Matthew 14:22-33, Mark 6:45-52, and John 6:16-21

But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” (John 6:20) The Gospel writers in all three readings today quote Jesus with the exact same words. Another “divine echo” for us, in that we’ve got FEAR as the topic for our St. Andrew’s Sunday sermon series during Lent. Thus far we’ve had “worship and fear” and “faith and fear”. Today’s readings seem to be about the natural world – not about His healing ministry, not about His multiplying food or making wine, but about Him and His control over Earth’s natural elements, in this case, His authority over water together with the disciples’ inherent fear of the same. So while our sermon fears tend to focus on our “fear triad” of the economy, politics, and COVID, the natural world item in this threesome is COVID. But I’m not sensing much fear at St. Andrew’s over COVID. I think that from the beginning we’ve stayed on top of the pandemic, following CDC and Kentucky guidelines and restrictions – masking. ZOOM’ing, videotaping, and limiting attendance. And to this date I have not heard of anyone at St. Andrew’s who has even tested positive for COVID. We’ve had some emotional and financial hardships, but we’ve persevered, even through our Rector’s sabbatical and resignation. So if today’s reading and our sermon series are both about fear, Jesus’ words quoted above stand out: “It is I; do not be afraid.” I am SO looking forward to us all getting back together again!!

See also:

• May 19 (2019) / Matt. 14:22-33
• May 20 (2019) / Mark 6:45-52
• May 21 (2019) / John 6:16-21

Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:1-15

I keep thinking about feeding the 5,000. What is Jesus’ message for us today? One U.S. farm today feeds 166 people annually (American Farm Bureau). So it would take 30 farmers to feed 5,000 for one year. Backing that off for one day – 30 farmers over 365 days means 1 farmer could feed 5,000 every 12 days, or every two hours of one farmer’s time could feed 5,000 for one day. That’s what Jesus did for an evening meal, using Holy Spirit power for His production and twelve men for His distribution system!

But back to that one farmer… In the 1930s that one farmer produced enough for only four people, basically just his family. Now that farmer is feeding 40 families! Our agricultural progress is a miracle in itself!

But I’m evading the question. What is Jesus’ message for us today? What do we do to feed those 5,000?

See also:

• May 17 (2019) / Luke 9:10-17
• May 18 (2019) / John 6:1-15

Matthew 14:13-21 and Mark 6:30-44

…and taking the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and said a blessing. (Matthew 19b) Looking forward to the Last Supper…?? Mark is even more explicit: …He looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves… (Mark 6:41b) And further in Mark: As they were eating, He took bread, blessed and broke it… (Mark 14:22a) In Cana at the wedding feast Jesus turned water into wine. So these miracles by Jesus earlier in His earthly life are also looking forward to His Passion week. Touching…!

See also:

• May 15 (2019) / Matt. 14:13-21
• May 16 (2019) / Mark 6:30-44

Matthew 14:1-12, Mark 6:14-29, and Luke 3:19-20, 9:7-9

A note in my Study Bible intrigued me, so I looked further online. Herodias is a main character in today’s readings. She is the wife of Herod Antipas and is the person who goads her husband into having John the Baptist beheaded. But there’s more to her than just that. She is, herself, related to her husband prior to her marriage – she is the granddaughter of Herod the Great! Her father was Aristobulus, one of at least four sons of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas and Herod Philip (Herodias’ first husband) were two other sons, so Herodias twice married her uncles! What a loving family!

Then we come to Herodias’ daughter, Salome (so named by Josephus). Salome is now the great-granddaughter of Herod the Great. She goes on to marry another of Herod the Great’s sons, Philip by name (not to be confused with Herod Philip), so Salome is also marrying in the family, her granduncle – her grandfather Aristobulus’ brother! What a family!! Here’s more reading: https://biblehub.com/topical/h/herodias.htm.

…for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. (Mark 6:20) In that one verse we hear these three things, that Herod feared John, kept him safe, and heard him gladly. But John is the man who is accusing Herod of illegally marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias. This verse also says that Herod …was greatly perplexed… by John. No doubt! He becomes even more perplexed later in Mark’s 26^th verse, And the king was exceedingly sorry… Unfortunately it seems that Herod was not sorry enough to want to repent of his sins. What a sad story is John the Baptist’s death.

See also:

• May 12 (2019) / Matt. 14:1-12
• May 13 (2019) / Mark 6:14-29
• May 14 (2019) / Luke 3:19-20; 9:7-9

Matthew 10:16-11:1

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. (v. 35) Note what is not said here – a son-in-law against his father-in-law. It seemed strange to me not to have this fourth relationship listed until I thought about the world back then. When a daughter married she went off to live with her husband’s family. Think of Rachel and Leah leaving their father Laban to go hundreds of miles to Jacob’s family. So the other three relationships existed (while the daughter was unmarried), but the son-in-law had little to do with his father-in-law. Interesting.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (v. 39) Occasionally I “worry” about my current life. I have it pretty easy. I stay busy – even “busy” with spiritual things – but I am not persecuted, I am not fearful for my life or my family or my possessions. I often think of Mark Bruner in Czechia and the difficulties that he and Tommie encounter so often. Or the stories that I’ve heard from when the Soviets took over in Czechoslovakia in 1948 (see my comments in the first link below) and Christians suffered such persecution – and that only one average-age lifetime ago! Have I really, truly lost my life for His sake? Or what can it mean for us to lose our lives for His sake? My consolation comes in an earlier verse: So everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father Who is in heaven… (v. 32) That I’ve done; I’ll just trust Jesus for the rest.

See also:

• May 10 (2019) / Matt. 10:16-31
• May 11 (2019) / Matt. 10:32-11:1

Mark 6:7-13 and Luke 9:1-6

And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. (Mark 6:11) I wonder what Jesus would say to us, today’s disciples if we are “not received” or “not heard” for our preaching. I doubt that we are to shake the dust from our feet. I think He would have us pray more earnestly for another opening, for the Holy Spirit to work in these unbelievers’ lives, for us to continue to minister in whatever ways we can. Jesus sent His disciples …to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (Matthew 10:6) I wonder if we have a parallel in today’s world to Jesus’ “lost sheep”. Maybe those who have fallen away from the faith…? Maybe the completely “unchurched”…? Maybe a continuation to preach to the Jews today…? Or to the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Moslems…? There are a lot of lost sheep out there!

See also:

• May 8 (2019) / Mark 6:7-13
• May 9 (2019) / Luke 9:1-6

Matthew 9:35-10:15

…for the laborer deserves his food. (v. 10b) Over the years the Lord has blessed me with more of an evangelical heart to the point where I see most day-to-day meetings with strangers as possible sharing opportunities. To that end I have developed (that is, I trust that the Holy Spirit has put on my heart) a number of introductions and transitions that I use as I seek to move the conversation to Jesus or His church or whatever. I employ this verse in 10b as one of those opportunities, but I translate it as “…a laborer is worthy of his wages.” I use this verse when I tip a plumber or an electrician or some other craftsman who has come to do some work for us. It’s a natural thing – we tip food servers at restaurants, why not “servers” who do other things for us? Lately I find myself occasionally praying for people when I deliver flowers from Rachel’s shop. Those prayers are never refused and are most often much appreciated. I say these things, not to my honor, but to encourage each of us to find ways to share our faith more openly with people we meet. We live in a hurting world and the Lord needs laborers for His harvest.

See also: May 7 (2019) / Matt. 9:35-10:15

John 5:24-47

Today’s last many verses (vv. 30, ff.) are often referred to as the “fourfold (or fivefold) witnesses: John the Baptist, the works, the Father, and Scripture (and Moses as the fifth). Both the Old Testament and the New Testament (Deuteronomy 17:6 and II Corinthians 13:1) ask for two or three witnesses. Jesus goes even further in claiming testimonies about Himself, acknowledging four (or five) witnesses.

I am intrigued by Jesus’ two comments about the dead: Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. (v. 25); and …an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (vv. 28b-29) In His first comment Jesus says …an hour is coming, and is now here. In the second comment He does not include …and is now here, but He does include that the dead will …come out. Jesus seems to be saying that the dead can hear Him (and respond?) in His present tense (alive on earth), but that’s as far as it goes – hearing Him (and possibly responding?). But His second comment is purely future tense – only in the future, presumably at His crucifixion will they …hear His voice and come out. So is this how God has dealt with those “saints” (and sinners?) who preceded Jesus, that they have been kept in some sort of “limbo” state, later to hear Jesus’ voice while He is on earth and to be released when He has died? As I looked online at a number of sources that seems to be the Roman Catholic teaching. Is Jesus confirming that teaching in these verses? Intriguing…!

See also:

• May 5 (2019) / John 5:24-30
• May 6 (2019) / John 5:31-47

John 5:1-23

So Jesus committed two “crimes” – according to the Jewish leaders: He healed the man on the Sabbath, and He told the man to break their Sabbath rule by carrying his bed on the Sabbath. So Jesus’ responses to these two charges: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (v. 17b) I’ve always been hard pressed to understand His response. Jesus is using the present continuous tense to refer to both the Father’s and His activities. The implication is that both He and the Father are working now and that the Father has been working all along. I don’t have a problem with that – if they quit working, we’re all gone! But working on what…? What is the “working” that Jesus and His Father have been doing? And how does this “working” respond to the Jewish charges? The only answer that I can come up with is that God rested on the seventh day after creating the world on the previous six days. But then, what about the eighth day? …and the ninth? …and…??!! My sense is that we are all living right now that eighth day and that Adam and Eve were living that eighth day – and Abraham and Moses and David and the prophets and Nicodemus and Peter and James and John … Luther, Calvin, and Wesley … and us! The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are working in us and through us right now, this eighth day! And Jesus was doing His Father’s work that eighth day long ago, when He healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. Effectively, Jesus’ response is that …the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27). It is the eighth day. Work when you are called to work, rest when you are called to rest.

See also:

• May 3 (2019) / John 5:1-15
• May 4 (2019) / John 5:16-23

Matthew 13:53-58 and Mark 6:1-6

…and coming to His hometown He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?” (Mt. 13:54) We had a discussion in our Men’s Group a few weeks ago about Jesus’ deity. I believe we came to the conclusion that Jesus had heard from His mother, Mary, from early childhood on about His miraculous birth and that He was the Son of God. So He lived His first thirty years with that knowledge, living a “normal” life in Nazareth, with the knowledge of who He was, but without the prompting from His Father that it was time to do something about His calling. So with that, I maintain that something extraordinary happened on the occasion of His baptism, when the Holy Spirit appeared as a dove alighting on Him and His Father proclaimed, “This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.” (Mt. 3:16-17) So then Jesus goes into the wilderness where His calling is now affirmed and His Holy Spirit becomes resident within Him. He then goes on to Cana for a wedding, then to Jerusalem for His cleansing of the temple, then to Nicodemus and the woman at the well, then to Capernaum and vicinity, across the lake to the land of the Garasenes, then back to Capernaum, and finally to Nazareth. He may be in his late-first or second year of ministry when He finally returns to His hometown. He is clearly a changed man from the person who left some many months before. He has “new wisdom” that He had not displayed before, and He now has a track record of miracles performed elsewhere. But to the people of Nazareth, he is still the same guy who grew up in town. Nothing has really changed (in their minds): “He is different, but He’s still the same Jesus that we grew up with.” (Sarcasm intended…!)

See also:

• May 1 (2019) / Matt. 13:53-58
• May 2 (2019) / Mark 6:1-6