Questions you may wish to consider (Or you may choose to totally ignore these questions and make up a new set that suits you and your context. Be brave.) • How do you think your community would respond to a ‘Jonno’ if he turned up next week? • A big part of John the Baptist’s ministry was based on people knowing that they needed to repent. What does ‘repentance’ mean to you? Do you think many people feel a need to repent these days? Why? Why not? • In the story, Jonno spends time with the Indigenous people of that area. Early European settlers were often very keen for the Indigenous people to accept Christianity and repent of their personal sins but rarely seemed to consider the corporate sin of dispossession inflicted on the First Nations of this country. What do you make of the idea of corporate repentance? • I use the cockatoo as a symbol of the Spirit. What bird would you have chosen? • The narrator experiences the symbolic death of baptism and the emergence into a new reality. In what way was your baptism – if you remember it – a sign of change for you? Does baptism really matter? How? Why? • Can you name prophets of today who resemble John the Baptist? Who is calling out the need to repent (to turn back towards goodness and light) in our world? What are they calling us to? They need not necessarily be connected to the church. John was not accepted by the priestly class in his time. 22
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI3ODI1