Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 14:10-11 bible study (September 24, 2024)

September 24, 2024:  Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:10-11

Good morning, dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

I hope that your day has had a good start, and that you are really ready to get into the study of these last chapters of Mark. We always need to remember that Mark's efficient use of words, which means that he by far the shortest when he describes what has begun to occur as the last days of Christ's life are now before Him. I know sometimes fewer words are better than more words. Did I really say that?!  I better take a little time to make certain that my Sunday Sermons which would benefit from an economy of words are indeed the length that they are meant to be.

In Mark’s description of Christ being at Simon the leper's home, this is not the Passover meal in the upper room that is so carefully and fully described to us in the other Gospels. Here Jesus has just be blessed the woman's action of pouring expensive perfume over Christ's head, which in many ways makes it an anointing which Jesus can relish in, knowing that the next use of perfumes will be for His body after He is murdered. It is from this meal that Judas leaves and goes to make the arrangements to have Jesus apprehended, and also to get paid for doing so. This passage tells us little else, yet there are a number of things that you and I may posit if we choose to read between the lines.

1. There was covetousness in the heart of Judas. Other Gospels inform us about the amount of the ransom which Judas received to turn in Jesus. 30 pieces of silver.  This was a great deal of money in Jesus’ time. John shows us that Judas was the group's treasurer and used his position to filter money off of the group's resources. Though Mark does not tell us this, from the other Gospel sources we can really believe that Judas had issues with money.

2. Perhaps Judas was jealous of Jesus.  We are all too familiar with people filled with their own ego who never want anyone else to be the center of attention. This jealousy in Judas is not coming from a heart filled with the joy of faith, it instead comes into the heart through sin and evil. We need to remember that Jesus knew from the very start of His ministry that it would be Judas who would move to betray Him.

3. It may well be that Judas had really large ambitions for his own place in the world. That hardly fits with the teachings of the LORD, which are filled with every opportunity to be the humble servant of the Truth of God.

4. Maybe we are the kind of person who feels sorry for Judas, and in our Christian Compassion struggle to understand how God could choose one such as Judas to walk into darkness in his life for the sake of the forgiveness of our sin.  Is it possible that Judas did not really want Jesus to die. After all, in the other Gospels Judas takes his own life due to his extreme grief and guilt over what Christ had to face.  Two of the Gospel writers believed that evil incarnate entered into Judas' life and he succumbed to the lure that so often drags people of faith away from walking ever day with Christ.

Today we have two simply written verses that are so loaded with complexity and possibility that they push and pull us around as we move ever closer to our Lord's murder at the hands of those who fear Him and His power.

I will be back with you Thursday, but it may be after lunch due to my mid-morning urologist appointment.

With Love in the Word, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 14:3-9 bible study (September 23, 2024)

September 23, 2024:  Monday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:3-9

Blessings and peace be with you this morning in the Name of our LORD Jesus Christ, and by the power of His Spirit.

As I had said, yesterday at church was so comfortable that a few members were actually feeling it was a little too chilly. Coming this Sunday is Rally Day 2014 at 9AM in the parish hall. I hope that you are planning to join us. It will be fun for our youth and for our adults. Please bring a brunchy type snack to share, or some sweet treats, or whatever you are moved to bring. We will begin our study of the Book of Ruth trying to get a personal understanding of what it must mean to leave one life behind and begin a new one in a completely unfamiliar place. We will also answer the question about why Ruth is in the Bible at all and work up your trivia mind so that you are ready to play. See you Sunday at 9AM. This Sunday we will also have a Gospel Music rehearsal after worship. Bell practice will begin soon in October, as the Bell Ringers get ready to offer their music on Christmas Eve. If you have been concerned about the warm temperatures in the worship space, let me assure you that it will be very comfortable this coming Sunday, as will the parish hall. Please pray for Steve as he continues his care for cancer, for Annette who will have knee surgery in mid-October, pray for good results in my fall visit to the urologist, and give thanks for the success of Holly's angioplasty. Also pray for Bobbie and Sharon, friends of Sharyn B who are both having health issues which will require health care intervention.

Today Mark passage is one with which we have a pretty good amount of familiarity. But the action of this woman who remains unnamed in Mark offers to Jesus one of the most beautiful and lovely actions that she had the power to take on His behalf. In the middle east there was a host practice to sprinkle a fine scent on the guests who entered their homes. We might have expected this action in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, but that is not where Jesus finds himself on this night. He is, instead, at the home of Simon the leper, being hosted for a meal. I feel that we can assume the great love that this entire household held for Jesus. This gratefulness becomes something much more when this woman, who is probably a relative, friend, or perhaps even the spouse of Simon, chooses to break open an extraordinarily expensive perfume from India, and to literally pour it over Christ's head.  In my ministry, I know what it means to have parents participate in their child's Baptism by placing water on their child's head three times, or to serve communion to those who are receiving with whom we have a special bond, yet this act was not an inbreaking of God's grace for the lives of His Son's followers.  It was instead a royal anointing of Jesus as He stood before those who loved him and followed Him. I am certain that this pouring of the richest nard over Jesus' head was indeed a gift of love for Him. There is a similar scene in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". It was not the woman's love which respected a return of affection. Instead, it was in the Greek, "kalos" which means good in a winsome, gentle, and charming ways. Imagine if we treated one another in that way, offering the good of the love of Christ with grace and gentleness within the church, and with everyone that we ever meet.

1. Jesus makes this unexpected act of Grace one of the loveliest things that could be done for Him, now in life, instead of only in His death.

2. If love is true love, then there must always be a certain extravagance to it. It will be the beauty of the heart of compassion, thankfulness every day for the other, giving the gifts of the heart with every day abundant offerings. I can think of nothing more, outside of Christ Love and Grace, which fills my heart to the brim other than when I think of the good that has been gifted between my wife and me. It still lifts my feelings every time I give myself time to offer "kalos" and an open heart to receive it. Like our Lord's Kalos in our lives, there is nothing better or greater.

3. Christ understands, and gives us His gift of understanding, that Love filled with Kalos will not come at every turn in our lives except through His Spirit. In fact, this experience of Christ, He knew to be a once in a lifetime event. For Jesus, it moved Him and lifted Him in a way that nothing else could do at that time before His death.

4. And Jesus knew one more thing too. This gift of such good love for Him came at that time when the weight of the sins of the world would be borne on His body in death, but at this moment the extravagant gift gave Him all the more drive to move with humble obedience in the face of God's Love for Him, and for us too!

Blessings and good love be with you every day, offered through you, and received with grace by you.

In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study - Esther 2:1-28 (September 19, 2024)

September 19, 2024:  Thursday Old Testament Bible Study - Esther 2:1-28

Peace and Christ's Love for you today and always.

On Wednesday Holly had an angioplasty which resulted in a stint for a completely blocked artery. She is home recovering and daughter, Liisa, and husband Rudy are here with her through the weekend. Pray for complete healing and restoration of health. Please also pray for a sense of unity and calm in our nation the closer we get to the election in November. This Saturday at 2PM we will be showing Babette’s Feast, a wonderful award-winning movie from Europe. It is a great movie to reach into our hearts about healing, forgiveness, and generosity for a small village which has little hope of any of it. A week from this Friday we will be eating with our Foodies of Faith at the Istanbul restaurant at 11:30AM on East Speedway. Sign up at church or call the office to let us know that you will be joining us for this treat. Of course, we have rally day coming on the last Sunday of this month, September 29th at 9AM. Please bring a morning snack or brunch item to share and be a part of the beginning of our study of the Book of Ruth during the Sunday School hour. Games and a lot of fun for all ages. Gospel Music Sunday will be on the October 6. That day there will be no Sunday School hour to provide for the rehearsal time of our Gospel Group.

We move into the second chapter of Esther today. After seeing the kind of behavior we can expect from the king, with a six-month long feast filled with an abundance of overeating and over drinking. And we get a really good picture of the place of women in Xerxes' capitol and palace. His wife Vashti is tired of being commanded to show herself off for her drunken kind, and she refuses his order. Obviously, the king is really frosted by her refusal, after all she is the queen, but the other piece of that is that Xerxes is the one who appointed her queen because of her beauty and earlier willingness to be at his beck and call.  So out of the first chapter what should you and I expect. The king is angry and decides to pull into the palace every beautiful teenage girl to make the best one the new queen. This is where Esther enters into the picture. She is a beautiful young woman who is orphaned due to the death of her parents, and her uncle has adopted her with promises to care for her at every turn. Needless to say, because of Esther's beauty she is one who is selected to come to the palace and undergo a 10-month practice of bathing in perfumes and with the application of skin softeners and makeup. It may sound like a dream, but for these young women this was a real nightmare. If they are the one selected, they are subjected to sexual abuse with an old king, who then, if they are not pleasing in that way, face the possibility of a lifetime of loneliness in the king's harem. During this prolonged period Esther's uncle Mordecai stays close by the area where the young women are being prepared making certain that Esther is doing OK. I am uncertain about what his options would be if he discovered that she was being mistreated. After all, they were both Jews living under exile in the kingdom of Xerxes, and at a point in the book, Xerxes is determined to murder Persians and Judahites because of his anger.  Esther is faced with being the one who gets selected, so how will she move to keep herself and her people safe from Xerxes' tantrum? By the way, when Xerxes selects Esther, he throws yet another party as he replaces queen Vashti with Esther. Of course, we must talk about whether or not we are happy with the way that God allows Esther to be used to save His people in Jerusalem. We have seen one sacrificed for the many later in the New Testament. Is this the role that Esther will be called to take?

More later. In Christ's Love, Pastor Kim