Tag: Mark

Sermon – Mark 1:14-20 – The Risk of Contact

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I guess I’ve been too tricky for my own good linking the file with the full text to the word cloud picture, so I’m going to start also putting a hard link to the text here –MS Word Link

Wanting to be called or to feel like someone has a job for you is an almost universal desire. Thomas the Tank engine is my son’s favorite toy/book. The original books were written some time ago by an Anglican minister. When you read those early books or see the early cartoons the main virtue being taught is interesting. The highest value for Thomas, given by Sir Topham Hatt, is to “be a really useful engine.” Men fall into that thinking more than women do – basing their entire self-worth on society’s definition of being useful. That requires a sense of call. Someone finds this useful. We are constantly looking for that Sir Topham Hatt character to contact us and affirm us.

The trick is sorting the true call from the all the things that might just be useful. In the Sermon I used the example of SETI. People desperately looking for that affirmation and sometimes salvation from contact from the stars. The people in SETI maintain an almost desperate hope that someone is calling them, but they just need to look in the right place.

We so want that contact and we often look so hard that we overlook our true calling. God has called us in Jesus Christ. It does not depend upon our skills or abilities. God takes the action. God has made first contact. And he does have something useful for you, tell someone else what Jesus has done for us.

Sermon – The Baptism of Jesus

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Liz made a comment on the way out that as a teacher an object lesson – i.e. a real baptism – would have been nice. I had to say a whole hearted yes.

Just a couple of stray thoughts. For many of us, remembering our baptism does two things – 1) it draws us toward our family and the community of God and 2) it points us in the right direction for living. For many of us were baptized as infants. Not being baptist, a rememberance of baptism immediately directs us to parents or grandparents or elders in the church. We are reliant upon them to tell us, yes you are baptized. We are reliant upon the church to be the people of God and remember who has been brought into the family. That is not a bad thing to remember that there is a corporate entity – the church – that has a role to play in our lives. It is not just us alone or me and my personal Jesus. Remembering baptism also points us in the right direction in that while the sacrament is a once for all act, the life it enables is an ongoing thing. Luther’s small catechism would say, “it indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned…” When we live the Christian life we are baptized each day or each hour when we recognize our shortcomings, but most importantly when we see the way through the water that Jesus sanctified.