On the Way to Wonder

³² Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; ³³ and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’  Mark 12:32

The religious authorities are lining up to ask Jesus trick questions to try to catch him in a heresy.  Now a teacher of the law comes and asks a question.  “What is the most important law or commandment?”  Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6, “⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  This is what Moses taught the Israelites when he came down from Sinai with the law.  The man affirms what Jesus has said but phrases the command in his own words showing he has understood and adds the second half of loving a neighbor as one’s self.  No tricks from this man and Jesus affirms him.

Matthew explains the scene a bit more, 

³⁶ ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ ³⁷ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” ³⁸ This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Many people can quote these verses and understand that since they have been good to family, friends, and neighbors, they have met the requirements of religion.  Being nice to our friends is one thing but loving God is another. Can you paraphrase loving God with heart, soul, and mind?  What three words would you use?  Blessings as you ponder.

“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”?

 ²⁷ He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.’

Mark 12: 26-27

It seems this last week in Jerusalem, everyone in religious leadership is upset with Jesus and trying to trip him up with trick questions.  Yesterday it was the Pharisees and the Herodians trying to trick him about paying taxes.  Today it is the Sadducees.  They don’t even believe in the resurrection of the dead but they still come and ask a question.  A woman who has been handed from brother to brother, seven brothers, who have all died leaving her childless, to whom will she be married in the resurrection. That is a horrible question and from a woman’s point of view, I applaud the abrupt answer Jesus gives.  There is no consideration of the woman and what she might have experienced and she is treated as chattel.  Horrible.  We might call it a “living death.”

​Jesus is very direct:  “You are quite wrong.”  God is the God of life and hope.  It makes me think of the lines we draw in the sand and assign people we don’t like to one side and ourselves to the side of the good.  It is easy to see this in politics but there are many other subtle ways that we evaluate “who’s wife” or which category a person belongs in.  Beauty may be our criteria or wealth or talent or health or employment.  Those are easy targets but we have others.

God is looking for life.  We might ponder what that means to us today.  Do we look for the life and growing aspects of others or do we focus on failures?  Let us spend a moment asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the good, the life in someone we perhaps have trouble loving. Lord, help us to focus on life and not death!

MARK 12: 13-17

Jesus is in Jerusalem and it is the last week before the crucifixion.  The chief priests and teachers of the law are looking for ways to arrest him.  Jesus has upset Temple protocol by creating a scene in the Temple outer court.  “My father’s house is to be a house of prayer!”  Next he gives a parable indicating that the leaders have been poor farmers taking care of God’s vineyard.  They are irate and now they try to trap Jesus in a trick question. Some Pharisees and Herodians, that is a mixed group of leaders supporting the Herods, the political power, and those representing Temple law, come with a question.  “Should we pay the imperial taxes?”   

Sometimes we get ourselves all tangled up in either/or questions. I had twins and invariably they argued about a toy.  One claimed he had it first.  The other claimed their big brother had given it to him.  They were both right.  Last month I had to plan to pay IRS, pay the dentist for a crown, and my daughter wanted money.  Social Security had still not paid survivors benefits.  My stomach knotted.

Jesus knew his followers were going to have to face the tension of being caught between the demands of this world and the demands of the kingdom of God.  Jesus does not choose a “right answer” for this specific situation, but gives a principle to live by.  Taxes were paid with coins.  On one side was the face of Caesar and on the other was written perhaps something like, “In God we trust.”  Jesus, seeing their duplicity, responded, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

Perhaps you are not caught in any situation right now.  It is always good to think about solutions in terms of what is required by the problem and what is required by our God.  Let us pray for our legal system, for the many caught in situations needing mercy and for the legal people who have to make decisions.  May they see beyond the immediate to the eternal!

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34

³¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm: Psalm 51:1-12

Create in me a clean heart, O God. (Ps. 51:10)

 ¹Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;

  in your great compassion blot out my offenses.

 ²Wash me through and through from my wickedness,

  and cleanse me from my sin.

 ³For I know my offenses,

  and my sin is ever before me.

 ⁴Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight;

  so you are justified when you speak and right in your judgment. 

 ⁵Indeed, I was born steeped in wickedness,

  a sinner from my mother’s womb.

 ⁶Indeed, you delight in truth deep within me,

  and would have me know wisdom deep within.

 ⁷Remove my sins with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

  wash me, and I shall be purer than snow.

 ⁸Let me hear joy and gladness;

  that the body you have broken may rejoice. 

 ⁹Hide your face from my sins,

  and blot out all my wickedness.

 ¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God,

  and renew a right spirit within me.

 ¹¹Cast me not away from your presence,

  and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

 ¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation

  and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit. 

Second Reading: Hebrews 5:5-10

⁵Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him,

 “You are my Son,

  today I have begotten you”;

⁶as he says also in another place,

 “You are a priest forever,

  according to the order of Melchizedek.”

 ⁷In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. ⁸Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; ⁹and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, ¹⁰having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Gospel: John 12:20-33

²⁰Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

 ²⁷“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

CHILDREN’S SERMON — What do Joni Eareckson Tada, Helen Keller, Fanny Crosby and Ludwig Van Beethoven have in common?  They were all famous people who had  stories of loss they overcame to become famous artists.  Joni broke her neck and is a quadriplegic.  Helen Keller and Fanny Crosby became blind as children.  Even the great Beethoven struggled with deafness from his mid twenties til he died.  Today we will see a link between glory and the seeming impossibility imposed by death of a dream .

Let us pray.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer.

SERMON.         

The context of our Gospel today is Jerusalem and it actually takes place after the triumphal entry of next Sunday.  The time is Passover week and Jews from around the world have gathered at the Temple.  Jesus is not staying in Jerusalem but in Bethany a few miles away with his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  He is making excursions into Jerusalem until the crucifixion. Jesus is still trying to help us understand the importance and impact of his life. Interestingly Mark opens this text with Greeks, maybe Jews but maybe not, coming to the disciples.  “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  Perhaps that is your cry today

 Wait!!!  Does this scene feel a bit familiar to you?  We are coming full-circle in this year’s accounts of the God who incarnated, lived among us as one of us, and went to the cross to die for us and show us that nothing can separate us from his love, not even death.  On January 6th we celebrated Epiphany when the wisemen from the East arrived in Jerusalem and asked King Herod, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” The arrival of the wisemen that occurs near the start of every liturgical year elevated the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem to a universal story for all people. Today the Greeks who might be considered “wisemen from the East,” come looking for Jesus.  They seem to signal that what unfolds is also for all people.  Our text has taken on a global feel beyond the Jewish festival of Passover.  This is not a history lesson but God speaking to us.  

  Our New Testament reading also reminded us who Jesus was understood to be, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”  Melchizedek was the high priest of God Most High who went out to meet Abraham when Abraham returned from rescuing Lot and families from raiders.  Melchizedek blessed Abraham before Moses was born and before the law was given on Sinai.  Melchizedek represents a priesthood that predates the Jewish priesthood begun with Aaron. Our text is what we would call “glocal” – global in scope and set in a local, identifiable history. 

We are coming to the climax of our Lenten journey and Jesus gives the Greeks and us another image to help us understand the significance of his incarnation.  Last week Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again and gave us the image of the wind, of light, and told us God so loved the world, he gave his Son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  Even the Greeks, even we, can approach and come to Jesus. ”We are the “whoever’s. Our writer skips the question and goes to the point Jesus wants to make. Jesus responds to the Greeks with one of his frequent images of a sower planting seeds but this time he ties it to the glorification that is about to take place.  Jesus linked glory and death when he talked about the seed falling to the ground and dying to produce fruit.

 When we think of glory we think of honor, praise, and distinction.  We could think of the Olympics or the Oscars,  The people involved certainly give of themselves and work hard but there will be awards given to new people in the next round.  We might call it “event glory.”  I think there is another type of glory though that does not applaud the hard work of the individual or team but rather points to a God who enables the person or team to accomplish the impossible.  I’ll call that “eternal glory.”  The people in our children’s sermon overcame catastrophe to become models for many. They went from death to God’s glory.  Jesus on the cross goes from death to glory, glory that goes to God.  Lord, open my ears and help us to listen, understand and glorify you!

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 

 truly, I tell you, 

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

 it remains just a single grain; 

As I looked in the gospels, it seems there are three main parables about seeds that Jesus has told during his ministry.  The most familiar is about a sower throwing out his seeds and them landing on the hard soil of the path, or on rocky soil, or thorny soil, but hopefully on good soil.  One sower, one type of seed and four types of soil that we pondered. God sows his word, the seed, but what type of soil is our heart that listens and receives it?  The second parable is about a farmer who has his workers plant the seed but at night an enemy comes and plants weeds. We are faced with the dilemma of good and seemingly bad people in our lives.  Jesus admonishes us to withhold judgment and allow God to decide at the harvest.  The third parable is about the mustard seed.  We only need faith as small as a mustard seed.  The size of our faith is not the issue.  Power rests in God, not us.  These three parables use the image of a seed to talk about the Word of God and about our faith.  Today’s text, though, talks about a seed being sown and then dying in order to produce fruit.  We are being challenged to go deeper. God’s glory is made manifest in suffering and dying.  That is counter intuitive.

So let’s go back to our three parables about seeds.  In any type of soil, the seed must die to grow.  Some of us have hard difficult lives like living on the path.  Due to the circumstances of life we are born in families that are just plain dysfunctional and hurtful.  All of us have rocks and thorns, challenges and disappointments that can lead to a choking of our faith.  And the world tries to convince us that those rich people, living in big houses and seemingly blessed with talent, looks, and wealth have special access to God. The seed today represents the person in all four positions in life who must learn to die to self.  The way to fruitfulness, to glory, is through death for seeds no matter what type of soil they fall on.   All seeds, even the rich, must fall into the earth and die. Without death to self there is no glory.  However large our faith, it must still die to self and look to God for there to be glory to God.  However we are impacted by the bad guys, the weeds in our life, we must still die to self.  However great our faith, we must still die to self. We most likely are willing to admit that we all will die physically and can’t take our goods with us but how does death to self relate to God’s glory?

Let’s think for a moment.  There is the beauty of the wedding with the groom handsome, the bride beautiful, the guests applauding and the promises made.  We snap pictures and try to capture the moment.  We might even say, “That was glorious.” Let me call that “event glory.”  Hours of preparation have gone into getting to this “event.” Lives are impacted and changed but “eternal glory” may or may not be achieved.  As we sadly know, not all marriages last and the glory of the event must be lived in the grind of every day life.

  Having sat in an assisted living facility this last year with a declining spouse who is a shell of that person I married, I saw the other families faithfully traveling to visit and support their person who was declining.  I saw grandchildren visiting, facing the smells and the awkwardness of death.  That is a different kind of glory. It is not “event glory,” an accomplishment we point to and defines us, but it is more like “eternal glory,” the subtle glory of suffering, that does define us but more importantly defines God.  In the dying process, love somehow shines through the ugliness of death and the reality of who God is appears.  We reflect on a life hopefully well-lived and learn lessons.

I asked in the children’s sermon about the four people listed.  They all faced disabilities and became overcomers, models of the glory Jesus is talking about.  They and their friends died to self.  Joni Eareckson Tada dove into the Chesapeake Bay, breaking her neck and became a quadriplegic. She has become a singer, a writer, an artist, a renown speaker and founder of an organization to help others facing disabilities – in our generation.  She is a famous example of a seed that  fell to the ground and died to all those dreams of youth but in the process a new life emerged that impacted many.

The point I think Jesus is making in our text is that we all are seeds that must fall to the ground and will face choices about dying to self.  Our death may be our physical death that carries us into eternity but there are also many ways that we face death to self daily.  Jesus realized the Greeks and the crowds were coming to him looking for the glory of the wedding picture, event glory that gets rid of the Romans.  But he tells us today again that there is another type of glory that comes when we die to self and follow God’s way, even as he is choosing to do.  The nature of the glory can come from an “event” that fades with time, may be captured in a picture, and affects a few lives.  “Eternal glory” that will include physical death and that will challenge our wills, leads to God’s glory as we choose to follow.

²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Our text first challenged us about the nature of glory.  Glory may not be having the world applaud as we win the Olympics, as wonderful as that is.  Our wonderful memories of wonderful times, our “event glory,” fades with age.  “Eternal glory” comes when we die to self like a seed coming to life in hard, rocky, thorny or good soil.  It dies to self and in that process produces a plant that does not just live for a moment but bears fruit.  I had a tomato plant that came up in the cracks of our driveway in Nairobi.  I have laughed, loved, and been shown deep love by people in a famine relief camp.  People in dying situations the world would consider hopeless can live good lives in community.  Eternal glory, though, is glory plus ripple effect.  It may start with the seed, our life, but we have no idea all the consequences that will result or the people who will be impacted by our following Jesus.  Jesus’ death on the cross would look like failure to the Greeks and the world but how many have been changed by that event.  A whole kingdom that lasts for eternity will result in eternal glory to God.  That is a glocal definition of glory Jesus calls us to.  

Secondly Jesus redefines the source of glory.  In event glory, the wedding, the couple is applauded and perhaps there are lots of “likes” on FaceBook.  Eternal glory that comes from following Jesus and serving him will be honored by God, the Father.  The applauders are different and the focus is different.

Then a voice came from heaven, 

“I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

We heard the “voice from heaven” at the baptism, at the transfiguration, and now we hear it again.  We have come full circle.  “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.” “This is my son, listen to him.” Now we hear,  “I have glorified it (God’s name), and I will glorify it (God’s name) again.

God is the source of power and his name will be glorified.  We are back at the Garden of Eden and the Evil One tempting Adam and Eve, and us, that if we eat the fruit of this world, we can be like God.  The truth is that this world can only offer “event glory.”  “Eternal glory” comes from God, focuses on God and is powered by God.  Eternal fruit can only grow as we die to self and turn our lives over to God.

Our text ends with Jesus realizing the choice he is making as he submits to the Father and the plan for eternity.  It is not an easy choice.  The voice from heaven speaks assurance.

What does Jesus want us to hear today? When we step from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of heaven, we must redefine “glory.”   I think he is trying to say that in the kingdom of this world we are continually faced with death.  The wedding pictures fade.  After four year there is another Olympics and we will eventually age out.  Disease, death, poverty and betrayal will tarnish our event glories, our dreams of being the hero of our own stories.  Event glory lasts but for a time and does have a kind of ripple effect in the children we bear, the lives we touch and the good deeds we do that make this a better world.  But eternal glory, the glory that is only possible because God is enabling it, has an eternal ripple effect as we serve others, and ultimately is only possible because it is empowered by God and He will receive that glory. He is glorified and we bow before him as He is the source, the focus, and the power of true glory.  We do not need to be afraid of death because it does not have the last word.  But likewise, I am not the center of the universe and life is not about me.  The last word goes to God. His name be praised.

Let the people of God say, “AMEN.”  May it be so Lord. 

Tomorrow the reading from Psalms is Psalm 51.  Perhaps you have memorized it.  King David wrote the psalm after being confronted by his prophet Nathan and his, King David’s, sin of adultery with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite.  David, with wives and a harem, saw Bathsheba and wanted her and invited her into his chambers. I doubt turning down a king’s request was socially not common at the time.  But not only did David sleep with Bathsheba, she became pregnant and David orchestrated the death of her husband and then married Bathsheba.  The story illustrates the domino affect of those “little sins” that change the course of our lives.

Tomorrow the Greeks comes to Jerusalem and are looking for Jesus.  They go to the disciples with their request, “We want to see Jesus.”  We do not know their question.  But like them, King David has lost sight of God and pleads in Psalm 51 for forgiveness and a return to relationship.  His cry, “Create in me a clean heart!”  

Please enjoy this simple melodic tune of one of the key verses in Psalm 51.

Create in Me (Psalm 51:10)

 “Then he began to speak to them in parables. ‘A man planted a vineyard,  “.  (Mark 12: 1)

Mark now chooses to focus in on a series of parables Jesus tells during that last week in Jerusalem.  Parables are symbolic stories that give form to the unknown, in this case how the future might unfold.  These parables do not seem to be helping us discover the nature of our God as much as foreshadowing what is about to happen.

• A man plants a vineyard
• He digs a pit for a winepress
• He builds a watchtower
• He rents it to farmers
• He leaves
• Then he sends servants to collect his share of the harvest
• He sends his son

The farmers refused to acknowledge the man’s ownership and hence his fair share and they eliminate the servants and kill the son thinking that then the vineyard will be theirs.  Jesus ends with a question, “What will the man do?”

It might be interesting to ask ourselves today some questions 

• What vineyard, what project are we trying to build in our lives?
• What is the product we are hoping will grow in the vineyard?
• How to we try and protect it?
• Who are the people helping us to care for our vineyard?
• What do we think is our fair share of the returns?
• How do we meet resistance?

Jesus speaks to the day of accounting that must come at the harvest time of any project.  He is again predicting his death and God’s judgment.  We can think of the IRS and April 15th coming up.  We can think of box office revues and the fair share that goes to the actors.  We can think of our investment in our families and the respect and honor we pray will result when they grow up.  The chief priests and religious leaders know the parable is pointed at them as caretakers of the church.

Perhaps today we might ponder what we have been entrusted with from God and how we are caring for these “projects.”  Let me note that Jesus is not just talking to individuals but to farmer-s. It seems we are all “caregivers.”   Let us pray about how we can be more trustworthy caregivers on the teams for the projects in our lives that God has given us.

Mark 11:27-33

‘By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?

We are reflecting on the last week of Jesus’ life before the crucifixion.  He is going to and from Jerusalem teaching.  We have just read that upon entering the Temple and seeing how it had become a “marketplace” taking advantage of people who had to exchange money to buy sacrifices and then the sellers who sold those sacrifices, Jesus becomes irate and created a scene, overturning tables.  The religious leaders are furious and plot to kill him.  But the next day when he returns, they do not accuse him of breaking the law.  He was too popular.  Instead they publicly confront him about his authority.

Authority is actually of various kinds.  There is the authority of the author who is the creator of the narrative, the parent of the child, or perhaps the genius behind an invention.  That is a kind of authority from being the creator.  But there is also the authority vested in someone by popular vote.  Our government has authority because our vote gives voice to our desire for them to hold power.

Jesus does not answer the question but flips it back on the chief priests and religious leaders by asking them a question.  “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”  Did John the Baptist speak for the creator God or was he just a popular person?

We might ask ourselves today how we respond to the authority of God’s Word.  Perhaps we follow the rules because we agree with them and they are norms ingrained in our culture.  Other times we “shine God on” for things like forgiveness, sharing, gossiping or gluttony and jealousy.  We treat God like a marketplace where we can pick and choose how to engage with our faith.  Hmmmm.  That’s not a pretty thought.

Let us spend a moment asking the Holy Spirit to raise to our consciousness any way that we are duplicitous in following God’s authority.

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?

    But you have made it a den of robbers.’

Mark 11:17

Yesterday we returned to Jerusalem with Jesus.  It is Holy Week, the time between Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  Yesterday the group walked past the withered fig tree and got a lesson on prayer.  When they got to Jerusalem they went to the Temple and Jesus entered the outer courts.  They had become a marketplace, exchanging the money of the foreigners and selling the sacrificial animals needed.  We suddenly see a side of Jesus we have not seen before.  He upsets tables.  He is angry.  The Temple is not to be a place of sacrificial relationship but place of prayer and communication.

 It is possible today to find most anything in churches — enlightening education, entertaining programs for youth, bookstores, coffee shops, and gyms.  All are designed to serve good goals of drawing us closer to the God we worship.  I don’t think the problem is the program but the condition of the heart.  When we take advantage of the vulnerable, use our gifts for self glorification, or just send kids to be babysat for free, we may have overstepped.

Today let us ask the Holy Spirit to shine his flashlight on our hearts and show us if there is any duplicity and selfishness in our hearts when we go to church.  May our churches be a house of prayer for all nations.

In yesterday’s reading, Jesus was warmly welcomed into Jerusalem with people pulling palm branches off trees and shouting “Hosanna.”  It was late in the day so Jesus returned to Bethany for the evening and the next morning as he and crew head back to Jerusalem, he is hungry and sees a fig tree with leaves but without fruit because it is not fruit season.  Jesus curses the tree to never bare fruit.  Mark reports that the followers saw this whole scene.  At the end of the day the group leaves for the night and on returning the next morning see that the fig tree has withered.  This certainly is a counter intuitive teaching moment as Jesus shares with the followers.  What’s going on?

The prophets in the Old Testament often compare the fig tree to Israel as does Jesus in the New Testament.  Jesus even tells a parable about the fig tree that does not bear fruit and the gardener asks for another years to work with it, fertilize and prune it.  That tree was given more time but the one today was not. It does not make sense that Jesus is cursing Israel, his own people.   Perhaps Jesus saw leaves and no buds meaning the tree was deeply diseased and not healthy for people to eat.  The text does not indicate disease but we do believe that Jesus could see beyond the obvious.

Jesus uses this tree, though, to point to the power of prayer as he challenges the followers when he is questioned:

 ‘Have faith in God. ²³ Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. ²⁴ So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.                Mark 11:22-24

Faith looks at seemingly impossible scenarios that appear beyond help and continues to pray and intercede for God’s help.  I think of wayward children that parents plead for.  I think of impossible financial challenges and then a check suddenly appears in the mail.  I once promised to go to a conference with the committee promising to pay half if I would find the other half of the cost.  I walked from the phone to the mail box and found a check for the exact amount from an anonymous source given for me to the church.  The check arrived right at that moment.  Not all our wants and needs are answered like that.  It is easy to think God is playing favorites or not listening.  On the surface this text seems to promise anything we want but I suspect there is a time clause and a need to recognize our wants are not always the best.  It is a challenging passage.  We are free to ask and approach the God of the universe and we must trust that he will work it out in the proper time.

Let’s pray for one of those situations that seems impossible in our lives.  Wars, famine, human trafficking, elections, refugees are all in need of more than one prayer.  Blessings.

We are in Mark 11.  Jesus sent two followers from Bethany where he was staying outside of Jerusalem.  They were to go to the next village and find a colt of a donkey that had never been ridden and bring it back.  The crowd put their cloaks on the back of the colt and Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd.  We will celebrate this next Sunday.  Palm branches were laid on the road before the donkey and so we call next Sunday “Palm Sunday.”

The people chanted:

Hosanna!

    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

¹⁰ 

    Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

Mark 11: 9-10

I was surprised when I looked up “hosanna” on the Internet to read

“Hosanna is a liturgical word in Judaism and Christianity. In Judaism it refers to a cry expressing an appeal for divine help. In Christianity it is used as a cry of praise.”

I have always associated “hosanna” with praise.  The crowds were quoting from Psalm 118:25-26.  When I read the whole psalm, it started with thanksgiving for God’s help in the past, but then at verse 25 it changed to a plead, ‘Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success!”  Perhaps the crowd on Psalm Sunday was welcoming Jesus whom they anticipated as the coming Messiah to rid them of the Roman oppression.  “Hosanna” is a word that bridges the reality of our present oppression with the faith that God will save us and deliver us.  AND often as with Psalm Sunday, the deliverance does not materialize as we expect.  Somehow those Romans, those things that irritate us, do not just disappear.

Perhaps the cry of your heart is for being saved from a situation that has become a quagmire for you or perhaps you are feeling praise for deliverance from a burdensome situation.  Let us use the word “Hosanna” as an acrostic for the prayer of your heart today.  H is for ______, O is for _____, S is for ______, A is for _____, N is for _____, or N could be for _____ and A is for _______.  Thank you LOrd for I know you are working.