Pastor’s Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 4:3-9 Bible study (October 30, 2023)

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

As I write today, it is a beautiful crisp fall morning.  How long we have waited to step out our doors, to open our windows, to breathe the scent of harvest, and to prepare ourselves for the time of real cold and hopefully, enough rain to offset this summer's lack.  This week there were photos of Death Valley National Park on line that revealed flooded flat basins in this below sea level park.  It reflected, in all of its so often harsh hot climate, pictures of the beauty of God's creation even in places that to us seem desolate.  We all need to know, that in what seems harsh, difficult, deadly, and sick, God's presence is there to reveal to us the beauty in all things when we allow His Grace and Peace to fill our lives each day.  We can not ignore the war raging between two parts of the same family.  Thousands are now dead, with the majority of the deaths in the Gaza strip.  When we love God above all things, as Jesus calls us to do, then we can see clearly the devastation of hatred, anger, and frustration between these two peoples, and come to know, that even Christians, are heavily divided over who is right in this war.  I believe that there is no right in this war, instead it is a war of the history of Israel and their Palestinian half brothers and sisters that has been going on since the time of Abraham in the Old Testament.  In the midst of all of this we must pray for peace between these peoples.  But, we must also pray for the people of Maine, Tampa, and other places around our nation where the violence of person against person has once again been the cause of multiple mass shootings.  It seems to me that the value of human life which I grew up with in the church, is losing its way in our modern gun toting society, where anger finds its first anchor in some lives bringing them to destroy the ones with whom they have disagreements, or in the case of Maine, a mentally ill person sought to do harm to others for reasons that we may never really understand.  It all seems pretty grim doesn't it?  Yet once again we must remember Death Valley and the seemingly impossible beauty that arose from its extremely desolate desert floor.  I work to keep a constant eye out for that impossible beauty which God can provide in the face of any seemingly harsh reality in life.

Today we move forward into another passage from chapter four in the Gospel of Mark Bible study.  This Parable of the Sowers and Seeds was never intended to be studied word for word as we so often do when we look at a passage filled with the teaching of Christ.  It is important for us to know that Jesus' teaching and preaching to the masses was done using the immediate examples which were around Him, His disciples, and the people with whom He spoke.  There would be no other reason for Him so say from that boat lying off the shore, "Look"  Something was happening that Jesus decided to draw upon for what he wanted to say.  There must have been a sower casting seed into a field right near by.  In using such immediate examples was Jesus way of calling out notice of what was a common occurrence in the lives of these people.  Something which was of this world, to indicate what held a meaning far beyond this world, into the heart of what it meant to be living in faith, and coming to know that the journey would be sometimes difficult, and sometimes it would be filled with grace and glory too.  William Barclay states it this way, "Jesus started from the here and now (the normal things going on around Him), to get to the there and then." Faith is that invisible reality presence in my life.

Another part of this passage is revealed to us when Jesus  tells the listener this parable which reveals the connection between the every day here on earth, and its relationship to heaven.  So often we think of heaven as that place where only the triumphant saints reside with the angels and the other hosts of heaven.  We only see its revelation in the most extraordinary of circumstances in the Bible.  Heaven and its hosts are revealed at the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem, or to Jacob as he wrestles with God, or at Christ's Ascent into heaven.  There are a few others as well, but they are contained in a very few of the experiences of God's children.  But those every day things, like sowing seeds, now that we know about, and how it reveals to us truths beyond ourselves and our self understanding in our relationship with God is what Jesus is teaching about in the common experiences of the story.  In Michigan there  is a saying "If you seek a beautiful peninsula, look around you."  In effect, this is what Jesus is saying, "If you wish to see God, look around you."  

When Jesus is preaching and teaching, He is always looking around Himself for a common point of contact with the people with whom he is speaking.  His method is to use a story of the common to reveal the greater truth which it contains.  What this means is that, knowing the things that He wanted His people to know, Jesus would speak with out plan outside of knowing the themes which were so important in revealing God's grace.  As I preach, I work in a similar way, reviewing Scripture for a Sunday's message, allowing that to fill my life, knowing what message I have to offer, and then using what I have experienced  which is so often in line with the experiences of the members who come to worship.  I can tell you that it can sometimes be pretty nerve wracking some weeks waiting on the Spirit to share that common life experience which I need for proclaiming the Truth of the Gospel.  In that the Gospel is always prepared to address the needs of the moment, from the tragic to the the joyous when we allow ourselves to be filled with the Word through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was always prepared with a Scripture.  He was, after all, the Living Word of God.  And, He was a Master in more than just the leader of His disciples.  He was a Master of the seeing in the mundane every day things of this life, the Holiness of God's ways of working in His creation.  How do these Eternal Truths of God rest in your life?  Have someone read this parable again to you, and listen, just as the people along Galilee did as they listened to Jesus, and found in His story the things that they needed to hear.

Tomorrow we will take a look at Mark 4:10-12, and consider Christ's conversation with the disciples. 

Blessing for you today in Christ!

Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament Bible Study of Ezra 1:5-11 (October 26, 2023)

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Maine with the news last night about the mass shooting in that state. This seems to be another situation in which a community member who was well known and a productive person, lost his way to mental illness and the paranoia that so often, in some way, moves its victims to violence. I pray that the Lord will be merciful to him, and certainly hold before those who have lost loved ones, the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. I pray that the Church will be there in all of its iterations bringing Christ's Love and Peace for all of those who grieve this horrific situation. As Christ has said, these folks are our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, in spite of the distance between us in miles. Today my heart hurts for all of these people in Maine. And yet, the horrific war in the middle east holds up the willingness of two groups of people to wreak mayhem, and rain down death on one another. There are obviously historic differences between these people all of the way back to Abraham in the Old Testament. Though I could go on about the problems in both communities of people, problems of the heart, and the refusal to let the Spirit move them all to compassion for one another's plights. May God's love for all of these people transform their hearts to work as hard for peace as they have worked to bring mutual destruction upon one another. You too have my prayers for peace in your life.

This week on Sunday we celebrate the Reformation. It has now been 506 years since Luther, Melanchthon, and other reformers began the process of challenging the theology of the Catholic Church. Instead of works righteousness the reformers came to understand that we are all justified by God's gift of Grace and His gift of faith in Jesus Christ. Our works are simply acts of thanksgiving and compassion for all that God has already accomplished in our lives through His Son. We are saved only by Christ's merit, not our own. We cannot earn our salvation!

Today in our bible study of Ezra, we are faced with an all too familiar circumstance. In order to understand the importance of what is happening in this passage, we must first go back to the time of the exile of Judah and Jerusalem in 597 and 587. It was a brutal time when the people of the southern kingdom were taken away to Babylon. Often, they could take nothing with them, and for some who had been the most resistant, a journey with the muscles of their butt cheeks pinned to one another by large pieces of iron. We can only begin to imagine the terrible time that this was for those who became its victims. Even the real symbol of the people, the Temple, was looted and destroyed, parts of it with important articles of faith and its practice destroyed. Then, to add insult to injury, the Babylonians took the temple treasures that they had carried off and placed them in their own temple to their god Marduk as a constant reminder that Marduk was more powerful than YHWH, the God of Israel. YHWH is unpronounceable and if it could be pronounced, it is a name too holy to be spoken. It is interpreted in the Bible as LORD. During this time in captivity, it was the prophet Jeremiah who worked to remind the people that the LORD had not forgotten them, and that in the future, (70 years) they would return to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem. Though there would be few, if any, who had ever been in the homeland, the traditions were carried by the people, and during the exile the religious leaders that are called Pharisees came into existence. If the people had any doubt the LORD had abandoned them, this passage is an indication that the LORD'S Hand had been involved from the very moment of their arrival in what had become Persia with a new ruler named Cyrus. Cyrus certainly would have been unlikely to send the Jews home, yet through what we must see as the action of the LORD, Cyrus would do exactly that, and not only that, but he would empty the Jewish Temple treasures out of Marduk's temple where they had been safe and return them to be taken back to the second Temple that would be built in Jerusalem.

Today, our world experience has shown us how difficult it is to be told that you must evacuate your home for your own safety, or for other unimaginable reasons in our nation, in the face of war. In Gaza we have seen burros carrying large loads of home belongings, and a few pickup trucks too. How could you possibly figure out what would be your greatest treasures in your home that would come with you if you could only fill your car where people would not be sitting? We have enough trouble packing the van for a 7-day trip, but to have to put a whole life's treasures into such a small place, I don't know. But there is more, when you had the opportunity to return, there would be nothing there. You would have to start from nothing again. And how would your church fit into all of that? No place to gather, no instrument led music and singing. How would you move forward to be certain that your family and other families could still be involved with a sense of what had been so holy before its destruction? And then someone would come up with the altar Misal, the Cross from the chancel west wall, and some of the communion ware that was used every week, and greatest of all, the large lectionary Bible. The feelings of desperation would be softened, and perhaps a new vision for how to continue would be reached. In all of this it is important for us to know that the LORD is always involved in what is happening to us, and God knows what it will be that will change our hearts and move them to see His Light and Love once again. The same was true for the Jews in exile.

Our next passage will be Ezra 2:1-67. This is a big passage to consider in one day, so depending on how it goes, we may take several weeks to get through it.

God bless you and keep you. Wherever you go, go with God. (“Vaya con dios” in Spanish)

In Christ's love, Pastor Taylor

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 4:1-9 Bible Study (October 24, 2023)

Greetings to all of you studiers of the Word of God. On this Tuesday I pray that in your life you are filled with the power of Christ's Love every minute of the day.

Yesterday I forgot to give you the parallels in the other Gospels to the text from the end of Mark 3 that speak of Christ's view of the ones who are truly His family. This can also be found Matthew 12:46-50, but in Matthew it appears to be aimed primarily at Christ's disciples and roadies, primarily men. (a term for those who followed Jesus throughout His ministry but were not counted as part of the inner circle.) In Mark Jesus indicates the believers in the crowd too. In Luke 8:19-21 there is an abbreviated passage that becomes even more expansive in its inclusivity. Anyone who hears the Word, and does it is family to Jesus, which is why you and I can speak of being His Brothers, Sisters, and family!

In today’s bible study, we are in chapter 4 of the Gospel of Mark verses 1-9. We will start out with the first portion of this passage. Mathew contains a parallel in 13:1-9 which is in effect a duplicate of the passage in Mark. However, Luke is different. It primarily tells us the same story in 8:4-8, but the part of the passage about Jesus getting into a boat is not in 8:4-8, but rather it is found in 5:1-3. John does not have this parable. However, in John 15:14, John writes, "You are my friends if you do what I command you". It is somewhat similar, but it is not the same as the parable in the other three Gospels.

In the early part of this passage, we discover that Jesus has moved, for now, to preach outside of the synagogues, so He finds Himself at the lake shore, and uses a boat to push out just far enough to not be mobbed by the crow that always gathered around him. I am certain that the crowd was looking for miracles of healing, but it is important to note that the Word which Christ offers to His people also bring healing, healing of the soul and spirit of everyone who hears the Word, and then whose heart is changed forever! This new method of reaching out to the people was really necessary if Jesus was going to win over the hard hearts of His own people. A parable is literally something thrown beside something else. It is a comparison too. In the case of what Jesus teaches, the parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. So why parables, of which Jesus was a spontaneous master?

1. Jesus uses this method to get people to listen. When I preach, I attempt to use my life and experiences as a way of gaining the congregation's attention. I have often heard it said that I must know what is going on in people's homes and lives. It is our shared reality which really helps the Gospel message to be more clearly heard.

2. Though the location and the "pulpit" was different and new, the method of teaching by telling a parable was very familiar in its usage in the Jewish faith, so He was not attempting to present a new style of preaching and teaching, but instead used this common method which had already been extremely successful as a tool for conveying the Word.

3. Many of the ideas in God's Word are intangibles that need to be given an opportunity for understanding if the average person is going to grasp what they are, and what they mean for the life of everyone who is in this relationship with God. An example would be the concept of goodness. We can talk about it all day, but until we set it with concrete examples it may remain mostly unreachable for us.

4. Here is the really important reason for Jesus to use parables. It makes people think! In the Spiritual Gifts we discover one called discernment. Thinking is a part of being one of Christ's children. Today we have a myriad of realities which Christ did not directly address because they were not a part of His world. So, if we are Biblical literalist, we would never drive or have a car, fly in a plane, use a refrigerator, and we would all need to have that kosher kitchen in order to maintain our relationship with God. Women would be faced with sitting outside of the sanctuary during church and would need to rely on the man in their life to relay what had been taught. It wasn't until the time of Paul's writing that we discover that women (Lydia) actually started communities of faith and nurtured their growth. We would all have to give up our deterrent of nuclear bombs and there would be no personal guns. We would manually row our great ships and use spears and bows and arrows for warfare in the world. We all seem to have no trouble using all of these things, when we believe in Christ, but in order to do that we must think about how they fit into the picture of this modern day. We must use discernment to know if we can use all of these things and still accept Christ's One Great Commandment as our guide for living as His children.

This is getting pretty long today, so we will finish next Monday with the parable of the Sower of the seeds and see our own lives of faith, and those of the people who remain in church around us, and those whose faith has failed. God bless you all and may this day of cool weather inspire you to great joy in the season's change.

In Christ, Pastor Kim