Text: Mark 9:38-50
Date: Pentecost XVIII + Proper 21b + 09/27/15
“A young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ And Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, said, ‘My lord Moses, stop them.’ But Moses said to him… ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets.’” Continue reading “The Right Credentials”
Text: Mark 9:30-37
Date: Pentecost XVII + Proper 20 + 9/20/15
Today’s Gospel may seem, at first, to be a bit disjointed. The first part is another of our Lord’s passion predictions and the second part a lesson on humility. But if we are here to be proclaiming Jesus Christ, it is all about Him. Today’s Old Testament reading hints at the passion part with the prophetic words, “I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Then today’s Epistle from St. James seems to point at the second half of today’s Gospel when it says, “‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” If we are here only to encourage a lesson in ethical behavior of a so-called Christian life, that’s easy enough. But if we are here to preach and proclaim Jesus Christ for the life of the world that is quite another though related matter.
Last week we left Jesus going through the foreign, Gentile territory. Today we follow Him through Galilee when they came to Capernaum, His home town. This group of followers had witnessed some amazing things at the hands of Jesus. Mark told us how Jesus healed a deaf man, fed four thousand people in a desolate place, and healed a blind man. As these were all very public events more and more people began to follow Him. Now it appears what people were thinking about this great rabbi from Capernaum. And as with any popular celebrity people jockey for positions to be seen or acknowledged as closer or more favored by Him than others, sort of a first century “selfie.” “Well, I knew Him ever since” this or that great work.
Now He comes to His house and asks His twelve chosen disciples, “What were you discussing on the way?” As if He didn’t know! But they knew He knew. And He knew that they knew that He knew. So….they kept silent. They knew how petty was their argument as to who is greatest among them. And this wouldn’t be the last time they would stumble into this sin (Luke 22:24). So Jesus takes one of the children in the house (they knew Him and so were completely at ease). He first stood him in the middle of the floor and then taking him into his arms said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
At first we are to consider others, especially children to be His favored, so much so that we are to treat and protect and love them as if they are Him. At first the child represents Him. But let the child represent us, you and me and all mankind being received and gathered by Jesus, the truly humble one, into His kingdom of salvation.
To become a Christian the heart and center of it all is faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. According to the small catechism we lay the groundwork for the faith with the Ten Commandments, the Word of our Creator with whom we then begin in the Creed. The life of faith is then taught by the Spirit through the Lord’s Prayer and the means of grace, the sacraments. In the center of it all, the crux of the matter is this: the Son of God, incarnate of the virgin Mary, crucified, risen again and ascended to His heavenly throne. So Jesus taught his disciples privately, personally, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.” Notice that since He is to be the greatest, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, He first is humble, last of all and servant of all. He calls Himself “the Son of Man.” Only faith calls Him the Son of God. Here He uses the word “kill” twice. a word almost more shocking than the word “crucify.” What? Are they going to behead Him? Torture Him? Justify Him by the sword? Since we know the story so well it is hard for us if not impossible to imagine how those first disciples “processed” this strange, horrible prediction. “They can’t really kill Him,” they must have thought. “He’s more powerful than anyone! He’s the greatest!” And if He’s the greatest then we His followers must be right in line of greatness. And so it goes.
If it was impossible to believe that He really meant He really was going to die then how doubly impossible for them to understand what this “after three days he will rise” means. Sure, we all believe, as did the disciple Martha when she said of the promise for Lazarus her brother, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). What she didn’t yet know, and what never entered the mind of these disciples, was as Jesus said to Martha, “I AM the resurrection” (Jn 11:25). Resurrection is not only an event reserved for the Last Day. It already happened to a young girl, to a man the only son of a widow, to Lazarus at the hand of Jesus. Resurrection is the power through which by His death Christ conquered death and the devil. Alleluia! Jesus is risen! When one has faith in Jesus it is as if one has already died with Him and is raised to newness of life, already now. We live in the faith and hope of the Last Day which will be but the first day of eternal life in the resurrection of all flesh.
True greatness is found in the humiliation and exaltation of the cross of Christ, both for Him and for us. When we make the sign of the cross over ourselves it is a confession of the faith that gladly takes the last place in the sure and certain hope of winning the prize as the apostle Paul put it (1 Cor 9:24). That prize is the imperishable wreath when this perishable body puts on the imperishable.
“For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’
‘O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:53-57).
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:10).
Text: Mark 9:14-29
Date: Pentecost XVI + Proper 19 + 9/13/15
Today’s dramatic Gospel is again all about faith or the lack of it. It’s about the fight of faith against, as we heard in last Sunday’s Epistle, “against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:11-12). Many have denied the demonic explaining away the experience of the young boy in today’s Gospel as merely the medical condition of epilepsy. But the father of this son says clearly that the problem is not with the boy but with “a spirit that makes him mute,” that “seizes him, throws him down.” Furthermore St. Mark claims that it was not the boy but rather “when the spirit saw [Jesus], immediately it convulsed the boy.” We will draw comparisons to our present evil days in a moment. Continue reading “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”
Text: Mark 7:31-37
Date: Pentecost XV + Proper 18 + 9/6/15
It’s great to be popular. Students especially in high school know and rally around those they perceive as the most popular fellow student. Among Christians there is a certain satisfaction when you see people drawn to a particular church where there is the most popular preacher or organist. Today St. Mark closes off this major section of his Gospel at the height of Jesus’ popularity. But there is a problem even a danger in being popular. For usually popularity is gained for only the most surface of reasons but which lack depth and therefore real significance. The most popular student can be lured into the same sins or difficulties as anyone else. Everyone who surfs the television channels has run across Joel Osteen whose positive thinking message seems very popular indeed. Yet mere positive thinking cannot deliver you from the depths of fear, worry, sin or death. And now at the height of Jesus’ popularity, after he restores hearing and clear speech to a man once deaf, “Jesus charged them to tell no one.” It’s not the first time we’ve heard this command to secrecy. Continue reading “Every Tongue Tuned to Praise”
Text: Mark 7:14-23
Date: Pentecost XIV + Proper 17 + 8/30/15
Last week at the beginning of Mark chapter 7 we heard the exchange between the officials from Jerusalem accusing Jesus’ disciples (and therefore Jesus Himself) of lawlessness, violating the rules and traditions of the elders concerning the ceremonial washing of hands before a meal. Jesus countered by labeling them hypocrites and legalists. In our discussion of the way of the Law and the way of the Gospel we ended with the observation that love is the fulfilling of the law. Today in the second half of chapter 7 Jesus turns from addressing the merely man-made religious traditions to the divine Law of God itself as summarized in the Ten Commandments. We discover that not only is love the fulfilling of the Law but that the love of Christ is actually the goal and end of the Law! Continue reading “My Heart Thy Royal Throne”
Text: Mark 7:1-13
Date: Pentecost XIII + Proper 16 + 9/23/15
Today St. Mark begins to describe the increasing hostility to Jesus by the official Jewish leadership which, of course, will culminate in our Lord’s crucifixion and death. In this confrontation by the high ranking Pharisees and selected scribes from Jerusalem Jesus refers to our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 29. In this word of the Lord we heard God’s accusation, saying, “You turn things upside down!” This, of course, is the habit of the rest of the world of spiritually blind sinners separated from the truth of God. This is why when Jesus delivers His Sermon on the Mount and specifically the Beatitudes that His words sound upside down to us! We refer to this classically as the confusion of Law and Gospel. The Law suggests a person is saved “only if,” only if you do the right works and lead the right kind of moral life. The Gospel on the other hand says clearly that salvation is, nevertheless, the free gift of God to all who will receive it. Continue reading “The Wor(l)d Upside Down”
Text: John 6:51-69
Date: Pentecost XII + Proper 15B + 8/16/15
There was just something in the way He spoke that drew us to Himself. Then there were the amazing healings. But even more amazing He fed us out in the middle of nowhere. I tasted the bread and the fish that He gave to His assistants to distribute to us sitting on the green grass. Then He disappeared for a time. We figured out that He took a boat to the other side of the lake. So I got into one of the boats while others ran around to the other side on land. Continue reading “You Will Live Forever”
Text: John 6:35-51
Date: Pentecost XI + Proper 14B + 8/9/15
They followed Jesus who healed them, who miraculously fed them and who was teaching them many things. They followed Him but they would not believe Him. Last week in John 6 we learned that our true, real and deepest need is not as much for food, clothing, shelter and health for this life but for an answer to sin and death and our eternal destiny. Today Jesus tells us about His mission of salvation with the goal of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. But it’s not enough just to know about Him and His mission merely intellectually. A person must come to the point of believing in and trusting Him for Who He is and what He has done. Continue reading “Living Bread from Heaven”
Text: John 6:22-35
Date: Pentecost X + Proper 13B + 8/2/15
We have been following Jesus in Mark’s Gospel as the crowds followed Him around the Sea of Galilee. The people witnessed our Lord healing many sick people. While He taught them many things He also miraculously fed the 5,000 from just a few loaves of bread and some fish. Then we heard about Jesus walking on the sea to His distressed disciples and finally arriving on the other shore. St. John in his Gospel relates those same things but today he fills in some further words and teaching of Jesus to those who were following Him that are not mentioned in the other accounts. Continue reading “Miraculous Bread”
Text: Mark 6:45-56
Date: Pentecost IX + Proper 12B + 7/26/15
Last Sunday we heard of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. Mark told us that when Jesus “saw a great crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mk 6:34). We are to know that you and I are in that great crowd, that is, that Jesus has compassion on you! Continue reading “The Ruler of All Cares for You”
