Worship at First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Illinois

Mark 8:27-9:8 Peter’s confession, passion prediction, bearing the cross, Transfiguration.

          This is a great sneak peek into what

is going to happen in Lent. The journey to Jerusalem is really an expanded and extended

version of what happens here. It opens with the crowd of disciples asserting

who Jesus is, with names varying, until it comes to naming Jesus as the

Messiah. This is much like the entrance into Jerusalem, when Jesus is both past prophet

and incoming Son of God. Jesus predicts the cross, the suffering, and the

denial. Jesus then says that some will not die until they see the kingdom of God coming with power.

                    6 days later, just shy of a

week, just the amount of time it takes for God to create everything, some of

the disciples go up on the mountain with Jesus. And there is an encounter high

on the hill/mountain when the identity of Jesus is revealed and cannot be

denied. When things are done on the mountaintop, there is just Jesus, no one

else. At the end of Lent, we close this story with just Jesus, high on a hill

top. The other two who were there with him fade away, and the story on the top

of the hill is just about Jesus.

                    We never get told the story

just once. Before it happens, Jesus tells us it will happen. Before Jesus, God

tells us he will happen in the prophets. We’ve been told, and told, and told. How

is it we recognize what God is doing in the world and in our lives? Can we see

that it happens over and over again? Can we see that God will not rest until we

get it?

Mark 7:1-23 What defiles one comes from within

          There’s a lot going on here, and we

need to be careful not to make this about all the ways that the Jews are

unfaithful. As so often happens, people in the crowd are looking to defame the

followers of Christ, and therefore Christ. They want to know why the disciples

don’t wash their hands before eating. And Jesus wants to know then why they

don’t actually honor the law of Moses, but why they have developed loopholes

and ways around the rules that they are supposed to follow. (Isn’t it nice we

don’t look for loopholes any more?)

                    Jesus then tell them and us

that it’s not about what goes in that defiles, it’s about what comes out. Jesus

argues that what goes in to us doesn’t go into our heart, but into our stomach,

and then out the other end. It is from within that the things that defile come.

There’s a list of things, from obvious to insidious, that defile. How is it we

understand where evil comes from? Does the devil make us do it, or does it come

from inside of us? Is it what we get one our hands that defiles, or what comes

out of our hearts?

Mark 6:1-29 Jesus rejected at Nazareth; sending of the Twelve; death of John the Baptist.

Jesus is the only

one who knows what’s going on in this passage. It’s a long chunk of text, and

not quite chronological, but Jesus is the only one who seems to have a grip on

what’s going on.

                    In the synagogue on the

Sabbath, in his hometown, no one is quite sure what to do with Jesus. Who is

he, how did he turn into this? Why would we take him seriously, we know his

family! Jesus is limited in his own hometown, only able to do some healings. Jesus isn’t recognized, expected, or

welcomed. They aren’t ready for the Messiah in their town.

                    Next, the disciples are sent

out. They’re told to take nothing, and to just go and be about Christ’s

business. They are sent out to have power over spirits, and they do healings,

cast out demons, and anoint many with oil. And it works. They do much of this. Are

they prepared?

                    Which gets us back to Herod,

who hears of it and wonders if the unexpected has happened again and that John

is risen from the dead. He would certainly be unprepared for that, just as he

was unprepared for Herodias to ask for John’s head.

                    What is Jesus doing in our midst that we feel unprepared for? What has he come into town to say that we aren’t ready to hear? What has he sent us out to do that we think we’re dramatically under prepared for? And what is being stirred up out of our past by the actions of God?

Mark 5:21-43                                               Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the flow of blood.

          Again Jesus crosses over to the other

side. Getting out, a crowd is gathered waiting to see Jesus. A leader of the

synagogue comes to see Jesus, with a daughter who is close to death. Jesus goes

with Jairus.

                    And on the way something

happens. The crowd presses in, and in the crowd is a woman who has been

suffering for a long time. She has been afflicted with a bleed for 12 years.

She reaches, out, touches Jesus’s cloak, and is healed. In so doing, she stops

the movement. She interrupts the trip to Jairus’s house. Or Jesus does. He

stops when he feels the power go out, and he wants to know who touched him. Everything

stops.

                    And while they stop,

Jairus’s daughter dies. They come to tell Jairus and Jesus not to even both

coming further, because the little girl is dead. Jesus doesn’t stop, though. He

goes on. This interruption doesn’t stop what God is about in the world. This

interruption is what God is about in the world. How do we handle interruptions?

How does Jesus? What happens in the interruptions?

Mark 5:1-20 Jesus heals the Gerasene demoniac

By the time we

get to this part of the story, we know that things happen when we cross the

river, or the sea, and get to the other side. So, we shouldn’t be surprised to

see something big happen here. They go across the sea, and land in the land of

the Gerasenes. More specifically, they land near a not so good part of the

land, a place of tombs, and a place with a man with an unclean spirit. The man

recognizes Jesus in all of Christ’s power. Jesus casts out the unclean spirits,

into an unclean animal (pigs) and sets the man free.

                    The swineherds run and tell

what they have seen, and then people come to see what has happened. They see

the man, cleansed, and they are afraid. They beg Jesus to get out of town. The

demoniac wants to go with Jesus, but Jesus sends him back to tell what had been

done to him. He does, and people are amazed.

                    Did you catch it? This is

Easter. A man is freed from among the tombs, returned to life, no longer

possessed of an unclean spirit (forgiven and cleansed), people run to tell the

news of what they have seen, and some are afraid. How do we recognize what God

is doing in Jesus Christ in each and every story? How do we see Easter every

day?

Mark 4:1-34 Parables of sower and mustard seed

Parables are something we spend a lot of time on in the church.

Jesus uses parables to teach us things. Often we end up with a superficial

reading, which domesticates the parables, or we go so deep that we lose

the relation of the parable to our lives. Sometimes Jesus explains the

parables, but more often, he does not, and we are left to ourselves to

interpret them.

Today, we’ll consider the setting of the telling of these parables.

These are root parables that we come back to time and time again. These

parables often end up being the base for our understanding of the faith.

Jesus is down by the sea when he tells these parables. He’s actually

pushed out to sea just a little bit in a boat, and is teaching from the boat to

the shore.

The sea isn’t that thing we think about today when we go to the lake

or the beach. It is wild, unknown, unknowable. It floods, it sweeps in and

destroys. It is limitless, stretching to the horizon. As we so often comment

when looking out to sea, it reaches until the sea touches the sky. It is a bit

of a bridge between here and above.

What does it tell us that Jesus choses to be pushed out into the

infinite sea, to teach those sitting on the land, about the kingdom of God?

Where do we find bridges the gap between heaven and earth? Who do we

find bridges that gap?

Mark 2:1-22   Jesus heals a paralytic and eats with tax collectors

With the speed of

the Gospel of Mark, the people learn that Jesus is home in Capernaum. And they

gather, and gather. So many gather that they can’t all fit into the house, and

some enterprising, compassionate, driven people climb up on the roof and make a

way for their friend to be lowered down in front of Jesus. What Jesus says next

inflames the room, or at least the scribes. He forgives the man his sins, and

tells him to walk. They want to know who he is to forgive sins. The crowd is

simply excited and amazed. They had never seen anything like this.

           Jesus walks to the sea, calls Levi to

follow him. (Sometimes Levi becomes Matthew, sometimes James. There is no Levi

listed among the 12.) Levi follows Jesus. And they have dinner at Levi’s house,

which sets the rumor mill flying again. Then there is one last set of questions

about fasting, and about not fasting.

           On one hand, it’s amazing how much

‘trouble’ Jesus gets into this quickly. On the other hand, it’s amazing how

much the world is responding to what Jesus is doing. The Church doesn’t move

this quickly. The Church is afraid to move quickly enough to make waves. What

about us? Are we willing to move quickly enough to have people talking about

us, questioning us? Do we have an answer? Jesus moves quickly and decisively. The

Word is on the move.

Mark 1:21-45          Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit, Peter’s mother-in-law, and a leper.

           In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus gets right

into things. Of course, in Mark’s Gospel everything

happens immediately. There are not wasted words or wasted energy in Mark. In

just 25 verses of today’s reading, Jesus confronts and casts out an unclean

spirit, heals Simon’s mother-in-law, heals the crowd, travels through Galilee

teaching and casting out demons, and then healing this leper. In between, Jesus

hides. He goes off on his own. And he prays.

           Of course, the hiding isn’t the

impressive part of the story. We’re all about the healings, the casting outs,

the teaching. We think that the impressive part of the passage is how much

Jesus gets done. Why can’t we be more like Jesus? Why can’t we be busier? Why

can’t we get as much done as Jesus does?

           Are we sneaking off to pray? Are we

getting down and alone time? Are we caught up in the works, and missing the

foundational preparation? If we want to be like Jesus, then perhaps we need to

step aside, step out of the busy, to get some quiet time, and some quiet time

in prayer with God.

John 1:1-14 – One of Us?

Granger Odum preaches.

Zach Sings part of “What if God were one of Us” as part of the prayer of confession.

Join us in worship as we tell the old story of the birth of Christ in song and Scripture. We gather at Christ’s table, and go out to a candlelight singing of Silent Night.