian communities. But they're in some of ours still today, between someone with wealth who comes into your gathering, someone who's poor, who perhaps looks dirty. Looks. I mean, I go to church in a city church, and sometimes people walk in off the street and, you know, it is about who we take, pay attention to, how we treat them with respect. And I think we are kidding ourselves if we think we don't have to overcome some unconscious bias and inherent prejudice when we encounter people dressed in certain ways. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Oh, that's. That's for sure. [00:08:56] Speaker A: Right. I don't think that's just me. Right? [00:08:59] Speaker B: No, no. There's a lot of ouch moments in James because he says, let's look at what actually happens in your synagogues, I think is the word in your congregations. This is. He's obviously reflecting back what's happening in his own community and what he sees. And I recognize this behavior in myself all the time. Who do you hang around with? Well, pretty much I hang around with people like me. [00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah. People who are like me, it's easy, socially easy to get along with them. Exactly. And, you know, James is reflecting a highly stratified society. But again, we're kidding ourselves in Australia, at least. I know we have listeners overseas, but I think this is happening around the globe, where the gap between the rich and the poor, between the haves and the have nots, is growing and. Yeah. Again, who we give respect and privilege to in our communities is. Yeah. What else do you notice? What would you want to draw out in this passage? Al? [00:10:03] Speaker B: I think I would name what you erased in the first instance that a lot of people have claimed that James undermines Paul's emphasis on faith alone when he quite bluntly says, faith without works is dead. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:29] Speaker B: You know, you can't just say Lord, Lord, and think you're living the way of Christ. So. But I think that that point can be overstated. I don't think Paul. Paul would say, you've just got to believe stuff and not worry about aligning your life's actions with your belief. I don't think Paul would say that. [00:10:52] Speaker A: No, exactly. I think Paul thinks faith is something that infuses all of your being, including your ethical behavior. Right. Yeah. It's not just some spiritual thing. You go to church and say your prayers, and then you can do what you like during the week. Yeah. [00:11:05] Speaker B: So I like to think that Paul could read James and think. Yeah. [00:11:10] Speaker A: All right. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Good on you. Yeah, that's. [00:11:13] Speaker A: I think that, too. [00:11:14] Speaker B: There needs to be alignment between what you say and how you actually live and act. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Yes. I think they're not so different, although, I mean, some scholars do think James is. Is writing in response to Paul, perhaps thinking that perhaps as a corrective, perhaps Paul has been misunderstood, and it's all come down to your spiritual confessional. So I think if that's the case, it's a necessary corrective. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:38] Speaker A: But I don't think that. I agree. I don't think they're actually in stark contradiction. [00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And unlike Martin Luther, I'm very glad James made it into the. [00:11:48] Speaker A: Luther did not like James or the book of revelation, and they're two of my favorite books. So I think, you know, in heaven one day, Luther and I are going to have words. [00:11:56] Speaker B: You may not be at the same dinner party in heaven. [00:12:02] Speaker A: What else do we notice here? I mean, the big appeal to me, you know, the first few verses, I think one to seven, set up a very concrete situation, which we can imagine you might even want to reimagine or put into language for our own time and place. You know, there's clearly references here, I think, to, you know, the rich who oppress you and drag you into court. So we're seeing here perhaps a reference to some of the hostilities early christians faced. But it really gets to the punchline, I think, in two eight, with this reference to the royal law, according to scripture, which is quoting Leviticus, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. This is something we get in all the gospels. We get versions of in Paul, we get versions of in other epistles. It seems to be a prevailing ethic in early Christ, as it was in Judaism at the time. This is not something christians didn't invent. Love, we should say, and now it's getting embodied with particular skin on it. One way of loving your neighbour is to not show partiality. [00:13:01] Speaker B: Partiality that really sums up this passage. Just treat everybody the same because Christ loves everybody, and that's the way we should try to live with God's help. [00:13:15] Speaker A: And I think the way, if I can jump ahead to verse 13, the way that gets embodied is mercy. So there's something here about judgment. Right. We can be very quick to judge. And I've just been at a conference where some of the conversation was around cancel culture, which we know, like the social media pile on, can be a problem. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:36] Speaker A: It can also have a good side. We're holding people to account in ways that perhaps we didn't. But judgment without mercy. Right. I think if we're christians, there's always the possibility of mercy, always the possibility of redemption, redemption and transformation. So this line about mercy triumphs over judgment is something to perhaps play with if you're a preacher. [00:13:57] Speaker B: Good one. [00:13:59] Speaker A: Anything else? No, that's enough in James. All right. Because we've got a lot to get into with the gospel. So let's go there. Next. Did you know you could join our Facebook group by the well, for extra content and discussion? Where are we going to start? With Mark seven. Yeah, we have two pericopes or two little scenes. The syrophoenician woman, which is probably the famous one of the two. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:32] Speaker A: Although. And then the cure of a man who cannot hear and cannot speak as a result of his deafness. And it's interesting to read them together because I think there are some things being compared. In one, Jesus will heal by word. In one, he heals by touch. He actually gets pretty physical, like, shoves his hand in this man's mouth. It's kind of weird. [00:14:51] Speaker B: That's kind of gross what he does. [00:14:56] Speaker A: But, you know, our lectionaries, paired them together. Mark has paired them together as two stories of kind of healing. Different kinds of healing. Should we start with the woman? [00:15:06] Speaker B: Yep. And we're coming up here to. I think it's next week, we're at that turning point in Mark's gospel. So we're coming up to that amazing change of direction, or single minded direction that Mark has Jesus on. [00:15:28] Speaker A: Yeah. In chapter eight, where he will then turn towards Jerusalem and to the cross. But up until now, it is worth giving some framing. The last few chapters in Mark, Jesus has been wandering around doing some pretty amazing things. He's been feeding thousands of people, he's been walking on water, he's been casting out hordes of demons. So at this stage, the disciples following him are seeing this incredible healer, prophet, wonder worker. Wonder worker. That's going to take a different shape very soon. [00:15:57] Speaker B: Dramatically. The other thing I noticed immediately was the continuation of the Jesus wanting to remain kind of incognito. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. [00:16:10] Speaker B: Doesn't want to go public twice. Verse 24, he entered a house and would not have anyone know it. [00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:18] Speaker B: Yet he could not be hid, you know? [00:16:20] Speaker A: Yes. [00:16:21] Speaker B: And then after the second story, he charged nobody to tell. [00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah. He's somehow trying to keep a lid on this. [00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:28] Speaker A: And it's not working. [00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:30] Speaker A: Which is a markan theme. Right. This messianic secret. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So he's in the region of Tyre, which we should say is gentile territory, and the woman he's about to encounter, we're told. I don't like the translation here. In verse 26, the NRSV has. Now, the woman was a gentile, but in fact, the Greek there is Eleanor. The woman was a Greek. [00:16:54] Speaker B: Oh, that was Greek in my translation. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Oh, there you go. Yeah. So I've got the NRSV on my computer here and she's syrophoenician. So this is a kind of a Syro for Syria. It's a certain region that kind of overlaps a bit with modern day Syria. And Phoenician is a semitic group historically associated with the Canaanites. So Matthew's gospel turns her into a canaanite woman. [00:17:18] Speaker B: I was going to ask, is there a difference? [00:17:21] Speaker A: But I think so. She's a Greek and all that is to say she's other. Right. She's not jewish, she's from a different region. Calling her a Greek, she might even be elite. So we need to be careful we don't make her some like she's other to Jesus, but she's not necessarily lesser in some ways. So the power dynamics, like, we're having to work with a lot of gaps in the story. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:48] Speaker A: And I say that because she comes to Jesus, she has a pretty strong sense of self agency. Right. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Yeah. She's on a mission. [00:17:56] Speaker A: Yeah. For her daughter. She's a desperate woman on a mission. [00:18:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:04] Speaker B: I was wondering, I did do a quick flick through. Is this the first and even the last explicit interaction in mark of Jesus with the gentile? Ooh, okay. That's a question I noticed. [00:18:21] Speaker A: That's a question I notice I need to think about quickly. [00:18:23] Speaker B: I couldn't. I couldn't find any other explicit references to. [00:18:29] Speaker A: Well, the next scene, I think. That's also a gentile. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:32] Speaker A: The deafen man who can't speak well, they're into capitalists, which are still. I don't. Yeah. But after this. Yeah, that's a good question. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Anyway, so he certainly already challenged prevailing notions of uncleanness. [00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:53] Speaker B: You know, lepers, the woman with the bleeding and so on. But I think this is the first explicit interaction with somebody who's unclean by definition of their race. So that's interesting. [00:19:14] Speaker A: And. And we get, I mean, so preach is the temptation here. And this has been a hard passage for people to preach because we want to rescue Jesus. We want Jesus to always look like the good guy, and he really doesn't in this story. He's possibly grumpy. He's tried to have some quiet time. This woman has come and maybe invaded his space. She's sought him out and she begs him, the language is pretty strong, to cast the demon out of her daughter. And we need to be clear what Jesus says. He doesn't say no. He says she's not the priority. Let the children be fed first. So he's got a missional priority. But then he says the thing that is the biggest stumbling block. It's not fair to take the children's food. So children probably referring to Israelites and throw it to the dogs, and there is no way to rescue that, I don't think. [00:20:04] Speaker B: I've searched for ways to make this an innocuous kind of reference. I've been unsuccessful, apparently. It is a very. [00:20:13] Speaker A: It's a slur. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:15] Speaker A: Yep. This is a horrible thing to say. Scholars have tried. So if you read old commentaries, you might read, oh, it's like. It's the, it's the diminutive, which is a grammatical term for dogs. So it's like puppies. It's cute. No, it's not cute. This does not hold up to scrutiny. [00:20:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:20:32] Speaker A: It is a racial slur. And this is where it's interesting. So I think we just have to accept the story as it's come to us. And the fact that Mark tells us is in itself interesting and a bit scandalous that he would tell a story that doesn't make Jesus look amazing. But I think her agency is fascinating because she comes back with this super smart response about the dogs under the table. Even they get to eat the children's crumbs. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Yes, it's brilliant. [00:21:03] Speaker A: It's brilliant. And it's for this word, this logos that Jesus says, the demon has left your daughter. Like, he affirms her word. She's the one who's actually right. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a very compelling scene. I was in a conversation recently and you were also part of it, Robyn, with an aboriginal friend. [00:21:27] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:28] Speaker B: And this passage came up in conversation and I was trying to. Yeah. I suggested, somewhat flippantly that I think Jesus was just having a really bad day. He was tired and grumpy and my friend said, no, you're letting Jesus off the hook here. This sounds like racism to me. Quite confronting, to put Jesus and racist in the same sentence. But there's no doubt that he understood his primary mission to be to jewish people. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Yep. [00:22:04] Speaker B: You know, it's a priority thing. I wouldn't call it outright racism. It's a priority thing. But certainly her wit and her determination pushed Jesus to change his priority in the moment at least. But it set a trajectory for the church. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Yep. That would include the gentiles. Radically. Absolutely. Radically. And, yeah, I think that's right. And we need to be careful. Like, I think this is a very human Jesus and we can say he's a product of his culture. We need to not. If we do that, we need to not throw all jewish people under the bus. So we need to do that carefully. Right. I mean, we all have our cultural biases. I also think the other theme running through here and where her witness is so powerful is she picks up on this food imagery which we've had above, like, so if we read this, you know, we've had Jesus feeding the 5000. Just above this, the Pharisees and Jesus disciples are eating a meal and there's a whole conversation about cleanliness and uncleanliness. I wonder, like, if we're a bit creative with a passage like this, acknowledging it is a bit in our faces. There's something here to the church. Even when we have scarcity, shrinking resources, perhaps are not sure what our priorities are. There's something here about saying the crumbs from God's table are enough. Like, I just wonder, like, what it would look like to play with that and say, we feel like we don't have that much more to give, maybe in this, you know, but actually the crumbs we have are enough. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:47] Speaker A: Cause that can transform a life. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Would be maybe one way I'd go with this. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah. You could link that to the feeding stories, too. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Where a little. The little that we assess that we have is enough and more than enough. [00:24:02] Speaker A: I don't know what you would. I mean, we should talk about the other man in a minute, too. But if you were preaching this passage, what would you lean in on? [00:24:11] Speaker B: I think I would. I would dwell a little bit. I'd suggest that Mark is telling this story because it's a live issue in his community. You know, clearly there's a lot of gentiles responding to the gospel, and, yeah, the early debates in the church was so much around who can come in. So he clearly tells this story to say, no, the gospel is for everybody. [00:24:41] Speaker A: Yep. [00:24:42] Speaker B: So I think I'd just probably make that point and maybe just pride and say, you know, we use the language of inclusion very glibly. I think sometimes in the church is. Does that really represent. Is that what people experienced if they come. Come into our communities? Are there signals that we send. Yeah, you know, let's look. Let's remember, James, do we send signals that basically say, look, some are more welcome than others? [00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think the other place to lean into is so feminist scholars will say that, you know, this woman has changed Jesus mind. She's actually taught him something which you alluded to before, and that might sit uncomfortably at first. But I actually think, again, if we look into the depths of the scriptures, God at times changes God's mind. [00:25:44] Speaker B: True. [00:25:45] Speaker A: Like Moses is able to change God's mind. The prophets call out to God to change God's mind. In fact, the very act of prayer on behalf of is about trying to change God's mind. So for Jesus to be genuinely, you know, have to reframe his thinking or to be changed by his interaction with another human being, I think is actually profoundly consistent with the very nature of God that says God is affected by us as much as we are affected by God. And this is therefore, because I used to always. I mean, I'm partly correcting myself. I used to always think this is about Jesus looking very human, but I increasingly think this is just as much about Jesus being divine. Yes, but that the divine can be transformed by our cries and our prayers, which takes up why I said that thing about the psalm earlier. [00:26:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But it actually. That makes Jesus an even more compelling figure for me. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:41] Speaker B: To think, whoa. He shifted because of her insistence. You know, he learned something from her and changed. [00:26:52] Speaker A: He was open to that. Yeah. [00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a plus for me. [00:26:56] Speaker A: I mean, I'm very tempted to go down some whole side note here about masculinity and what men could learn from this passage, but we will just plant that little seed. [00:27:03] Speaker B: You've done it. [00:27:04] Speaker A: I've done it. So what about the end of this passage? We've got Jesus in the region of Decapolis. Now, a very different miracle. Like weird Jesus now healing by touch. He's spitting. He's touching his tongue. It's kind of graphic. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah, graphic and gross. Touches his tongue with spit, places his fingers in the man's ears, gives big sigh, looks to heaven. That's. [00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Is that how you say it? [00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. Make it up. Just say it with boldness. If you're reading this aloud in church. [00:27:39] Speaker B: One commentary I read said that it's like a word of command. Like an exorcism. [00:27:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:47] Speaker B: Like, Mark's world is populated by demons, isn't it? [00:27:50] Speaker A: Yep, it is. [00:27:51] Speaker B: So it's almost like an exorcism. [00:27:54] Speaker A: And we do get language in the next verse about his tongue being released. So there is, like, a lot of the language of the demonic. And the exorcism in healing, in Mark is actually about release from something that binds. Right. [00:28:06] Speaker B: So that's their fetus of his tongue was loosened. Fetter of his tongue was loosened, was loosened. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Yep. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:13] Speaker A: I mean, there are resonances here. Scholars will point out that the way Jesus is portrayed in this scene is very much how magicians at the time were talking about that. Often had physical acts and these sort of strange words like fafda, that's hard to say, but that are kind of like y abracadabra type words. And, I mean, that is intriguing to me. I don't know what to do with it in a sermon, but again, I. Getting some cultural insight into how this might have been understood at the time. I suspect the point of this second little story here is the last line about everyone being astounded. He's done everything well. He can even do this right. This is part of his emerging identity as a wonder worker. And I. Yeah. [00:29:07] Speaker B: And I think the challenge here is to turn our experience of Christ's love and forgiveness into testimony to witness. [00:29:26] Speaker A: In. [00:29:26] Speaker B: Our church, I think we've taken the markan injunction to keep silent very literally in terms of sharing our faith. We've kind of bought the cultural teaching that religion's private. [00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Keep it to yourself. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And we're really good at obeying that part of it. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. [00:29:45] Speaker B: But I think, you know, that was very. That was contextual for Jesus. The ending of Matthew. Go and proclaim. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Baptize and proclaim the good news and make disciples, I think is probably more relevant. [00:30:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's an irony in the way Mark tells these stories because obviously people were not quiet because we also have lots of passages in Mark where, you know, the report about him spread everywhere throughout the whole land. So whatever work that kind of Jesus trying to keep things quiet was, it's actually counterproductive, which might be. The point is, if we're actually transformed by our experience of Jesus, we can't not talk about it. We can't not witness to it in some way. [00:30:32] Speaker B: Well, we can. [00:30:33] Speaker A: Well, we can because we're actually quite good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we shouldn't. I hate should words, but you know what I mean. [00:30:39] Speaker B: I do. [00:30:40] Speaker A: Any last thoughts, Al, on what you'd preach this week? [00:30:44] Speaker B: Well, I'd love to have a crack at all of these. I try not to refer to lots of different readings. In one sermon, I'd usually just pick one passage, but they're all preachable. But I think reminded, particularly with that second story, remind people that there's a metaphorical dimension to these stories. And maybe that later one is that apart from God's grace, we're deaf to the word of life. Let's not just go on the literal surface of the story, but what's the abiding message for the whole church in these stories? [00:31:24] Speaker A: And what do we need released in us to be able to speak exactly faith and God. Yeah. Love it. Thank you, Elma Crow, for being with us for this pleasure. By the well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.