Worth Doing Badly

Anyone serious about the faith knows that belief is some of the hardest, most strenuous work out there because it learns to see life in the midst of death. Jesus, is “the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6:33) He is the bread that was sacrificed on the altar of the cross and His deadly sacrifice gives life to the world.

Jesus intensified the fear of his disciples of dying in a storm by appearing to be the angel of death present to take their souls to hades. His purpose was to demonstrate to the disciples that the very real evil in the world and in their hearts requires a very real deliverance that can be trusted even when in the thick of fearful circumstances.

Teaching is a sign of Christ’s compassion. He is not just here to protect and provide like a shepherd, He is here to teach and by teaching He leads people out of fear and disorder into his leisure and abundant feast in this wilderness.

Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection leaves nothing unchanged. Fulness of life is in the ongoing realization of the happy hopefulness of this truth.

Can a sense of pride on the part of the hearer get in the way of hearing the preaching of repentance? Pride is unbelief, and prevents the miracles of faith from occurring.

Jesus’ healings define the meaning of the grace which redefines God’s relationship to sinners.

And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Mark 4:39 The calming of the sea was a contest of the louder voice. It was not just that Jesus told the sea “Peace, be still!” It was “Silent! Be muzzled!” Language has its limits, we think, but that is only until God gets his hands on it.

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. Mark 4:26 When Jesus specifies the metaphor, close attention needs to be paid to points of comparison. The church is an agri-culture which distinguishes it from mechanical systems, financial systems, political powers, or pleasure calculus. Cultivation not management is the ruling metaphor. The natural history of seeds is the most...

If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24 The nature of God’s Kingdom is not that of a family dynasty connected by physical bloodlines, but a spiritual Kingdom united by the power of the Holy Spirit under the Lordship of Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven is made up of people liberated from the Kingdom of Satan by Christ who has bound the strong man and plundered his...

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Mark 2:27 Preaching on this passage has often staked the untrue claim that the Gospel "frees" a Christian from keeping the "Sabbath." And that deceptive claim gives the false consolation that Christians are free not to worship together. It is ironic that the freedom of the Gospel is a license to be free from the Gospel, which is enjoying God’s...

Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Isaiah 6:5 God is life, life, life, and Isaiah saw himself to be too much defined by death to imagine ever fitting into God’s presence, that is until God cauterized his festering lips, forgiving his offenses then returning Isaiah to par...

Salvation is completely accomplished by Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. His Ascension unleashed the final stage of the apocalypse revealing the consequences of His Salvation by extending it to single individuals throughout all nations.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. (John 15:9) “Abide” means enjoying Christ’s perfection in loving as we have been loved. It is personal and participatory like remaining in a warm house whose warmth is shared.

Jesus’ declaration that he is the True Vine connects to His first miracle at the wedding in Cana. It was not accidental that Jesus launched His mission to give immortality to mortals at a wedding and by changing water into wine as it harkens back to God’s gifts of fruit and fruitfulness at life’s creation.

When Jesus says, “I AM the Good Shepherd,” He offers a unity grounded in sacrifice and knowledge that at the same time raises up the individual and brings that individual to share in the one mind of Christ.

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” (Luke 24:36) This reading continues the theme of peace brought about by Christ’s Resurrection, but instead of being connected to forgiveness, peace relates to physical presence and eating. Jesus grants peace by being physically present. Holy Communion incorporates the communion of the physica...

“Peace be with you!” Peace is the confidence that through His cross and resurrection Jesus has restored to us the natural, wholesome condition of existence.

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 167-8) We are seeing here the response of true worship. True worship, as a saturated experience, leaves us ecstatic. It complet...

The mystery of Jesus’ Passion glory gives us the freedom to hate this life without hating life, the freedom to love this life by hating the destruction inflicted by sin, death, and the devil and to refuse to live as if life can be permanently killed. This freedom is granted only to those with the hope of Jesus’ Passion glory.

Jesus manifests what true greatness is in His self-sacrifice. True greatness is not in lording it over anyone but in the knowledge and wisdom He so generously serves. More than that, in His offering himself as the ransom—the redemption price for those all those who are captive to sin. A price well beyond what we can imagine!

God’s love given to those who love the darkness casts light on what it means for us to live in a post-truth world where trust is increasingly displaced by suspicion and loneliness.

Jesus cleared out the Temple, essentially bringing the sacrificial economy to a halt, because God now dwells in the flesh and not in a temple made with hands, to make the once-for-all sacrifice sins.

To confess Jesus as Christ is to have the same Words as He does, breathe the same Spirit as He does, and ultimately, do the same things as He does. There is a oneness with Christ and His body that comes out of the confession.

Jesus suffered temptation because he was the beloved Son who would demonstrate God’s love for the world by being the sacrifice for the sins of the world.

Jesus’ Transfiguration defines the final act of salvation as a movement beginning on the Mount of Transfiguration through the disfiguration of the cross, then finished by the Resurrection.