"Our Cup Overflows"

In this season after Easter, our worship preparation blog is on hiatus to allow Rev. Manion to prepare for future series. 

The sermon texts and related texts will continue to be posted for your reflection in anticipation of Sunday worship. 

Scripture for Sunday, April 30, 2017:  1 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Scripture for additional reflection:  Romans 5:1-15

Peter, However Got Up and Ran

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Scripture for Sunday, April 16, 2017: Luke 24:1-12

The women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, don’t know it is Easter Sunday morning.  When they go to the graveyard they come looking for the dead body of Jesus.  He died on Friday.  On Saturday they rested.  On Sunday they search for the dead, where the dead can be found.  They come to the tomb.  But they cannot find the dead body.  Did robbers come?  Have wild animals dragged the body away?  Were they in the right graveyard?  It couldn’t be resurrection.  Could it?  While they wonder what happened to the body two angels begin asking hard questions, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

What kind of question is this?  With their own eyes they had seen Jesus dead and buried in this very tomb.  That was the sad end to what began as a glorious week.  On Palm Sunday hope soared.  The long expected Messiah, who would establish the Kingdom of God, was acknowledged by the crowds.  But then on Friday the hopes of the women and the eleven disciples died and the seeds of doubt were sown.

 

The angels’ question pushes the women past the doubt that is growing in their hearts by reminding them of Jesus’ own testimony, “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”    

   

I suspect our instinct is to go easy of the women and on the disciples.  After all, we are familiar with doubt and acquainted with unbelief.  We all have hopes that God’s plan for us will include success, happiness and security.  When failure, sadness and insecurity strike our hopes die and we bury them.  These buried hopes can be seeds of doubt.  There was that relationship that you hoped and prayed would be reconciled, but it ended in divorce.  Hope died, was buried, and now you are doubting that God values marriage.  There is that addiction you thought had been conquered, but when you least expect it overwhelms you with a ferocity that cannot be combated.  Your hope to be free from addiction is buried, and you begin to doubt that God has conquered sin.  Grief wells up at an awkward moment.  And your hope that you were moving on dies a little, and you doubt that God gives the victory over the sting of death. 

Friends, Jesus is risen.  Although we might enter Easter with seeds of doubt because of dead hopes, our doubt cannot stop Easter life.  The resurrection is powerful enough to enliven the hopes that lie dead and buried in our past, present and even our future.  Easter teaches us that even dead hopes can be transformed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Reflection: 

1.       What hopes for either yourself or others have died in you?

2.       Have these dead hopes sprouted into doubt?  Do you carry doubt into this Easter season?

Using your sanctified imagination, imagine the hopes that have died being buried with Christ.  Imagine these dead hopes being raised with Christ.    

Standing in the Rain with Rizpah

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Scripture for Sunday, April 9, 2017:  2 Samuel 21:1-14

David's release of seven of Saul's sons and grandsons to be executed by the Gibeonites is as hard to read as it is to understand.  It's an ugly story.  Why does David, a man after God's own heart, turn over to death the descendants of a man whose life he spared again and again? 

The Gibeonites were Canaanites who, under false pretenses, made a treaty with Joshua to live at peace with the Israelites (see Joshua 9).  Even though the Gibeonites had lied to them, Israel honored the peace agreement made in the LORD's name.  While Saul was by no means innocent of slaughtering unsuspecting people (see 1 Samuel 22:17-19), there is no biblical account of Saul killing the Gibeonites.

As this passage opens, David finds his kingdom in trouble.  The country has had a famine and continues to experience political tension.  David's handover of Saul's sons and grandsons both attends to the issue of Saul's guilt and appeases the Gibeonites.  But it also serves to solidify David's rule: young men of Saul's line who could have threatened David's throne are executed.

It's interesting that David inquires of the Lord about the famine; but not about a way to remove Saul's guilt.  That question is reserved for the Gibeonites, who are not known for their trustworthiness.  Was the only way to make peace with Gibeon truly to execute the two sons of Rizpah and the five sons of Merab?

Saul's concubine Rizpah, mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth, is given no recorded words in Scripture.  But her life speaks. 

Rizpah has lost the protection afforded to her as a member of Saul's household; and now by King David's authorization she loses any protection offered by her sons.  She has nowhere else to go and no way to appeal.  So she climbs the hill where her sons lie dead, spreads out the fabric of grief, and camps out on a rock. 

There she is with Armoni and Mephibosheth, day after day.  There she is, shouting at the sky, chasing off the birds.  There she is, threatening the wild animals with sticks.  There she is--for months!--from the time the barley begins to ripen in March until the autumn rains begin to fall on the land.  She will not forget them, and she won't let others forget either.

Rizpah's protest reaches King David.  David gathers the remains of Saul and Jonathan, killed by the Philistines; and the remains of Saul's seven sons and grandsons, and gives them all a suitable burial in their family tomb.

And then, after David honors Saul's family, God answers prayers for famine relief.


Reflection:

1.  Rizpah is good company for those who grieve for the lives or injustices done to their children.  She has limited power but demonstrates courageous protest in the wake of grief.  How might God bring you encouragement through her? 

2.  We serve a Savior who knows each one of us and calls us by name.  We are precious to him.  Rather than "hand us over" to the destruction we deserve, in his great mercy Christ handed over himself.

Using your sanctified imagination, imagine how the story of 2 Samuel 21 would be different if David handed over himself to the Gibeonites to atone for Saul's sin.  I can hardly imagine it.  Yet this is what Christ, our King, has done for us.