Sun. Feb. 20, 2011 (Steve Heinrichs)

Steve Heinrichs spoke on a variety of subjects, such as (1) Jesus calming the sea (Mark 4.35-41), (2) the history of European Canadians taking over British Columbia, and (3) Mennonites attempting to relate to indigenous neighbours. This summary will focus on the gospel lectionary reading for the morning. Some travelers have the gift of sleep. Jesus slept right through the heart of a storm until awakened by friends. But the way this story is told in Mark draws interesting parallels to the story of Jonah. We first sense the deliberateness of these parallels when noticing that the teller refers to the tiny Lake of Galilee as a "sea". This helps listeners recall that Jonah was also asleep on a boat while traveling through a storm on the sea. Both Jesus and Jonah were awakened by frightened fellow travelers, and both men found unusual and even supernatural ways to calm their storms. Both men were on a mission to the Gentiles, Jonah to Ninevah (to save them from certain destruction) and Jesus to Decapolis on the east of the Jordan, where he went to a Gentile cemetery (doubly unclean) and cast out demons (bringing salvation to the man and witness to the area). The 'possessed' man was obviously on the margins of his society. Steve then challenged us to leave the comforts of our church world and consider relating in meaningful ways to those marginalized in our society, especially indigenous peoples. [JEK] Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, February 20th, 2011 using your browser's preferred media player.