Monday, September 20, 2010

Worried About Bread or Watching For Leaven

After the sermon someone commented that they thought it was good that I had left the interpretation of leaven open so that each person could discover what what happening within their own heart.  Indeed, the success of any sermon is not what happens on Sunday, necessarily, but what happens in the days that follow.  I love it when people tell me, "I haven't been able to stop thinking about . . . . that was mentioned (or read) in the sermon."  When preparing a sermon I wrestle with a text and it's meaning which often causes me to wrestle with my own heart and soul as well.  Sundays it sometimes feels like I hand off my discoveries to the church so that they can let it roll around in their hearts for awhile.

The text I preached this past Sunday (Mark 8:1-21) is actually the end of the first section of the book.  Mark is bringing a conclusion to his teaching on the identity of Jesus and the failure of the Twelve to really understand. This story is built on the previous stories, especially the preceding ones where Jesus challenges the disciples to learn the difference between internals and externals; what truly makes a person clean or unclean.  The list he gave on that occasion would so well for someone searching their heart for leaven to clean out:
"For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly." (Mark 7:21-22)
When Jesus warned against the leaven of the Pharisees and that of Herod he at least had these in mind.  It would do us all well to pay particularly close attention to these things and clean them out of our hearts before they take root and spread their venomous evil.  After all, bread is no problem for Jesus - he can make as much as is needed.  Leaven, on the other hand, causes him all kinds of problems.  Let's prove the genuineness of our faith but keeping the leaven out of lives.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Jesus Is Doing Something New

I love Isaiah's pictures of the kingdom.  He gave us such wonderful word pictures which so graphically illustrated what God was going to do.  The one Mark seemed to be alluding to in this morning's sermon text was from Isaiah 35:5-6:
"Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.  Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert."
Why couldn't the Twelve understand what God was doing through Jesus?  Why did they continue to miss the point?  Because they kept trying to squeeze God's kingdom into their own preconceived ideas. As Jesus will say later in the Gospel of Mark, they have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear. 

I wonder if my eyes are truly open to see what God is doing.  Do you ever wonder about that? What is he wanting to show me that I keep refusing to look at?  Two things that keep me from looking are fear and pride.  I don't know where Jesus might take me so I am afraid.  I don't know what areas he might require me to change through repentance and so I am prideful.  These same two things keep churches from seeing the new thing God is doing among us.  We are afraid because who knows what he might call us to lose. (One man I heard of was told to sell everything he had and give to the poor!)  We are prideful so we refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that we might be wrong about something.

Which brings me back to the wonderful word pictures of Isaiah.  God wants to do something new in our generation.  The only question that remains is: Will we open our eyes and see what he is doing?