Difference between revisions of "Sermon for July 29th, 2012"

Revision as of 08:34, 28 July 2012

Mark 6:34-52

34As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 35When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ 37But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ 38And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ 39Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. 42And all ate and were filled; 43and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

47 When evening came, the boat was out on the lake, and he was alone on the land. 48When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the lake. He intended to pass them by. 49But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; 50for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ 51Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

Hard Hearts Can't Loave

Despite the raised eyebrows and dubious looks I got from Patty Herrera, our Office Administrator, and Everett King, our Facilities Manager, who both work very hard to make sure nothing in the bulletin or the marquee outside is mispelled...there is no typographical error in today's sermon title, "Hard Hearts Can't Loave" -- just a really bad pun. I'll come back around to that eventually.

For the past few weeks we've been following Jesus and his disciples through the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6. We've read how Jesus sent his disciples out into the villages and towns around Nazareth, and how after their hard work and near exhaustion, Jesus called the disciples away to a quiet place for some rest. However, in my desire to impress upon you how important rest is (and believe me, it is important to Jesus, the disciples, and all of us), I may have omitted one little detail. This detail might even come as a comfort to those of you who, like me, tried really hard to put last week's sermon into practice and failed miserably. Here it is: Jesus and the disciples weren't quite so successful (this time) in their efforts to get some rest, either. In fact, they failed pretty miserably, too. Our gospel text today actually