ETC 4420 Day 1 (7pm)
Show attribution
wikicommonsThe man with the unclean spirit
(Mark 1.21-28)
Discussion
Post it notes - FELT and FEEL
MAN: How I felt about the man when I first heard him? How do I feel about the man’s future now he is free?
JESUS: How I felt about Jesus as I heard the man’s questions? How I feel about Jesus as I see the differences between Jesus and traditional healers then and now?
How would I want to pray if I had been there?
Show attribution
wikicommonsIssue - Death
Living under the shadow of death
“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens”
Woody Allen
Life expectancy in the Roman Empire
The numbers are hard to calculate, here are the best figures available.
Life expectancy for men was around 25 years
Life expectancy for women was around 20 years
Infant mortality rates were 200 deaths per 1000 births
30% of children died in the first year of their lives
50% of children lived beyond their tenth birthday
40% of children lived to twenty
Ethiopia figures
Life expectancy in Ethiopia today
Life expectancy for men 64.62 years, for women 71.30 years.
Average life expectancy today 67.88 years.
In 1950 life expectancy in Ethiopia was 35 years.
Infant mortality rates in Ethiopia in 2023
Mortality rates of 36 deaths per 1000 births
In 1966 it was 158 deaths per 1000 births
In 1983 it was 193 (or more) deaths per 1000 births
The mortality rate has been declining since 1987
Discussion
For people living under the reign of death, suffering under Roman imperial authority and enduring different forms of religious tyranny, what makes the encounter between Jesus and the man with the unclean spirit so exciting?
How do you think the crowd were feeling on their way home?
How do you feel about what Jesus did for the man, as a foretaste of what he has come to do for the world?
Show attribution
wikicommonsReflection
How does Jesus show what Mark 10.40-45 involves? What does Jesus not do (that other religious and political leaders often do)? What does Jesus do instead? What do you love about Jesus in this story? What questions does the story leave unanswered? How shall we respond to Jesus?
.
.
Show attribution
wikicommonsHomework (90 mins)
Practise your servant leadership for the man by writing a prayer for him to pray and send it to me by email before 5pm tomorrow.
My email for this course is: [email protected]
Imagine that two or three years later the man from Mark 1.21-28 has become a Christian. He has been born again, and he is growing in faith as a committed member of a local church.
But he is troubled by death. There is so much death around him. Death comes so close to him. Death takes away members of his family and his friends. Death breaks the door down unexpectedly and snatches people away.
He knows that Jesus has died and risen, and returned to the right hand of the Father, to the throne of God, from where he is delivering God’s good purpose for his world. He knows that the Spirit of God came at Pentecost. He has received Christ and received the Spirit into his heart. But death is brutal and everywhere. He does not know what he should pray. He is asking for your help.
He has come across the Lord’s Prayer, and he is asking you to help him by teaching him to pray, and to develop the pattern in the Lord’s prayer in the light of his original encounter with Jesus, and his continuing anxiety and disappointment at the power of death.
Write a prayer for the man to use. Look back to the original encounter with Jesus in your prayer. Address the uncertainty and fear that your Christian brother is feeling. Use the Lord’s Prayer to guide the shape of your prayer.
You may not be used to writing prayers. But there are written prayers in the Bible. Jesus arranged for the Lord’s Prayer to be written for us. Paul wrote to churches telling them what he was praying for them. David wrote down some of his prayers for other believers to use.
You may already know that Martin Luther wrote a prayer for his friend Peter the Barber, using the Lord’s prayer as a framework. You can find the prayer here. You only need the first four pages. You can read the rest later, and learn from the way that Luther uses the Ten Commandments and the Creed to shape his prayers.
Your prayer will need to look different from Martin Luther’s prayer. But you may like to read his written prayer to see how he helped his friend.
Please email your response to [email protected] by 5pm before we meet at 530pm