Monday, June 25, 2012

July 1, 2012 5th Sunday After Pentecost




Mark 5:21-43
21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.
   A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
   30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”  31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
   32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
   35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”  36 Overhearing[a] what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
   37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.
   After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
“Your Faith Has Made You Well”  

It is easy, with a text like today's, to make faith something magic rather than deeply human.
The power to heal was not in Jesus garment.  It was hidden someplace in what happened between the woman and Jesus.  Had she not reached out, she would have never known this healing.  Had she not risked doing what was both forbidden and scary, as well as a bit selfish, nothing would have happened.

Miracles happen when we believe in them enough to make them happen.  This doesn’t mean we create the miracle;  it could mean that we have something to do with creating the possibility of a miracle happening in our lives.  The miracle begins with me.  I have to want it bad enough to risk doing what is forbidden to get it!  The woman made it happen by reaching out in faith.  How many miracles don’t happen because we don’t reach out in the same faith?

Don’t wait for God to create a miracle for you and lay it at your feet.  Create the possibility of a miracle and lay it at God’s feet.  This is what faith dares to do!  It dares to believe that God can and will make miracles out of my efforts.  God will create the miracle of reconciliation as I
open my heart and mind to being reconciling.  God will create the miracle of forgiveness as I confess and become forgiving.  This in no way diminishes God’s power.  It makes God even more real, and intimate.  Not a magician who does things I cannot do; but a Friend who walks with me and enables my life to be a miracle!

 “Don’t Be Afraid, Only Believe” 

These words could sound superficial to us as well as Jairus - they point to the truth not that God keeps bad things from happening to good people but that God continually makes life out of death, hope out of despair.  The miracle is that as we lose life we find it.

To say, “Don’t be afraid - only believe” is not a cop out on real living.  To the contrary it is really living and believing that death is not an epilogue at the end of life but an episode in the endless life and is in fact, often the source of new life.  “What the caterpillar calls the end of the old, the master calls a butterfly.”

“The Miracle Is Faith” 

The issue of this text is faith, not miracles.  Faith which dares to trust in the goodness of God against all odds.  Which dares to say, “I believe in the sun, even when it is not shinning.  I believe in love even when I feel it not.  I believe in God even when He is silent.”  (Words found on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany after WWII.)

God is not in the business of producing mass miracles.  God is in the business of loving us uniquely, personally, powerfully, so that no matter what happens to us in our lives, ‘his unfailing love and mercy still continue’ and we can live in hope.

To worship miracles is to worship unrealistic expectations.  To worship God is to trust God’s
unfailing love and mercy” which can turn the worst into the best - and that is a miracle indeed!



Monday, June 18, 2012

June 24, 2012 4th Sunday After Pentecost



Mark 4:35-41
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

It is easy to feel that God doesn’t care; so much bad happens to good people.

We look for signs of God caring for us by how God uses his power for us - in miraculous ways.  Perhaps we need to look again at how God cares for us, not in miracles, but in the miracle of our faith.

What if the disciples had fought the storm rather then wake Jesus, trusting that they could do it? What if they had made the miracle happen by trusting that Jesus did care about them and trusting their own God given strength to overcome?  It would still have been a miracle!

This is not to diminish the uniqueness of what Jesus did; and the sign it is for who he is!
It is to say that there are miracles of God in the ordinary, not just the extraordinary things of life. 

“Anxiety impelled faith which turns people to Jesus for deliverance in emergencies is not the faith Jesus calls for.” 

Jesus calls for the faith which empowers one to believe strong enough to create one’s own miracle, by not letting fear immobilize and paralyze; by daring to believe against all odds that God is for us, not against us. always!  He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, will give us all things, even the power to overcome fear and make our own miracles.

Don’t wait for God to do it for you.  Ask God to do it with you and see what miracles can be created when you dare to believe that asleep or awake, God does care for you.


Monday, June 11, 2012

June 17, 2012 3rd Sunday After Pentecost



Mark 4:26-34
    26 He (Jesus) also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”
 33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.
"God Does It'"

The Kingdom of God seems terribly insignificant and insufficient in the affairs of the world, yet it has the dynamic that can make the difference even in our world.

That dynamic is the love of God as known in Jesus Christ.  A love which is individual and universal.  “If Christianity doesn’t begin with the individual it doesn’t begin; but if it ends with the individual, it ends.”
In the parable of the seed growing secretly we are reminded that we have little to do with the building of the Kingdom.  It grows on its own and at its own pace! 

 “The Kingdom of God is not a ‘cause’ for which we fight, nor a ‘program’ that we run.  It is what God does on His own.  We do not build God’s Kingdom.”   God does!” 
God uses us to be sure.  Yet we do not do it; God does.  And it takes time.  Patience is the word when we wait for seed to grow - in the ground and in the Kingdom.

The parable of the Mustard Seed reminds us that God often works God’s purposes out through the insignificant.  In the Kingdom of God, it is not bigness which counts, but making a difference in someone’s life. 

Monday, June 4, 2012

June 10, 2012 2nd Sunday After Pentecost




Mark 3:20-35

 20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 
21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! 
By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

 3 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan?
24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
 6 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 
27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. 
28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 
29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 
32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 
35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”


Pentecost 2  Mark 3:20-35  (not from sermons preached.  Written 6/4/12)

In the middle of this text Jesus drops a bomb.  We have to say a word about that before we can hear what else he has to say.

What ever Jesus means about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit - a sin which cannot be forgiven -
this is for sure:  Anyone who fears they have committed it haven’t.
It is a sin which happens when we believe we are right so strongly that we are not open to any other thought or any other possibility.  We are not even open to the Holy Spirit having something different to say to us and through us.  It is not letting anything - even the Spirit of God which blows over us and through us like the wind - open and even change our closed mind and heart.

It is a reminder that a totally closed mind and heart are headed on a dead end street.

As we struggle with faith, hope, and love in our lives we need the encouragement which comes from the promise of forgiveness, not the threat of condemnation.  
The God (Jesus) I meet in the NT is a God who would rather forgive than condemn, and doesn’t like the unforgivable sin any more than we do.

Having said this, we can listen to Jesus words about a divided Kingdom is sure to fail and the true Kingdom is one where all are brothers and sisters.

Dare we say it?  Jesus words regarding a divided kingdom remind me of what is happening in our country right now.  It is no way to live in our earthly kingdom and it no way to live in the Kingdom of God.

We are called to live in harmony, letting the spirit of goodness, mercy and respect lead us to decisions which must be made for the good of all.  For we are family!  And only as we live as family will we be able to stand, and standing,  be a blessing to others.