A Moment with the Minister

A moment with the minister

Easter Sunday

 St. Luke 24:1-9          The New Living Translation

“24 But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. ² They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. ³ So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴ As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.

⁵ The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? ⁶ He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, ⁷ that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”

⁸ Then they remembered that he had said this. ⁹ So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened.”

How Does the Resurrection Affect Your Life?

Father Basil Pennington, a Roman Catholic monk, tells of an encounter he once had with a teacher of Zen. Pennington was at a retreat. As part of the retreat, each person met privately with this Zen teacher. Pennington says that at his meeting the Zen teacher sat there before him smiling from ear to ear and rocking gleefully back and forth. Finally, the Zen teacher said: “I like Christianity. But I would not like Christianity without the resurrection. I want to see your resurrection!”

Pennington notes that, “With his directness, the teacher was saying what everyone else implicitly says to Christians: You are a Christian. You are risen with Christ. Show me (what this means for you in your life) and I will believe.” That is how people will know if the resurrection is true or not. Does it affect how we live?

The amazing thing is that every one of Jesus’ disciples passed this test. Their lives were dramatically turned upside down, or actually right-side up, by their encounter with the risen Christ. How would you ever make something like this up and stick to it when stones were piercing your flesh as did Stephen, the first Christian martyr? Or as you were being crucified upside down like Simon Peter? It is hard to dispute the testimony of someone who is so convinced of what they have experienced that they are willing to suffer and die to tell the story of Jesus.

You see, people aren’t really interested in an intellectual proof for the resurrection of Jesus. What really speaks to most people is the proof from a changed life. It is not points that convinces anybody, but rather the best proof is a person, your relationship with the Risen Jesus!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

Palm/Passion Sunday

 St. Luke 19:28-40        The Message translation

^28-31 After saying these things, Jesus headed straight up to Jerusalem. When he got near Bethphage and Bethany at the mountain called Olives, he sent off two of the disciples with instructions: “Go to the village across from you. As soon as you enter, you’ll find a colt tethered, one that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says anything, asks, ‘What are you doing?’ say, ‘His Master needs him.’”

^32-33 The two left and found it just as he said. As they were untying the colt, its owners said, “What are you doing untying the colt?”

³⁴ They said, “His Master needs him.”

^35-36 They brought the colt to Jesus. Then, throwing their coats on its back, they helped Jesus get on. As he rode, the people gave him a grand welcome, throwing their coats on the street.

^37-38 Right at the crest, where Mount Olives begins its descent, the whole crowd of disciples burst into enthusiastic praise over all the mighty works they had witnessed:

Blessed is he who comes,
    the king in God’s name!
All’s well in heaven!
    Glory in the high places!

³⁹ Some Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, get your disciples under control!”

⁴⁰ But he said, “If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise.”

Jesus and His disciples left the city of Jericho and were walking up the mountain on their way to Jerusalem. That was the way the pilgrims came, with Jesus going on ahead, as He had planned all along. This was to be the climax of His story, of His public career, of His vocation. He knew well enough what lay ahead, and had set His face to go and meet it head on. He couldn’t stop announcing the kingdom of God, but that announcement would only come true as He now embodied in Himself the completion of the things He’d been talking about. The living God was at work to heal and save, and the forces of evil and death were massed to oppose Him, sort of like Pharaoh and the armies of Egypt trying to prevent the Israelites from leaving. But this was to be the moment of God’s new Exodus, God’s great Passover, and nothing could stop Jesus going ahead to celebrate it.

The walk from Jericho to the top of the Mount of Olives, where you reach the summit can be intense. They left behind the barren, dusty desert for lush green growth, particularly at Passover time, at the height of spring. There before them, glistening in the sun, is the holy city, Jerusalem itself, on its own slightly smaller hill across a narrow but deep valley. The small towns of Bethany and Bethphage nestle on the Jericho side of the Mount of Olives. Once they passed them, Jerusalem comes into view almost at once. The end of the journey; the pilgrimage to end all pilgrimages; Passover-time in the city of God.

For Jesus it’s a royal occasion, to be carefully planned and completed so as to make exactly the right point. The animal He chose was a young foal, almost certainly a donkey’s colt. He knew Zechariah 9:9, the prophecy of the Messiah riding on a young donkey. The disciples pick up the theme, and in a kind of instant royal celebration they spread cloaks along the road for him. Down they go, down the steep path to the Kidron valley, and the crowd starts to sing part of the great psalm of praise (Psalm 118) that pilgrims always sang on the way to Jerusalem: a song of victory, a hymn of praise to the God who defeats all His foes and establishes His kingdom. Jesus comes as the fulfilment of the nation’s hopes, answering their longings for a king who would bring peace to earth from heaven itself.

And yet … the grumblers are still there; some Pharisees, going along with the crowd, suddenly become anxious about what will happen if the authorities in Jerusalem think for a minute that there’s a messianic demonstration going on. Jesus knows, and Luke knows, and we as his readers know, what awaits the Master when He gets to the city. From Jesus’ point of view, this is why there is such a celebration in the first place: it is appropriate precisely because He is coming to bring God’s salvation, God’s great Exodus, through His own Passover action on the cross.

This beginning of Holy Week, Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, as we arrive at Jerusalem with Jesus, the question presses upon us. Are we going along for the trip in the hope that Jesus will fulfil some of our hopes and desires? Are we ready to sing a psalm of praise, but only as long as Jesus seems to be doing what we want? The long and dusty pilgrim way of our lives gives most of us plenty of time to sort out our motives for following Jesus in the first place. Are we ready not only to spread our cloaks on the road in front of Him, to do the showy and flamboyant thing, but also now to follow Him into trouble, controversy, trial and death? Because we can’t have the resurrection without His death.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

 St. John 12:1-11         The Message translation

Anointing His Feet

“12 ^1-3 Six days before Passover, Jesus entered Bethany where Lazarus, so recently raised from the dead, was living. Lazarus and his sisters invited Jesus to dinner at their home. Martha served. Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table with them. Mary came in with a jar of very expensive aromatic oils, anointed and massaged Jesus’ feet, and then wiped them with her hair. The fragrance of the oils filled the house.

^4-6 Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, even then getting ready to betray him, said, “Why wasn’t this oil sold and the money given to the poor? It would have easily brought three hundred silver pieces.” He said this not because he cared two cents about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of their common funds, but also embezzled them.

^7-8 Jesus said, “Let her alone. She’s anticipating and honoring the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you. You don’t always have me.”

^9-11 Word got out among the Jews that he was back in town. The people came to take a look, not only at Jesus but also at Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. So the high priests plotted to kill Lazarus because so many of the Jews were going over and believing in Jesus on account of him.”

Have you ever been to a shared meal table with family and friends when it suddenly went from being a time of support and friendship, to nasty and mean?

Part of the tragedy of this little scene is that Jesus badly needs and wants His followers to be united at this moment. The rest of the world is plotting against Him; His friends might at least have the decency, you might suppose, to stick together and back Him! But no. We can feel the tension in the air.

There is the obvious confrontation between Judas, Jesus, and Mary. But even before that, consider the simple words: ‘Martha served … then Mary took a jar of expensive perfume …’

We have met these sisters before—in the previous chapter when their brother Lazarus had died and Jesus raised him back to life, and at the end of Luke 10. We feel we know them. Martha, as in Luke, has made a great dinner for Jesus and His followers. Mary seems to steal centre stage, not this time simply by sitting at Jesus’ feet, but by her apparently outrageous and extravagant gesture of anointing Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair.

She would need to let it down for that purpose; that’s roughly the equivalent, at a modern polite dinner party, of a woman hitching up a long skirt to the top of her thighs. You can imagine the onlookers’ reaction. Had she no shame? What was she trying to say—to Jesus, to the onlookers? All sorts of disturbing thoughts must have been flying round the room. There is a peculiar tension in the air, after all the things that Jesus has said and done, not to mention the warnings of violence being plotted against Jesus.

We can imagine how Martha felt. She may well have thought that Mary had gone over the top this time; but it was Judas who came out and said it. The other disciples looked on, quite likely equally embarrassed by Mary’s extravagance, by Judas’ outburst, and by Jesus’ strange comment. John is quite clear where the blame lies. Judas, he says, had in any case been helping himself out of the common purse, so his reaction wasn’t sincere.

But there is no escaping the challenge posed by the stand-off between Mary and Judas. It is one of those scenes which positively shouts at the reader, ‘Where are you in this picture?’

Are we with the shameless Mary, worshipping Jesus with everything she’s got, risking the wrath of her sister who’s doing all the hard work, the anger of the men who perhaps don’t quite trust their own feelings when a woman lets her hair down in public, and the sneer of the person (Judas) who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Or are we with the cautious, prudent, reliable Judas (as he must have seemed to most of them), looking after the meagre resources of a group without steady or settled income, anxious to provide for their needs and still have something left to give to the poor? (This last was a regular preoccupation. When Judas went out at the Last Supper (13:29), the others guessed he might have been going to give something to the poor, even at that solemn moment.) Put aside our natural inclination to distance ourselves from Judas. After all, even at that last moment none of the other disciples had suspected him of treachery. Can we see just a glimpse of him as we look in the mirror?

Or are we back in the kitchen with Martha? If so, how do we feel about both Mary and Judas? And how do we feel about Jesus, and what He said?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Fourth Sunday in Lent 

St. Luke 15:1-32      The Message translation

The Story of the Lost Sheep

^1-3 By this time a lot of men and women of questionable reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religious scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.

^4-7 “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.

The Story of the Lost Coin

^8-10 “Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it—that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”

How much is one human being worth? In terms of a financial profile, the prodigal son was worth, at his lowest point some would say, zero? How much are you worth? Chemically: if we could somehow break down the chemical composition of your body, I could tell you your worth. You have within your body enough iron for a nail; enough sugar to fill a sugar bowl; enough fat for seven bars of soap; enough lime to whitewash a chicken coop, enough phosphorous for 2,200 match heads, enough magnesium for a dose of magnesium; enough potassium to shoot a toy cannon, all mixed in with a little sulphur, so that in today’s market you are valued at around $20.

What about the prodigal son? He had a father who loved him dearly. That alone is a priceless value! There are around 52,000 runaways every year in Canada, and that does not cause us to blink an eye. But if I hear that my child is one of them, there is nothing that I will not do to see that they are found. You are more valuable than a diamond mine or an oil field. Why? Because you belong to our loving Heavenly Father. In the parable of the lost coin, we read where a woman turns her house upside down in search for a missing coin. When she found it, she threw a party. In the parable of the lost sheep the shepherd left 99 sheep and searched until he found the lost one, then threw a party. In the parable of the lost sons, we see the father throwing a party when one son returned home. Has God not literally turned the world upside down, as His Son Jesus came to welcome us home?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Third Sunday in Lent

St. Luke 13:1-9 NLT

A Call to Repentance

13 About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. ² “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? ³ Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. ⁴ And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? ⁵ No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.”

Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

⁶ Then Jesus told this story: “A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. ⁷ Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s just taking up space in the garden.’

⁸ “The gardener answered, ‘Sir, give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. ⁹ If we get figs next year, fine. If not, then you can cut it down.’”

This parable of the fruitless fig tree comes after a discussion on the connection between oppression, suffering, death, and repentant living. Jesus again dismantles the idea that those who suffer are more sinful than anyone else but then tells His listeners that unless they change their hearts and lives (metanoia in Greek = repentance), they will die just like those unfortunate ones who were slaughtered by Pilate or were killed when a tower fell. On one level Jesus didn’t offer the people a very comforting message in light of the horrible news of the Roman Governor Pilate murdering some Galileans while they were worshipping in the Temple. Roman and Jewish historians tell us how brutal and cruel Pilate was. But Jesus’ response seems to be telling people to shift their focus from judging other people and onto re-evaluating their own lives. He also reorients the discussion away from the mistakes of the past and onto the opportunity for repentance (changing one’s mind and life) available in the present. Jesus is inviting people to change their lives in order to move forward in a life with God.

With that conversation as a backdrop, Jesus tells the story of a fruitless fig tree. Remember where we are in Luke’s narrative: Jesus has now resolutely set His life to go to Jerusalem, to die. And He will end up going there leading a procession of Galileans into the city and go to the Temple. This is actually a very challenging parable, that like so many of His parables, Jesus seems to leave open ended, with more questions than answers.

God had been looking for the fruit of repentance from His people (for centuries) and Jesus the Son of God, the Saviour, almost confirms over the course of His three-year ministry that hardly anyone has shown the fruit of repentance. But, as the gardener, Jesus will dig around the barren fig tree, spread out manure, seeking to infuse the seemingly dead tree with new life. And here the parable seems to just stop, leaving us wondering…

How are you and I doing in bearing the fruit of repentance and following the way of Jesus? How are we doing in daily changing the focus of our living from judging others and to living life for Jesus?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Second Sunday in Lent

 Please read St. Luke 13:31-35. This is an account of Jesus being warned of King Herod’s intentions to hunt Him down; and Jesus’ lament over His people.

During the summer of 2024 we saw some of the worst wildfires ever in our world, and especially in North America. Fire is as terrifying to trapped animals as to people, if not more so. When a farmyard catches fire, the animals try to escape; but, if they cannot, some species have developed ways of protecting their young. The picture here is of a hen, gathering her chicks under her wings to protect them. There are stories of exactly this: after a farmyard fire, those cleaning up have found a dead hen, scorched and blackened—with live chicks sheltering under her wings. She has quite literally given her life to save them.

It is a vivid and violent image of what Jesus declared He longed to do for Jerusalem, for all Israel, and for the whole world. But, at that moment, all He could see was chicks scurrying off in the opposite direction, taking no notice of the smoke and flames indicating the approach of danger, nor of the urgent warnings of the One who alone could give them safety.

This picture of the hen and the chickens is the strongest statement so far in Luke of what Jesus thinks His death would be all about. But this passage also expresses another great danger alongside fire: the predator fox. And that’s the image Jesus uses for Herod.

For most of the story, Herod has cast a dark shadow across the page, but he has not until now posed an explicit threat to Jesus. Jesus clearly indicates His contempt for Herod.

What matters is that Jesus has a destiny to fulfil, as He has already stated (9:22, 44; 12:50). It consists, in picture-language, of two days’ work and one day’s completion. Two days to cast out demons and cure illnesses; ‘and I shall be finished on the third day’. No careful reader of Luke’s gospel could miss the echoes, backwards and forwards: to the boy Jesus, found on the third day in the Temple (2:46); to the risen Jesus, alive again on the third day (24:21).

Jesus’ destiny, then, is to go to Jerusalem and die, risking the threats of the fox, and adopting the role of the mother hen to the chicks faced with sudden danger. But will Jerusalem benefit from His offer? Jerusalem has a long history of rebelling against God, refusing the way of peace (that statement seems to be as true in the modern day as in the ancient world).

We can see, with devastating clarity, what Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem is going to mean. Israel’s greatest crisis is coming upon her, and Jesus is offering an urgent summons to repent, to come His kingdom-way, His way of peace. This is the only way of avoiding the disaster which will otherwise follow her persistent rebellion. Jesus’ intention now, in obedience to His purpose, is to go to Jerusalem and, like the hen with the chickens, to take upon Himself the full force of that disaster which He was predicting for the nation and the Temple. The one will give Himself on behalf of the many.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The First Sunday in Lent

Please read St. Luke 4:1-13. This is an account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.

Luke has just reminded us of Jesus’ membership in the family of Adam, the human family. If there had been any doubt about His being truly human, Luke underlines His sharing of our flesh and blood in this vivid scene of temptation. If Jesus is the descendant of Adam, He must now face not only what Adam faced but the powers that had been unleashed through human rebellion and sin.

What was Jesus to do?

The three temptations can be read as possible answers to this question. This string of natural ideas that the devil gives voice to are plausible, attractive, and make, as we would say, a lot of sense. God surely doesn’t want His beloved Son to be famished with hunger, can He? If God wants Jesus to become sovereign over the world (that, after all, is what Gabriel had told Mary), then why not go for it in one easy stride? If Jesus is Israel’s Messiah, why not prove it by spectacular displays of power?

If there are in this narrative, echoes of Adam and Eve in the garden, with the serpent whispering plausible lies about God, His purposes and His commands, there are also echoes of Israel in the wilderness. Israel came out of Egypt through the Red Sea, with God declaring that Israel was His son, His firstborn. There then followed the 40-year wandering in the wilderness, where Israel grumbled for bread, flirted disastrously with idolatry, and put God continually to the test.

Now Jesus, coming through the waters of baptism as God’s unique Son, the One through whom Israel’s destiny was to be fulfilled, faces the question: how is Jesus to be Israel’s representative, her rightful King? How can He deliver Israel, and thereby the world, from the grip of the enemy: Satan, sin, and death? How can Jesus bring about the real liberation, not from Rome and other political foes, but from the arch-enemy, the devil himself?

The answer is that Jesus must begin by defeating him at the most personal and intimate level. If Jesus could not win the victory there in the wilderness, there was little point carrying on.

Jesus responds to the devil, not by attempting to argue (arguing with temptation is often a way of playing with the idea until it becomes too attractive to resist), but by quoting scripture. The passages Jesus draws on come from the story of Israel in the wilderness: Jesus is going to succeed where Israel failed.

Temptation #1: Physical needs and wants are important, but loyalty to God is more important still.

Temptation #2: Jesus is indeed to become the world’s true lord, but the path to that status, and the mode of it when it arrives, is humble service, not a devilish seeking after status and power.

Temptation #3: Trust in God doesn’t mean acting stupidly to force God into doing a spectacular rescue. The power that Jesus already has, which He will shortly display in healings in particular, is to be used for restoring others to life and strength, not for cheap stunts. His status as God’s Son commits Him, not to showy prestige, but to the strange path of humility, service and finally death.

The enemy will return to test this resolve again. For the moment, an initial victory is won, and Jesus can begin his public career knowing that though struggles lie ahead, the foe has been beaten on the first field that really matters.

We are unlikely to be tempted in exactly the same way as Jesus was, but every Christian will be tested at the points which matter most in her or his life and vocation. It is a central part of Christian vocation to learn to recognize the voices that whisper attractive lies, to distinguish them from the voice of God, and to use the simple but direct weapons provided in scripture to rebut the lies with truth.

At the heart of our resistance to temptation is love and loyalty to the God who has already called us His beloved children in Christ, and who holds out before us the calling to follow Jesus in the path which leads to the true glory. In that glory lies the true happiness, the true fulfilment, true life!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A Moment with the Minister

 March 2, 2025

Please read St. Luke 9:28-36. This is an account of the Transfiguration of Jesus.

What’s it like up there, on the mountain tops of life?

1. It is cloudy on the summits

“A cloud … overshadowed them” (Luke 9:34). It is cloudy on mountain summits. True, on a clear day you can see forever. But most days, mountaintops are not clear. Most days on mountain-tops, one rubs shoulders less with the sky than with soupy clouds. From the cloudy mountaintops, it is hard to see where one is, where one has been or where one is going. One needs an interrupting voice to speak from the overshadowing clouds. After the Transfiguration, Peter does not know what response to make (Luke 9:33). So, he babbles. Peter always has to say something, even when vision is obstructed, when silence is what is called for and when experience eludes understanding until one is off the mountain.

2. There is little growth on the mountaintops.

Air gets thinner, trees get shorter, foliage gets scarcer, the higher one climbs. On the top of the mountain itself, there is only the stark beauty of rock and dirt. For growth, one has to go into the valleys, where an abundance of water produces lushness of greenery and richness of colour. The greatest growth in Jesus’ life took place in a garden, not on the mountain, in the Garden of Gethsemane, not on the Mount of Transfiguration.

3. There is nothing to cast a shadow on the mountaintops.

We must not build booths on the summits or remain in mountaintop tent-temples. We visit the mountain tops. We inhabit the valleys. Because of Jesus, God is no longer on the top of a mountain but walking on earth in human flesh and blood.

4. Building plans: Monuments to the moment

Peter, James and John were so startled and awed by their experience on the mountaintop that their first response to the divine in their lives was to build something: a monument to the moment. It never happened.

The disciples preferred building over being. Being in prayer or being in an attitude of expectancy is very difficult. When Peter, James and John were asked to simply be, they usually fell asleep, as they did here (verse 32 and also see Matthew 26:36-46). They believed that the best way to preserve a memory, a belief or an experience was to build a temple, a monument, rather than a testament of the heart.

When we come down the mountain, God expects no monuments, but loves to see in us attitudes of behaviour like:

• Trust & Obedience
• A listening heart
• Kindness and mercy
• Peace
• Gentleness
• Love, for God, and for neighbour, friends and enemies

When God touches us with God’s transfiguring glory, it is best not to build, but to be, and let Him build those attitudes within us!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

Love for Enemies

²⁷ “But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. ²⁸ Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. ²⁹ If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also. ³⁰ Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back.³¹ Do to others as you would like them to do to you.

³² “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! ³³ And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much!³⁴ And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return.

³⁵ “Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. ³⁶ You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.

St. Luke 6:27-36         The New Living Translation

The Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity. Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person, and go ahead and do it. Think of what you’d really like someone to do for you, and do it for them. Think of the people to whom you are tempted to be nasty, and lavish generosity on them instead. These instructions have a fresh, springlike quality. They are all about new life bursting out energetically, like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their colour and vigour.

But are they possible? Well, yes and no. Jesus’ point was not to provide His followers with a new rule-book, a list of do’s and don’ts that you could tick off one by one, and sit back satisfied at the end of a successful moral day. The point was to continuously instill, and illustrate, an attitude of heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all that the world can throw at you. And at the centre of it is the thing that motivates and gives colour to the whole: you are to be like this because that’s what God is like. God is generous to all people, generous (in the eyes of the stingy) to a fault: He provides good things for all to enjoy, the undeserving as well as the deserving. He is astonishingly merciful (anyone who knows their own heart truly, and still goes on experiencing God’s grace and love, will agree with this); how can we, His forgiven, beloved children, be any less? Only when people discover that this is the sort of God they are dealing with will they have any chance of making this way of life their own.

This God is different. If you lived in a society where everyone believed in this God, there wouldn’t be any violence. There wouldn’t be any revenge. There wouldn’t be any divisions of class or caste. Property and possessions wouldn’t be nearly as important as making sure your neighbour was all right. Imagine if even a few people around you took Jesus seriously and lived like that. Life would be exuberant, different, astonishing. People would stare.

And of course, the people did stare when Jesus did it Himself. The reason why crowds gathered, as Luke told us earlier, was that power was flowing out of Jesus, and people were being healed. His whole life was one of exuberant generosity, giving all He’d got to give to everyone who needed it. He was speaking of what He knew: the extravagant love of His Father, and the call to live a lavish human life in response. And finally, when they struck Him on the cheek and ripped the coat and shirt off His back, He went on loving and forgiving, as Luke will tell us later (23:34, 43). He didn’t show love only to His friends, but to His enemies, weeping over the city that had rejected His plea for peace by truly living for God, praying for God to forgive those who crucified Him. He was the true embodiment of the God of whom He spoke.

There are two particularly astonishing things about these instructions. First, their simplicity: they are obvious, clear, direct and memorable. Second, their scarcity. How many people do you know who really live like this? How many communities do you know where these guidelines are rules of life? What’s gone wrong? Has God changed? Or have we forgotten who he really is?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A Moment with the Minister

The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

The Beatitudes

²⁰ Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said,

“God blesses you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
²¹ God blesses you who are hungry now,
for you will be satisfied.
God blesses you who weep now,
for in due time you will laugh.

²² What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man.²³ When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, their ancestors treated the ancient prophets that same way.

Sorrows Foretold

²⁴ “What sorrow awaits you who are rich,
for you have your only happiness now.
²⁵ What sorrow awaits you who are fat and prosperous now,
for a time of awful hunger awaits you.
What sorrow awaits you who laugh now,
for your laughing will turn to mourning and sorrow.
²⁶ What sorrow awaits you who are praised by the crowds,
for their ancestors also praised false prophets.

St. Luke 6:20-26         The New Living translation

For one season, for one summer, I pretended to be a co-coach of my son’s soccer team. I had to go for training sessions, then we were let loose. The boys were 6 years old, and their parents had signed them up to play in the house league. We tried teaching them some of the basic soccer rules while we ran them through drills. Hoping that at least some of what we taught them about what to do and what not to do stuck, we started playing games. Remember, this was a group of boys who wanted to be there, to learn and play, at least most of them wanted to be there.

Now imagine us co-coaches going to say a school ground at recess and trying to pick a group of 11 random kids to teach them the ins and outs of soccer. There might be a few hundred kids on the school grounds, but we only want 11. And we don’t know if the kids we pick have any experience in soccer, or if they really wanted to be chosen. And we don’t have much time to teach them before the games begin.

In Luke 6, Jesus spent a night in prayer up on a mountain, then the next morning He came down the mountain and from the hundreds, maybe thousands of people following Jesus so far, Jesus hand-picked the 12 disciples. Everything Jesus did was “bathed” in prayer, like praying all night before calling the first 12 followers whom Jesus would spend the next 3 years training, not for soccer, but for changing the world.

They came from different families, and backgrounds. And His training began with 4 “rules” to do, and 4 “rules” to not do. Way back in their history, God had chosen the 12 sons of Jacob to be the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. Through them, God intended to fulfill His promises of redeeming His creation. The people listening to and the crowds following Jesus around knew this from their history. And now Jesus picks 12 men to be the core of the new thing God was doing in unleashing His New Covenant through His Son Jesus.

God is doing something quite new: as Jesus had emphasized in the synagogue at Nazareth, in Luke chapter 4, He is fulfilling His promises at last, and this will mean good news for all the people who haven’t had any for a long time. The poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated: blessings on them! Not that there’s anything virtuous about being poor or hungry in itself. But when injustice is reigning, the world will have to be turned once more the right way up for God’s justice and kingdom to come to birth. And that will provoke opposition from people who like things just the way they are. Jesus’ message of promise and warning, of blessing and curse, rang with echoes of the Hebrew prophets of old, and He knew that the reaction would be the same.

So what would happen if Jesus comes to “our playground” today…

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

5 ^1-3 Once when he was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, the crowd was pushing in on him to better hear the Word of God. He noticed two boats tied up. The fishermen had just left them and were out scrubbing their nets. He climbed into the boat that was Simon’s and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Sitting there, using the boat for a pulpit, he taught the crowd.

⁴ When he finished teaching, he said to Simon, “Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch.”

^5-7 Simon said, “Master, we’ve been fishing hard all night and haven’t caught even a minnow. But if you say so, I’ll let out the nets.” It was no sooner said than done—a huge haul of fish, straining the nets past capacity. They waved to their partners in the other boat to come help them. They filled both boats, nearly swamping them with the catch.

^8-10 Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell to his knees before Jesus. “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.” When they pulled in that catch of fish, awe overwhelmed Simon and everyone with him. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee’s sons, coworkers with Simon.

^10-11 Jesus said to Simon, “There is nothing to fear. From now on you’ll be fishing for men and women.” They pulled their boats up on the beach, left them, nets and all, and followed him.

St. Luke 5:1-11           The Message translation

Peter clearly had a sense that life was never going to be the same again, that he was going to face new demands and challenges; but he couldn’t help being swept off his feet by what had happened.

It had started as a neat bit of resourcefulness on Jesus’ part. He’d begun to teach a group by the shore, but the crowd got bigger and bigger and there simply wasn’t room. So Jesus improvised. Along the lakeshore close to Capernaum there is a sequence of steep inlets, a zigzagging shoreline with each inlet forming a natural amphitheatre. To this day, if you get in a boat and push out a little from the shore, you can talk in quite a natural voice, and anyone on the slopes of the inlet can hear you clearly—more clearly, in fact, than if you were right there on the shore with them. Jesus was simply making good use of the geography of the area and the ready availability of a boat.

Having commandeered the boat, with the fishermen listening to His every word, Jesus puts them on the spot. You don’t catch any fish during the day there, but fish are much more likely to be caught after dark. On this occasion the men had worked all night for nothing; the last thing they would normally do would be to start again by daylight. Instead during the day they would be fixing their nets, getting ready for (hopefully) a better night of fishing. But Jesus told them to cast the net now, during the daylight, so they did. He made that sort of impression on people, even hard-working, no-nonsense fishermen.

The rest, as they say, is history. A huge catch. Quick messages for help to the other boat. A struggle to get boats and fish back to land before they all went under with the weight. And then the moment of truth. Peter finds himself right out of his league. Jesus promises that the same sort of thing will happen, only now it will be people, not fish. And the fishermen become followers, going off into a new life with only the skimpiest idea of where it will take them.

This is the kind of story it helps to get inside. Become Peter for a few moments; pause and ponder what you normally do, day after day, and then imagine Jesus suddenly appearing, asking for your help with His own work, and then telling you to do something in your own line of country which seems pointless, a waste of time and effort. You do it, grumbling perhaps under your breath; and suddenly everything clicks into place, everything succeeds on a scale you’d never dreamed of. What’s going on? How did it happen? Feel the sense of awe, terror even, as you come to terms with the power of Jesus. Then feel that sense of terror increase as He turns to you with what looks like a question in His eyes, though it proves to be a command. ‘You and I are going to be working together from now on,’ He says. And you realize you have no choice. If this man isn’t worth following, nobody is!!

And remember, Jesus doesn’t want to leave anybody out. His call to Peter and the others—that they should now help Him in catching people—came precisely in order that the good news would go out wider and wider, reaching as many as possible. Ultimately, there ought to be no bystanders in the kingdom of God. We are reading Luke’s gospel today because Jesus kept His promise to Peter, despite Peter’s initial reluctance and subsequent failures.

When Jesus calls, He certainly does demand everything, but only because He has already given everything Himself, and has plans in store, for us and the world, that we would never have dreamed of.

 

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

^14-15 Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone’s acclaim and pleasure.

^16-21 He came to Nazareth where he had been raised. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!”

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”

²² All who were there, watching and listening, were surprised at how well he spoke. But they also said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son, the one we’ve known since he was just a kid?”

^23-27 He answered, “I suppose you’re going to quote the proverb, ‘Doctor, go heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum.’ Well, let me tell you something: No prophet is ever welcomed in his hometown. Isn’t it a fact that there were many widows in Israel at the time of Elijah during that three and a half years of drought when famine devastated the land, but the only widow to whom Elijah was sent was in Sarepta in Sidon? And there were many lepers in Israel at the time of the prophet Elisha but the only one cleansed was Naaman the Syrian.”

^28-30 That set everyone in the meeting place seething with anger. They threw him out, banishing him from the village, then took him to a mountain cliff at the edge of the village to throw him to his doom, but he gave them the slip and was on his way.

St. Luke 4:14-30         The Message translation

I’ll never forget the first, and only, time I preached a sermon in my home church in London. I was going to seminary in a couple of months, and I was invited to preach in the congregation I had grown up in. I preached for 45 minutes from John 15, about how Jesus wants His followers to bear much fruit for the glory of God, and the best way to do that is to stay intimately close with Jesus. Well, people were polite to me after the worship time together, but I heard some comments about the length of the sermon, and who was I to tell people to stay close to Jesus, I hadn’t even started seminary yet.

I was never invited back to preach in my home church. But at least they didn’t try to run me out of town and throw me off a cliff, like the hometown crowd did to Jesus after He preached His first sermon there!!

What was so wrong with what Jesus said? What made them kick Him out of the synagogue, hustle Him out of the town, and take Him off to the cliff edge to throw Him over? The crucial part comes in Jesus’ comments to His hearers, in His sermon following the reading of Scripture.

By way of defence and explanation for the line He had been taking, Jesus points out what happened in the days of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, and in doing so, Jesus identifies Himself with the prophets. Elijah was sent to help a widow—but not a Jewish one. Elisha healed one solitary leper—and the leper was the commander of the enemy army. That’s what did it; that’s what infuriated the crowd in worship that day! To the people in worship that day it sounded like Jesus was saying that Israel’s God was rescuing the wrong people.

The earlier part of Jesus’ address must have been hammering home the same point. His hearers were, after all, waiting for God to liberate Israel from pagan enemies. In several Jewish texts of the time, we find a longing that God would condemn the wicked nations, would pour out wrath and destruction on them. Instead, Jesus is pointing out that when the great prophets were active, it wasn’t Israel who benefited, but only the pagans. It’s not what people wanted to hear.

Luke says that the people ‘were astonished at the words of sheer grace that were coming out of His mouth’. Sometimes people have understood this simply to mean, ‘they were astonished at what a good speaker he was’. But it seems more likely that Luke means ‘they were astonished that Jesus was speaking about God’s grace—grace for everybody, including the nations—instead of grace for Israel and fierce judgment for everyone else’. That fits perfectly with what followed.

Why then did Jesus begin His address with the long quotation from Isaiah (61:1–2)? The passage He quotes is about the Messiah. Throughout Isaiah there are pictures of a strange ‘anointed’ figure who will perform the Lord’s will. But, though Isaiah goes on to speak of vengeance on evildoers, Jesus doesn’t quote that bit. Instead, He seems to have drawn on the larger picture in Isaiah and elsewhere which speaks of Israel being called to be the light of the nations, just as Jesus read from Isaiah 61 “This is God’s time to shine!”. The servant-Messiah has not come to inflict punishment on the nations, but to bring God’s love and mercy to them. And that will be the fulfilment of a central theme in Israel’s own scriptures.

This message was, and still is shocking. Jesus’ claim to be reaching out with healing to all people, though itself a vital Jewish idea, was not what most first-century Jewish folk wanted or expected. As we shall see, Jesus coupled it with severe warnings to His own countrymen. Unless they could see that this was the time for their God to be gracious, unless they abandoned their futile dreams of a military victory over their national enemies, they would suffer defeat themselves at every level—military, political and theological.

Here, as at the climax of the gospel story, Jesus’ challenge and warning brings about a violent reaction. The gospel still does this today, when it challenges all interests and agendas with the news of God’s surprising grace.

How has God’s amazing grace challenged you lately?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The Third Sunday after Epiphany

Love Your Enemies

^38-42 “Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

^43-47 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

⁴⁸ “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

St. Matthew 5:38-48     The Message translation

There was once a father who had to go away from his young family for three or four days on business. Anxious that his wife should be properly looked after in his absence, he had a word with the oldest son, who was nine at the time.

‘When I’m away,’ he said, ‘I want you to think what I would normally do around the house, and you do it for me.’ He had in mind, of course, clearing up in the kitchen, washing up dishes, putting out the garbage, and similar tasks.

On his return, he asked his wife what the son had done. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was very strange. It started with right after breakfast he made himself another cup of coffee, went into the living room, put on some loud music, and read the newspaper for half an hour.’ The father was left wondering whether his son had obeyed him a bit too accurately.

The shocking thing about this passage in the Sermon on the Mount is that we are told to watch what our Heavenly Father is doing and then do the same ourselves. So Jesus gives three hints of the sort of thing He has in mind. To be struck on the right cheek, in that world, almost certainly meant being hit with the back of the right hand. That’s not just violence, but an insult: it implies that you’re an inferior, perhaps a slave, a child, or (in that world, and sometimes even today) a woman. What’s the answer? Hitting back only keeps the evil in circulation. Offering the other cheek implies: hit me again if you like, but now as an equal, not an inferior.

Or suppose you’re in a lawcourt where a powerful enemy is suing you (perhaps for non-payment of some huge debt) and wants the shirt off your back. You can’t win; but you can show him what he’s really doing. Give him your cloak as well; and, in a world where most people only wore those two garments, shame him with your impoverished nakedness. This is what the rich, powerful and careless people in our world have been doing for millennia: they are reducing the poor to a state of shame.

The third example clearly reflects the Roman military occupation. Roman soldiers had the right to force civilians to carry their equipment for one mile. But the law was quite strict; it forbade them to make someone go more than that. Turn the tables on them, advises Jesus. Don’t fret and fume and plot revenge. Copy your generous God! Go a second mile, and astonish the soldier (and perhaps alarm him—what if his commanding officer found out?) with the news that there is a different way to be human, a way which doesn’t plot revenge, which doesn’t join the armed resistance movement (that’s what verse 39 means), but which wins God’s kind of victory over violence and injustice.

These examples are only little sketches to give us the idea. What would it mean to reflect God’s generous love despite the pressure and provocation, despite our own anger and frustration?

Impossible? Well, yes, at one level. But again, Jesus’ teaching isn’t just good advice, it’s good news. Jesus did it all Himself and opened up the new way of being human so that all who follow Him can discover it. When they mocked Him, He didn’t respond. When they challenged Him, He told quizzical, sometimes humorous, stories that forced them to think differently. When they struck Him, He took the pain. When they put the worst bit of Roman equipment on His back—the heavy cross-piece on which He would be killed—He carried it out of the city to the place of His own execution. When they nailed Him to the cross, He prayed for them.

The Sermon on the Mount isn’t just about how to behave. It’s about discovering the living God in the loving, and dying, Jesus, and learning to reflect that love ourselves into the world that needs it so badly. In other words, for us to do what we see God the Father doing in and through His Son Jesus.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The First Sunday after Epiphany

The Baptism of our Lord Jesus

^“4-7 But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.”

Galatians 4:4-7   The Message translation

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”(1 John 3:1 ESV)

From an early age, we’re told who we are: a good student if we get good grades, a valuable player on the court if we cover our person on the opposite team and put up decent shot percentages, and later, a good employee if we hit our quotas and don’t talk back to our boss. How much of it is conditional though: You are good if, you are loved if!!

But what about our identity as people from God’s perspective?

We are chosen and adopted by God (Galatians 4:4-7). We’re not defined by our achievements, failures, or circumstances but by our identity as beloved children of the Most High God!!

This status is not earned through our efforts or lost through our mistakes; it’s a gift and a manifestation of God’s love. Our adoption as beloved children of the living God means we are heirs to His kingdom, sharing in the inheritance of eternal life with Christ (Hebrews 9:15).

It reminds me of Jean Valjean from Les Misérables. After being released from prison, Valjean is taken in by a kind bishop who offers him food and shelter. During the night, Valjean, desperate and hardened by years of suffering, steals the bishop’s silverware and then runs away. When he is caught and brought back to the bishop, instead of accusing him of theft, the bishop tells the police that the silverware was a gift. He even gives Valjean two more silver candlesticks, saying he had forgotten them.

This shocking act of mercy profoundly impacts Valjean, transforming his life. He becomes a man of integrity and compassion, dedicating his life to helping others.

The story is a moving illustration of grace of being lovingly adopted into a forever Family. Valjean, who felt worthless and defined by his past mistakes, was given a new identity through an act of unconditional love and forgiveness.

As beloved children of Almighty God, we are given a new identity based not on our past but on the love and forgiveness of our Heavenly Father. This identity empowers us to live transformed lives, reflecting the love we have received to the world around us.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank You for adopting us as Your beloved children!!! Help us to live in the confidence of our identity as Your children, knowing that You deeply love and cherish us. Amen.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The 1^st Sunday after Christmas

Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector

⁹ Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: ¹⁰ “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector.¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! ¹² I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”                 St. Luke 18:9-14          NLT

Robert Capon, author and Episcopal priest, had a different take (as he often did) on the story Jesus told in Luke 18 about the tax collector and the Pharisee who went to the temple to pray. What if that same sinner kept sinning and came back to the temple to pray the same prayer? What if he were a drug dealer, a pimp, or a thief who stopped by the church on his way to deal, traffic, or rob another bank? The story would be the same each time. That’s the point. God’s forgiveness is that radical and surprising.

It’s the principle: God whispers in our joy. God shouts in our pain. God gently comes and loves us in our helplessness.

A man named Dave served in a church in Boston. He was dealing with the theological problem of suffering and this woman then made it personal to her own suffering. She said to Dave, “The pain, humiliation, and failure have been so hard. Why would God put me through all of that?” Dave asked, “Would you rather not have known God?” The woman said softly, “no,” wiping away her tears.

Now please read Isaiah 41:10 & Psalm 18:2 & Romans 8:1  and 2 Corinthians 5:17

We all struggle with fear, shame, and guilt. It’s inevitable. But what then? How would you answer Dave’s question? How has God whispered in your joy, shouted in your pain, and gently come and loved you in your helplessness?

Turn again and again to Jesus. In His loving and open arms, you’ll find safety, peace, comfort, unfailing love, and of course forgiveness!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister

The 1^st Sunday after Christmas

Please read St. Luke 2:21-35.

This narrative is about the old man Simeon who had lived his whole life looking forward to the day when the Saviour would come, and he was overjoyed to hold the baby Jesus, for which he praised God and blessed Mary and Joseph.

I know, Christmas Day was just a few days ago. I spoke with a person this week who said that they are so glad to be through Christmas for another year. Is Christmas time just another thing, another season of extra business that we try to add on to our already busy lives?  Do we ever wonder if we’ll make it through so that we look forward to the slow days after Christmas to catch our breath?  Does it ever feel as though Christmas throws your life out of balance for a while, or does life just feel somehow out of balance anyway?

I guess it depends on what our focus is; what the focus of our/your life really is.  I know people who wondered: if their health would make it through Christmas; if they would have the strength to visit with family for another Christmas time; if their relationship(s) with loved ones would collapse or heal; if they would hear from their “prodigal” daughter or son at all this Christmas; if they would be able to stand the loneliness of Christmas since their spouse or another family member died; if the new year will have a job in store for them; if, if, if  lots of different and yet related things.

These sorts of situations are all related because no matter which one or ones we find ourselves in the midst of, Christmas is one of the biggest ways that God seeks to remind us that He is with us, with you no matter what!!!

The gift of Jesus the Son of God, the Saviour of the world at Christmas reminds us that His love, hope, peace, joy and forever life are with us in the darkest of times, the brightest of days and everywhere in between.  Christmas is God’s invitation for us, not to try to have or to achieve a balanced sort of life with a little bit of Jesus added in for good measure, but rather for us to stake everything on His power and presence in our lives.

Christmas is God’s reminder of Immanuel which means God is with us.  Period.  Christmas is an invitation for us to, not have Jesus follow us, but for us to follow Him, to a cross and an empty tomb and then to a world in which we are His hands and feet, carrying His love and grace everywhere.

Christmas is a reminder of where we focus our lives: our hearts, minds, soul and strength.  Jesus was born, lived the only sinless life perfectly loving humanity, died in our place, rose again from the dead and is one day going to return in glory.  In doing all this and more for us He invites us in the midst of everything we experience to remember He is with us and to follow Him, no matter what.

I was just thinking out loud about this, a few days after Christmas,

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 22^nd December 2024

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The Birth of Jesus

⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.  St. Luke 2:15–20 NIV

Because we’ve heard the Christmas story so many times, we forget the amazing miracle it was. God came to earth in the form of a man. We need to take time to ponder the wonder of this miracle.

The fundamental mistake the religious leaders of Jesus’ day made was trying to force God to fit into their religious boxes (see Matthew 23:23). Instead of being conformed to God’s image, they tried to form God in their own image. What they ended up with was a “God in a box.” Jesus healed people on the Sabbath; He lifted up the down-trodden; He gave hope to the hopeless and real love to those the world considered unlovable, but instead of celebrating the amazing things of Jesus, the leaders plotted to kill him. Why? Because Jesus didn’t fit in their box.

In his book Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey says there are two ways of looking at the world. “One takes the world apart, while the other seeks to connect and put it together.” He goes on to say, “We live in an age that excels at the first and falters at the second.”

Similarly, there are two ways of approaching God. One approach takes God apart. We make God manageable and measurable. We reduce God to a set of propositions, tightly sealed theologies, or divine formulas. We fall into the trap of reductionism. In the words of A.W. Tozer, we end up with a God who can “never surprise us, never overwhelm us, never astonish us, never transcend us.”

Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Experience the mystery of Christmas—the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God of all creation was born as a helpless little baby in Bethlehem. Like Mary, ponder the wonder of it all…God became one of us, to bring us into His family!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 15^th December 2024

The Third Sunday in Advent

The Birth of Jesus

¹ At that time a decree was issued by Augustus Caesar: the whole world was to be registered. ² (This was the first registration, before the one when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ So everyone set off to be registered, each to their own town. ⁴ Joseph too, who belonged to the house and family of David, went from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judaea, David’s city, ⁵ to be registered with his fiancée Mary, who was pregnant.

⁶ So that’s where they were when the time came for her to give birth; ⁷ and she gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him up and put him to rest in a feeding-trough, because there was no room for them in the normal living quarters.

⁸ There were shepherds in that region, out in the open, keeping a night watch around their flock. ⁹ An angel of the Lord stood in front of them. The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

¹⁰ ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the angel said to them. ‘Look: I’ve got good news for you, news which will make everybody very happy. ¹¹ Today a Saviour has been born for you—the Messiah, the Lord!—in David’s town. ¹² This will be the sign for you: you’ll find the baby wrapped up, and lying in a feeding-trough.’

¹³ Suddenly, with the angel, there was a crowd of the heavenly armies. They were praising God, saying,

¹⁴ ‘Glory to God in the highest,

and peace upon earth among those in his favour.’

¹⁵ So when the angels had gone away again into heaven, the shepherds said to each other,

‘Well then; let’s go to Bethlehem and see what it’s all about, all this that the Lord has told us.’

¹⁶ So they hurried off, and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the feeding-trough. ¹⁷ When they saw it, they told them what had been said to them about this child. ¹⁸ And all the people who heard it were amazed at the things the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured all these things and mused over them in her heart.

²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told to them.         St. Luke 2:1–20

Do you know anybody who lives on the margins of society? I’m sure that if we were asked what sorts of people live there, we could easily categorize them: some people with mental health challenges, addiction issues, immigrants who have fallen through the proverbial cracks, refugees, people seeking to live as they work 2 or 3 or 4 jobs and have to decide every month between paying rent or heat or food, that is if they have a place to rent, let alone the growing number of people living in tent communities. The list could go on.

2,000 years ago, in the Middle East there was a section of that lowest social strata who were treated as dung: the group was Shepherds. They were treated as dangerous, untrustworthy, thieves, and worse. But they had their own little community even as they looked after sheep.

They probably knew little of all the prophecies from God that spoke of the coming Messiah, a Saviour Who would bring people hope, peace, joy, and everlasting love; a Saviour Who would treat them as real people. You can almost hear them scoffing at such a thought, ‘Yeah, right!’

So, as you read the old familiar scripture passage from Luke 2, try to imagine their utter shock and surprise as God’s messenger was sent to them with the world’s greatest announcement! They weren’t worried about whether they deserved to hear such amazing news, they simply let God’s joy flow through them as they ran to find baby Jesus, and then as they told everyone they met about what had just happened to them. They didn’t care what the people they told thought about them, they simply had to share their great joy!

And then they returned to their lowly life, transformed, as they praised God!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

*******

A moment with the minister,

Sunday 08^th December 2024

The Second Sunday in Advent

Joseph was a carpenter of Nazareth when he found himself in a tremendously challenging situation, a heart-wrenching problem. He was jolted by the news that his fiancée, Mary, was expecting a child… before they were together, before he knew her as a wife. Joseph was crushed, of course, but he loved Mary… and he did not want to hurt her or ridicule her or embarrass her.

He was agonizing over how to handle this difficult situation. As he grappled with his problem, he turned to God… wanting so much to do God’s will and somehow in a dream the Spirit of God spoke to him in a dramatic way and said, “Joseph, don’t be afraid. Go ahead and take Mary for your wife. Your love for each other is unique and special. The Spirit is with her bringing a new life. The child is of God. It is God’s will that she will bear a Son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save people from their sins.”

Now, when you stop to think about it, you can’t help but be inspired by the bold faith of this man called Joseph. As a matter of fact, I think way too little attention has been given to Joseph’s part in the gospel story. His faith, his sensitivity, his kindness, his bigness, his compassion, and his obedience to the will of God have had a far greater impact on Christian thought and the Christian lifestyle than most of us realize. We owe so much to Joseph, and we can learn so much from his faith.

But, how did Joseph do it? What gave him the peace, the poise, the resolution, the confidence, the strength, to rise to that challenging situation? Well, the answer is found in one word in this passage in Matthew chapter 1, one word that underscores the greatest promise in the Bible, the promise of Christmas.

And the word is “Emmanuel” which means “God is with us.” This is what Christmas is about. God in the flesh moved into our broken lives to show us personally the depth of His love. “Behold, a virgin shall bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel, which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 01^st December 2024

The First Sunday in Advent 

⁸ That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. ⁹ Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, ¹⁰ but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. ¹¹ The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!¹² And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

¹⁵ When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”                   St. Luke 2:8-15   NLT

Henri Nouwen told the story of a student who, many years after graduation, returned to sit in his old professor’s office where so many questions had been answered and so many problems had been solved. When the student entered the office, he told his professor that he didn’t need anything, he came just to visit, to be together. They sat for a while in silence and looked at each other.

One broke the silence by telling the other how nice it was to see each other. The other agreed, and then there was silence. Then the student said, “When I look at you it is as if I am in the presence of Christ.” The professor remembers that did not startle or surprise him and that he could only respond with, “It is the Christ in you who recognizes the Christ in me.” The student replied with the most healing words Nouwen had heard in many years. “Yes, Christ indeed is in our midst. From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground.”

Our culture puts such an emphasis on productivity, on doing things, solving problems, making plans, producing products that two things have happened. In many cases, those who do not solve or plan or produce are looked upon as second class citizens. And secondly, the idea of getting together just for the sake of being together is so foreign that when we do come together, we often fail to see the Christ in one another because of this uneasy feeling that we ought to be doing something.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 24^th November 2024

³³ Pilate went back into the palace and called for Jesus. He said, “Are you the ‘King of the Jews’?”

³⁴ Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you this about me?”

³⁵ Pilate said, “Do I look like a Jew? Your people and your high priests turned you over to me. What did you do?”

³⁶ “My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.”

              St. John 18:33-36       (The Message Translation)

 

In the ecclesiastical calendar, this marks the last Sunday of the liturgical year. The liturgical year is different from the calendar year. The Church year begins with Advent, the time we set aside for reflection about the coming of Christ. After we celebrate Jesus’ birth, the church calendar follows His life, beginning with Epiphany, His baptism, His temptation, and the beginning of His teaching ministry.

Then we enter the season of Lent when we begin focusing on His death, then His resurrection at Easter. That is followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Then we, the church, seek to live out our lives following the teachings of Christ through the ordinary days of the church year until today, the last Sunday in the church year, when we reach a sort of climax with a celebration of the coming reign of Christ over all creation, often called Christ the King Sunday.

With Christ the King Sunday something very powerful is being said. “King,” “kingdom,” “reign” — these are all highly charged political words. They say something about power: Who has it, and conversely, who does not.

Pilate understood that. He asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” (vs. 33). This is not a casual question, although Pilate seems to be asking it with a sneer. In fact, this word “king” is repeated nine times during this encounter between Pilate, Jesus, and the Jewish leaders.

Jesus’ response is interesting. Instead of a direct answer, He comes back with another question: “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about me?” (v. 34). Sounds almost smart-alecky or at least rather bold considering His situation. The Jewish leaders had brought Jesus to Pilate after their illegal midnight trial. They made it perfectly clear that the expectation was that Pilate would condemn Jesus to death, so one would think that flippant replies would not be a good idea.

Pilate, of course, is equally flippant in response: “Am I a Jew?” (v. 35). In fact, that attitude was characteristic of Pilate’s administration in Judea. In his arrogance he never identified himself with the people in his charge and the result was an ill-tempered, mean-spirited regime that would have long ago been relegated to the dustbin of history. His name would quickly have been forgotten, except for one memorable, even earthshaking, incident.

“It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?” (v. 35).

Jesus responds, but not with anything that would answer Pilate’s question: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (v. 36).

Pilate is still confused: “You are a king, then!”

“You are right in saying that I am a king” (v. 37), says Jesus. But we would have to add, “But like no other king this world has ever known.”

We are drawn back to the Christian year that culminates with a celebration of Christ as King. Christ is not Jesus’ surname. It is a title. It indicates “the anointed one” — someone set apart for God’s service. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish people were looking for a Messiah, a Christ, to come who would lead them in victory against their oppressors, a conquering hero who would overthrow the hated Romans. It soon became evident that this was not God’s intention in Jesus. For those who had their hopes pinned on a military & political Messiah, this was a devastating blow. Indeed, some have speculated that this was Judas’ problem — once he found out that his dream of conquest was over, he bolted ranks. And the rest of the story we know too well.

But we know the story does not end sadly. That is why we culminate the Christian year with Christ the King Sunday. This is the day that we can rock the rafters of the universe with our declaration that Jesus Christ is indeed KING and Lord!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 17^th November 2024

“Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’”           Luke 10:41-42 (NIV)

I know it is hard to believe that the Advent and Christmas seasons are just around the corner! And with them can come the “usual” busyness that we can invariably find ourselves wrapped up in, and before you know it, before you actually pause and sit in the wonder of what Christmas is all about, suddenly it is the New Year. Have you ever wondered ‘where did the time go?’ Have you ever thought to yourself, maybe I should do things a little differently next year?

This Christmas, do you need to do less, instead of more? By simplifying your life a little bit now, would you have more enjoyment, more fulfillment, and less stress? What can we learn from Mary and Martha?

At one of the busiest times of the year, do we need to make sure we’re filling our calendar, our mind, and our heart with what’s important, not trivial things that won’t even matter in five years, much less for eternity?

The trivial things I’m talking about are not evil things. We can fill our lives with good things that keep us from spending time with God. We can be involved in serving all the time and be so busy working for God that we don’t leave God any time to work in us.

An example of this is Mary and Martha, who were sisters and also friends of Jesus. One day they invited him to their home for a meal. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to His teaching. Martha was busy worrying about the food and making sure everything was in place.

Doesn’t that sound like Christmas? We spend months buying and wrapping gifts, decorating the house, putting up the lights, fixing the tree, sending out the cards, preparing the meals, planning parties. Then, when Christmas arrives, we realize we were so busy with the preparation that we didn’t make any time for Jesus.

“Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her’” (Luke 10:40-42 NIV).

Mary knew there was one thing worth her time: getting to know the Son of God. And in fact as we spend time at the feet of Jesus, getting to know Him and enjoy Him, it is that time with Jesus that enables us to see where and how He sends us out in the power and presence of His Spirit to serve Him. It is not the other way around.

Nothing else will matter in eternity. God didn’t put us on Earth just to work and then retire. He put us here so you can get to know Him.

This Advent & Christmas pause regularly, take a breath, and shift your focus to the one thing that matters most in this life: Jesus. Then serve from Jesus being our centre!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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Remembrance Sunday, 10^th November 2024

 “The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.”    St. John 1:14  The Message

This past week I have been asked a few times some questions about how God is at work in light of what is going on in politics. I think those questions are leading us to the deeper question: Our world seems to be getting worse not better, so where is God in all this mess? Has God left us?

The whole of the Old Testament (remember that the word Testament is the Latin word for covenant) is the written record of God choosing to be with first an individual, then his family, and then the whole community of his people. God gave them many promises of His Covenant presence, even to the point of promising the gift of His own Son Who would fulfill the whole Covenant in our place, on our behalf, and Who would be God in the flesh.

John’s gospel starts out with the beautiful truth that Jesus moved into our neighbourhood. Whenever we feel that the world is falling apart too much, too quickly, and we wonder if God has left us, we need to remember His promise: God in Jesus has moved into the neighbourhood of His world, and He has also promised that He is with us no matter what even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

With the escalation of conflicts around our world, it can be easy to lose sight of God. A dear friend of ours wrote the following poem several years ago and while I have read it many times over the years, when I read it this week, it struck me in a whole new way. Maybe it was the Lord saying through the words to this poem that He indeed moved into these very specific neighbourhoods in our world, and He isn’t moving out!

Peace and Home

Peace on the littered, puddled streets of the forgotten city;

this is my home.

Peace among the high-rises. blind to the hills and the sky;

this is my home.

Peace in the endless suburbs with no sense of place;

this is my home.

Peace in the burning desert with no shade, no water;

this is my home.

Peace on the hurtling highway, inches from death;

this is my home.

Peace among the homeless, curled up in doorways;

this is my home.

Peace in the hospital, among the fearful and the dying;

this is my home.

Peace in the delivery room, with the joy and the pain;

this is my home.

Peace in the church, O God, for this is my home.

Peace on the gentle hills, caressed by the wind;

this is my home.

Peace on the water, battered by the waves;

this is my home.

Peace among the lovers, oblivious to all;

this is my home.

Peace among the war-makers, blind to their world;

this is my home.

Peace among the soldiers, their lives taken from them;

this is my home.

Peace among the weapon-makers, consumed by their own machines;

this is my home.

O my God, give me your peace, open my eyes to my home.

Andrew Foster

From “Like Leaves to the Sun”, ed Neil Paynter,  Wild Goose Publications 2013

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 03^rd November 2024

 ¹⁷ When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. ¹⁸ Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many of the people had come to console Martha and Mary in their loss. ²⁰ When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.²² But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”

²³ Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”

²⁴ “Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.”

²⁵ Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. ²⁶ Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God.”

St. John 11:17-27        NLT

When did you last say: ‘If only …’?

If only he hadn’t driven that car while so tired …

If only she had studied a bit harder and not failed the exam…

If only a different Prime Minister had been elected last time round …

If only we hadn’t decided to go on holiday that very week …

If only I hadn’t said …

Oh, if only …

And whatever it is, you will know the sickening sense of wanting to turn the clock back. That’s why movies are made, like the Back to the Future series, in which people do just that, moving this way and that within the long history of time, changing something in a previous generation which will mean that now everything in the present – and the future – can be different.

But of course it’s a wistful dream. It’s a kind of nostalgia, not for the past as it was, but for the present that could have been, if only the past had just been a little bit different. Like all nostalgia, it’s a bitter-sweet feeling, even while knowing such thinking is all a pipe dream.

All of that and more is here (verse 21) in Martha’s ‘if only’ to Jesus. She knows that if Jesus had been there, He would have cured Lazarus. And she probably knows, too, that it had taken Jesus at least two days longer to get there than she had hoped. Lazarus, as we discover later, has already been dead for four days by the time Jesus got there, but perhaps … He might just have made it … if only …

Jesus’ reply to her, and the conversation they then have, show that the ‘back to the future’ idea isn’t entirely a moviemaker’s fantasy. Instead of looking at the past and dreaming about what might have been (but now can’t be), Jesus invites Martha to look to the future. Then, having looked to the future, He asks her to imagine that the future is suddenly brought into the present. This, in fact, is central to all early Christian beliefs about Jesus, and the present passage makes the point as clearly and vividly as anywhere in the whole New Testament.

‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ Jesus said to Martha. ‘Resurrection’ isn’t just a doctrine. It isn’t just a future fact. It’s a Person, and here He is standing in front of Martha, teasing her to make the huge jump of trust and hope.

He is challenging her, urging her, to exchange her ‘if only …’ for an ‘if Jesus is …’.

If Jesus is who she is coming to believe He is …

If Jesus is the Messiah, the One who was promised by the prophets, the One who was to come into the world …

If Jesus is God’s own Son, the One in whom the living God is strangely and newly present …

If Jesus is resurrection-in-person, life-come-to-life …

Then this changes everything!!!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

*******

A moment with the minister,

Sunday 27^th October 2024

 ⁵⁰ Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus.

⁵¹ “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked.

“My Rabbi,” the blind man said, “I want to see!”

⁵² And Jesus said to him, “Go, for your faith has healed you.” Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road.            St. Mark 10:50-52

For 51 years Bob Edens was blind. He couldn’t see a thing. His world was a black hall of sounds and smells. He felt his way through five decades of darkness. And then, he could see. A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight. He found it overwhelming. “I never would have dreamed that yellow is so…yellow,” he exclaimed. “I don’t have the words. I am amazed by yellow. But red is my favorite colour. I just can’t believe red. I can see the shape of the moon–and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapor trail. And of course, sunrises and sunsets. And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light. You could never know how wonderful everything is.”

Blind Bartimaeus saw what hardly anyone else had yet seen: Jesus is the merciful, promised Saviour. After yelling out for Jesus to have mercy on him even though the crowd of people that day were trying to get him to behave like the unwelcome nobody he was believed to be, Jesus stops to help.

Jesus stopped briefly here while He was on His way to Jerusalem, to where He knew He was going to die for the sins of the world. He heard a brother’s cry for help. Bartimaeus believed that this Jesus was able to heal his blindness, not realizing that he already had better vision than even the disciples who had been following Jesus for 3 years.

Jesus beautifully connects this situation to the situation just prior, when James and John wanted Jesus to guarantee them the top positions of power in the Kingdom of God. Jesus asked both James and John, and now Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you? The two brothers wanted personal power and prestige. But Bartimaeus wanted to see.

He already saw Jesus with his heart of faith, but immediately he now saw Jesus with his newly healed eyes.

What would you or I do if Jesus did something wonderful for us? Wait a minute, what do I mean if? Jesus has done so much wonderful for us!!

What did Bartimaeus do now that he could literally see Jesus? He could have gone anywhere, but his heart chose to follow Jesus, even into Jerusalem where Jesus was headed to die so that the world might see.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

*******

A moment with the minister,

Sunday 20^th October 2024

 3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.          Philippians 2:3-5 NLT

Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

^5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.         Philippians 2:3-5 The Message

 Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, tells about the Roman aqueduct at Segovia, in his native Spain. It was built in 109 A.D. For eighteen hundred years, it carried cool water from the mountains to the hot and thirsty city. Nearly sixty generations of residents drank from its flow. Then came another generation, a recent one, which said, “This aqueduct is so great a marvel that it ought to be preserved for our children, as a museum piece. We shall relieve it of its centuries-long labor.”

They did: they laid modern iron pipes. They gave the ancient bricks and mortar a reverent rest. And what happened to the aqueduct? It began to fall apart. The sun beating on the dry mortar caused it to crumble. The bricks and stone sagged and threatened to fall.

What ages of service could not destroy, idleness disintegrated.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 06^th October 2024

 ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.           Philippians 4:4-7 NIV

Thanksgiving weekend is upon us! While it goes without saying, still I need to be reminded that giving thanks in every situation is a year-round way of life for the family of God, and who better to remind me/us than my favourite Pastoral Theologian Father Henri Nouwen:

“Gratitude…goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. . .  The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort. But each time I make it, the next choice is a little easier, a little freer, a little less self-conscious. . . There is an Estonian proverb that says: “Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.” Acts of gratitude make one grateful because, step by step, they reveal that all is grace.””

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

World Communion Sunday 06^th October 2024

 The Rich Man and Lazarus

^19-21 “There once was a rich man, expensively dressed in the latest fashions, wasting his days in conspicuous consumption. A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived for was to get a meal from scraps off the rich man’s table. His best friends were the dogs who came and licked his sores.

^22-24 “Then he died, this poor man, and was taken up by the angels to the lap of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell and in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham in the distance and Lazarus in his lap. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I’m in agony in this fire.’

^25-26 “But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you got the good things and Lazarus the bad things. It’s not like that here. Here he’s consoled and you’re tormented. Besides, in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to, nor can anyone cross over from you to us.’

^27-28 “The rich man said, ‘Then let me ask you, Father: Send him to the house of my father where I have five brothers, so he can tell them the score and warn them so they won’t end up here in this place of torment.’

²⁹ “Abraham answered, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets to tell them the score. Let them listen to them.’

³⁰ “‘I know, Father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but they’re not listening. If someone came back to them from the dead, they would change their ways.’

³¹ “Abraham replied, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they’re not going to be convinced by someone who rises from the dead.’”

St. Luke 16:19-31, The Message

We have all seen him. He lies on a pile of newspapers outside a shop doorway, covered with a rough blanket. Perhaps he has a dog with him for safety. People walk past him, or even step over him. He occasionally rattles a few coins in a tin or cup, asking for more. He wasn’t there when I was a boy, but he’s there now, in all our cities, all over the earth.

We all know Lazarus. He is our neighbour. Some of us may be rich, well dressed and well fed, and walk past him without even noticing; others of us may not be so rich, or so finely clothed and fed, but compared with Lazarus we’re well off. He would be glad to change places with us, and we would be horrified to share his life, even for a day.

This parable is not primarily a moral tale about riches and poverty—though, in this chapter, it should be heard in that way at the very least. But there is something more going on here. As a parable, that means once again that we should take it as picture-language about something that was going on in Jesus’ own work.

The ending gives us a clue, picking up where, a chapter earlier, the story of the father and his two sons had ended. ‘Neither will they be convinced, even if someone were to rise from the dead’; ‘this your brother was dead and is alive again’. The older brother in the earlier story of the Prodigal son, is very much like the rich man in this: both want to keep the poor, ragged brother or neighbour out of sight and out of mind. Jesus, we recall, has been criticized for welcoming outcasts and sinners; now it appears that what He’s doing is putting into practice in the present world what, it was widely believed, would happen in the future one. ‘On earth as it is in heaven’ remains His watchword. The age to come must be anticipated in the present.

Not only was the prodigal brother a type of resurrected life, not only was the other Lazarus mentioned in St. John 11 also raised from the dead, but soon after Jesus spoke this parable about the rich man and the utterly destitute Lazarus, Jesus Himself would experience death on behalf of and for all the world and then be raised to new life forever! Yet even that Resurrection didn’t and doesn’t convince many.

Yet we are all still called by the Lord to so live our lives towards others, especially the utterly destitute and invisible people in our world, that some will see Jesus in us, and hear His call to life!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 29^th September 2024

 ³⁸ John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons, but we told him to stop because he wasn’t in our group.”

³⁹ “Don’t stop him!” Jesus said. “No one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰ Anyone who is not against us is for us. ⁴¹ If anyone gives you even a cup of water because you belong to the Messiah, I tell you the truth, that person will surely be rewarded.

⁴² “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck. ⁴³ If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one hand than to go into the unquenchable fires of hell with two hands. ⁴⁵ If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better to enter eternal life with only one foot than to be thrown into hell with two feet. ⁴⁷ And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It’s better to enter the Kingdom of God with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸ ‘where the maggots never die and the fire never goes out.’

⁴⁹ “For everyone will be tested with fire. ⁵⁰ Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other.”                St. Mark 9:38-50      NLT

William Barclay, 1907 – 1978, a Scottish theologian, author, radio & television speaker, tells the following story in his commentary on this Biblical text. He told a story about someone changing signs. That is, at an intersection of the road, one sign would point to the city of Seattle and another sign would point to the city of Tacoma. And the boy wondered to himself: How many people could I send down the wrong road if I switched the signs around?

Your very life is a signpost and a sign. To where or to whom is our life directing people? To meet Jesus, or somewhere else?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 22nd September 2024

 ^30-32 Leaving there, they went through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know their whereabouts, for he wanted to teach his disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.” They didn’t know what he was talking about, but were afraid to ask him about it.

So You Want First Place?

³³ They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?”

³⁴ The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest.

³⁵ He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So, you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.”

^36-37 He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”

St. Mark 9:30-37      The Message Translation

The disciples’ anticipation of greatness is exposed as foolish and flawed. Their quarrel over who would be the greatest and get heaven’s glory seat is dismissed by the looming reality of Jesus’ inglorious death. Jesus shows them, gently at first but more firmly as He goes along, how they must learn to redefine greatness, and how radically they must realign their concept of success and achievement, how totally they must rid themselves of ideas of class distinctions, and embrace, like Him, servanthood.

Jesus turned upside down everything the disciples thought about what making it means, everything first-century and 21st century people have been taught about becoming successful and great. Instead of glorying in His leadership, assuming sweeping authority, and flexing His messianic muscles, Jesus highlights servanthood and insists that, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (verse 35).  When Jesus said to be a servant to all He really meant ALL.

Jesus showed them a daily example as He welcomed a little child as someone worth being loved and cared for. Jesus would soon show them through (what He has already told them about twice): His death and Resurrection!

To borrow the words from the old limbo game, it’s not about how low can you go, but how low will you go? The way up is down; down on our knees.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 15^th September 2024

²⁷ Jesus and his disciples headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As they walked, he asked, “Who do the people say I am?”

²⁸ “Some say ‘John the Baptizer,’” they said. “Others say ‘Elijah.’ Still others say ‘one of the prophets.’”

²⁹ He then asked, “And you—what are you saying about me? Who am I?”

Peter gave the answer: “You are the Christ, the Messiah.”

^30-32 Jesus warned them to keep it quiet, not to breathe a word of it to anyone. He then began explaining things to them: “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.” He said this simply and clearly so they couldn’t miss it.

^32-33 But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. “Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works.”

^34-37 Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

³⁸ “If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I’m leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.”

St. Mark 8:27-38      The Message Translation

 

You might remember comedian Yakov Smirnoff. When he first arrived in the United States from Russia, he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. He says, “On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk–you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice–you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!”

Smirnoff is joking but we make these assumptions about Christian Transformation-that people change instantly at salvation. Some traditions call it repentance and renewal. Some call it Sanctification of the believer. Whatever you call it most traditions expect some quick fix to sin. According to this belief, when someone gives his or her life to Christ, there is an immediate, substantive, in-depth, miraculous change in habits, attitudes, and character. We go to church as if we are going to the grocery store: Powdered Christian. Just add water and disciples are born not made.

Unfortunately, there is no such powder and disciples of Jesus Christ are not instantly born. They are slowly raised through many trials, suffering, and temptations. A study has found that less than 10% of churchgoing teenagers have a well-developed faith, rising to under 20% for churchgoing adults. Why?

Because true-life change only begins at salvation, takes more than just time, is about training, trying, suffering, serving, growing in His love all while dying to self-will.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 08^th September 2024

The Faith of a Gentile Woman

²⁴ Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre. He didn’t want anyone to know which house he was staying in, but he couldn’t keep it a secret. ²⁵ Right away a woman who had heard about him came and fell at his feet. Her little girl was possessed by an evil spirit, ²⁶ and she begged him to cast out the demon from her daughter.

Jesus Heals a Deaf Man

³¹ Jesus left Tyre and went up to Sidon before going back to the Sea of Galilee and the region of the Ten Towns. ³² A deaf man with a speech impediment was brought to him, and the people begged Jesus to lay his hands on the man to heal him.

St. Mark 7:24-37  New Living Translation

Christians have never been called to be obnoxious or hostile in society. We’ve been called to be a people of hope, filled with a sweetness of spirit and a gentleness of demeanor (Phil 4:5). As it says in Titus 2:10: we are to “make the teachings of Christ our Savior attractive.” Or, to put it another way, the church of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a cranky little subculture, but a dynamic and joy-filled counterculture—one in which the surprising grace and spontaneous, unfailing love of God is made known to our neighbours in real and tangible ways. Yes, we gather with like-minded believers to worship God and hear His truth, but then we leave our comfort zones and enter into the world of others to be a blessing to them. To do that means that we have to cross some borders—just like Jesus did. Some borders are geographical in nature, but others are racial, cultural, educational, or social. Crossing them can be difficult.

There’s no greater example of Jesus crossing borders than in Mark 7. It’s the only time the Gospels record for us that Jesus left the nation of Israel as an adult. (He was taken to Egypt as newborn to escape the sword of Herod.) In this passage, Jesus goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon, which is northwest of the Sea of Galilee. This is Gentile territory—outside the covenant land—and Jesus goes there on purpose. Still, it’s one of the strangest and most difficult texts in the New Testament. The parallel passage in Matthew 15:22-28 is even more bizarre. It’s the story of the Canaanite woman, whose daughter Jesus sets free from demonic oppression. But before He does so, He engages this woman in a conversation that surprises us. Not only does Jesus come across as cold, dismissive, gruff, and seemingly unconcerned, He likens the poor woman to a puppy! What’s going on here? Then Jesus and His disciples went even further away from the so-called homeland of God’s people, and He heals a deaf and unspeaking man, then feeds over 4,000 common folk.

Jesus doesn’t usually act like this as He did to this woman, and when He does, we want to know why. We almost feel the need to apologize for what He says. We don’t mind when Jesus is rude to the religious leaders of the first century, but when He seems indifferent to the plight of a desperate mother, Christians get nervous. In fact, this is one of the stories that convinced the famous atheist Bertrand Russell that Jesus was not a kind or moral person like everyone thinks He is. Was Russell right? Not at all. In the end, Jesus demonstrates that the grace of God cannot be contained within the borders of men. He touches all kinds of people so that they are whole and rejoice at being beloved of God. But He has to expose prejudice before He can redeem it. And when He does, His border crossings give His followers a larger vision—a vision that assures us that Jesus is genuinely concerned about—and displays great sensitivity toward—those who need His touch, regardless of who they are, where they have been, what they might have done, and who society says they are.

Jesus crossed all kinds of borders with His grace, and He wants His followers to do the same.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 01^st September 2024

 One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating. ³ (The Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient traditions. ⁴ Similarly, they don’t eat anything from the market until they immerse their hands in water. This is but one of many traditions they have clung to—such as their ceremonial washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles.)

⁵ So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”

⁶ Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁷ Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

¹⁴ Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said, “and try to understand. ¹⁵ It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”     St. Mark 7:1-7,14, 15 New Living Translation

Every church has such traditions that have become “sacred cows”. In one church, the color of the carpet had become the sacred cow. They had always had blue carpet, but now the property committee was going to change it to red. Some people just weren’t sure they could worship God on a RED CARPET, God forbid.

At another church, there was the Great Hymnbook Controversy of 1996. It took ten years in 1972, when the previous new version of the hymnal had been published, for the congregation to switch to the “new” hymnal because they had been using the 1909 hymnal for 70 years. Then in 1996 with the arrival of the latest new hymnal, the worship committee wanted to purchase this latest version. This decision sparked a major debate on the quality of music in each hymnal. The final decision was made at a two-hour church-wide business meeting where they finally hammered out a compromise that just barely averted dividing the church. The 1972 hymnal would be kept in the sanctuary, and the 1996 hymnal would be used in the chapel.

I heard about a church where a similar controversy erupted over whether the Communion would be served before the sermon or after the sermon. Another church fought over where the piano should be placed, where the Doxology is sung, how to take the offering, or if children should be allowed in the sanctuary during the worship time together.

It seems that every church manages to elevate certain practices, practices made up by people, from the routine to the sacred traditions. Bill Easum wrote a book about this phenomenon. He called it “Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers” in which sacred cows are those people created traditions that get in the way of the gracious love of Jesus being freely shared.

In our Bible passage today, the religious leaders were on a fact-finding mission as they wanted to trap Jesus and discredit Him so that the people would stop flocking to Jesus. Now if you have ever seen fact-finding missions in operation, you know they are not fact-finding missions but fault-finding missions.

What defines us as being God’s beloved children? For those religious leaders, and for all who put too much value in people made rules and traditions, Jesus reminds us that it is not what we eat or how we eat that matters to God (and you can always tell if we are in fact putting our “faith” in rules and traditions when it becomes clear that that’s what’s eating you, rather than putting our faith in Jesus), but instead what matters to God is the quality of our heart. The process of living less by “garbage in, garbage out” and more by “grace in, grace out” is a life-long one!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 25^th August 2024

 ⁶² Then what will you think if you see the Son of Man ascend to heaven again? ⁶³ The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 

St. John 6:62, 63          New Living Translation

I have been focusing the last few weeks on the incredible passage of John 6, and I am finishing these thoughts this weekend.

John chapter 6 is a very long passage with lots of challenging yet very interconnected parts. The heart of this passage is verses 62 and 63, and the explanation for how the whole thing fits together is given by mentioning two things: the ascension of Jesus, and the Spirit. At first sight this seems only to confuse an already complicated set of problems still further. Perceived problems like: how on earth did Jesus do that miracle of feeding thousands of people with just a few fish and loaves of bread? How and when did Jesus cross the Sea of Galilee, and why wouldn’t He let the people make Him the King they wanted? Why won’t Jesus do more miracles right now to prove Who He is and then everyone would follow Him (or would they really)? How can Jesus even suggest that He is greater than their ancestor Moses, the greatest prophet and leader ever? What does Jesus mean, saying that He is the bread of life which came down from heaven, isn’t He just the son of Mary and Joseph? And perhaps the biggest problem of all in this chapter, what on earth does Jesus mean about eating His flesh and drinking His blood???

But these two verses, 62 & 63, are actually the keys to unlock the puzzles of this chapter, and this book.

The mention of the ascension of the son of man is designed to say: maybe you need to come to terms with the fact that the one you are now dealing with is equally at home in heaven and on earth. He is The Citizen of both. He is, after all, the Word made flesh. If that is so, it makes sense to suppose that this flesh, and this blood, are somehow vehicles of the inner life of the Word of God. The flesh by itself, of course, would be irrelevant, as verse 63 indicates. But when the flesh is indwelt by the life of God, of the Word who is God, it makes sense to speak of it in the way Jesus has just done. Though the ascension as an event remains mysterious in John’s gospel (Jesus speaks of it in 20:17, but He does not elaborate on it), it is clearly important for John, here and elsewhere, to affirm that Jesus’ body, not just his ‘spiritual’ life, was and remains the place where the Word of God took up permanent residence.

Jesus will have more to say about the Spirit as the gospel progresses (see especially chapters 14 and 16). Here He is warning against a purely physical interpretation of His words about eating and drinking. He is urging His hearers, as He has been doing all along, to go beyond a one-dimensional understanding of what He is doing and saying (for instance, the crowd’s desire to follow Him simply to get more free bread) and instead to break through to listen to the Word of God within the flesh. For this, they will need the Spirit to help them. Without that, they will remain in unbelief.

The Twelve, however, remain, but eventually are really eleven. They are prepared to say out loud that Jesus is God’s holy one, His Messiah. He is the one who is not only speaking about God’s new age, the age to come, but is, by His words, already bringing it into existence: ‘You’re the one who’s got the words of eternal life’ they said in verse 68. Jesus knows that one of them will turn traitor, and, worse than traitor, become an ‘accuser’ (the word can mean ‘devil’, but here and elsewhere John seems to refer to what Judas was actually going to do in handing Jesus over to the courts). But for the moment the Twelve stand as representatives of the faith, the belief, that Jesus has been looking for: the recognition that in Him, His words and His deeds, the Hebrew peoples’ God was at last bringing into being the new Exodus, the great movement that would set the whole world free from sin and death.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 18^th August 2024

 Please read our passage from St. John 6:47-59 from whatever translation you have.

 The German theologian Helmut Thielicke told of a hungry man passing a store with a sign in the window, “We Sell Bread.” He entered the store, didn’t smell any fresh baking bread but still put some money on the counter, and said, “I would like to buy some bread.” The women behind the counter replied, “We don’t sell bread.” “The sign in the window says that you do,” the hungry man said. The woman explained, “We make signs here like the one in the window that says, ‘We Sell Bread.’”

But, as Thielicke concludes, a hungry man can’t eat signs.

Bread isn’t always found where we think it might be.

When people see the Church, or when they encounter you or me, do they see, smell, and then want to taste the Bread of Life, the enduring life that Jesus offers? Or are we letting the Bread of Life get a little stale in us?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 11^th August 2024

Please read our passage from St. John 6:22-59 from whatever translation you have.

The influence that food can have on us appears in a Chinese story originally told by Linda Fang. She presented this story at the Smithsonian Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1988.

At the foot of a great mountain in China lived a father and his three sons. They were a simple and loving family. The father noticed that travelers came from afar eager to climb the dangerous mountain. But not one of them ever returned! The three sons heard stories about the mountain, how it was made all of gold and silver at the top. Despite their father’s warnings, they could not resist venturing up the mountain.

Along the way, under a tree, sat a beggar, but the sons did not speak to him or give him anything. They ignored him. One by one, the sons disappeared up the mountain, the first to a house of rich food, the second to a house of fine wine, the third to a house of gambling. Each became a slave to his desire and forgot his home. Meanwhile, their father became heartsick. He missed them terribly. “Danger aside,” he said, “I must find my sons.”

Once he scaled the mountain, the father found that indeed the rocks were gold, the streams silver. But he hardly noticed. He only wanted to reach his sons, to help them remember the life of love they once knew. On the way down, having failed to find them, the father noticed the beggar under the tree and asked for his advice.

“The mountain will give your sons back,” said the beggar, “only if you bring something from home to cause them to remember the love of their family.”

The father raced home, brought back a bowl full of rice, and gave the beggar some as a thank-you for his wisdom. He then found his sons, one at a time, and carefully placed a grain of rice on the tongue of each of them. At that moment, the sons recognized their foolhardiness. Their real life was now apparent to them. They returned home with their father, and as one loving family lived happily ever after.

This Sunday as we gather together to worship God, we will receive a reminder of home, a taste of food that will help us remember who we are. I mean the bread of life, Jesus, our heavenly Father’s gift to us. This is the food of God’s kingdom and reminds us that this kingdom is our true home.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 14^th July 2024

 Please read our passage from St. Mark 6:14-29 from whatever translation you have.

Ok…How many of you have had the experience of looking back at your life and lamenting (perhaps over and over) a mistake you wish you wouldn’t have made? I think we’ve all done that at one time or another.

How many of you have had it keep you up at night?

That nagging, awful feeling of blame and guilt that just won’t let you go.

The nightmares, the sleepless nights! We can be awfully hard on ourselves sometimes. (And if we are honest, sometimes we are just as hard on others for their sin).

Wrestling in itself is not bad. It helps us discern right from wrong. It helps us learn and grow. It’s part of our human entanglement with our conscience and with God. But when our torture and turmoil gets out of hand, and anxiety sets in, we can become downright haunted by a past that just won’t let us go. That’s when we tend to push God out and take to imposing punishments on ourselves. Unlike God, sometimes, we can be unrelentingly punitive.

Unrepenting, obsessive, unredeemable guilt is a kind of sin, a self-imposed spiritual desert that keeps us isolated, in bondage, and in a vice grip, and refuses to allow us to be redeemed. As humans, in fact, we can become so obsessed with punishing ourselves, so entrenched in fear, that we forbid ourselves God’s grace. We push away the very God who could heal us.

That’s part of the story of King Herod in our Gospel passage this weekend.

And if this sort of thing is a part of your/our/my life story, remember, Jesus joyfully went to the cross 2,000 years ago, died, and rose from the dead to life eternal, to give us forgiveness for all our sins, which includes forgiveness and freedom from all our guilt and shame!!!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A Moment with the minister:

Sunday 07^th July 2024

St. Mark 6:1-13

Many preachers can remember the first time they stood up to preach in front of their own parents, in front of the congregation where they grew up. It’s actually very hard to preach there; everyone remembers you when you were little and all the trouble you got into. They remind you that you are simply the son of Dick and Mary, nothing more. Besides, when I once preached there, I had not yet started seminary, I was not qualified.

Multiply that up a lot to allow for the fact that Jesus’ message was different. He wasn’t just another synagogue preacher, telling people how to obey God’s law, offering God’s hope for the future, explaining from the prophets something about when the Kingdom might come. He was saying, on His own authority, that the Kingdom was now at hand, then and there. Where He was, the kingdom was. And if there was any doubt on the matter, He was doing things, miracles that demonstrated it.

But in Nazareth there was doubt, and Jesus didn’t do very much in consequence. This is the odd thing. They had heard what He’d done in Capernaum and around the lake shore; now they were teasing, mocking, challenging Him to do the same back home where everyone knew Him. You see, the hometown crowd knew that Jesus had simply grown up being a local carpenter, and he never went to be schooled under the best of Rabbis or any Rabbi for that matter, in training to become a Rabbi on His own. There must have been that underlying sense of ‘who does He think he is ‘cause He’s certainly not qualified to be any sort of professional Rabbi.’

I think, though, that there was more to it than just putting the ‘local boy made good’ in His place. The kind of kingdom Jesus was talking about was not the sort of kingdom His contemporaries wanted to hear about. When the good folk of Nazareth had such an excuse for rejecting Him, they took it with both hands. They didn’t need to believe such a dangerous message; they could dismiss it as ‘Oh, He’s just the local handyman’. As if that made any difference. Actually, like Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener in John 20, there may be a hidden irony here: Jesus is indeed the one who can fix things, the one who is putting up a ‘building’, the living Temple of the Lord, the one people should go to, to get things sorted out.

And as so often in Mark, there is a pointer here towards the time when Jesus would go to the city the Messiah might think of as home, Jerusalem, to the Temple where a Messiah ought to go, and yet even there He was once again rejected, this time with fatal consequences. Already at this stage of the story we are being pointed forward to see where it will all lead.

Then fresh from the (according to our world’s standards) failure of a short stint in His hometown, Jesus and the disciples turn their backs on Nazareth, and head to all sorts of other little villages, there to share the message of God’s love, of God’s Kingdom. No time to wallow in the pain of rejection from the hometown folks, they’ve got to get moving sharing the message.

They became heralds of God’s Kingdom, and so are we!

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 30^th June 2024

 ²⁴ Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him.²⁵ A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. ²⁶ She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. ²⁷ She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. ²⁸ For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”²⁹ Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

³⁰ Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

³¹ His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

³² But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. ³³ Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done.³⁴ And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”            St. Mark 5:24-34 NLT

 “Touch in Church:”

What is all this touching in church? It used to be a person could come to church and sit in the pew and not be bothered by all this friendliness and certainly not by touching.

I used to come to church and leave untouched. Now I have to be nervous about what’s expected of me. I have to worry about responding to the person sitting next to me.

Oh, I wish it could be the way it used to be; I could just ask the person next to me: How are you? And the person could answer: Oh, just fine, And we’d both go home…strangers who have known each other for twenty years.

But now the minister asks us to look at each other. I’m worried about that hurt look I saw in that woman’s eyes.

Now I’m concerned, because when the minister asks us to greet one another, the man next to me held my hand so tightly I wondered if he had been touched in years.

Now I’m upset because the lady next to me cried and then apologized and said it was because I was so kind and that she needed a friend right now.

Now I have to get involved. Now I have to suffer when this community suffers. Now I have to be more than a person coming to observe a service.

That man last week told me I’d never know how much I’d touched his life.

All I did was smile and tell him I understood what it was to be lonely.

Lord, I’m not big enough to touch and be touched! The stretching scares me.

What if I disappoint somebody? What if I’m too pushy? What if I cling too much? What if somebody ignores me?

“Pass the peace.” “The peace of Christ be with you.” “And also with you.” And mean it. Lord, I can’t resist meaning it! I’m touched by it, I’m enveloped by it! I find I do care about that person next to me! I find I AM involved! And I’m scared.

O Lord, be here beside me. You touch me, Lord, so that I can touch and be touched! So that I can care and be cared for! So that I can share my life with all those others that belong to you!

All this touching in church — Lord, it’s changing me!

What was it our bold friend said 20 centuries ago? “If I but touch his robe, I will be healed.”

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 23^rd June 2024 

³⁵ As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” ³⁶ So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). ³⁷ But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.

³⁸ Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”

³⁹ When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm.⁴⁰ Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

⁴¹ The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!” St. Mark 4:35-41 NLT

Jesus and His disciples were experiencing some amazing results of ministry together, when Jesus said that it was time to go, head across the Sea of Galilee. As they did so, Jesus fell asleep in the boat and soon the disciples, 4 of whom were professional fishermen, became terrified of the fierce storm that arose. Amazingly, as this violent storm was taking place, Jesus still slept.

When John Wesley was going to America from England, he found himself in the middle of a storm. This was in the days before his Aldersgate experience. He was frightened to death. He frantically ran around the ship seeking shelter. In the process, he came across a group of Moravians who were singing and calmly praying. No fear. No panic. Not even among the children. Wesley could not believe this, and he asked the source of their strength. They replied: “We have Jesus as our Saviour.”

If we do not understand who it is that is in the boat with us, then our fear of the storm outside and our fears of the storms within us have the power to paralyze us. When Jesus awakened, He rebuked not only the storm but the disciples. “Why are you afraid,” He asked. “Have you no faith?” Now, let us be clear about this. The promise that is made to us is that of God’s very presence. In the midst of the storm, God will be in the boat with you. In Jesus He is with us always.
You need not panic, though the situation may appear bleak. The Lord of the Church is in the boat with you. The Lord of History is in the boat with you. You need not become immobilized. The Lord of all creation is in the boat with you. That is the promise: Emmanuel.
Will the clouds dissipate immediately? That’s never promised. Will you no longer have to struggle with problems? That’s never promised. Will you henceforth prosper, as some T.V. ministers assure you? That’s never promised. God promises us Himself, Emmanuel. God lives within us by His Holy Spirit.  God’s presence got Noah through the storm. It got the ancient Hebrews through the 40-year wilderness experience. It got Mary through her pregnancy. It got Jesus through the crucifixion, and it will be sufficient to get us through every storm in our lives.

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 16^th June 2024

 ²⁰ Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.                                   St. Matthew 7:20 NLT

 Yes, it is true, the saying about ‘does the walk match the talk?’ As someone once said to me, “I’d rather see your sermon than hear it.”

“Where one man reads the Bible, a hundred read you and me.”—Dwight L. Moody (evangelist through the second half of the 1800’s).

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 09^th June 2024

 16 “I have told you these things so that you won’t abandon your faith…

⁵ “But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. ⁶ Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. ⁷ But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. ⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.   St. John 16:1, 5-8  NLT

A few years ago in the Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena, a float stalled. Frustrations increased quickly because other floats could not move, and this event was televised around the world. Mechanics quickly descended upon the stalled float, searching all over for the problem. Finally, someone had the presence of mind to check on the fuel level of the vehicle. It was empty, out of gas. This became even more embarrassing when the crowd realized that the float’s sponsor was one of the major oil companies.

Did you know that Christians can run out of gas too? It happens all too frequently. A Christian’s inner resources can be depleted by struggles, temptations, trouble, grief, all sorts of things that move us to take our eyes and hearts off Jesus. Unless that Christian is receiving fresh resources from a reliable source, he or she will be in trouble.

We have such a source, available and inexhaustible. That source is the Holy Spirit.

As Chuck Swindoll wrote, “What fuel is to a car, the Holy Spirit is to the believer. He energizes us to stay the course. He motivates us in spite of obstacles. He keeps us going when the road gets tough. In short, he is our spiritual fuel.”

Shalom,

Pastor Mark

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A moment with the minister,

Sunday 02^nd June 2024

 Please read St. Luke 7:36-50, the narrative of when Jesus was invited to a dinner party by Simon the Pharisee and what happened there.

There was a certain young woman who was nervous about meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time. As she checked out her appearance one last time, she noticed that her shoes looked dingy. So, she gave them a fast swipe with the paper towel she had used to blot the bacon she had for breakfast.

Arriving at the impressive home of her potential in-laws, she was greeted by the parents and their much-beloved, but rotten-tempered, poodle, Cleo.

Well, the dog got a whiff of the bacon grease on the young woman’s shoes and followed her around all evening. Wouldn’t leave her alone. At the end of the evening, the pleased parents remarked, “Cleo really likes you, dear, and she is an excellent judge of character. We’re absolutely delighted to welcome you into our little family.”

Cleo may very well have been a great judge of character but that night, I’m afraid it was the bacon grease that won out.

According to our passage of Scripture, the Pharisees didn’t think Jesus was a very good judge of character.

Damaged Goods. That’s what the Pharisees saw in the sinner woman who interrupted the dinner party, but Jesus saw the woman very differently. Thankfully Jesus sees all of us the same way…what way is that?

Shalom,

Pastor Mark