Church of the Open Door Sermon Archives

David is preaching from John 6:51-58, with the Jewish authorities – and even those who’d followed Jesus – balking at His words, ““Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Jesus’s odd words that invite us to take in this Living Bread, to absorb Him into ourselves and thereby come to life.

Al Schuck takes us deeper into John's story of Jesus in John 6:35, 41-51. What we see in this passage is that Jesus is God, the only one who leads to life - but we get sucked into believing in so many other gods and try to fill our hunger and thirst with so many other things. But Jesus is the true Bread of Life, and it is Jesus who shows us what the Father is really like.

Amanda brings us to the Table with Jesus's declaration that "I am the Bread of Life." These words are so familiar that we can find it hard to actually hear what Jesus is saying. It's easy to be part of those thousands who'd followed Jesus around the lake after He'd fed them all with five pita breads and two anchovies. Like them, we can be so eager for more bread that we can't even really understand Jesus as He speaks of an entirely different reality.

Amanda compares the crowd to a a toddler relentlessly asking for something, while the parent knows better what the child needs. What would it take for us to actually trust that Jesus is the Son of God and the fulfillment of the promises - and live our lives like that is true?

Teaching Pastor: Amanda Svensk, Next Generation Associate Pastor

Anne-Marie Finsaas speaks from John 6:1-11, where a young boy offers his five barley loaves and two small fish, a meager meal that could not possibly satisfy the hunger of the great crowd following Jesus. And that’s the point: it isn’t enough. We aren’t enough, don’t have enough – yet when we hand over our not-enough self and our not-enough resources into Jesus’s hands, it becomes enough. In Anne-Marie’s words, “We’re meant to have our minds blown and realize that we have nothing to do with this but our tiny little deed.”

2 Samuel 7:1-14

Isaiah 58:5-11

Bethany Hoang, from International Justice Mission, joins us to help us see more of what breaks God’s heart in our world, and how we can continue to move toward hope in the face of despair. She’ll give us some insights into the systems of child sex trafficking that isn’t just “overseas somewhere” but is happening in our own back yard, with the US Department of Justice identifying the Twin Cities as one of the nation’s 15 largest centers for child sex trafficking.

David picks up the thread of the gospel story in Mark 6:1-6, where Jesus preached in his hometown synagogue but His own people took offense because they thought they knew everything there was to know about Him: “Where did He gain this wisdom? And what are all these stories we’ve been hearing about the signs and healings He’s performed? Where did He get that kind of power? Isn’t this Jesus, the little boy we used to see in Joseph’s carpenter shop? Didn’t He grow up to be a carpenter just like His father? Isn’t He the son of Mary over there and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, Simon, and their sisters? Who does He think He is?” (Mark 6:2b-3, Voice trans.) As a result, Mark tells us that Jesus wondered at their unbelief; and the invitation the text offers us this week is to wonder at our own sense of expectancy about and openness to the power of God, at work in our ordinary lives.

Mark 5:24b-34

Peggy follows Dave’s message from last week with another very familiar passage from Mark’s gospel – the woman who’s had a 12-year flow of blood, pushes through the crowd jostling around Jesus, touches the fringe of His garment, and is healed. Initially she is unnoticed by Jesus, until He perceives that healing power has gone forth.

There are so many unanswered questions in these verses from Mark 5:24b-34: How old was this woman? Was she married? What had caused her condition? What treatments had the doctors tried, that left her worse off? How did Jesus know healing power had gone forth from Him? How did the woman feel, having to describe to the whole crowd what her health issue had been, now that she’d been healed? Was anybody else in the crowd healed of their particular disease as they crowded in on Him?

This passage leaves our curiosity unsatisfied. But God’s heart for His people is clear, and that’s what Peggy makes space for this Sunday as we come to the Table. That we would encounter this caring, compassionate, restorative God, then be agents of that restorative shalom for others as we do our everyday lives.

David continues in Mark’s gospel with a familiar passage: Jesus is asleep in the boat; a storm blows up; the panicky disciples wake Jesus with “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”; Jesus silences the wind and asks why they’re still so timid; and the disciples become even more afraid, asking, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” Written originally to the beleaguered Christians in Nero’s Rome, this story enfolds all of us as terrifying life-events overtake us; and it makes space for our “Where is God right now?” questions when the chaos overwhelms us.

Mark 4:26-34: Mark was writing to the church in Rome that hadn’t had the impact on the culture they desired. Rather, they were becoming the scapegoat for everything that was going wrong in the current culture, and Mark was reminding them that this life in God IS worth it. A sower goes out to sow some seeds, and things WILL grow, regardless. A tiny mustard seed, so insignificant, becomes a huge bush that provides protection and shelter. The kingdom is alive, fertile, and utterly extravagant! (This is the Bigger Story Al referenced last week, the Story that is strong and vibrant enough to bear the weight of our human and often pain-filled stories.)