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SUMMARY:Holy Communion and Junior Church
DTSTART:20240908T090000Z
DTEND:20240908T101500Z
DTSTAMP:20260617T220250Z
UID:10626922024-09-08 09:00:00+00:00achurchnearyou
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Holy Communion for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity: celebra
 nt the Revd Tola Badejo. Junior Church takes place at the same time in the
  hall.\n\nFirst reading: James 2. 1 – 17\nGospel: Mark 7. 24 – 37\n\nT
 oday James addresses a central argument in the church: are believers saved
  by their faith or by their works? His answer returns the question to the 
 enquirer: how can we believe we have a saving faith if that faith is not r
 eflected in our actions? Faith is also a key element in the Gospel\, which
  contains stories of people healed deep in Gentile territory. Jesus's blun
 t words to the Syrophoenician woman pose a challenge to commentators\, who
  sometimes try to minimise their force\, and perhaps we should understand 
 them less as a literal record of what was said than as Mark's way of under
 lining the universality of the Gospel\; in his account\, Jesus himself wor
 ks through a process of opening his message to people who were alien\, and
  sometimes actively hostile\, to Jews. This need for acceptance\, the oppo
 site of prejudice\, is the link between the two readings: just as Jesus ma
 de no distinction between Jew and Gentile\, James (who might have been his
  half-brother) urges us to extend a welcome to all\, including those who d
 on't seem to be 'our' kind of people.\n\nThe Dutch painting above illustra
 tes the key elements of the Gospel story in a symbolic rather than realist
 ic way - the woman begging for help\; a man looking doubtful\, as if he's 
 not sure she should be doing this\; children eating and dropping crumbs\; 
 and little dogs (the Greek NT apparently uses the word for pet dogs rather
  than working dogs). As usual\, much of the setting reflects the artist's 
 own world and the way things appeared in the seventeenth century\; while o
 n the one hand this approach might seem faintly ridiculous\, on the other 
 it makes the point that story relates to everyone's 'now'\, whenever that 
 may be.
GEO:0.037423;51.469833
LOCATION:Kidbrooke\, St Nicholas
URL:https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/671/service-and-events/events/10
 62692/
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