Genesis 9:8-17; Ephesians 3:14-21; Mark 6:45-56

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

How much a phrase can change its meaning simply by the inflection has always amazed me. Whatever word you emphasize can alter the entire meaning. Take the phrase, “You shouldn’t be here.” Maybe you shouldn’t be here but someone else should. Maybe you shouldn’t be here because it’s a bad idea to be here or it was downright impossible. Maybe you shouldn’t be here, but rather you’re meant to be somewhere else.

This phrase almost perfectly describes the disciples’ reaction in our Gospel reading this week. Jesus had just fed the five thousand by miraculously multiplying bread and fish. Immediately after, Jesus sends the disciples away on a boat while he stays behind to dismiss the crowds. We don’t know, but it seems likely that the plan was for them to regroup across the lake, that Jesus would catch another boat or find some way to join them there. But that’s not how it goes.

Imagine the disciples in a boat, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of the night (roughly 3am). They have been rowing hard because the wind was against them, so they haven’t made much progress. As most of them are fast asleep in the boat, one or two would be awake to keep watch as they come to see someone walking on the water in the middle of the sea (Mark 6:48). “When they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out for they all saw him and were terrified,” Mark 6:49-50. You shouldn’t be here!

It's not hard to see why the disciples were terrified. We would be too. Jesus shouldn’t have been there. That is, it was impossible. No one could even imagine they would see someone walking IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEA! But the disciples also thought, Jesus should be back on land. You shouldn’t be here. They thought Jesus was far away, and thus were terrified at who this “phantom” might be. This is why the thought of seeing a ghost has always terrified us too. We see people who shouldn’t possibly be here.

“You shouldn’t be here” is also what Jesus says to us. When the disciples were terrified, Jesus speaks to them, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid,” Mark 6:50. Jesus is telling them that even though he shouldn’t be here, he’s here for them. He does the impossible for them! So much is bound up in these few words of Jesus, for he’s also acknowledging the disciples’ difficulty against the wind. You shouldn’t be here; you should have already made it across! But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He comes to us and says, “You shouldn’t be here.” Here in sin, here among the evil and wicked, here under Satan’s reign. Jesus does the impossible to be present with us. So, Jesus shouldn’t be able to be with us as God, yet he is. He comes to die on the cross, doing the impossible by saving us! Take heart then! Jesus is here with us, doing the impossible, coming where he shouldn’t be so that we may go where we couldn’t go… to heaven and eternal paradise!

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

Almighty and most merciful God, the protector of all who trust in You, strengthen our faith and give us courage to believe that in Your love You will rescue us from all adversities; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-44

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

After a long day of work, the last thing anyone wants to do is to be bombarded with a list of chores. Work can be exhausting, so we just want to come home and put our feet up. However, we all know that isn’t always possible. Taking care of a family requires us to pour every last ounce of effort into meeting the needs of those we love. So, even after working all day, we clean, cook, and serve our spouse and children. No matter how exhausted we are, we tell ourselves it needs to be done. 

So it was for the disciples in our Gospel reading. They return to Jesus after being sent out to preach and to heal the people. Jesus notices how exhausted they are, so they go to rest. However, the crowds follow them. The crowd even beats them to their destination. In their exhausted stupor, they beg Jesus to send the crowd away. Send them to get their own food. But Jesus doesn’t. Rather, he tells the disciples to feed the crowd. So they tell Jesus, two hundred denarii (days’ wages) couldn’t buy enough bread to feed the crowd much more than crumbs. Even after all the miraculous things they did, the disciples are probably feeling insufficient for this task. How could they ever do what Jesus is asking them to do? 

But notice what Jesus does with the disciples. He doesn’t ask them to go out and buy the food. He’s not asking them to prepare a gourmet meal. He asks them, what do you have? “How many loaves do you have?” And they tell him, “Five, and two fish.” For this is where Jesus in essence says, “I can use that.” Jesus’ care for this crowd overshadows the disciple’s insufficiency. For so we’re told, “[Jesus] had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus shows in this miraculous meal that he is the Good Shepherd. For Mark also records for us, “Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass,” (Mark 6:39). For so we remember from the twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” With just five loaves and two fish, Jesus satisfies the hunger of five thousand men, plus women and children. Jesus uses what little the disciples had to satisfy many.

For so Jesus looks at you with compassion. We’d be foolish to think his compassion stops at the spiritual. No, he cares very deeply about our physical well being also. For you see, this is why Jesus came down from heaven. He came to heal many who were sick; he fed the hungry; he even raised people from the dead. Yes, in our Lord’s compassion, he goes to the cross to wash away all of our sins. But so too, does he use common elements to satisfy our hungry souls. Just as he did for the five thousand, Jesus took bread; he blessed it and he gave, saying, “Take, eat, this is my body;” “Take, drink, this is my blood… given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” By his death and resurrection, Jesus invites us to his table to eat and be satisfied in both body and soul! 

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, though we do not deserve Your goodness, still You provide for all our needs of body and soul. Grant us Your Holy Spirit that we may acknowledge Your gifts, give thanks for all Your benefits, and serve You in willing obedience; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

If you’ve ever played a game of hide and seek, you know that you can’t hide forever. Even if you found the best hiding place where no one would ever think to look, you eventually will need to leave it behind. The moment you step out from hiding, you’re afraid that someone might find you.

It’s no different with our baggage or our “dead bodies in the closet”. It’s our sin and evil deeds that we wish to keep hidden so that no one may find them. Indeed, like playing a game of hide and seek, we look for the best hiding place. But nothing stays hidden forever.

This is the issue that Herod has in our Gospel reading today. He hears about Jesus going around teaching, preaching, and performing miracles that he assumes Jesus is John raised from the dead (Mark 6:16). For so we read a flashback of the very circumstances that brought about John’s death. Herod had thrown a birthday party and invited all of the nobles. John had been speaking to him about the sinfulness of his current marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife. Herod’s niece, the daughter of Herodias, “performed” for those in attendance so Herod was pleased. Thus, Herod offers her a gift, up to even half his kingdom! After consulting with her mother, the daughter asks for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

John’s death is a reminder for us, as Christians, that persecution always follows the preaching of God’s word. However, there’s also this sentiment from Herod that he was sorrowful over John’s death. So, we wonder, why? Just earlier, Mark records this: “When [Herod] heard [John], he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly,” Mark 6:20. John was constantly calling out Herod’s unlawful marriage to Herodias. John was calling Herod to repent for all the evil he had done. Yet, John wasn’t just preaching about repentance, he was preaching about Jesus!

Indeed, God’s word is perplexing to us, like it was to Herod. We hear all over that we’re poor, miserable sinners who deserve nothing but death and condemnation. However, God’s word also says that God will give us peace and life and eternity! For the sins that we try to hide will eventually come to light. They will be laid out before God and his almighty throne. For instead of being afraid of them being exposed, John shows us the need to confess them, to lay them on Jesus who shall take them all to the cross. Herodias thought that by killing John, they would be rid of their sin. It was actually the opposite. John was showing that the only way to rid sin from their life was to lay it on Jesus who shall cleanse them by his blood shed on the cross. No longer should we fear our sins being brought to light, for they have been obliterated in the very light and life of Christ!

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

O Lord, You granted Your prophets strength to resist the temptations of the devil and courage to proclaim repentance. Give us pure hearts and minds to follow Your Son faithfully even into suffering and death; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Mark 6:1-13

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

It’s often said that familiarity breeds contempt. We start to take for granted those things that we’re familiar with, be it a best friend whom we see every day, our house that we live in, our job that we work week after week and so on. When things become overly familiar, we begin to have contempt for them and their imperfections. Because some things are super familiar to us, we begin to look only at the bad parts to see how they could be better.

The corollary to this might just be “the grass is greener on the other side.” We will often sit and daydream about that ideal thing, something without all the flaws and imperfections we perceive from the familiar. We will build up the ideal in our mind as we grow in contempt for what we already have. “I want a new house because this one is too small.” “I need a new car because I don’t like the color.” Etc. etc. 

This is the issue in our Gospel lesson as Jesus goes to visit his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus grew up among these people. Jesus’ own family lives here, those who perhaps know him the best. Jesus lived among them for nearly three decades before he began his public ministry. You might think they would be his biggest fans, but it’s the opposite. Because he’s so well known, they have contempt for him. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him,” Mark 6:3. Their familiarity with Jesus has bred contempt for him so that Jesus marvels at their unbelief (Mark 6:6). 

I’ve heard this far too often today when it comes to families with unbelieving members. As Christians, we want them to believe and listen to us as we share the good news, as we share Christ with them, but it’s shrugged off because it’s familiar. We marvel at the unbelief that surrounds us in our families, with our friends, and especially in our world. It’s difficult to share the faith with those you know so well because it’s familiar. For so we lament and marvel at the rejection we see when sharing our faith with those we know. 

This isn’t to say though that we should just give up and leave it for someone else. No matter how difficult it is to share our faith with family and friends, we know it’s important. Even Jesus dealt with rejection, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we face it too. But this is what we can learn from Jesus. Don’t give up. For there’s only one remedy for unbelief… and it’s Jesus. Jesus didn’t give up on us when we rejected him, when we sinned against him, when we shrugged him off and said, “Don’t bother me”. Jesus kept teaching, kept healing, kept giving us more of himself. He gave us everything by going to the cross to die for us and our unbelief. For it is God’s goodness and mercy that pursue us to win us over, to bring us out of unbelief and into faith. So too shall it be for those we love. So, keep giving them Jesus, his goodness and mercy so that Jesus may win them for eternal life!

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

O God, Your almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy. Grant us the fullness of Your grace that we may be called to repentance and made partakers of Your heavenly treasures; through Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Lamentations 3:22-33; 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Think outside the box. It’s a phrase that has challenged us for years to consider new possibilities that we never before thought were possible. As someone who likes things neat and tidy, it’s easy to fall into the habit of confining ideas, concepts, and reality to an easily described “box”. For instance, if I were to talk about science, I would pull out of the “box” topics like physics, biology, chemistry, and so on.

Topics of theology work this way too. We like to put stuff into a small, neat box. Yet, this often leads us not to consider the bigger picture for many things. One such topic that comes up this week is resurrection. Now, when I mention resurrection, I tend to think of the last day. It’s the common church teaching of the resurrection of the dead on the last day. Resurrection, we believe is only what happens after we die, and when Jesus returns. But resurrection is actually a much bigger topic than the last day.

In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus encounters a ruler of the synagogue, Jairus. Jairus comes before Jesus, pleading for his help because his little daughter is sick and nearing death. Jesus agrees to go with him to his home. On the way, however, we meet another woman who has her own health issues. She has had a discharge of blood for twelve years and nothing anyone has done has helped her. But, like Jairus, this woman had heard reports about Jesus, which brings her before him. “For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well,” Mark 5:28.

These two stories are woven together so that we can see a pattern, a similarity between them. This woman with the discharge of blood has been suffering from her illness for a long time. It was so horrendous that Mark even calls it a “scourge”, like the scourging done to Jesus before his crucifixion. Yet, the similarity is with the daughter of Jairus. She dies before Jesus can make it to her, even being told by a member of the household. These two women show us the sad effects of sin. Due to sin in the world and in our lives, we all face the slow decay of health leading towards death.

But there’s another side to it as well. Jesus performs not just one resurrection, but two! When we talk about resurrection, we talk about those who have died. But a resurrection doesn’t always have to be precipitated by death. Rather, resurrection is the granting of new life. Thus, when the woman who touches Jesus is healed, she experiences (in small measure) a resurrection! She is made new! So too with the daughter. Jesus speaks to the daughter, “Talitha cumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise,” Mark 5:41. She who had died is given new life! This is what Jesus does for all of us. Like the little girl, Jesus comes to us and says, “I say to you, arise!” By faith in Jesus and his death upon the cross, Jesus is granting to us the resurrection unto eternal life. He is restoring us through his forgiveness, mercy, grace, and faith so that we may experience even now the new life he won for us through his own resurrection! 

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, during His earthly ministry Your Son Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. By the healing medicine of the Word and Sacraments pour into our hearts such love toward You that we may live eternally; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Job 38:1-11; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

You never know how good something is unless it’s been tested. From products to services, to relationships, the place where these are forged is in testing. Products have to undergo rigorous testing before they’ll ever be sold so that companies can back up their claims of how good a product it is. Services are only ever considered good if they hold up under pressure. So too our relationships, we only consider others our best friends if they have proven themselves loyal and worthy during a moment of testing.

Why then do we consider faith to be any different? We act like faith should never be tested and when it is that somehow faith has proven unreliable. Life’s struggles are sure to come to the Christian and non-Christian alike. There’s also no telling when struggles and turmoil will come upon us. While we never know why certain struggles come upon us, we also know that every struggle we face is also a testing of our faith.

Consider the disciples in our Gospel reading this week. Jesus just finished teaching the crowds and ushers the disciples into a boat to cross over the sea. While out in the middle of the sea, a “great windstorm” arises and comes upon them quickly. The disciples became afraid of the storm as the wind and waves battered the boat so that it was beginning to fill with water. Yet, during this storm, Jesus remains asleep. So, the disciples go to wake him and say, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Mark 4:38. 

Great faith never comes without great testing. This doesn’t mean we’ll ace every test. Far from it! So often, like the disciples in the boat, we shrivel in fear staring at the storms that are upon us. In the midst of storms, we tend to forget completely about our faith! We often panic thinking that every great storm we face will be our end. 

But great storms are important for one more reason. It’s not just a testing, but a revealing. Without the great storms of life, we would never see the greater deliverance brought by Jesus, our Savior! Consider the drastic change that comes for the disciples when Jesus speaks to the wind and waves… and they obey him! “And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm,” Mark 4:39. It’s in the midst of our storms that Jesus reminds us, he’s in the boat too. He’s there with us through it all so that we may have a great calm. For when we encounter life’s challenges, we look to Jesus who will show us his greater deliverance in the cross. By Jesus’ death upon the cross, we come to see how great a Lord we have. We have Jesus who shall deliver us through every storm, through death, and grant to us the greatest calm and peace in the resurrection to eternal life!

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

Almighty God, in Your mercy guide the course of this world so that Your Church may joyfully serve You in godly peace and quietness; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:1-17; Mark 4:26-34

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Have you ever seen a mustard seed? It’s so incredibly tiny that you must look real closely to see it. It’s so small that should you have dropped one, you wouldn’t even attempt to find it because it would be nearly impossible. There’s something to be said for our mentality of “bigger is better.” We value things that are large and easy to show off; thus, we also devalue things that are small or miniscule.

Just because something is small doesn’t mean it will stay that way. The mustard seed might be the smallest of all seeds, but it will grow into a large tree. We have many stories and experiences that should teach us not to underestimate small things. Just because we view something, or someone, as small and feeble doesn’t mean they can’t outperform our expectations.

In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus gives us two parables concerning the kingdom of God. Perhaps the lesson Jesus seeks to teach us is not to underestimate God’s kingdom. It will grow in ways which we are not aware of; and it may seem small but will be larger and more prominent than any other.

It doesn’t matter how much we try to understand church growth, find the right formula, instill the right culture, we’re still just as clueless as ever. By examining church growth, we find that there are no magic bullets to always grant growth. I.e. what works in one place is never guaranteed to work elsewhere. For we often show our own disdain for the Word by trying to replace our hope in traits, programs, or people to grow the church. 

Consider the work of the farmer scattering the seed. We can encourage growth. We can seek to help growth. But growth just happens on its own. “He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how,” Mark 4:27. When we share the Word, we can’t guess whether it will yield growth or not. Rather, we scatter the word knowing that the word can grow. Growth is dependent on two things, the seed of the Word and its reception by one who hears. The word is nothing else but the word of Christ. It’s speaking and witnessing to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For when we speak of Christ and how he takes our sins upon himself and goes to the cross for us, the seed is scattered into hearts and minds so that faith may grow. And so also the mustard seed, when faith is shared, when Christ is proclaimed, the Church grows. The tree of the Church sends out its branches far and wide so many may come and find shelter and life within its shade. So, let us trust that the word will grant the very growth which God desires from it and that by the word alone, the Church will grow into all nations, granting salvation unto eternal life!

Pastor Sorenson

Prayer:

Blessed Lord, since You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!