A.C.T.

Tim Kirk
Telephone: 0404 805 082 (Office Hours)

New South Wales

Anne Marie Gatenby (Chairperson)
NSW Resource and Ministry Centre
19a Quirk Street, Rozelle 2039
Telephone: (02) 9810 2499. Fax: (02) 9555 5962
Office Hours: 9.30am to 4.00pm, Monday to Friday
Website: https://ccrnsw.org.au/

Queensland

Jenny McCormack (CCR QLD State President)
Telephone: (07) 3209 7671 (Office Hours)
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South Australia

Hiacinta Msomi (Chairperson CCR SA)
Telephone:  0407 660 715
Email:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Tasmania

Sean Werapermall (Chairperson)
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Victoria

Lenyce Willason
CCR Centre
Telephone: 03 9486 6544
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Western Australia

Dan Hewitt (Chairman)
Telephone: (08) 9398 4973 (Office Hours)
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From the beginning of chapter 13 of John’s Gospel, the evangelist has been turning to one of the biggest issues facing his community sixty years after Jesus’ death — the apparent absence of Jesus. Apparently, there is deep concern within the community that Jesus does not seem to be amongst them when they are being persecuted and killed by people from the local synagogues (cf. 16:1–4).

There are no resurrection appearances in Mark’s Gospel. Instead, the Gospel concludes with a scene where Jesus is not present. Why might Mark have ended his Gospel without Jesus appearing in the final scene?

The most probable setting of the Markan community is the city of Rome, perhaps a year after the destruction of the Temple in 70. If so, the intended readers of this Gospel had suffered seven years of severe persecution during which, according to Tacitus, “a great multitude” of Christians have been put to death just for being followers of Jesus. Mark was dealing with a community that had experienced the seeming absence of Jesus during that time. His people were asking why Jesus had not come and saved them from their suffering. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” (Mark 15:34) is really the prayer of those Roman Christians.

We are so used to Luke’s account of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2), that we miss the account of the giving of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in John’s Gospel, where it occurs, not fifty days after an Ascension (there is no Ascension in John), but on Easter Sunday night. It is a pity, too, that this unique account is rather lost in our liturgical reading of the First Sunday after Easter by making it part of 20:19–31, so that the whole focus becomes the story of Thomas. How many preachers speak about the Holy Spirit on this Sunday?

We are all familiar with the Emmaeus story from Luke’s Gospel, in which the disciples recognised Jesus “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35). For Luke’s community, the Eucharist was the special moment when Jesus would be recognised as being present among them.

For the second and third generation Christians in the 80s and 90s, both Luke and John dealt with the question how Christians could recognise the Risen Jesus as being with them. What is often not recognised is the several ways in which the author or authors of John’s Gospel addressed this question.

On the Feast of St Mark (26 April), we remember the faith of this great evangelist. Mark’s community had been suffering severe persecution for some time, and many had died. Mark 13:12–13 describes the betrayal and hatred experienced by his community, most likely the church of Rome, and we know from Tacitus that they were subject to persecution from the year 64 under Nero. It is most likely that Mark’s Gospel was written after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in August, 70, and probably after the victory march through Rome by Vespasian and Titus in June, 71. This means that the Roman church had suffered for perhaps seven years.

Friendship was highly valued in the Greco-Roman world. It was the ideal relationship between equals. For Epicurus, friendship was the basic pleasure, and the friendship found in Epicurean groups was a key factor in their popularity.

But the human being could also be a friend of God: “The sage is a friend of god” (Pseudo-Diogenes, Epistle 10). More than that, in Jewish thought, God could be a friend of the human being. In Exod 33:11, “Yahweh would talk to Moses face to face, as a man talks to his friend.” But it was only Moses who had this special positiion. The closest the ordinary person came to this notion of friendship was through seeking Wisdom: personified Wisdom was a friend of all who seek God (Wis 6:12–16; 7:26ff; 9:1–2; Prov 8:22–31).

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

The question — How did Jesus redeem us? — has been the subject of much theological discussion and many different explanations since the early days of Christianity. Even in the New Testament, many different expressions are used to explain how Jesus’ death brought us salvation. Here we look at the understanding found in Mark’s Gospel, the oldest of the Gospels.