First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street Blackwood, NJ 08012 Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ June 23, 2024) Sermon Title – Who Is This, Anyway Text – Mark 4:35-41 Rev William Gaskill Who Is This Anyway? II Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41 Okay, I’m going to preach to myself and you are invited to eavesdrop. Did you ever find yourself in the midst of such a storm that you knew you were in over your head, a storm over which you had no control, a storm strong and unsettling, a storm that threatened to overturn life as you knew it? I’ve been there more than once in my life. Is there a way to find shelter in the time of storm as the old hymn has it? Is there any hope of finding peace in the midst of trials and the chaos they cause? It’s a long and complicated story of which I will spare you the details, but in one week, my daughter, a single mother of five, will be officially homeless. She and four of her children are moving in with us at the end of this week. Good-bye peace and quiet; good-bye leisurely mornings over coffee and scripture reading with my wife; good-bye spacious home with several rooms within which to find solitude; good-bye peaceful meals, prepared in an un-crowded kitchen where all the pots and pans have been well washed and ready for use. And a whole lot more, but need I go on? We saw this movie once already, seven years ago. As Yogi Berra said once, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Lord have mercy! Through this and many other storms Jean and I have walked and I must say, this time around I feel a curious sense of peace. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to please the Lord. Oh, I’ve prayed my Gethsemane prayers: “Lord, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, nevertheless…”. I’ve done a little whining: “God, I’m no longer a young man; I don’t know if I’m up to it!” “Peace. Be still!” I’d read the story of Jesus and the disciples out in the boat on the Sea of Galilee many times before I actually went there and saw it for myself. When I saw it I thought, “Huh? How could anyone feel their life was in jeopardy on this quiet little lake?” The Sea of Galilee is only 7 miles across (on a clear day you can see the opposite shore) and 13 miles long. It could easily fit into the Delaware or Chesapeake Bay many times. It was after that trip to Israel that church members Tom and Shirley took us out on their boat in the Northeast River, which is a tributary of the Chesapeake. Suddenly, a violent thunderstorm arose and then I understood how someone out on the water could get really scared. And the water wasn’t even deep! And I’ve learned since that due to the topography around the Sea of Galilee there is a great wind funnel that can cause such violent waves that even today in parking lots on the west shore there are signs warning motorists that even their cars are liable to be swamped should a sudden storm arise. The Jewish people had an uneasy relationship with all sea waters. Scholars have noted the parallels between this story and the story of Jonah. You remember old fish food; Jonah was sent to warn the wicked city of Nineveh to repent or else. Jonah had two problems. One, he hated Nineveh and wanted bad things to happen to them. The last thing he wanted to do was warn them. So he went AWOL on God’s call, but God used a stormy sea and a great fish to halt him in mid-flight. Sometimes it takes dramatic measures to elicit our obedience to God. Jonah knew enough about God to know that God isn’t willing that even one should perish, as the Apostle Peter put it hundreds of years later, and that the odds were that the people of Nineveh would repent and God would show them mercy instead of judgment, which, of course, is exactly what happened. It sent Jonah off in an angry sulk. And of course there are other sea stories, like the one from the Exodus, the story of Israel being blocked by the Red Sea in their frantic escape from the pursuing Egyptians. There, God opened the way through by splitting the sea apart. The sea that confronted them caused them to fear that their hoped for salvation was about to evaporate under the wrath of the Egyptian warriors. Then God came to the rescue. God is Lord of all the mighty waters on earth, both physical and spiritual. Or you could go back all the way to Genesis and see God’s creative authority over the waters of chaos setting boundaries and limits over them. But unbelief can leave our confidence in tatters. Oceans are beyond our control but not beyond God’s. Sometimes though, we wonder if the boundaries will hold up. There is much more in the Old Testament that shows us that Israel did not view seas as happy little swimming holes painted by Bob Ross. We find malicious and threatening sea monsters from the Book of Daniel all the way through the Book of Revelation. Add to that the ancients’ belief that the whole creation, both sea and land, was infested with hostile demonic forces that were prowling around like roaring lions looking for someone to devour. So, the actual weather conditions and resulting rough seas were augmented by the disciples’ prevailing world view. Result? Terror! Wake up Jesus! Save us; we are perishing! How can you sleep at a time like this? Don’t you care? Ah, the storms of life and our questions. Storms seem to always generate questions. And like the disciples, when the storm breaks, often our first reaction is fear. We are in over our heads. We want to be in control but we are not. Forces much bigger and stronger than us are threatening our lives. As our fears intensify, we may come to think that we have a sleeping Savior. Oh, we believe he is always nearby, but we suspect that as conditions worsen he is possibly not paying attention. We’ve read Psalm 121 that assures us that our God never slumbers nor sleeps, but if he’s awake, why doesn’t God do something? Can’t God see we are in real trouble? The disciples shake Jesus and cry, “Wake up!” We’ve also read the end of Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you and lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.” In the next moment he ascended up and out of their sight. How can we know he is with us when we can’t see him? How can we put these things together in a coherent whole? Is our Savior really present in the storms of our lives or are we engaged in wishful thinking? Where are you when I need you Lord? Are people of faith what the world thinks we are, gullible fools? Jesus, wake up! Jesus’ eyes pop open but he seems almost serene, so the next question is, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?” Why aren’t you as afraid as we are? Don’t you see we are going to drown? They’d already seen Jesus perform remarkable and mighty signs, but that was then and this is now! Why don’t you do something? Sure you can heal people, you can exercise powerful authority over the demons that torment individuals, but how about the malevolence of this violent wind and this stormy sea? If you are not personally acquainted with this question, you simply have not been in a strong enough storm yet. Sooner or later most of us get our own stormy boat ride. When storms rage on and nothing seems to get better, the most natural question is, “Don’t you care?” That question’s first cousin is the oft heard question, “How could a good God allow this to happen?” Or, “If God is good, why doesn’t God come to help us?” These questions transport us to difficult theological problems. The first thing to say is that the presence and power of evil in the world is impossible to explain. We can experience its onslaught, we long to understand the how and why of it all, but it is beyond our powers of reason. That’s why Paul wrote, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) We soon realize that the battle doesn’t belong to us but to the Lord. Without God’s help we are lost. There are not just atmospheric dangers, not just physical dangers we can understand by study and by applying our scientific methods to the trials of life. There is a spiritual dimension to our struggles that we can only meet and overcome by faith and trust in God. Come what may we must trust, because just as evil is inscrutable, so is the grace of God. Oh the riches, the depth, and the kindness of God’s grace! God’s goodness is far beyond our capacity to limit or define! Sometimes in the evil day, the goodness of God seems to be eclipsed by difficult circumstances, but we believe in spite of it all, or not. If we look at the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we see Jesus doing all sorts of remarkable signs and wonders. But each gospel has a turning point where Jesus sets his face to go up to Jerusalem, there to die on a Roman cross. The juxtaposition of his gracious and compassionate work, his signs and wonders which put the power of God on display for all to see with his gruesome end is not accidental. Each of the four gospels has been steering us to an encounter with crucified love, with the life of God’s Son laid down for us and our salvation. His love is on full display in his suffering, not just in his miraculous deeds of healing and deliverance. Jesus is hanging there by choice to fulfill his mission. There humanity hurls insults that are the fruit of their unanswerable questions. If you are the Son of God, come down from there. It is because he is the Son of God that he doesn’t come down. As the old choir song goes, “He could have called ten thousand angels, to destroy the world and set him free. He could have called ten thousand angels, but he died alone for you and me.” He is hanging there for love, even love for those who hate him. “He saved others, he cannot save himself,” they jeered. If he saved himself, none of us would be saved; we would be eternally lost. On Golgotha and in every generation since, human hubris has demanded answers that we could not handle if we wanted to. Read God’s answer to Job if you want an illustration. Our natural limitations preclude our ability to fathom the wonders of creation and redemption. It’s humbling to face up to that fact. And our natural man or woman likes the taste of humility about as much as a dose of castor oil. Once, an old farmer friend gave my wife a dose of castor oil for her stomach problems. If you are at all young, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Castor oil was an old-fashioned remedy even then and it tastes nasty. From the face she made I thought she might die on the spot! But the remedy worked. Sometimes God’s remedies are also hard to swallow. Confronted by the disciples’ somewhat accusatory questions, Jesus turned the tables with a question of his own: “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he rebuked the wind and the waves: “Peace! Be still!” And suddenly there was a dead calm. The disciples’ fear of the elements turned to reverent fear of the one in the boat with them: “Who is this that even wind and sea obey him?” Now that’s the right question: who is this? It’s the question that each of us must ask and answer; do we believe Jesus is the Son of God or not? And do we realize that Jesus is not only Lord of each person’s heart, but he is Lord of the whole created order? As John said at the beginning of his Gospel, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” The old time commentator William Barclay put forth a little outline of the places we can find peace, listing three areas where we all spend some time. He said first that we can find peace in sorrow. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and his promise that we will be raised with him to newness of life places a boundary around our grief. The comforting presence of the Holy Spirit enters our sorrows and begins to give us consolation and a peace that passes understanding. God’s comfort far exceeds our capacity to fathom it rationally. It makes no sense, but there it is. Second, we can find God’s peace when we are faced with life’s problems. We must learn in prayer to recognize the still small voice of our Good Shepherd and learn to trust the guidance we receive. Third, we must learn to find peace that replaces anxiety. Anxiety is the fear of an imagined but undefined situation which may not even come about. We create dreadful scenarios and then fret over how to avoid them. Paul wrote in Philippians that we are to have no anxiety about anything. You can have anxiety or you can choose not to have it. You can choose to trust in Jesus in all circumstances. So, in one week, my daughter and four grandchildren are moving in. So here are the choices I am making and the ones I will try to stick to, though I might stumble a time or ten. I am going to thank God every day that I am able to shelter the people I love so much. I am going to focus upon love that I can give and that I most assuredly will receive. I am going to praise God that while they are with me I have a golden opportunity to model what it is like to be a Christian. I am going to give my time and attention. I will seek new ways to nurture the intimate moments that my wife and I have enjoyed throughout our days. Some things are going to need re-configuration. And so on and so on. None of this is going to be easy, but all of it will be worth it! You get the point, I’m sure. Life is about choices, not just about what to do but how to feel and what to believe; but enough about me. How about you? What storm are you facing? Whatever it is, never forget who is in the boat with you and what he is able to do to guide you, protect you, and bless you. May you know the nearness of Jesus Christ no matter what.
0 Comments
First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street Blackwood, NJ 08012 Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ June 16, 2024) Sermon Title – Praying The Ultimate Text – Matthew 8:23-27 Rev Scott Morschauser First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street Blackwood, NJ 08012 Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ June 9, 2024) Sermon Title – The Universal Christ Text – Mark 3:20-35 Rev Joel Buckwalter First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood
21 E. Church Street Blackwood, NJ 08012 Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ June 2, 2024) Sermon Title – Setting Priorities Text – Mark 2:23-3:6 Rev Beth Thomas The lectionary is turning to the Gospel of Mark again and even though we are only in the second chapter today, Jesus has already done some things that the Pharisees see as threating. They are already distrustful, suspicious of him. They are making it one of their priorities to watch him closely. So, they notice that at some point on the Sabbath as Jesus and the disciples are walking through a grainfield, the disciples are plucking off the heads of grain and eating them. We suppose that the disciples were hungry and did not have to follow a gluten free diet. The Pharisees, you remember, were a Jewish sect distinguished by its strict observance of Jewish law, who had a sort of sense of superiority and holiness about themselves. They were men who had been raised in the Jewish faith and spent their lifetimes studying and following its long-held traditions. They were experts on the law and eager to enforce it. But there wasn’t anything in Jewish law that prepared them for Jesus. Here in Mark’s first chapter this unknown and seemingly un-educated carpenter has shown up and called an unclean spirit out of a man right in the synagogue. He’s healed Simon’s mother-in-law and as soon as people heard about that they brought him all kinds of people who were sick or demon-possessed. He cleansed a leper and told him not to talk about his healing but the leper couldn’t keep quiet. And let’s not forget about that man who couldn’t walk. When his friends brought him to Jesus the crowd was so big they couldn’t get near him so they removed a portion of the roof of the house Jesus was in and lowered the man down before him. He forgave the man’s sins and healed him. What is going on?? Now, he’s breaking Sabbath law! The idea of Sabbath has a long history. It is mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis, when God rested on the seventh day, after finishing the work of creation. God blessed the Sabbath and set it apart. In Exodus 16 that seventh day—the Sabbath--was singled out as a day of resting from the harvesting of manna. In chapter 20 of Exodus the Sabbath becomes the topic of the Fourth Commandment. Keeping the Sabbath holy required the Israelites to abstain from the work they normally engaged in on the other six days, In Exodus 31 things get really serious when God tells Moses “You yourself are to speak to the Israelites: “You shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, given in order that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people… whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the Israelites shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” After this idea became Jewish law, Jewish scholars and leaders shifted their thinking about the Sabbath. Instead of it just being a cessation of normal activities they begin to contemplate the ways in which the Israelite should worship God on the Sabbath. You can imagine the debates: “The law says that the Sabbath Day is to be kept holy and no work done on that day. “So, what should be classified as work?” All kinds of things made the list: carrying a burden for example counted as work. But then the scholars asked, what is a burden? According to William Barclay in his study of this story in Matthew, the definition they came up with was “food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, paper enough to write a notice upon, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet, reed enough to make a pen”—and so on endlessly. According to the Rev. Robert Deffenbaugh, the law makers spent endless hours arguing about the laws of the Torah: whether a man could or could not lift a lamp from one place to another on the Sabbath, whether a tailor committed a sin if he went out with a needle in his robe, whether a woman might wear a brooch, or a man might lift his child on the Sabbath Day. To the law makers, these things were the essence of a religion of legalism, what we might call nit-picking rules and regulations. Another bit of background to keep in mind as we look at Jesus and the Disciples walking through the grain field is that in Deuteronomy 23:25 we read, “When you enter your neighbor's grainfield, you may pluck the heads of grain with your hand, but you must not put a sickle to your neighbor's grain.” So technically, Jesus and the disciples could pluck grain as they walked through a field. It was and may still be a practice of hungry travelers in Palestine where fields are not fenced and there are narrow paths through the crops. But the Pharisees objected to the actions of Jesus and the disciples because they interpreted their plucking and eating as reaping—working—on the Sabbath. Which brings us to the central question of the Sabbath—is it God’s gift to his hard-working people or is it the work of the Jewish leaders to make even the Sabbath difficult because of all its accompanying rules? Was the Sabbath created to serve humankind or is it about making humankind serve God through the following of so many laws? Jesus asks the Pharisees if they remember the story of David, who, fleeing from Saul, stopped at the temple at Nob near Jerusalem and asked the priests for bread. The only bread they had was the ceremonial bread, set out for Jehovah. This holy bread, baked on the Sabbath, consisted of 12 loaves and could only be eaten by the priests, after it had been on exhibit for a specified period of time. This is the bread the priests gave to David to eat and that David shared with his companions. In other words the priests used what they had to meet a very human need even if it meant breaking Sabbath law. Jesus may also have been alluding to how busy priests were on the Sabbath. There was bread to bake, sacrificial lambs to kill, lamps to be lit, incense to be burned…so the prohibition against work on the Sabbath was not universal. Maybe work on the Sabbath for the glory of God was okay and God certainly calls us all to feed the hungry. Maybe the prohibition should have been limited to work for worldly gain? Jesus may also be saying that sometimes certain demands of the law are rightly set aside in favor of pursuing greater values or meeting greater needs, especially when those greater needs promote a person’s well-being and facilitate the arrival of blessings. When Jesus says the purpose of the Sabbath has always been to serve humankind (as opposed to making humankind serve some stern religious principle), he is referring to the reason behind Deuteronomy 5:12-15, in which God institutes the Sabbath so a people who once toiled in slavery can forever enjoy at least one day of rest each week. So maybe the proper function of the Sabbath is to promote life and extol God as a liberator. In the larger context maybe Jesus is pointing out that for the Pharisees religion had simply become a matter of following and enforcing the rules. Maybe Jesus is saying that by doing that religion turns a blind eye to mercy and kindness and compassion. Weren’t the priests being compassionate by offering the bread to David? Shouldn’t the Pharisees have recognized that the plucking of a few heads of grain was not the same as harvesting a field? Then with the Pharisees already angry, Jesus incited them further by saying that the Son of Man (meaning himself) is the lord of the Sabbath. For the Pharisees this was blasphemy for only God is lord of the Sabbath. Jesus is there to remind them that the Sabbath is for the pleasure of humankind, not another reason to look down their noses at folks. He is “grieved at their hardness of heart.” Our second scene, where Jesus heals a man with a withered hand is another example of choosing compassion and life-giving activity over a strict adherence to the rules on the Sabbath. When it comes to healing on the Sabbath the Pharisees are once again dead set against such activity. Jesus on the other hand is all for it—as God is for any activity accomplished in God’s name that sustains or enhances life. The scene in the synagogue intensifies the conflict over Jesus’ authority, his values, and the urgency of his claims. For the Pharisees who lie in wait, watching, the issue is not whether Jesus has the power to heal the man’s hand, it is whether doing so on the Sabbath demonstrates a willful disregard for the law of God -- a law that was originally believed to give good order to life and to provide conditions for encountering God’s blessings and holiness. Jesus’ response to the Pharisees -- “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” -- indicates that he disagrees with their premise. By orchestrating the man’s healing, he does not disparage or break the law in any way (for nothing Jesus does here can be considered “work” that the Sabbath prohibits). Rather, Mark casts Jesus as honoring the original purpose of the Sabbath commandment. It is as if Jesus is saying that if the chief objective of the law is to save and preserve life, what better day is there than the Sabbath to heal? Isn’t the Sabbath, a day meant to promote God’s commitment to humanity’s well-being, the perfect time to restore a withered hand? With the restoration of his hand, the man in the synagogue may be able to find work that will allow him to provide for a family and improve the quality of life for all. It was more than just fixing something that was wrong, it was a restoration to whole-ness. At this point we aren’t very far into the gospel of Mark but even now the Pharisees and Herodians want to destroy Jesus. To destroy the life of the one who brings life. It is the beginning of Mark’s theme that an institution can become an end in itself, stifling legitimate concerns of those outside that may seem to threaten stability. It illustrates how frequently insidious forces we scarcely notice can transform the best-educated, best-intentioned among us into insensitive leaders, desperately out of touch with what’s real.” Such insensitivity and brokenness move Jesus to grief in the synagogue when he considers the stony, Pharaoh-like hearts that regards anything as more valuable than removing suffering and disadvantage. But Mark also has good news to announce. This story of the in-breaking reign of God will also tell of compassion and transformation. Jesus, like the God who instituted the Sabbath, is committed to preserving life. His ministry will expose the destruction that comes with fear, governmental pretense, and religious hypocrisy, wherever they reside, and finally, he will deliver us from them. These stories of Jesus bringing life and truth on the Sabbath are instructive to us today. How is the Sabbath life-giving for us? How are we paying attention to the life-giving spirit of God in our own lives, and how can we support others in doing the same? When we find the spirit of discouragement hovering within us, how do we return to following Jesus? Sometimes we can reflect on those times and places of life-giving energy. Sometimes others have to hold the Christ light for us when we cannot see the way and sometimes others must share their bread with us, so we may sleep through the night. In turn, we must do the same for others, as Jesus did. I think too, this is a cautionary tale so relevant to today’s political climate and the climate in the church. We all know people who can recite one or two verses from the Bible to back up their ideas of who should and shouldn’t be in the church. And sometimes these same people are the ones who, professing God’s love and life-giving agenda, extend those beliefs to include who should and should not be allowed in the country, who should and should not be stopped on the street and searched by police. Then, on the other hand, we have people who can site Bible verses to prove just the opposite and almost seem to believe with the Beatles that all you need is love. What would you have said about Jesus and the disciples in the wheatfield? Would you have looked at them and noticed their hunger? Could you forgive them for eating heads of grain on the Sabbath? Or would you have been shocked that they broke Sabbath law? If you see hungry people on the street today does your heart go out to them or do you judge them as lazy beggars looking for a handout? If you had known the man with the withered hand all your life and noticed Jesus had healed him would you have rejoiced for him or would you have been angered that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath? Would it give you joy that this man could at last lead a normal life? Would you have recommended him for a job or would you scoff and say, “Well, it doesn’t count because it happened on the Sabbath and look at all the other people Jesus didn’t heal that day?” What does the condition of your heart lead your mouth to say? What does the condition of your heart lead you to do to give life to others? What are your priorities? Lots to think about in the coming week! |
Author
Archives
October 2024
Categories
|