Good morning,
Praise be to Jesus our Lord for this glorious day. It is going to be a glorious weekend to rest in the Lord, and to worship Him and serve Him, for He is our Life and He is our peace. He is our Eternal Hope. He comes into the dead places of our lives and situations; He brings Life and He breathes His peace into the places of despair and gloom.
I was reading from Mark 5:21- 43 the other day. Jesus is the Christ in every crisis. He is captain at every battle we face. In this passage, Jesus was on the way to a home where death had visited. On the way He encountered a a woman who was dying because of a seemingly incurable, chronic illness; a little girl already had died. A father stood helpless, completely at a loss. He stood face-to-face with death, facing the loss of his beloved little daughter.
Among us, not only when we are threatened by a serious illness, not only when we stand beside the grave of someone we love, but each day, there is death. Death meets us, not only in the grim face of our doctor, informing us of the onset of some dreaded illness, but also in the faces of the one who told us that we were not needed anymore at our job.
Again, In Mark 5 one woman's entire life has been caught and dominated by a terrible, life-demanding illness. There are also a distraught father, a little girl whose young life is being cut short, the baffled disciples, and the crowd who doesn't know what to think of all this. Yet, intruding into the story is another face, the strong, life-giving face of Jesus, our Lord. As we read in Mark, Jesus was forever intruding into fixed, settled, hopeless situations and bringing life. Let us listen to His strong voice speaking over the laments and dirges in today's gospel? Hear him as he calls to the little girl, "Get up!"
I think Jesus is calling to each of us to "Get up!" His voice is strong, commanding, and vital. "Get up!" We have, perhaps, heard His comforting, soft voice before, stilling the waves of the storm, bringing peace to troubled waters. Now we hear His other voice, that strong, shattering, enlivening voice. It is the same voice that evoked "fear and trembling" (verse 33) in all who heard it that day, it may do the same for us. Life is frightening, when it intrudes into the realm of death.Let us hear His voice now. I think it is a shout. There is so much death. We are asleep with death so it takes a loud voice to wake us. Left to our own devices, we are caught, trapped, dead. But Jesus does not leave us alone. Jesus came to raise the dead. "The only qualification for the gift of the Gospel is to be dead. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be good. You don't have to be wise. You don't have to be wonderful. You don't have to be anything...you just have to be dead. That's it." (Robert Farrar Capon).
In all our caught-ness, in the depressing fixedness of the world, Jesus comes to us, calls to us, raises us up, brings us life. It is all because of His Grace. Let us come to Jesus and live.
In Christ,
Brown
Friday March 16, 2012
Television Outreach
Time Warner Cable Channel 4
Time 7:00 PM
Saturday Evening Worship Service:
Location: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinley Avenue
Endicott, NY
Sponsored by: Union Center United Methodist Church
Time: 6:00 PM gathering for Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Date: Saturday, March 17, 2012
Speaker: Rev William Puckey
Special Music by Hawleyton United Methodist Church Worship Band.
For information, call 607-748-6329
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