Jesus had a shadow mission and that was to be a messiah without suffering. That was what the temptation in the dessert was all about. You don’t have to be hungry. Turn these stones into bread. Bow down and worship me (Satan) and I’ll give you this whole world. You don’t have to suffer, just call on the angels to rescue you.
Considering this makes space for the possibility that God actively enlists us in God’s work. This does create the unfortunate, and sometimes tragic, possibility for resistance, certainly, but it also invites our partnership and, in this way, makes holy (to use a Wesleyan word) our daily activities and actions in the world.
But Jesus wanted more for her. He wanted her to have peace. He wanted her to be restored to her community. When he asked, “Who touched me?”, he wanted to have a personal relationship with her so that she could experience the loving nature of the Kingdom of God.
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From the very beginning, from his inception/conception (when he was just a twinkle in his daddy’s eye), Jesus began disordering/disrupting the world. Of course, to begin with, it was a very small piece of the world, but 2 lives that had intended to join together to create a new family were suddenly changed when Mary, and then Joseph, learned that Mary was pregnant. Last week, in the gospel of Luke, we experienced Mary’s response to the...
An angel appears to Mary, telling her that she will give birth to a son. Initially frightened by the angel’s appearance, he soothes her, telling her not to be afraid, because she has found favor with God. The promise of the angel is that: He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end...
“Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” I’ve already heard this much-loved Christmas carol played a number of times—along with others—in the stores where I’ve shopped, for several weeks now. We’ve grown accustomed to Thanksgiving decorations being set up before Halloween, soon followed by the red and green and gold glitters and sparkles of Christmas...
Questions are asked for all kinds of reasons. We might ask a question because we’re curious, we’d like more information, we’d like to get to know someone a little better. Sometimes questions are asked to clarify, to make sure the other person has received the information we’re trying to share, to be sure they understand what we’re saying—like the questions a teacher will...
People in the crowd can see what’s going to happen. They begin to smile in anticipation. Some of the folks in the crowd gently elbow the people on their right and left and whisper, “Wait till you see this!” The rabbi from Nazareth, the traveling preacher, is coming through town on his way to Jerusalem. This rabbi, unlike most of the others, never swallows the truth in order to be polite...
Have you heard the story of the man who came to the gates of heaven to be greeted by Saint Peter? Peter asks the man if he can give a brief history of his life with an emphasis on the good deeds he’s done in order to gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven. “You will need 1000 points to be admitted,” Peter tells the man. “This will be a cinch,” the man thinks to himself...
Mary Ann Cain is one of my favorite people. She is a lay-person, she’s wise, full of vim and vinegar, well-read, and devoted to Christ and His Church. She was our Director of Adult Ministries or Education or some such title when I served in Elkhart, and she continued to serve until she retired some years after I headed off to a new congregation. I remember in some setting...
The man’s wife had left him. He was completely depressed. He had lost faith in himself, in other people, in God. He found no joy in living. One rainy morning the man went to a small neighborhood restaurant for breakfast. Although several people were at the diner, no one was speaking to anyone else. Our miserable friend hunched over the counter, stirring his coffee...
We’ve been traveling along through the gospel of Luke, and Jesus has been teaching his disciples and others gathered around all along the way. We’re more than halfway through the gospel now, and for we who are reading the written down version, the stories follow one right after the other, and I’m guessing that for the disciples, that’s how it feels to them, as well. As they walk..
Today we hear the story of the rich man and Lazarus, another one of those stories that catches our attention and causes our backbone to stiffen just a bit. We don’t want to place ourselves in the fine shoes of the rich man, but we know we can’t relate to Lazarus, either, sitting at the rich man’s gate, longing to eat whatever might be left over from his last meal, that will end up...
Here we go again: another installment in what I could have entitled as a sermon series, “What in the world was Jesus thinking?” as he teaches his disciples and the “sinners, tax-collectors and Pharisees” who are gathered within earshot, listening to him. What in the world was Jesus thinking? What is he wanting to teach us? To cheat? To lie? To mess with...
I read something this week that suggested that one of the reasons Jesus was put to death was to stop all the stories he kept telling! When Jesus told stories, he had this annoying tendency to make the wrong people either the heroes or the bad guys. Two people go up to the temple to pray, one a pious, biblically learned religious leader, the other a compromised, evil collaborator...
Wow! This is a text that grabs your attention, isn’t it? It starts out telling us that large crowds are traveling with Jesus, but after hearing what he has to say, we can’t help but wonder how quickly some folks might have responded by backing away, not wanting to hear another word! This is another one of those times when our first response is: seriously, Jesus?...
In my experience with Jesus, he’s not one to avoid answering tough questions. We pastors, on the other hand, learn through experience that one ought be cautious in responding to tough questions. “Preacher, what does the Methodist Church have to say about… gambling… the death penalty… euthanasia… human rights… immigration...
There’s a little book written by the late Bishop Rueben P. Job entitled Three Simple Questions: Knowing the God of Love, Hope and Purpose, that I’m guessing some of you studied when it first came out a few years ago. In the book, Bishop Job reminds us that: God is greater than anything we can comprehend or imagine; Each of us is God’s beloved child, just like every other human being is on God’s good earth; All of us together are God’s family; and...
As we read through the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we get caught up in this flurry of activity as Jesus travels and teaches. As the chapter begins, Jesus commissions and sends 72 disciples on ahead of him to prepare the way for his visits and has instructed them on how to respond to the hospitality they’re offered—or not offered. These disciples return to Jesus...
As I begin this morning’s message, I want to offer a disclaimer: It’s Jesus’ fault. When I struggle through a difficult passage, as I work on an outline, as I try to figure out how to best write and preach a sermon on a particular text—what comes out in the end (if I’ve been prayerful and faithful), what I share with you on Sunday morning, well, it’s Jesus’ fault...
This morning’s scripture about the healing of the demon-possessed man in Luke 8 is possibly one of the wildest stories ever told about the ministry of Jesus. It begins as Jesus takes his disciples and crosses from the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee—on the western shore—to the Gentile side of the lake. As he does this, it reminds us of how Jesus...
“Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” As I began focusing on the text for this morning, these are the words that caught my attention, particularly, the phrase: we have peace with God. From there, the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul,” came to mind...
This was the day they’d been waiting for. They hadn’t known what to expect and they couldn’t have been able to imagine what would happen if they’d tried. This was so completely new…so unexpected…so amazing. Nothing like it had ever happened before. As I read about what happened in the book of Acts with the violent wind and the tongues of fire...
It’s an unexpected sermon title, isn’t it? Maybe I inhaled too much anesthesia in April; maybe its effects are still impacting my brain, because “We Are One” sounds really good, but it’s a bit of stretch, don’t you think? It seems there are always forces pulling us apart. There are all kinds of things that separate us. Sometimes the differences are unexpected...
When I was working on sermon planning and read this Psalm as one of the lectionary texts, I immediately chose it as our focus today, because it is filled with praise and blessing. It seems to me that so often we notice and focus on the negative things in life and we lose track of the blessings. But today I want us to intentionally focus on blessings...
Pink and white? Or, teal and gray? That’s the picture and the question posted on Facebook this past week. What color do you see? I’m pretty convinced there’s only one answer: it’s teal and gray. Am I right? But the article accompanying the pictures says the actual color of the shoe is “mahogany rose” or pink. The way we see it has to do with...
If you’re one who reads the monthly newsletter, you have perhaps noticed on the Preaching Plan that we have designated Sundays beginning with Palm Sunday as Vision Sundays, which will continue up through May 12 as we bring our commitments to Rebuilding First Church forward. We’ve wanted this time of preparation to be...
