The Twelve Are Appointed

Mark For Everyone

MARK 3.7–19
The Twelve Are Appointed...

...When I was a boy, the football team I support, Newcastle United, won the FA Cup, the world’s oldest football trophy, three years out of five. Think what it was like in Newcastle when the players came back from the match at Wembley Stadium in London. The whole town turned out to watch and to cheer. Something similar happens when a film star comes to town. Or a rock star. The streets are full of people, and you wonder where they all came from.

It doesn’t often happen that way today with people we think of as ‘religious’ leaders (though crowds do sometimes turn out when the Pope goes on tour). But we shouldn’t just think of Jesus in what we today call ‘religious’ terms. The main reason people came flocking to him from all sides was because he was able to heal them. In a world where medical skill was, by our standards, extremely primitive, someone who appeared to be able to heal almost anyone of almost anything caused a stampede. Word went round from village to village and region to region. They didn’t have radio, television or newspapers; but their bush telegraph was pretty effective. Suddenly the little town on the sea of Galilee was overrun with eager folk coming to be cured, or to bring sick relatives...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright