New Testament Stories

Today we make a stop at Ephesus in our geographical pilgrimage through certain N.T cities. I've never been to Ephesus myself, and yet, I feel I know it in a sense.... NOT the modern city, of course--- It's a thriving metropolis of some inhabitants--- I DON’T KNOW CONTEMPORARY EPHESUS, but the old city, the New Testament city, the city Paul knew and lived in nearly 3 years...

I don’t usually begin a sermon with a plug for a movie, but if adventure, excitement, noise, and the raw explosive power of nature is your bag, go see Twister, now playing at your local theater. 

Talk about no holds barred...talk about pulling out all the stops...YOU GOT IT, BABY, in this account—the linguistic equivalent of “puttin’ the pedal to the metal.”

Allow me, please, to start with a confession. The passage I have just read is an assignment. It is the lectionary reading for today, the Gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday in Lent. Left to my own devices, I probably would NOT have selected this passage to preach on this morning....in fact, I’m pretty sure I would not have. It came anyway, which is how it often happens. I didn’t choose it, it chose ME...I HOPE for a purpose that will prove to be worthwhile.

The truth is, I think, they were both right. Mary and Martha were both right. They both had a point, and a good one. They both represent something valid, even as they both represent something one-sided. EITHER SISTER WITHOUT THE OTHER LEAVES SOMETHING BASIC UNSAID.

We call the disciples saints now, but they were a long, long way from sainthood that night in the Upper Room. 

Here’s a parable, a story I think we’ve rarely done justice to. Maybe we know it too well, maybe our familiarity with it has blunted the sharp edges of it. It’s almost a tame story now and yet the more you dig into it---it’s true of all the Biblical material---the more you probe, and poke, and nose around, the more treasure you find.

We pick up today, in a sense, right where we left off last week. I hope you were here a week ago, when we celebrated Holy Communion. Amy Peed in an excellent Communion Meditation, used as her text and springboard, the story from the first part of Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John about Jesus taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to the people who were hungry.

Do you know what I think that guy was really looking for, that young man who assaulted Jesus on the street beseeching help? It’s a great story, isn’t it, an unforgettable story, one of the most vivid the Bible tells....We call it the story of the RICH YOUNG RULER..... Remember? He ran, he kneeled, he implored...The Record says he said, “Good Master, what must I do to have eternal life?”

In a sense AMBIGUITY is the appropriate word for today, I think....or maybe AMBIVALENCE, which is very close kin, or PARADOX. There’s a tug, a pull in more than one direction.

I was afraid when I announced that I was restricting myself to just the 1st chapter of Mark as the preaching focus for the month of January that I was perhaps biting off less than I could chew, as it were. That’s a lot of sermons to try to squeeze out of a limited amount of material. I wasn’t sure but that I’d run out of gas before I ran out of month.

Here’s something intriguing---I’d never thought of it before until someone pointed it out to me: SO MANY OF THE STORIES OF THE BIBLE, AND EVENTS OF THE BIBLE ARE ASSOCIATED IN SOME WAY WITH FOOD, with EATING. Had you realized it? It’s almost a thread, in a sense, that runs through Scripture, from beginning to end. Over and over in the Biblical account, the role of FOOD stands out.

It’s a story of contrast, of course, a parable of conflicting responses... two boys, two sons, two brothers... and two divergent paths.

Call it a miracle story if you like. I’d agree with you, 100%. No question that there are elements of the spectacular in it, and even spectacular may not be a strong enough word. You don’t get people walking on water every day. Walking on water is supernatural stuff. It implies another dimension, another realm entirely, something reserved for only the extraordinary. When we use it about human beings, we do so with tongue-in-cheek, as an oblique way of making reference to the

Do you know what I almost wish? Not quite, maybe, but almost, I almost wish people didn’t know the Bible so well. That may seem like a strange thing for a preachers to say, and if you tell the Bishop, I’ll have to deny it, but I really do almost mean it. I almost wish people didn’t know the Bible so well. Most of us have just enough familiarity with it to keep us from hearing what it really says.... It’s as if we’ve been inoculated against catching an unadulterated dose.

I didn’t pick this passage for today. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s the lectionary reading for this Sunday, The Gospel reading for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, which is today.

Have you ever had an experience that absolutely changed your life, turned it around, so that from that time on, everything was different?

How prone we are to forget that Easter is a season, not simply a day. It’s still Eastertide with several weeks to go. We settle down again to the old routine so quickly, too quickly. MAYBE TO some extent it’s inevitable. So much happens on that first, glorious, triumphant resurrection morning that everything afterwar seems almost anticlimactic.

Talk about pulling out all the stops...talk about sforzando writing---sforzando is a musical term I learned from Kathy. It means, being roughly translated, “lettin’ her rip”, no holds barred, fortissimo, with all the power you’ve got.

In a way, it’s like a replay of the Baptism. Haven’t we heard some of this before? Just a few weeks back, in the early part of the Epiphany season, we heard the account of the commissioning of Jesus---with John the Baptist, down by the riverside, when the heavens were opened, and the Word descended on Jesus from above as He came up out of the water.... “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”