Staff Trax

As I noted at the start of my sermon last week, there are going to be several times this fall that we are going to have to directly address some language issues in our stories if we are going to make sense about what is being said, and today is one of those days. To begin our story, Mark tells us that Jesus heads to the region of Tyre and then Decapolis. In other words, Jesus left the Jewish territories…

It is important that we begin today with a little lesson on what is not happening in our text. Jesus is not condemning the faithfulness of the Pharisaic system of Judaism. Unfortunately, for those of us who have been raised in the Christian tradition, most of us have been taught to view the Pharisees and scribes as self-righteous hypocrites and that somehow we are better, and passages like this…

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (6:51).

Let me just start by saying, YUCK! I mean, truth be told, if you were listening to what I just read you most likely had the same reaction as the “Jews” that were listening to Jesus some 2,000 years ago. In six…

As I mentioned last week, we will be reading through Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel over the next several weeks. Now when we ended this story last week, we ended with the story of how the disciples left the “other side” in a boat without Jesus because when they left, Jesus wasn’t with them. If you remember, after Jesus had fed the 5,000, the people were excited and wanted to make Jesus their…

If I can make a suggestion, you might want to make sure you have a little breakfast before you come for the next several weeks, because today is the first of five weeks in a row in which we will read from the Gospel of John about food and specifically about bread and its importance in our lives.

Now before we begin talking about the text itself, I think it is important to get an understanding…

As I have shared before, Amos is truly one of my favorite prophets. I suppose I like him because first, he really wasn’t a prophet in the typical sense. Amos wasn’t born into a religious family. He wasn’t dedicated at birth to the temple and raised in the temple like other prophets. In his own words, Amos says today,“I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser…

About six years ago, Rodney Atkins, a country music artist, recorded a song called "Watching You". The song is a about a dad and his 4-year-old son who wants to be just like him. As the song begins, they are in the car and the little boy is eating his Happy Meal in the back seat, but when his dad has to hit the brakes suddenly, the meal goes flying and the little boy, without thinking,…

Today, we are reminded that God’s grace, love, and healing presence are truly for everyone, and that God’s love never ceases, even if the rest of the world says otherwise. As our story begins, we are told that Jesus and his disciples have returned to the northwestern shores of the Sea of Galilee. Most likely they are back in Capernaum, and as crowds once again begin to gather around Jesus, a…

As we have heard the past couple of weeks, Jesus had been teaching and preaching in his hometown of Capernaum, a small fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Last week we listened to how Jesus had been using parables to teach his followers what the kingdom of God was like, and as I noted then, Jesus was teaching that God’s kingdom was going to be in the “seediest of places.”…

For some of us as we say our daily prayers we often include the Lord’s Prayer, which means as we pray we pray for God’s kingdom to come. For this faith community, every Sunday when we gather, or every time your Council ends a meeting, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, which means we pray for God’s kingdom to come. Today Jesus wants to give us a glimpse of what this Kingdom might be like and for…