Month: September 2009

Text: Mark 9:38-50
Date: Pentecost XVII (Proper 21) + 9/27/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

Today’s pericope helps us understand what has gone just before in Mark’s Gospel, and to better understand our own task of confessing Christ in our world today. I mean, didn’t you think it strange that the disciples suddenly started arguing about who is or will be the greatest among them? Where did that come from? Were they that petty? When’s the last time you got into an argument about who is greater than whom? I thought so. Probably the last time was when you were a child! Or when you were being childish! And then what about this oddity that suddenly Jesus’ disciples were unable to cast out a demon from a young boy, something that they had previously been fully authorized to do? Continue reading “Who's Following Whom?”

Text: Mark 9:30-37
Date: Pentecost XVI + 9/20/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

This is now the third and final time in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus tells his disciples about his coming passion, death and resurrection. And their reaction just seems to get worse every time he brings the subject up. The first time (8:31-33) Peter rebukes Jesus and becomes the unwitting tool of Satan himself. The second time (9:9-12) followed Jesus transfiguration and the inner group of disciples were left with more questions than answers. This third and last passion prediction so stuns them that they were, literally, speechless. “They did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him” (v. 32). They don’t get it yet, that the way of the Christ, and therefore of his followers, is the way of meekness as Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). The Messiah is, as Jeremiah prophesied, “like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter” (Jer. 11:19). Taking a child for an object lesson, Jesus illustrated the peaceable innocence and meekness that characterizes Him and therefore is also to characterize those who follow Him in the way of the cross. Continue reading “Wisdom From Above”

Text: Mark 9:14-29
Date: Pentecost XV (Proper 19) + 9/13/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

When the Blessed Virgin Mary inquired of the angel as to how it would be that she should bear a child without a human husband, she was told, “nothing will be impossible with God” (Lk. 1:37). By faith in that word she conceived and bore the Son of God. When the disciples heard Jesus suggest the difficulty of the rich young man and people like him to enter the kingdom of heaven at all and asked, “Who, then, can be saved,” Jesus said, “with God all things are possible” (Mt. 19:26). I have been blessed to know a few people of some earthly means and wealth to also be examples of generous and lively faith. Jesus Himself, before His suffering and death, in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed, “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mk. 14:36). In the Book of Hebrews faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). “By grace you are saved through faith,” says the Apostle Paul, “and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). It appears that this thing called “faith” has to do with issues that are beyond our manipulation or prediction. Yet faith, in the Bible, is not blind, it is not just a hunch or a wild bet or wager based on your wildest dreams or desires but is, rather, the appropriate God-given response to the promises of God. Continue reading “Believe It or Not”

Text: Mark 7:31-37
Date: Pentecost XIV (Proper 18) + 9/6/09
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

In today’s Gospel, Mark the Evangelist clearly has in mind the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard earlier, “Say to those who have an anxious heart, ‘Be strong; fear not!’…. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped” (Is. 35:4a, 5). For the Jewish scribes had always said this would be a sign of the Messiah to come. Well, today, here He is. And so we repeat the comforting prophetic word at His coming to us today, “Do Not Fear.”

There are many kinds of fear. One is the fear of failure. It can probably be said of all of us that we can all do a few things well. Perhaps it can even be said that each one of us can do at least one thing well. But of none of us can it be said, “He or she has done all things well.” For, many times we fail. There is only One to whom that tribute can be paid, and we are here in worship on this day to join the chorus in the tribute that began in the region of the Decapolis, and has grown in great crescendo through the centuries to this day, saying of Jesus, “He has done all things well!” He is why God can say, and we can say to each other, “Do Not Fear.” Continue reading “Do Not Fear”