Sympathy for Complainers (Sermon preached 8 August 2021)

 “Then the Jews began to complain about Jesus because he said “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:41). It’s amazing, isn’t it, how swiftly the joy of the miracle dissipates. How quickly the abundance is forgotten! All those people. All that gorgeous green grass. All that bread! All disappearing in the rear-view mirror as the crowd has chased Jesus across the sea of Galilee to the other side.

 They want more. And Jesus is wondering, is it true understanding they are after? Or do they just want to know how he did it? He’s been trying to explain what is going on, and what it all really means. And they still aren’t getting it...(read more)

Pennies and Barley Loaves (Sermon preached 25 July 2021)

Most of the time, the story we just heard from John 6 is referred to as “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”. But it is sometimes called "The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes”. Which, in itself, is an interpretive move. Because it shifts our focus from what happened, which is that all these people got fed, to what Jesus actually did to make that happen.

The presenting problem of the story is the problem of not enough – nowhere near enough. The problem is solved when something very small somehow becomes more than enough to meet the need. Remember, twelve baskets of leftovers!

 

Doesn’t it make you wonder what it must that have been like...(read more)

Coming Forward, Coming Clean (Sermon preached 27 June 2021)

Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to be called out of a crowd -- out of the relative safety of a group -- because you’ve been caught at something you would never dream of doing out in the open? And then, in front of all those people have to explain yourself? Honestly, I don’t know how that poor woman that Jesus meets on his way to heal Jairus’s daughter found the courage to be there in the first place.

In the Greek, Mark’s description of her situation is this series of participles piling one on top of another. The literal English translation goes something like "And a woman— having been bleeding for twelve years, and having suffered greatly from many physicians, and having spent all she had, and having benefited not one bit, but rather having gone from bad to worse, having heard about Jesus, having come in the crowd from behind…”

 

It’s like we can feel her, right? We feel her labored breathing... (read more)