David wanted to give God what HE would want. Reminds me of the way I sometimes act. I get Lara a CD for Christmas that I am actually more interested in than she is.
Idea of building a Temple for the ark is a good political move. Legitimizes David’s authority. Says, in effect, God is on my side. Visible reminder of that.
God says no to that. He instead asks David to trust his promise only. Then his son will be able to build a Temple.
Instead of you building me a house, I’ll build you a house.
Trusting God will provide without subscribing to the “Prosperity Gospel.” The idea that God will bless us and we have the duty to display that with a life of luxury and wealth.
Often Like David, we want to do something great
for God (build a temple), but what we discover is
that God is committed to doing something great in
and through us ("He who began a good work in
you... Phil. 1:6). The first is safer because we
are in the 'driver's seat' the second requires
saying, "let it be according to your
word."
Perhaps this passage speaks to us about putting God in a box of our own construction instead of letting God work through us to do his will. We are more comfortable creating God in our own image rather than opening our hearts and mind to let God pour into us God's Holy Spirit and allowing God to reveal God's self to us. It is not our job to plant God somewhere, it is God's will to keep us rooted in order that we might glorify God.
God is completely free. And God chooses to make His home in us, Jesus said the body is a Temple. During the Exile to Babylon, when may Jews were taken as slaves, and the Temple was destroyed. The people of God had to think more deeply about how and where God dwelt. The idea of the Messiah began in the minds of the prophets who looked at this passage from Samuel and knew that God would be faithful to it.
I don't think David's idea was all that bad; seems admirable, really, at first glance. It took God to know otherwise, that even in our well-meaning, sincere attempts at faithfulness, we can easily build up barriers to our reliance upon God.
The exile also forced a relocation of the God of Israel. He could no longer dwell in the destroyed temple. Apparently rationalizing the temple’s destruction, an exilic theologian reasoned that only his name dwelled there, not the Deity himself. The God of Israel dwelled in the heavens, not in an earthly temple. Quoting 2 Samuel 7:5’s rejection of the temple, Isaiah 66:1 would ask how could a temple contain God? The temple was irrelevant because the God of Israel did not live in a temple; rather, as Ezekiel so pointedly argues, God dwelt among his people. The exile provided the context for a universalization of the God of Israel.
Ephesians text : the movement from seeing God as residing in a place such as an ark or a temple, into becoming flesh in Jesus, then dwelling in all Christians.
God is asking for a place to live! What he wants most is to live in our hearts.
Jesus, this son of David, finally is the one to help build the house.
OF course, we can read the text (most literally) as saying Solomon will build the temple, which he does, but which is ultimately destroyed by the Babylonians. Or we can read the text in light of the Gospel:
Jesus builds it out of the people he's healed, those for whom he has had compassion in their suffering. A house made out of broken people, ministered to by Christ. An interesting image--keeps God as the actor, us as the grateful receivers and responders.
Boy Scouts. Remember sitting at Camp AP Hill outside Washington at the 1994 National Jamboree with scouts from all over the country, listening to Lee Greenwood sing. I remember the sitting there, with 40000 scouts with lighters in the air, as 3 F-15s buzzed the concert ampitheater, a deafening roar that you never forget.
The Bible is unabashedly doting on David, who is our subject for this summer series, yet it also tells the truth. (even when the lectionary does not)
Reading between the lines today, we find that David seemed to have given the order to kill all the blind and lame people in Zion simply because his detractors said that “even the blind and the lame would rise up against you.”
Last week, we missed the David story, but it was the classic story of killing the messenger.
Honest about our faults. Don’t chalk them up to “un-American revisionist history.”
Just read David McCullough’s A Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama canal. Surprised me to learn (even though I remember doing a 6th grade term paper on Panama) that basically Panama exists because the American gov’t didn’t want to pay more money for the land to Columbia than we had at first agreed. So, we financed a revolution.
Don’t get snowed by the blindly patriotic version of our Nation’s history and heritage. We have a lot to be proud about, but that doesn’t mean we should whitewash the truth.
The Bible sets the template for a people keeping track of the negative and positive things they have done. This is a good guard against falling pray to the idolatry of nationalism.
Our nation was built on the back of atrocities as well as heroics. It makes me sick to hear the phrase, “My country, right or wrong.” It makes me sick because it is a forfeiture of democracy. “My country, right or wrong” is what those who live in a dictatorship must say, so why should I, living in a free country, stoop to such a base form of allegiance.
The scriptures are clear about what makes a country great. It isn’t the grand achievements. It’s not the canals and the skyscrapers and the military might. It’s not the economic prowess, that we now clearly see is a house built on sand anyway. What makes a country great is how that country treats the poorest and weakest and most desperate.
Listen to the Psalm again. This is David’s song about his hopes for his son, Solomon. What is it that he repeats over and over again?
For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.
13 He will take pity on the weak and the needy
and save the needy from death.
14 He will rescue them from oppression and violence,
for precious is their blood in his sight.
This is what the Lord loved about David—because he was once the left out and forgotten, he would include the left out remember the forgotten. He prayed that his son would continue in this way.
Because this was and is the way of the Lord. "He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?" (NKJV)
The beginnings of Jerusalem as the City of David are not it’s destiny. Just because we are honest about our roots, just because we have eyes open to our foibles, doesn’t mean we have to wallow in them. We are called to greatness. We are called to bear the image of God.
John sees the city of Jerusalem descending from the clouds in the book of Revelation. He describes God’s voice saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
Amen!
Ben’s Shoes:
The thing about this passage that really strikes me: this narrative about Saul insisting that David wear his armor, and then the comment that the armor hung on him like a little boy wearing his dad’s t-shirt like Wesley did yesterday.
Why would the storyteller include this point? It has something to do with God’s relationship with us.
The scripture is particularly fascinated with armor. Even though Goliath is a giant, we hear much more (3 verses) about his weaponry than we do about his height.
Actually the texts don’t agree on his height—the Masoretic text (Hebrew tradition from the 10th century) describes him as 6 cubits and a span—9ft. 9 inches--In other words, standing next to a basketball goal, his head would be just under the rim. The Greek text (the Septuagint, and the oldest known Hebrew text, the Dead Sea Scrolls) measures him at 4 cubits and a span, which is about 6 ft. 9 inches.
In either case, he is a giant by the day’s standards. The average Hebrew male in 1000 bc grew to full height of 5ft3inches. Saul, who stood a head above everyone else, would probably have been around 5ft. 7. (So, even though the more ancient texts describe Goliath as around 6ft 9, most Bible translations keep the less reliable text because, well, we like our stories the way they look in the children’s books)
No need to embellish the story with supernatural height. Just imagine LeBron James in bronze armor and high-tech weapontry coming at a farm implement-wielding Danny DeVito and you'll have an idea of the dread the average Israelite solder would've felt! (James Michael Smith)
So, back to the story, we get the point in this great epic story of two champions meeting in the desert that God uses the most unlikely of people to speak and act for Him. This is an important theme all throughout the scriptures, and something I want to accentuate for us.
but it is also about this: God wants us as we are.
The story describes this as well. David “can barely walk” in Saul’s armor. Instead he sheds the metal, and walks out bare skinned, with his leather pouch and sling.
Saul may have uttered the divine name, but he cannot give up his own reliance on human military power. He attempts to clothe David in his own armor (vv. 38-39).
Saul does not understand anything. He has uttered Yahweh’s name. But he wants to outdo Goliath on Goliath’s terms. . . . So he offers armor, helmet, coat of mail, sword—David “tried in vain to go” with such encumbrance. David’s contrast is with both Saul and Goliath. Unlike them, he goes unencumbered (“I am not used to them”). Both of them—the one a braggart, the other a coward—trust in arms.123
David is the model of another way, of those without the benefit of superior arms and armies who nevertheless trust that God can make deliverance possible against the odds, that there is hope even when faced with apparently hopeless situations. David refuses the armor, and he takes only his staff, his sling, and five smooth stones—the equipment of a shepherd (v. 40)—to meet the Philistine.
Be not conformed to this world.
His actions are reported throughout the chapter, but especially in the climactic moment of the battle with the Philistine champion, David becomes a man of bold and effective action. In vv. 48-51, David is the subject of fifteen verbs, placing him at the center of a bold action drama. He ran—put his hand—took out—slung—struck—prevailed—striking down—killing—ran—stood over—grasped—drew—killed—cut off. David is now introduced to us not only as God’s man and Saul’s man, but also as his own man.
More than that, in the ancient near east, to die by one's own weapon was a sign of humiliation and disgrace. David's use of the giant's sword--rather than the stone--to kill him was a powerful symbol to all who witnessed it, as well as the generations who would read about it in the future. God's messiah defeated the most powerful enemy with his own weapon...sound familiar??
Conquering the World
Five seniors, big plans. As you look at the prospect of going out and living on your own, you no doubt feel like you can do anything! You can “conquer the world,” as the saying goes, right?
I remember my plans upon graduating high school: they weren’t all that grandiose. I just wanted to be Indiana Jones. No, this wasn’t my childhood vision of what I wanted to be when I grew up, this is what I told the announcer to say when he introduced me and some other attendees of governor’s school at a football game.
I had a hat, a whip. I was ready to rock. I got to college and loaded up on history courses. I signed up for a 2 term, 200 level “History of China” because that’s where I was interested in beginning my career as a next generation adventuring archaeologist.
I took a music appreciation class because I figured it would be easy and I’d have more time to focus on my budding plans for world travel and intrigue. After the first term, the music appreciation class ate my lunch, (the prof. had grown accustomed to people thinking his class was a “gimme” and had developed a series of tests and papers that would give people their just desserts for making such a presupposition.)
So, things changed, as they usually do. Our plans take some detours that we don’t anticipate. Things crop up that we were unaware of.
You can have everything laid out in one grand scheme and then one unforeseen event, one minute of life, can change your whole direction. When I worked in college ministry, I began to realize that I could almost predict with certainty which students would be having a crisis of the soul by their second year by how fixed and certain their plans for their life were in their first month of their first term on campus. What can we do in such an uncertain world?
John has a strategy for conquering the world that actually works: Faith.
He says, For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Now, I hope you didn’t just hear the last thing I said. If you just heard the last thing I said, then you may think that conquering the world is a matter of belief, like there’s a secret way to “believe” something into existence, and if you just hold on to that belief, if your head just cognates the right kind of ideas, you will overcome anything.
Belief is a powerful thing, and I know of some people who have gotten through some difficult times just by “getting their head right.” But for most of us, I think, we might have a little less confidence in the power of “mind over matter.” Our minds can play tricks on us, after all. We might imagine all sorts of things.
Fortunately God makes it easier on us. To pull one verse from 1 John that seems to say that the world conquering faith is a matter of belief doesn’t jibe with the rest of 1 John’s message. If we know anything from John, it is that faith is more than belief. Look at the beginning of the passage: “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.”
What is the chief commandment? “Love one another as I have loved you.” Believing in this principle means enacting it. This is how we conquer the world instead of letting the world conquer us.
Be assured of that. The world, and the imposter who make believes that he is the owner of the world, is actively seeking ways to conquer us. The Tempter who offers Jesus the world and all that is in it because it belongs to him wants to fool us. The force of evil has its own tactics of conquering the children of God by fooling them out of their inheritance as children of God.
Sometimes it’s the bait and switch, such as when Satan takes something good and life giving, such as sex and intimacy, and we become twisted into believing that the purpose of such things are meant for nothing more than the satisfaction of an urge.
It becomes corrupted into something we can “get” instead of something that we share. “I want to ‘get some.’” Such an outlook on sex and intimacy has the effect of bending the whole arc of our lives toward chasing the next fleeting gratification. Perhaps this is why Dante portrayed the souls in Hell that had given in to lustfulness as literally being blown around by the wind: Unsubstantial and wispy in their eternal state of being.
Or, take wine and drink and merriment, which the Scriptures praise in verses like Psalm 104:15. “God makes wine for the gladdening of the heart.” The world ensnares us with something good and life-giving, and twists our mind to believe that drunkenness is gladness. Or we are deceived into believing that our reputation and stature are enhanced and built up in the minds of others by how drunk we might get in front of them.
May those deceptive lies of Satan be purged from your souls like the vomit that spews from your mouth when you overindulge in something God meant for something life-giving. Those lies can kill you. And if they don’t kill you, they have the power to conquer you: your mind and body and soul, which Jesus commands us to offer to God, will become the slave of a substance.
If you find yourself in the midst of such lies, put your faith into practice. Treat others with the love and respect that you want to be treated with yourself. Serve God through acts of service and charity toward the marginalized and oppressed, the poor and the sick. This is what a belief in Jesus Christ entails. This is the commandment that is no burden. This is how we will conquer the world. Let Love Rule
Loveis gentle as a rose
And love can conquer any war
Its time to take a stand
Brothers and sistersjoin hands
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
Love transcendsall space and time
And love can make a little child smile
Oh cant you see
This wont go wrong
But we got to be strong
We cant do it alone
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
We got to let love rule
Let love rule
Texts: John and 1 John
My mother, like many of our mothers, spent the years that my sister and I were in the home being a home-maker. That was her profession, and she did it well. It wasn’t just about housework or making breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It wasn’t just about hauling my sister and me in the car to gymnastics meets, tennis practice, boy scout meetings, or youth group. I sense, now that I have had the chance to make a home for my own children along with my own wife, that home-making was and is about creating a haven: a place where my family could rest assured, where we could “be ourselves,” a place where we could be loved.
Wesley’s notes
8. God is love - This little sentence brought St. John more sweetness, even in the time he was writing it, than the whole world can bring. God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract, as he is said to be love; intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.
No, it is not just the mother’s responsibility to create a home where the Divine attribute of love can be nurtured and strengthened in us. Especially in this day and age when we find most couples sharing the responsibility of “bringing home the bacon.” It is indeed the responsibility and the joy for both partners in a marriage to have this task of “home-making” before us.
But today we lift up the feminine element of that task and we celebrate the mothers in our midst who have contributed so much to this element of our lives. Making a home for us.
I’m speaking so much about home-making, because it is the focus of our scriptures today. Today we lift up God’s activity of home-making. We hear from the letter of John that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The Gospel of John shows Jesus comparing himself to a vine and his disciples to branches. “Abide in me and I will abide in you, and you will bear much fruit. Because apart from me you can do nothing.” Abiding—Peterson translates this word in the message as “Make your home in me as I do in you.”
Mothers show us quite literally what it means to make a home for another living being in them when they carry children in their wombs for 9 months, waiting to bring forth life. I think this “maternal instinct” that Rob Bell speaks about in the video is created during this time. Because once a woman brings forth a child, she “lives in them” in a very real way.
It is this same kind of nurturing relationship that Isaiah ascribes to God. God has a fierce maternal instinct about us as well.
21. And this commandment have we from him - Both God and Christ. That he who loveth God love his brother - Every one, whatever his opinions or mode of worship be, purely because he is the child, and bears the image, of God. Bigotry is properly the want of this pure and universal love. A bigot only loves those who embrace his opinions, and receive his way of worship; and he loves them for that, and not for Christ's sake.
This is how we make a home for our God. We make things familiar to God by reflecting God’s nature in our lives. We love others without hesitance because God is Love. This is how we bear fruit in the world. It only takes Love. All you need is Love.
Don’t you think the word “love” has lost some of its potency? We use it in this day and age to mean so many things. “I love a good steak.”
This is why John’s advice is especially crucial for us today. He cuts through the hollowness of language. He says, like John Lennon later wrote in a song:
Love is Real. It is real when we put it into action.
Actions Speak Louder than Words:
Favorite saying of my mother.
This is crucial for us to understand, because it is the way of Jesus.
Book by Eugene Peterson.
This is the way of Christ—it is acting out of love for our brothers and sisters. Just in case we think “laying down our life for our brother or sister” is too demanding, John de-literalizes it for us. If we have the means to help someone in need, and yet we do not—it is obvious to the world and to God that we have no interest in this person called Jesus Christ. If we profess Jesus as the truth, and yet make no attempt to follow Jesus as the way, we dishonor God\
Thomas used as a polemic against his community.
Importance of Xity seems to be belief/doubt. What about action/apathy.
1 John says it is not about what you profess, God’s focus is on whether you live in the light or in the darkness.
What do you think it means to “walk in the light.”
Do you live in an up front and honest way with people?
Do you lie or gossip?
To me, the witness of Thomas is that a skeptical nature doesn’t keep a person from experiencing God’s grace and forgiveness.
Why do we sometimes behave as though the point of all this, all this religion, is to pass along a set of beliefs, and the most heretical thing you can do is doubt the story. If we take a fuller look at the witness of scripture, we can see that the life lived is what counts. After all, as John says, you can say you are in fellowship with Jesus, but if your life is lived in the darkness—how can you be in the light?
Probably one of the reasons the 12 step program is so powerful and effective is because it asks its participants to come out in the open with the fact that they have a problem, and then bring to light those instances in the past that give you shame—go to the people whom you’ve wronged and own up to it. It is bringing a life lived in darkness into the light.
Thomas carried the gospel the furthest and over the largest area. Much of the world considers him the greatest apostle. Carried gospel through Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, India. His first converts carried the faith into China and even Japan by 70ad. That is the same year the Temple was razed by the Romans, and before the Gospels were all composed.
Thomas had a career many times more far-reaching than Paul.
He is the first to address Jesus as “God.”
Benefit of the doubt is that it engages us in theological thinking. It deepens and enriches our faith to question.it. IF it is an off limits place, it can get murky and stagnant. Faith needs to be stirred up, it needs to be flowing and active.
It needs something to prod it along. The benefit of the doubt is that doubt and questioning makes a faith vibrant and living. If you put faith and belief behind a locked door, you may forget to feed it and it will die of starvation and neglect.
The experience of doubt has for me been the experience of honesty. It is when I am most honest with myself and others that I feel as though I’m “living in the light.” And it is when we live in the light that we find ourselves in the presence of Christ—the Light of Lights!
I usually think of our lives lived as stained glass windows. We all have our own colors, and God’s light, which is Pure Light, is made up of all our colors. When we live in the light, we reveal an aspect of God to the world. I think a reason our tradition and expression of Christianity involves stained glass windows is because of this truth.
When we let the light shine through us, God reveals Himself to the world through us. A window displays the light, and when we participate in the community of faith through an active belief, we form a wonderful picture of God.
Imagine a person coming in to a church with beautiful stained glass windows only because it is the place where the feel the warmth and beauty and security of the love of God.
St. Jerome, another Church Father, tells us that John constantly repeated one refrain in his old age: "Little children, love one another."
So may we “live in the light,” which includes being open about our doubts and misgivings. May our doubt activate attention to our faith life. When we profess our faith, may it seem redundant, due to our lived life, to the world around us. As my mom always told me, “Actions Speak Louder than Words.”
Sermon Notes
Today’s Gospel reading reminds me of a Paul Harvey radio spot. I’m sure everyone remembers Paul Harvey, the master storyteller who died this past Feb. who had been on the radio in Chicago for 50 years.
He’d start a story, say about a 13 year old boy who received a cash prize from Franklin Roosevelt, and then after a commercial break we’d find out that “the rest of the story” was that the 13 year old boy was one Fidel Castro. Little chance encounters and surprise endings were to be expected on Paul Harvey’s show.
So today’s scripture reading sounds like the first half of a Paul Harvey radio spot. It lacks that satisfying conclusion. In fact, the original Greek is even more incomplete and dissatisfying, ending in the conjunction gar, which means “for.”
A literal translation would be “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them…they were afraid for…” Tom Long says “It is almost as if the author of Mark had suddenly been dragged from his writing desk in midsentence.”
So, no doubt some of the fourth and fifth generation of Christians saw the ending unfit for a Gospel of Jesus Christ—especially in comparison to some of the other Gospels available—with their inspiring stories of the appearances of Jesus. Who wants to receive a Gospel which ends with the disciples of Jesus being afraid?
So they tagged a few of them on there to the end of Mark. But, we know how Mark’s gospel truly ends because we have the written testimony of some of our most trusted Church Fathers who speak about Mark’s ending without referring to these other endings.
Story about actor who memorized Mark, went with original ending….uncomfortable silence at end. “AMEN!” Decided that his conclusion had betrayed the original intention of the author.
Second night, walked briskly off stage after saying “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”and the audience was stunned. He said the electric buzz was palpable among the people as they left that night as the audience talked with each other about the non ending.
This electric charge is what some Biblical Scholars believe was the intended result of ending the story in this way. It is compelling. It grips us and makes us want to enter the story and grab the women by the shoulders and shake them.
Mark’s Gospel is known for something called the “Messianic Secret” At every turn, when Jesus performs some miracle or healing, he orders the recipients or the witnesses to remain silent about the implications of such things. It is as if Jesus is afraid of the consequences of the cat getting out of the bag. It’s at the end of the first chapter, when he heals a leper and then “sternly” tells him not to mention it to anyone. Mark 8: 27-30
And in every case, Jesus’ own instructions to keep silent are disobeyed. The word gets out, and the movement grows. Some say the reason Jesus wanted to keep his identity a secret was because he wanted to re-define the meaning of a Messiah. The Hebrew people had certain expectations about what the Messiah would accomplish.
Scriptures told them the Messiah would rise up and dispel the conquering forces. He would free Israel and sit on the throne in glory and splendor. He would be the return of King David, who many Jews spoke of with the same sense of romanticism that our own culture remembers the mythical King Arthur.
So, the secret in this instance is reversed—the women are charged to Go and tell, and instead they run and hide. They are finally given the go ahead to spread the message far and wide, because now no-one will co-opt the movement of this Messiah and try to turn it into something it is not. Now Jesus is not able to be grasped and manipulated. He tells Mary in the Garden in John’s resurrection account, “Don’t grasp onto me.”
“But go,” the young man said, “tell his disciples (and be sure and tell Peter too) that he is going on ahead of you to Galilee.” (Galilee? Plain old ordinary Galilee where it all began?) That was the women’s “home turf,” Lamar Williamson said. The sort of place where the “same old same old” (routine) happens.[i]
“Yes! The messenger said—that’s exactly where you’ll see him just as he told you” (Did he tell us that?)
So, the Messiah returns to his disciples in exactly those kinds of moments. He joins them in a locked room as they are hiding out in fear of the authorities. He joins some as they are back to the old routine of fishing, and he cooks fish and bread with them on the lakeshore. He joins two on a walk from one town to another, never revealing himself until right before he leaves.
Instead of the Messiah coming in glory and transforming the world in some strong armed display of God’s strength, this Messiah who was put to death on a criminal’s cross makes resurrection appearances in the midst of the mundane and transforms our lives so that we might transform the world into the one God envisions empowered by the Spirit of God.
Did you notice the young man’s instruction included some specific instructions to be sure to include Peter too? Why single him out? Because Peter is the one who on this day is probably still bogged down and sulking in his guilt for denying his Master three times. The resurrection includes this major revelation that can transform even the most shamed disreputable lives and actions: You are forgiven.
This is the rest of the Story—as Paul writes to his friends in Corinth—Jesus invades the mundane and shameful lives we lead, and can transform them with forgiveness and grace. This forgiveness and grace inspires confession. Then, Christ can use that transformed life to accomplish amazing things.
It is the kind of transformation that inspires, even compels us to spread the message. We are loved and cherished by God! Paul was able to spread the message of Jesus far and wide, and his letters are the first written records that we have of the movement to which we belong.
The meaning of the resurrection is that Christ enters our lives in the here and now—in the mundane or unexpected—in the Galilees of our own lives. In the midst of our relationships with spouses, family, work-friends, and neighbors: Christ is Risen! In the midst of daily tasks and chores, and work and play: Christ is Risen!
The story is unfinished because it includes you and me and future generations. It acknowledges the reality that our first instinct is to shrink from the truth that will change our lives and run the other way instead. But the “rest of the story” is that our weakness, our fear and our frailty doesn’t impede the advance of Christ, who comes into this day and all days with a resurrected truth that we are forgiven!
This is the day the Lord has made and it’s going to be a ………..
Good Day!
[i] Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Mark,
