https://www.facebook.com/580192415374656/

The Methodists of Bradford, TN, 156 E Main Street, Bradford, TN (2026)

03/17/2018

A stained glass window that portrays St. Patrick

03/17/2018

Homily for the 5th Sunday in Lent
18 March 2018

PEOPLE OF THE CROSS
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51; Hebrews 5:5-10; St. John 12:20-33

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” --G.K. Chesterton

“You will never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have got.”
--Mother Teresa

A cadre of Greeks approached Philip with the request, "Sir, we want to see Jesus.”
Philip recounted the request to Andrew, his brother, and the two went to tell Jesus.
Strangely enough, that's the last we hear of the Greeks. John, who tells this story, never mentions them again and seems to have changed the subject, for on approaching him, Jesus told Philip and Andrew that he must die and that the two must follow in his footsteps. That’s the last we hear about the Greeks which raises the question why John mentioned them at all.
In order to answer that question back up to verse 19 which depicts the Pharisees complaining that they have no way to stop Jesus because the whole world had begun to follow him. You see, the Greeks illustrate what the Pharisees were saying. Even the Gentiles had begun to seek Jesus, to believe in him, to follow him, to give him their allegiance.
Keep in mind that the Jews had been looking for a messiah like the warrior King David who had defeated the Philistines, the Moabites, the Edomites, and other enemies of Israel (2 Samuel 8, 10) expanding Israel's borders and turned little Israel into a great power. The Israelites were looking for a messiah who would do that for them again.
But Jesus presented himself as a very different messiah. He said: "I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” This comment makes two statements that we cannot overlook: it was a pronouncement about the kind of death he would die and that his death would draw all people to himself. The Greeks request to see Jesus gave him a chance to introduce the idea that he would be offering salvation to Gentiles and not just Jews.
That wasn't the first time Jesus let it be known that he planned to expand his work to include the salvation of all people. Earlier, Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." That verse makes the point that God loves the world and not just Israel. It also said that God would give eternal life to whoever believes in the Son. When God gave us his Son, he was opening his arms to embrace all people everywhere.
We need to hear this, because we are Gentiles, and this is a way of letting us know that God loves us and has provided for us to be part of his kingdom. But it's also a way of letting us know that God loves people from all over the world. Many of them look, act, and think in ways with which we are not accustomed. John 3:16 reminds us that we will be sharing God's kingdom with those people. The mention of the Greeks in chapter 12 reminds us of that truth.
Then Jesus had some words for his followers which includes us: "He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life." That's heavy! People came to see Jesus because he was exciting. He healed the sick, caused the lame to walk, the blind to see. What else could he do for those who followed him?
But Jesus splashed cold water in their faces. They expected him to say, "Take up your sword and follow me." Instead, he said, "Take up your cross and follow me.” The fact is Jesus often disappointed his followers who had visions of the glory of ruling others, but Jesus had a vision of serving others even to the point of death.
Are like those disciples? Some of us talk about going to church for what we get out of it in that we want to be comforted and comfortable. Ralph Sockman used to say: "Too many [Christians] are waiting for God to do things for them, rather than with them." I believe Sockman had a point. It is easier to ask God to fix things, including our church, than rolling up our sleeves and getting involved with God in everyday still.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who opposed Hi**er. The N***s arrested him in 1943 and executed him in April, 1945. Before his death, he wrote The Cost of Discipleship in which he said: "When Christ calls (us), He bids (us) to come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Martin Luther's who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time––death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old (person) at His call."
Jesus knew that the cross would draw us, and it does. He died on a cross and his death changed the world forever. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How can such an instrument of death like the cross have that kind of power? How can sacrifice lead to greatness? We know what makes people great, don’t we? Money makes people great; beauty makes people great; power makes people great. But Jesus says, “If you want to be great, take up your cross and follow me!" By such a pronouncement Christ turns our world upside down; wisdom becomes foolishness and foolishness becomes wisdom!
And so Christ calls all people to him, not from the saddle of a war horse, but from a splintered cross. The paradox is that those who have lived by the sword have also died by the sword, but Christ, who died on a cross, lives in our hearts two thousand years after his death. He tells us, "If anyone serves me, let him follow me. Where I am, there will my servant also be. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” And so it is. The most powerful witnesses to the power of Christ are those who have taken up their cross in his service.
The other day I came across a brief biography of Father Domenico Mercante, the parish priest in the mountain village of Giazza, Italy during World War II. German paratroopers came to Giazza, and some of the villagers tried to resist them. The Germans arrested one of the resisters, and started to execute him. Father Mercante pled for the man's life and offered to take his place. The Germans accepted the priest's offer and prepared to shoot him. When the time came, one of the German soldiers in the firing party stepped out of the line. He said, “I can't shoot a priest.” The German commander ordered him to lay down his rifle and to stand beside Father Mercante. Then he ordered his soldiers to shoot them. Can you imagine the power of Father's Mercante's example in the lives of those villagers? The villagers have forgotten thousands of sermons, but they shall never forget Father Mercante. Or consider the power of the disobedient soldier's witness. I suspect every soldier there that day (and many others too)––were affected by his witness.
The Greeks who asked to see Jesus gave St. John an opportunity to show the world what Jesus was really like. He is the Christ of the cross who turns everything upside down. He is the Christ who from the cross saves the world which includes you and me.
We are his church and become his people when we become the people of the cross. Amen.

03/16/2018

WEEKLY MESSAGE
March 16, 2018
Sunday, March 18th is the fifth Sunday in Lent.

Sunday’s hymns are 297, 338, 400, and 424.
The readings are Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51, Hebrews 5:5-10, and St. John 12:20-33.
The liturgist is Joyce Stanfill; the reader, Sue Matheson.
The sermon title is “People of the Cross.”

I ask each of you to pray daily for the church and its members. You may have difficulty finding time but at least hold the church and its members in the thoughts of our heart.

Again, I ask you to pray for me. My main concern is not my physical malady but that I discern God’s will for me as your pastor.

Prayer Concerns. Porter and Peggy Swindell, Murel and Larry Childress, Sue and Clarence Matheson, Renee Arrington, Billy Wade and Shirley Swindell, Jimmy Pate, Mary Evelyn Arnold, Wayne Pruitt, Nita Hill, Louise Pruitt, Shirley Davis, Melinda Adams, Jason Pruitt, Faye Asbell, Jean Kruge, Terry White, Pam McCarthy, David Knox, Ronald Gentry, Tommy Adams, Jane Evans, Linda Vinson, Fredia Miller, Mark Crocker, Philip and Josiah Griffin, Britanny Hall, Junior Taylor, Barbara Lancaster, Isaac Ervin

March Birthdays. 13th, Sandra Exum; 14th, Clarence Matheson; 18th, Ava Griffin; 24th, David Knox; 29th, Phillip Griffin

Grace and peace,
Bob

03/10/2018

Homily for the fourth week in Lent
11 March 2018

A PACKAGE FROM HOME

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107; Ephesians 2:1-10
St. John 3:1-16

“. . . living the transformed life does not mean trying harder. It means
trusting more and staying close to the only One who can make us more
than we are.” – Ruben P. Job

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison is one of the most significant religious books of the twentieth century. Bonhoeffer, a brilliant young pastor and teacher, opposed many of the policies Adolf Hi**er instituted in the 1930’s. Because of his opposition he was stripped of public responsibilities including his university post. Sensing no alternative to N***sm except active resistance, he aligned himself first with the Confessing Church (that part of the German Church that opposed the policies of the Third Reich) and then as a matter of conscience with the resistance movement. As a consequence of the latter he was arrested on April 05, 1943 and after a prison con-finement of two years was hanged just before the Allies liberated Germany in 1945. He is an authentic twentieth-century Christian martyr.
Some of his correspondence during the prison years survived and was published shortly after the war. Few documents of this sort have been read more carefully or exerted a wider influence than Letters and Papers from Prison which has become one of the truly seminal religious works of our time. About ten weeks after his arrest and while he still had hope for an early release Bonhoeffer ended a letter to his parents with these words:
It is Whitmonday, and I was just sitting down to a dinner of turnips
and potatoes when a parcel you sent me by Ruth arrived. Such
things give me greater joy than I can say. Although I am utterly con-
vinced that nothing can break the bonds between us, I seem to need
some outward token or sign to reassure me. In this way, material
things become the vehicles of spiritual realities. I suppose it is rather
like the need felt in all religious sacraments.

As I thought through these sentences, I was struck by how profoundly human his need for assurance was. He admitted that at the intellectual level he was utterly convinced that nothing could break the bonds between him and his parents. However, at the feeling level he was hungry to have those bonds reaffirmed, to hear one more time how he stood with the people who were important to him.
Assurance is a basic human need. We need to be reassured about our okayness, how our significant others feel about us, our place in God’s world, how it is with our existence here-and-now. Sometimes the need for assurance grows out of uneasiness about our world: Is it friendly or hostile? Am I welcome here? Do I really belong? It is good that I am here?
I read Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus in such light. He was a man searching for something and needed reassurance that he was looking in the right place. If I were writing a biography of Nicodemus, I would have very few facts with which to work. He is just one of those persons in the Bible whom we encounter briefly and are left wonder-ing about the details of his life. Saint John introduces him noting that he was a Pharisee, a leader of the Jews, and came to Jesus by night. None of these statements constitutes outright criticism, but each has an unfavorable connotation. For example, the Gospels often depict the Pharisees in such a way that we surmise that they were hypocrites who practiced a superficial religion and were blind to God’s work in St. John the Baptist and Jesus and petty in their legalisms and opposition to Jesus and his followers. But this assumption is only partially true, for Jesus counted a number of Pharisees among his adherents.
Moreover, as a Pharisee Nicodemus stuck his neck out for Jesus. In one instance he counseled the Sanhedrin to deal prudently with Jesus. The Council wanted to condemn Jesus out-of-hand, but he said, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does” (John 7:51)? In the final encounter he supplied some of the expensive burial spices for Jesus’ body following the crucification.
Moreover, he came to Jesus by night. In the larger context of the Gospel of John darkness suggests confusion, uncertainly, the refuge of evil, the enemy of light. At best it suggests confusion and bewilderment. I suspect, however, he doesn’t want to commit himself irrecoverably. If he comes out into the open, he will lose influence in the circle in which he moves and will forfeit the power to help the movement as a friend in high places. So he comes to Jesus in the nighttime. To use the language of our day, Nicodemus was a cautious man who “looks before he leaps.”
Nicodemus begins his conversation with Jesus diplomatically, “We know great Teacher that you come from God. No one could do the mighty works you are doing unless God is with him.” Jesus’ reaction seems abrupt, even harsh. He wants to know how Nicodemus arrived at this conclusion. Who told him? Had he been “begotten from above”? Unless he has, Nicodemus cannot possibly recognize the signs of the Kingdom. Nicodemus rubbed his chin in the manner of someone deeply puzzled because his reply indicates that he did not understand Jesus. “How,” he queries, “can someone as old as I be born again?”
The Greek word translated “born again” (anothen) has two different but related meanings: “again” in the sense of a second time and “from above” which is how Jesus used it. Nicodemus took the word in its literal sense of a second time. Jesus was talking about things of the Spirit which the eye cannot see. Nicodemus interpreted Jesus’ remarks as though he could use his senses to lay hold of the Spirit. Tied to a world he approached though his senses, this great old man could not understand the things of the world of the Spirit. God is Spirit, other-worldly, who moves like the wind blowing in from the desert. You can feel the movement of the wind, but you cannot determine its origin. Neither can you command it to blow in this or that direction. Jesus says the same obtains for God. Since God moves as God wishes, one must be touched by God to sense the movement and presence of God. Perhaps Jesus’ comparison of Spirit to wind and wind to Spirit will make more sense if you understand that the Greek uses the same word for both (pneuma).
Aren’t we all from time-to-time like Nicodemus? A gentle, searching person, he wants to present himself to God in the best possible light. “See here,” he says to God,
“I’m really an okay person who wants and deserves your love.” We’ve been taught to make a good impression the first time round, and this is precisely what Nicodemus tried to do in his first meeting with Jesus. But he failed to find God because he was looking in the wrong places.
I believe I understand Nicodemus. I too have groped in his kind of darkness. Sometimes my efforts to find God have been as vain as trying to see the wind. Some-times my efforts to storm heaven and take hold of God have been about as foolish
as trying to capture a breeze in a butterfly net. And I did this—and sometimes still do it—because I want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves me. Yes, I believe I understand Nicodemus. Jesus goes on to say—and I paraphrase:
Nicodemus, we talk about what we know, and we witness to what we have
seen. You can’t talk about the things of the Spirit because you do not know
them. Since you can’t go to God and lay hands on him, God has come to
you. Look at me and believe.

“Look at me and believe,” says Jesus. Jesus offers himself as the key that unlocks the door. We cannot mount a siege and storm the stronghold of God. We cannot capture God any more than we can capture the wind with a plastic bag! But God has done what we cannot do when God became flesh and lived among us. God is in Jesus, and this is the power behind John 3:16: God loved, sent, and gave so we can under-stand what God really is like! The fundamental truth about God, says Jesus, is that God is love.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee and therefore the inheritor of a magnificent tradition. Moreover, he had tested his tradition in the experience of life and found it valuable and conformed to it as best he could. But he still had questions about God’s attitude toward him and his place in the economy of God. Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud’s famous biographer, said somewhere in his writings that the fundamental question that drives us is how does God feels about us. Is God kindly disposed toward us, or is God against us? We are from the same source as Nicodemus. If I asked you, “How does God feel about you?” wouldn’t you automatically answer, “God loves me?” But would you also be listening to a very small voice whispering in the background of your mind, “Are you really sure about that? Look at all the things you have done and the mess you have made of your life? Are you certain God loves you?”
A general manager of a major league baseball team may have put into words the general uncertainty about God’s disposition toward creation when he said: “I can’t perceive God being on the mound in the ninth inning and saying a loss is the way it should be. I perceive him as being an individual who would beat you any way he can as long as it’s within the rules.” Isn’t this idea about God a common one? Life is like a baseball game. The score is one to zip in bottom of the ninth, a runner is on first, and you are at bat. If you can get a hit, you might tie the game; and if the hit is good enough, you just might score the winning run. You think that at last you finally have an opportunity to amount to something. But God in on the mound and you simply can’t hit his blazing fast ball!
Jesus stands in relation to us in much the same way Bonhoeffer looked upon the package from his parents. That package, however modest in appearance and content, represented a bond that at the feeling level needed reassuring. Jesus is God’s eternal pledge to us that we were created to have a place in the universe, that we are loveable, and that we are loved. Jesus came, as he said, not to condemn, but save. Amen.

03/09/2018

The Concerns of the Church

March 11th, Fourth Sunday in Lent
10:00, Sunday School for all ages
11:00, Sunday morning worship
Nina Cash, liturgist; Valerie Veasey, reader

March 18th: Fifth Sunday in Lent
10:00, Sunday School
11:00 Sunday morning worship
Joyce Stanfill, liturgist; Sue Matheson, reader

March 20th: First day of spring!

March 25th: Palm Sunday
10:00, Sunday School for all ages
11:00, Morning Worship
Tamara Proudfit, liturgist; Nina Cash, reader

April 1st: Easter Sunday

Prayer Concerns. Porter and Peggy Swindell, Murel and Larry Childress, Sue and Clarence Matheson, Renee Arrington, Billy Wade and Shirley Swindell, Jimmy Pate, Mary Evelyn Arnold, Wayne Pruitt, Nita Hill, Louise Pruitt, Shirley Davis, Melinda Adams, Jason Pruitt, Faye Asbell, Jean Kruge, Terry White, Pam McCarthy, David Knox, Ronald Gentry, Tommy Adams, Jane Evans, Linda Vinson, Fredia Miller, Mark Crocker, Philip and Josiah Griffin, Britanny Hall, Junior Taylor, Barbara Lancaster, Isaac Ervin

March Birthdays. 13th, Sandra Exum; 14th, Clarence Matheson; 18th, Ava Griffin; 24th, David Knox; 29th, Phillip Griffin

03/03/2018

Homily for the third Sunday in Lent
03 March 2018

THE GOSPEL: GOOD NEWS OR BAD?
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19 (UMH 750); 1 Corinthians 1:18-25;
St. John 2:13-22

"For when you are looking intently [an inordinate or excessive desire] at something, the serpent slips into your heart and coaxes you. He leads on
your reason with flattery; he awakes your fear with lies. 'You will not die,
'he says (Gen. 3:4). He increases your interest while he stirs up your greed.
He sharpens your curiosity [The Latin behind the word "curiosity" implies
an inordinate or excessive thing.] while he prompts your desire. He offers
what is forbidden and takes away what is given. He holds out an apple and snatches away paradise." -- St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Humility and Pride

Many years ago a young, inexperienced minister moved into one of those rural communities that used to be common in the South, a self-contained, well-defined center of life for the surrounding country side. The general store stood at its center--a supermarket, hardware outlet, restaurant, and community gathering place whose pro-prietor was enterprising, hard-working, well-respected, and a champion checker play who studied and played the game so well that that no local gave him competition. Since he lived in an age that knew nothing of computers and even less about the internet, he engaged other checker players by mail.
The proprietor also stood out in the community because he was one of the few who didn't go to church. He was in fact the "local atheist," which made him fair game for any minister who wanted to make a name for himself. The new minister predictably strolled into the store and said, "Sir, I've got good news for you. Jesus died so that you can have everlasting life."The store-keeper peered over the top of his spectacles, and said, "Son, I've lived a long time, and life has been one long unending misery. I want it to end, and the worst news you could have for me is that it'll go on forever." He went his way shaking his head in disgust while the dumb-struck preacher went the other way.
You remember a type of joke that uses a good news--bad news format? Some-body says, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" The punch line consists of not being able to have the one without the other. The Gospel is like that; it comes wrapped in a good news--bad news package. Yes, it is good news, and I don't doubt it, but you've often got to hear a bit of bad news before you hear the good. This is the nature of the Gospel, that you can't have the one without the other.
I recall, for example, Jesus' Nazareth homecoming--a local lad made good who came home sporting a reputation for doing good stuff. He entered the local house of worship and sat till the time set aside for anyone (especially traveling dignitaries) wanting to make a few comments. The worship leader invited Jesus to offer his insights on the lessons appointed for the day. He and the community were understandably curious about this home-grown fellow who had carved out such a hearty reputation and gained a respectable following. Jesus called for the scroll of the prophecy of Isaiah and found the passage we know as Isaiah 61, read the first few verses, and used them to identify himself as The Expected One whom God had sent not only to the Chosen People but also to the gentiles! His revelation so infuriated the congregation that they ran him out of town. Some were so angry that they would have killed him if they had gotten the opportunity. The good news was, "The Messiah for whom you have been waiting is here;” the bad news was "I, Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary am he, and I've come for all people everywhere." The Nazareth town folks couldn't have the good news without embracing the bad.
The fellow known as "the rich young ruler” came upon the same good news--bad news situation. He had a question that so captivated him that he couldn't restrain his anxiousness to find an answer, "Tell me, sir, what I must do to have eternal life." "What must I do," he queried, "to get to the good news?" Jesus noted the eagerness with which he proposed the question and gave the traditional answer, namely to be faithful to the light which Moses revealed, “Have you kept the commandments?" He said, "Yes. I've kept them since I was a child." Jesus said, "Son, you lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give the proceeds to the poor. Then you may follow me." The Bible says he walked away, "for he had great possessions." He loved what he had more than he wanted that for which he had asked; he was more in love with the idea of discipleship than he was with discipleship itself." This youthful seeker rejected the good news because he wouldn't hear the bad news.
The Gospel is bad news before it is good news, and there is no escaping it. It is the news, to use an old, honored word which has fallen into disuse, that we are sinners, that as St. Paul says "we are evil in the imagination of our hearts." The Gospel is incredibly good news, for it affirms that we are loved, cherished, and forgiven by the very God who made us. But it is also the news that we have rebelled against our Creator and fouled up our lives and his good world.
To put this another way, the bad news involves what Jesus called repentance, "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." Repentance (Greek, "to change one's mind") means that you see at least enough of the truth about yourself that you are moved to do something about what you see. That's a bit abstract; let me therefore give you a situation around which you can wrap your mind. The bad news is you've come down with a serious illness while the good news is your condition is treatable, but to get help you must first face the fact that you are sick.
About a year before he died, my father developed speech difficulty with accompanying chest pain. He knew he was sick but refused to see the family physician because he thought he had tuberculosis. He had watched his mother and father, my grandparents, die of that terrible disease and felt he couldn't stand up under the weight of a doctor telling him he had it. He reached to the point where he was too weak to work and hardly strong enough to walk. We loaded him into the car and hauled him to the doctor who sent him to a Memphis hospital. Several days later the attending physician brought the news that he had a cancer so advanced that nothing could be done. He died six months later. If he had admitted his condition and gotten medical help, he might have lived several more years, but he put off going to his physician because he was afraid of bad news. His procrastination angered me; I lost my father because he wouldn't face the truth that he was sick. He died in 1968. I've added years to my life since then and managed to pick up a little wisdom along the way. I got over the anger a long time ago when I learned to appreciate "the shoes" in which he walked. Nobody wants to hear the bad news.
Repentance means that you see at least enough of your condition to know that you need help. When I shave in the morning, I want to like the face that stares back at me. I want to say, "Now there's a fine fellow, a likeable chap, as good as they come. Nothing there to wound a conscience, to gnaw at his insides like termites destroying a building." But I know better; I know what the face that looks back at me in the mirror knows: I know the bad news behind the face. I know a little about the human ability to deceive itself.
The Gospel is a stumbling block to some as well as foolishness to others, as St. Paul says; it says stuff we don't want to hear. See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil. Protect yourself at all costs. God help us to see ourselves as we really are, that we are in serious need of that which God supplies. This is the bad news. After you have heard the bad news, hear the good. For those who hear, the Gospel is the power of God; it is life, eternal life, everlasting life, abundant life, which is able to redo us.
The Gospel, good news or bad? For those who hear it's the best news they've ever heard. Amen.

02/24/2018

Homily for the second Sunday in Lent
25 February 2018

JOURNEY’S END?

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22 (UMH 752); Romans 4:13-25;
St. Mark 8:31-38

“We dream of a world which is wax under the moulding of our dreams and
our ambitions or of our aspirations; we meet a world which faces us with
trials we have not the character to surmount, and with seductions we have
not the virtue to resist.” -- Austin Farrer

Our Lenten experience began this year with an account of Jesus’ baptism followed by
an account of his temptation experience in the wilderness. His baptism was a public declaration that he was the long-awaited Messiah, and from that moment on he declared that he would leave the carpenter’s shop that had been home for decades and take up the work for which he came. The temptations he experienced in the wilderness answered the question how he would live out his life as Messiah, the Christ.
His journey mirrors our journey in that it begins with baptism, that singular act by which God claims us as God’s own. Said differently, our journey began when through the act of baptism God announced, “You are my child, and through the water of baptism I claim you as my own.” If baptism is where our Christian journey began, the next step in our trek calls for believing that we can make the journey which we have set out and arrive at the destination God intends when God claimed us.
You have heard me say on several occasions that getting to the destination is as important as the destination. This is to say the trip itself, what happens between the time you leave home and arrive at your destination, is at least as important (if not more important) than getting to your destination. As I was researching material for this homily, I came across an entry in one of the journals that recounted a trip I took with Mark and David from Medina to Washington, D. C. David was seven years old; Mark was sixteen. Before we left the house, I told David to be sure to use the bathroom before he got into the vehicle. He said he had. We hadn’t gotten far when he said, “Dad, I have to use the bathroom.” We stopped, and he exited the vehicle to avail himself of the facilities, came back to the vehicle and said, “I guess it was a false alarm.” (He had a vocabulary those days larger than he was.) If he or Mark weren’t in need of rest facilities, they were hungry, or David was touching Mark who repeated, “Dad, will you please make David stay on his side of the seat?” The trip to Washington took two days; the return trip took two days. I swore off trips with them until they grew into some semblance of adults!
I admire a patriarch like Abraham who set out on a journey with as much gusto as he could muster and seems to have enjoyed every step of the trip. It’s almost like the journey was all he had because he spent his life looking for, as the book of Hebrews has it, “a city without foundation whose builder and maker was God.” The journey itself seems to have been the highlight of his life.
Today’s Gospel lesson recounts an incident in Jesus’ life that took place at a particularly crucial time in his journey. Jesus’ question and Peter’s answer constitute one of those hinge moments that often occur in anyone’s life. Jesus asked his followers, “Who do people say that I am?” “Well, some say this and others say that,” they answered. Jesus responded, “What about you? Who do you say I am?” Peter spoke up, “You are Messiah.” Jesus took the dialogue further when he said his journey would end in suffering and death and added a few words about rising from the dead, and he enjoined his followers to believe what he had just said.
Look at this episode from the perspective of those who followed Jesus. He had power over nature to the extent that he could muzzle wind and sea. On many occasions he exercised his ability to banish devils just by telling them to depart. He had the ability to take a tin of sardines and a bundle of crackers and feed multitudes. Yet he tells his followers that he will suffer gross indignities and be put to death at the hands of ordinary mortals.
Peter seems to have spoken for the group when he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him for his seemingly senseless remark. By the way, the Greek word for “rebuke” (epitimao) is the same word used in St. Mark to refer to silencing demons. It appears that Peter fell into the same trap as Jesus’ family who began to think that he was insane and needed to be exorcised. Besides, anyone growing up in polite society would be horrified to experience a disciple talking to a teacher as Peter did! There is more. It was as if Peter assumed the role of Devil Jesus faced in the wilderness. Jesus said no to Peter as he did to the Devil. You see, neither Peter nor the other disciples understood at this point that Jesus’ death lay at the heart of God’s plan of salvation.
Jesus was on the journey that would end in his death. To at least a mild degree, Peter and his companions played a role similar to Mark and David’s behavior on the Washington trip with a significant difference. Unlike the effect my sons’ behavior had on me, Jesus took his followers’ behavior in stride and began the slow process of teaching them the meaning of the trip they were taking as well as its destination. He began by pointing out that whoever tries to save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for his sake and the gospel’s will save it. He said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole work and forfeit his life? For what can a man given in return for his life” (St. Mark 8:36-37, RSV)?
What does this episode in Jesus’ life have to do with you and me? We are on a journey. We don’t know how it shall end, but we know that we must finish what we began at baptism. There will be obstacles, pivotal points, along the way with which we must reckon. I remember C. S. Lewis’ account of his overwhelming feelings following his wife’s death. He said when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, you find a door slammed in your face and the sound of bolting coming from the other side, and after that you hear only the sound of silence. He wrote, “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful thinks about Him. The conclusion I dread is not, ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer’”(A Grief Observed, p. 297). Of course Lewis’ journey did not end with his wife’s death, but it could have.
We began our journey when we were baptized, and we are still on it. Take heart, good Christian people because this is a journey on which the good Lord Jesus accompanies us. He walks behind us to protect us, underneath us to support us, and beside us as companion and friend. Amen.

The Methodists of Bradford, TN

03/17/2018

03/17/2018

03/16/2018

03/10/2018

03/09/2018

03/03/2018

02/24/2018

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Place Of Worship

Shortcuts

Share

Category