Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 14:17-21 bible study (October 1, 2024)

October 1, 2024:  Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:17-21

Blessings and Peace to you this morning in the Name, and by the Power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today please keep Pastor Kurt in your prayers. He is suffering from a muscle locked jaw. He spent time in the ER and is now healing. He celebrated his birthday last week. His call to serve the Gospel is at Sierra Ev. Lutheran Church in Sierra Vista. Reminder - Gospel Music Sunday Oct 6, and Monthly carry-in dinner after worship with an Italian theme.

Today, I am going to move forward quickly with the Bible Study, because I have a lunch engagement with Pastor Kurt.

Yesterday we talked about how Jesus may well have prepared in advance for the Passover meal. His planning made it possible for He and His disciples to be together. Next, we are faced with the meal itself, and how Jesus, in the midst of the meal, talked to all of the disciples about what was coming, and that there was at this Passover meal a person who would betray Jesus, and set in motion the events which would get Jesus arrested, tried, and crucified.  Today we know that person was Judas. Jesus offers to Judas the opportunity to reset his choice and their consequences, but Jesus also makes it clear to his disciples that the person at the table who chooses to act against the will of God, especially when mercy has been offered and yet rejected, will suffer consequences far worse than they could ever think would happen.  I think that in some ways, Judas never had a chance, but here when we have Jesus offering him a way out, Judas continues to move forward with his betrayal of the Lord. However, we do learn some important things about Jesus in this passage.

1. Jesus knew in advance what was going to happen, but like you and me, Judas also had free will and chose very poorly. It is hard to imagine, Jesus knowing in advance what was coming, still had the courage and faith to offer mercy, while understanding that the burden of bearing the sin of the world must take Him to His enemies, so that he could indeed become the Savior of all of creation.

2. He was able to see into the heart of Judas, just as He was able to see Nathaniel under the tree before Christ would meet him in person. Nathaniel was a man of compassion and was more moral and ethical than anyone else Jesus had selected. All too often we forget that Jesus knows our hearts too, even when we have hidden our own sin and brokenness. So, He knew Judas. What a burden of sin Christ was already holding in His Holy Grace-filled person.

3. In this passage Jesus appeals to Judas out of His love for him and knows full well how Judas will suffer because of this choice that he has made. Jesus does not act with compulsion toward Judas. If He needed Judas to be prevented form this act, Jesus could have called on the other disciples to restrain him. However, this is not the way of God. Adam and Eve were warned about the fruit of that tree in the garden, yet in their free will God did not place an impassable barrier around it. He left it up to free will. The very same thing is true for you and me. God has given us the Word, the Living Word, Jesus, and the Scriptures that we read. Every person has free will. God awaits the choices that we will make, and when they have been made, the Spirit calls us to return to our Savior with humble confession and open hearts to receive the fullness of Christ's forgiveness.

God bless you always, with Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 14:12-16 bible study (September 30, 2024)

September 30, 2024:  Monday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:12-16

Good morning to all of you who will join in this study of the Word this morning. I pray for the LORD'S peace and hope to fill your lives today, and every day, all of which the LORD has made. And yes, we should all be glad, even on these hot September days, and rejoice in the Father's gift of this new day.

Please keep Annette in your prayers as she has surgery on her knee in the middle of this month. Also keep Dotty in your prayers as she comes to the end of her life. Pray for twins, Haley and Talia, as they move from their parent's home to live with their grandparents in California.  Pray for peace in the growing violence between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah. May God move the hearts of His children toward a desire to set aside historic struggles between them. Pray too for Kandice, Lisa, and Alexis as they face the uncertainty of each day, praying for Kandice as she continues her battle with cancer.

Gospel music Sunday is this coming Sunday. Our carry-in meal is Italian theme. Let us know that you will be coming if you have not already signed up at church so that we can have seating all set for our use. I hope to see you there.

Today we continue our study as we get closer to the end of this Gospel, the death of Christ, and His Resurrection. For today we are at the point of the celebration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as the Passover. I hope that you are familiar with this very special day in the Jewish faith, when everyone is called to remember the passing over of the angel of death which occurred in Egypt as God was acting to set free His Hebrew children after the seven plagues. This holy celebration was the reason for Jesus and His disciples to be in Jerusalem, as was required by Jewish Religious Law. They were there with tens of thousands of other pilgrims who had come to have their Passover meals. The Historian, Josephus, tells us that over 250,000 lambs were sacrificed on this holy day in Jerusalem. The process was that the pilgrim needed to bring their own lamb, butcher it at the temple, placing the animal's blood in a bowl from which it would be cast upon the altar along with the internal organs of the animal, all of which would be burned. It is hard for us to even think about the massive amount of dedicated blood and organs that would be placed there in the temple, after which the pilgrims would take their lamb to their home, or inn, where it was to be roasted on a spit over an open flame.  This is a tough visual for us to consider. Yet there is something else here which is really important for us to not miss. It is the way in which Jesus had prepared for the celebrating of this meal in Jerusalem. We have all too often treated this as an amazing miracle, but we must realize that this was all more likely a picture of how Jesus would have made advance preparations at this extraordinarily busy time in the capitol. In all of this bustling around in the city Jesus gave an unmistakable sign for the disciples to follow, a man carrying a water jug. This man would be the only one because this was a job that no other man would do. This was a woman’s work. He would be easy to find and identify. It really makes no difference how we choose to see this whole thing, miracle or good planning.  Either way it is the meal, and the significance of the sacrificed lamb. This is all a foretelling of what was to come for the Savior. 

Let’s look at the elements of the meal itself.

1. First, there was the lamb, whose blood sacrifice, gave those who marked their homes with its blood, were redeemed from the Angel of Death as they and their first born were passed over.

2. There was the unleavened bread, quickly prepared to be eaten as the Hebrews escaped from slavery. In Christ, the bread is our symbol of Christ's body, given from us all, and bringing to us the means of escape from the slavery of sin.

3. There was the bowl of salt water.  The reminder of the bitter tears that had been shed over the years of slavery in Egypt.

4. There was a collection of bitter herbs, the reminder of the bitterness of enslavement.

5. There was a paste called charoset, a mixture of apples, dates, pomegranates, and nuts, a reminder of the clay from which they made the bricks for the Egyptian building projects.

6. There were the four cups of wine mixed with water, reminding the Hebrews (Jews) of the four promises made in Exodus 6:6-7.

   a.     I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

   b.     I will rid you of their bondage.

   c.     I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.

   d.     I will take you to me as a people, and I will be your God.

Even at this time with Jesus, the disciples still had to realize that they ate with the final fulfillment of these promises, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God! Is it any wonder that the celebration of Holy Communion is filled with such wonder and joy for all of us who receive our Savior's living presence in the bread and wine of this Sacrament.

I will be back with you tomorrow as we continue in this late part of the Gospel of Mark.

In Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study - Esther 2:19 - 3:11 (September 25, 2024)

September 26, 2024:  Thursday Old Testament Bible Study - Esther 2:19 - 3:11

Good evening, and good morning, 

Yes, I am at it again late on Wednesday.  Tomorrow is my midday appointment with my urologist to check on the status of the cancer that we know is present.  Please keep me in your prayers for a good update.  Also please remember two families that have family members who are succumbing to their cancers in the near future.  One is in the Denver area, and the other is a neighbor of Teri H.  Please pray for these families that the hope of the Christ's salvation and forgiveness will bring comfort and peace at this time of uncertainty.  Now, we move on to study Esther this evening.

As we get into the passage for this reading, (see above) we find that Xerxes has already called for a second viewing of the young girls who will be sexually abused by him, which at this time in history, is his right as the nation's leader.  During this time two of his eunuchs plotted to kill the king.  It was their job to protect the occupants of the harem.  Obviously, they were unhappy with how the king was acting towards the young women who had been called into his presence to be looked at for their beauty and who would then go on to be misused by the king.  When this happened Haman, a servant of the king, who was not in a position of great power sought to save the king and then took the eunuchs and killed them.  The king was so pleased with Haman's action on his behalf that he gave Haman a position of Ultimate authority over everyone except himself, and Haman certainly took advantage of his new position, even to the point of having everyone who entered through the palace gate forced to bow to Haman's authority.  That is, everyone except Mordecai, Esther's adoptive father.  This made Haman furious, and so he approached the king about destroying all of the Judahites and more in the kingdom, along with a number of others too who were seen as an outside threat to the king, and maybe even more, to Haman!

As we know from history, the Jewish community has often suffered as the scape goats.  This is the start of that victimizing them based just on the basis of their heritage and identity as a people.  Haman was able to even get the king to consent to his taking on the job of destroying these communities of outsiders, and he would make a sizable fortune for doing so, which the king willingly paid.  In terms of the young women who were being judged, we need to remember that not everyone met the king's standard.  Beauty was a high and vicious standard to have to meet, and many young women could not measure up.  Beautiful women are vulnerable, and so are the Judahites.  The names for the Jewish people that were most often used were Judahites, Jews, Jewish, and Jew are all rooted in the word Jehudi, or in the plural Jehudim. (Here the J’s are pronounced like the y in yes.)  We all know that at an earlier point Cyrus was called by God to release the Jews, but it was more than that.  They had become successful in business, had large families, and their community in exile soon outpaced the native community of Persia.  So large numbers were given the opportunity to leave for Judah and the promised land.  Though Hama was hatching a plan to destroy the Judahites in the kingdom over which Xerxes was king.  Mordecai's persistent refusal to bow to Haman, was only exacerbated by the food restrictions which Mordecai's people followed stringently, and their independent and unique religious practice also separated the Jews and made them more vulnerable.  It is also likely that Mordecai recognized Haman as an Amalekite.  The Amalekites had been historically irrationally and inhumanely hostile toward the Judahites.  No good Jews would ever bow down to a person from this area of their world.  Today the Jews in Israel continue to see the Palestinians as Amalekites, which may explain their disdain for these children of Abraham.  Over hundreds and thousands of years, the Jewish community has seen the Palestinians as their enemy.  There seems to not be a good answer in the Middle East, but whoever becomes the next president in our election will be forced to deal with this very irrational way in which these children of Abraham are willing to do harm to one another. 

With love for your faithfulness in Christ, Pastor Kim