I want to remind everyone this morning that of the four Gospels that we have in the New Testament, two of those Gospels don’t include any of the stories that we tell during Christmas and Epiphany.
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Who are these people? The Greek text says they are magi, from the East. Matthew tells us that the first people who recognize Jesus as the King were not Jews or nearby neighbors. No, these visitors were from far, far away—complete strangers. Matthew implies, “They are so not us!” And yet, they understood.
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In March of 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic, I read an amazing book, John Barry’s, “The Great Influenza.” In the book, Barry traces the history of the flu virus from 1918-1920 which cut across the globe, in which as many as 100 million people may have died. He walks us through the history of medical science and the handful of doctors and researchers who were coming to understand viruses and inoculations—just barely in time.
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Here’s what I’d like you to consider this morning: God loves a good surprise.
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Let’s go on a careful walk through our text this morning…I think you’ll be surprised at just how many layers of meaning there are to explore.
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If you search carefully enough, you can find almost anything on the internet. Every now and then, what you find is amazing.
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Last week, we heard Jesus’ summary of the law: love God and love your neighbors. The point isn’t to be a perfect person. The point is to be a loving person. If we choose to live faithfully then we will live differently. We don’t get to be like everyone else.
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Here’s an interesting question: did Jesus think he was starting a new religion or did he think he was reforming Judaism?
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So, is Christianity about going to heaven when this life is done or is Christianity about how to live in this lifetime?
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So, this is the third week in which we are going backwards in the Gospel of Mark.
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This morning, I would like to offer a pretty close reading of our text. What happens when you look at a text and then look at it again? How does the text speak differently with each new pass? This is a big part of my little world, re-reading scripture to see what I missed before. Maybe there’s something you missed, too?
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Twenty-six years ago, when I started as the pastor of the Union Church, pretty much every trustees meeting was marked by abject fear. “What if the boiler breaks?” “What if the organ falls apart?” “What if the “summer slump” in giving doesn’t stop?” The fears were not unreasonable. However, they also could be disabling. We lived in crisis management mode for years.
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