Update
at Hudson Community Chapel
Week of April 5, 2009
Update
at Hudson Community Chapel
Week of April 5, 2009
 Easter Weekend Events @HCC *Christ in the Passover - 7pm Thursday *Good Friday Service - 7pm Friday *Easter Service on Saturday Night -- Avoid the crowd!
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: We are in need of additional volunteers for Early Childhood (birth -pre-K)and Fish Tank (K-1). Please consider partnering with us and making yourself available either on Saturday or Sunday. One hour of your time would be a huge blessing to us and the children. We are blessed to worship at a church with multiple services allowing us the opportunity to worship and serve.
Please email Joy Trachsel or Molly Lauck.  mentioned or referenced in the past 6 months (or so):   meaningful connection. |
|
And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." And he said to her, "For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter." And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. Mark 7: The Faith of the Syrophoenician Woman During our last ABF time together we walked through the portion of Mark 7 where the Syrophoenician Woman persisted on behalf of her daughter. Matt re-emphasized the three step process that he recommends we follow as we study the Scriptures: Observation, Interpretation & Application. (It was my intention to outline and hi-lite this concept in the Update sent on 3/8, and I did... but it never made it past my desktop. I accidentally distributed my template rather than the actual Update. Oops! While I'm still really embarrassed about my mix-up, if you click here, you can see what should have been sent, and get the How to Study the Bible Recap.) It was neat to see the virtual gears turning in folks' minds as we Observed the passage, and then proceeded to Interpret and then Apply this section from Mark. We stressed the importance of the Jesus' choice of words, and the faith shown by the lady and how even a little bit of Jesus is more than enough for her. As I thought through about the section both during the ABF time and afterwards, I was impressed and somewhat awed by the way the Lady pressed Jesus. Jesus gave her an answer in verse 27, but she had a comeback for Him in verse 28. So many times we ask the LORD to show us "His will" or to speak to us. Sometimes we don't get a clear answer, but when we get a clear answer from God, I wonder if there are times when He desires sincere dialog with us rather than simple resignation to His answer... some demonstration to Him that we're giving our lives and His purpose with our lives some thought and that we're engaged with Him in this life. Don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting that we argue with God or cavalierly treat God as an equal. What this Gentile Lady shows us, though, (as well as numerous other folks in the Bible) is that when we come faithfully to Jesus, He is willing to have a back-and-forth discussion with us. Ultimately, our take-home message was that Jesus is enough for us... He died for us. And that is the ultimate demonstration of His love. So when we wonder, "Can He love me even though I ______?" The answer is, Jesus is all that we need. He came to show His love for us.
As you continue through Mark, take some extra time to simply Observe what Mark is telling us. We'll be back together in two Sundays with Tony Galieti. See you then!
Easter and My Struggle with the Brutality of God's Plan Something about the story made me cringe every time I heard it, and since I grew up a Baptist, I heard it a lot: To satisfy His need for justice and His demand for holiness, God sentenced His own Son to death in the brutal agony of a crucifixion as punishment for the failures and excesses of humanity. Don't get me wrong. I want as much mercy as I can get. If someone else wants to take a punishment I deserve and I get off scot free, I'm fine with that. But what does this narrative force us to conclude about the nature of God? As we approach Easter, the crucifixion story most often told paints God as an angry, blood-thirsty deity whose appetite for vengeance can only be satisfied by the death of an innocent - the most compassionate and gracious human that ever lived. Am I the only one who struggles with that? The case could be made that it makes God not much different from Molech, Baal or any of the other false deities that required human sacrifice to sate their uncontrollable rage. We wouldn't think this story an act of love from anyone else. If you offend me, and the only way I can forgive you is to satisfy my need for justice by directing the full force of my anger for you onto my own son by beating him to death, you probably wouldn't think me worth knowing. You certainly wouldn't think of me as loving. And this solution ostensibly comes from the God who asks us as mere humans to forgive others without seeking vengeance. Is He demanding that we be more gracious than He is? Many of the Old Testament writers did look forward to the cross as a sacrifice that would satisfy God, and they used the language of punishment to explain it. But the New Testament writers looking back through the redemption of the cross saw it very differently. They didn't see it as the act of an angry God seeking restitution, but the self-giving of a loving God to rescue broken humanity. Their picture of the cross does not present God as a brutalizing tyrant expending His anger on an innocent victim, but as a loving Father who took the devastation of our failures and held it in the consuming power of His love until sin was destroyed and a portal opened for us to re-engage a trusting relationship with the God of the universe. The New Testament writers saw the cross not as a sacrifice God needed in order to love us, but one we needed to be reconciled to Him. One of my best friends died of melanoma almost two years ago. Doctors tried to destroy the cancer with the most aggressive chemotherapy they could pour into his body. In the end, it wasn't enough. The dose needed to kill his melanoma would have killed him first. That was God's dilemma in wanting to rescue us. The passion He had to cure our sin would overwhelm us before the work was done. Only God Himself could endure the regimen of healing our brokenness demanded. So He took our place. He embraced our disease by becoming sin itself, and then drank the antidote that would consume sin in His own body. This is substitutionary atonement. He took our place because He was the only one that could endure the cure for our sin. God's purpose in the cross was not to defend His holiness by punishing Jesus instead of us, but to destroy sin in the only vessel that could hold it until - in God's passion - sin was destroyed. Perhaps we need to rethink the crucifixion in line with those early believers. God was not there brutalizing His Son as retribution for our failures; He was loving us through the Son in a way that would set us free to know Him and transform us to be like Him. Now that's a God worth knowing.
Enjoy your week. Send an encouraging e-mail to a friend. RG |
|
