Category Archives: Series B
2 Lent 2021
28 February 2021 – Mark 8:27-38
1 Lent 2021
21 February 2021 – Mark 1:12-13
Transfiguration 2021
14 February 2021 – Mark 9:1-9
Ephesians 5:22-33 / 23 August 2015
Several weeks ago, I commented that the supreme court and its decision regarding the legal status of gay marriage were not going to deflect us from hearing God’s Word and the assigned readings for that Sunday. One thing about life in the church is that we are not tyrannized by what the world deems “important” and the news media calls “urgent.” Late-breaking news does not define our family conversation. Our focus is on things eternal not things temporal.
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John 6:51-69 / 16 August 2015
How can this man give us his flesh to eat? The folks in Capernaum didn’t understand what Jesus was saying. And who really could blame them? “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Has Jesus taken leave of His senses? Or is He just speaking “metaphorically,” a little over the top shock and awe to get the attention of dull ears just to see if they’re listening?
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John 6:35-51 / 9 August 2015
More Jesus, more bread of life. Like the loaves in the wilderness, this text keeps on giving more, pushing things further and deeper. With Jesus, one can never say, “Enough already!” Faith is always hungry, always thirsty for more, and Jesus is the bread that never runs out.
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John 6:22-35 / 2 August 2015
Free food always draws a crowd. It never fails. You want people to come out in droves? Offer free food. They’ll flock to it every time. There is nothing better than bread you don’t work for. No sweat of the brow involved here. All you can eat bread and fish from Jesus. Such a deal! The crowds flocked after Jesus. They even chased after Him in boats. Free food. Who can resist it? We elect politicians on the promise of a chicken in every pot, or at least today’s equivalent. Imagine it. The end to world hunger and welfare. No one goes hungry when Jesus doles out the bread and the fish. They just keep on multiplying endlessly. No more food banks, no more food stamps, no more work. Give us this day our daily bread, and poof! There it is.
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Mark 6:14-29 / 12 July 2015
See what happens when you mess around with politics and marriage? You lose your head to Herod. John wasn’t martyred for preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God. He lost his head for criticizing Herod’s shabby morals for shacking up with his brother’s estranged wife Herodias. John calls him out on it and gets in dutch with Herodias, who’s probably more of a political player than anything else. Her daughter does a seductive belly dance for Uncle Herod and his buddies at his birthday party and, in a fit of probably drunken magnanimity, offers the girl up to half his kingdom. She goes off to Mom who seizes the opportunity and asks for John’s head on a platter. So much for John. Exit stage left, down the stairs of moral activism.
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Mark 6:1-13 / 5 July 2015
Jesus returns home with his growing entourage of disciples. The local boy made good has come to the home congregation to preach to the hometown folks. The place was probably packed. The word had gotten back to Nazareth. He teaches with authority. He heals the diseased, casts out demons. He’s the complete messianic package. And who would have thought it? Jesus, Mary’s kid. The carpenter from Nazareth.
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