The Joshua Victor Theory

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week in Psalm 28 we prayed with King David and felt the emotional tug of war waiting for God’s answer to prayers. Today Mark 9 is a lesson on mature discipleship, faith and prayer. A nameless father has a boy who is suffering terribly with epileptic seizures caused by a demon. The father’s faith is faltering; this has happened since childhood. The disciples’ faith appears absent, as Jesus rebukes them and the rest as a “faithless generation,” when they fail to heal him by failing to pray. Jesus seems harsh, as in several places in Mark. But the nameless father persists and his prayer is answered! Jesus lifts the nameless father and us, from faltering to faith. How do we get from faltering to faith? God will always strengthen faith when we ask for it. When it came to the power of prayer, Jesus shows the disciples failed to even use it! Before the disciples had success in casting out...

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Today’s parable of the Ten Virgins is a parable of readiness and faith. God has set a day known only to Him as a definitive, final cut-off date. Judgment Day, or the Day of Christ’s Second Coming, when He returns to judge the living and the dead. We confess every week in the Creed that “ He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead”. The final judgment. On that day, God will finally determine who are the just, who will join Him in eternal life, and who are the unjust, who will be sentenced to eternal punishment. The Parable of the Ten Virgins symbolizes this “final cut-off date” when the Bridegroom arrives for the wedding celebration. Upon His arrival, five wise virgins are ready, prepared, and waiting. Five foolish virgins are not. They’ve left just before His arrival, and it is too late to enter in when they return. Pleading at the door emphasizes the fi...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Does God really hear or answer our prayers? Why does it so often seem like He is silent, or deaf to our pleas? Our Introit, Psalm 28, explores this common fear. David, some 3,000 years ago, cried out this theme, found in all the other readings as well. The fear of rejection, silence, unanswered requests…these themes show up all throughout the Bible. We’re not the only ones. It’s the common experience of faith. Faith lives in this tension between the invitation to trust God and call out to Him for help, and His seeming slowness or inaction. Faith lives in this real tension between our present struggles and how and when God will respond.             It’s the Canaanite woman’s struggle in our Gospel reading, Matthew 15. She is crying out for help for her daughter. At first Jesus won’t even answer, then His disciples try to push her aw...

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week we left off with Jesus feeding the 5,000. Now at last Jesus gets to pray alone, filling that deep spiritual hunger to reconnect with God. Keeping our eyes on Jesus, we do well to pray with Jesus and reconnect with God in prayer, for the health and nourishment of our soul. Prayer is 24/7 reconnection to the God Who loves us and knows all our inmost thoughts and struggles, Who graciously invites us to pray, “Our Father…” When Jesus finishes praying the disciples are several miles offshore, fighting a heavy wind on the Sea of Galilee. In Job and Psalms, we read that God “ alone stretches out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8) and “The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (Psalm...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In our Gospel reading from John 16, Jesus tells His disciples “ Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” ·          Jesus urges us to ask boldly and He will answer! amazing promise, but this simple promise creates a crisis of prayer or a crisis of understanding for countless people. ·          two ways to understand: one leads to a crisis of prayer and doubt. the other to fullness of joy ·          Reread. Where is emphasis? Next sentence “in my name.” ·          natural tendency: latch onto “whatever you ask”—because we want to take Jesus’ words as a genie-in-the-bottle promise. Examples: cars, ...

Sermon Outline: ·          The conclusion of a conversation (begins vs. 9): “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him says the Holy One.” Isaiah 40:25-31—God is asking, Have you considered His greatness? The size and reach of the universe? We have the most meager and inadequate measurements to try to grasp it. Man has not instructed God in wisdom or understanding, as if we could teach Him anything—neither about justice or knowledge. Compared to God, we are utterly nothing—dust, a drop in the bucket, nothing and emptiness. God is incomparable to anything we might compare Him too, and the thought of comparing Him to idols and false gods is an utter insult and foolishness. He is the One who laid down the foundations of the earth and stretched out the heavens like a tent. Our existence is momentary in comparison. ·          Don’t like to think of ourselves this way, as dust and nothingnes...

Sermon Outline, expanded:  **Church Trivia--the Latin name for "Quasimodo Geniti" Sunday comes from the words of the Introit: "Like newborn... (babes crave pure spiritual milk)" (1 Peter 1)--and the character in the novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was named "Quasimodo" because he was abandoned at the church on that Sunday, and the priest gave the name.** On Easter evening, what still trapped the disciples? Fear. John 20:19? What did Jesus’ words, actions, and presence bring to the hearts and minds of the troubled disciples? Peace. John 20:19-20. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you…not as the world gives…” (John 16) When Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to the disciples, what did He empower them to do? Forgive sins (of the repentant), withhold forgiveness (from the unrepentant) John 20:21-23. How does the church still do this publicly today? Matthew 16:19; 18:18. When does it happen in the wor...

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! When we see the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, what do we see? Someone could be a smart aleck, and say “None of us ‘ saw’ the resurrection of Jesus.” But neither did you see the birth or death of George Washington, or Caesar crossing Rubicon River to provoke revolution in the Roman Empire. But of course none of us can “see” anything that happened outside our natural lifetime, except to believe the reports of reliable historians and eyewitnesses. And so today you hear the reliable report of the historian and Gospel writer Luke, who along with hundreds of eyewitnesses, records for us the unmistakable miracle of Jesus rising from death, and walking out of His now empty tomb, in a living, physical body. So what do you “see” or “perceive” about this historical event, that changed world history for the past 2,000 years? Some of what we can see, the first eyewitnesses were unable to perceive on that first Sunday morning. They did not p...