The Joshua Victor Theory

  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today’s Gospel, Mark 10, follows from last week where Jesus met the rich young man, who wouldn’t part with his great possessions to come follow Jesus. Jesus sadly reflects on that situation and contrasts His own “uncommon thinking” with our common ways of thinking. With all the details to comment on here, I’m going to walk through this passage verse by verse, so you may want to have Mark 10:23-31 available in front of you. 23Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24And the disciples were amazed at his words. The disciples show continued astonishment at Jesus’ words. Like they’re saying, “Jesus, you’re too much! We just can’t believe all the things you say!” Isn’t that how we often react to Jesus’ words? Like an old satirical song says, we just want some “Easy Listening.” Or like Paul wrote to Timothy, we want easy, so...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Matthew 10 Jesus sends out His apostles on the mission of His kingdom. Life in His kingdom is not an easy mission—quite the opposite—He promises it will be hard. Expect it. Thinking of quitting or surrendering? Jesus speaks courage to your heart! He transforms fear into courage in His kingdom. Let’s see how. In verses 26-33, Jesus uses the word “fear” four times. Three times it’s: “ Don’t fear ”; and once it’s to “ fear God .” What’s there to be afraid of? When you stand up and live for Jesus, you will be misunderstood and rejected, like Him. You can potentially face mockery, hatred, persecution, and in the worst cases, death. Many fears in life are exaggerated and blown out of proportion. But some are perfectly real. But whatever the fear, Jesus calls: “ Fear not.” Virtually no one is trying to kill us because we are Christian. We live in a free country. But that kind of extreme persec...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In the past two sermons, we’ve introduced the book of Revelation and how the Risen Lord Jesus stands at the center of the book, and of all history, for that matter—and saints and angels in heaven surround the throne of God and of the Lamb, in holy praise and worship. Today, we again see a vision at the throne of God in heaven. In the bigger picture of the book, this scene is sort of an “intermission” or “interlude”, during a series of seven unfolding visions. A series of “seven seals” are opened one by one, with different judgments on earth unfolding at each seal. Our reading takes place during an “interlude” between the 6 th and 7 th seals. Similar interludes show up later in Revelation, between the 6 th and 7 th stages of later visions. So this is part of a larger pattern found in the book. It’s also a very bright scene that is surrounded before and after by dreadful scenes of judgment upon the earth—so...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Despite signs that you might see, while driving to and around Lahaina, that say, “We are NOT in the end times,” Jesus told us that “ no one knows the day or the hour ”, and to always be ready for His return. The book of Revelation was written for times just such as ours—times just like the first century of Christianity, the times after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. In the decades after Jesus’ resurrection, while the apostles of our Lord Jesus were busy witnessing to all the world about Him—they encountered resistance. Resistance to the Good News, resistance to hearing that Jesus Christ had conquered the grave. This resistance often became hostile persecution. Sometimes imprisonment, sometimes loss of livelihood, sometimes loss of life. St. John the apostle, who writes the book of Revelation, writes it while he, probably in his old age, was exiled to the island of Patmos, fo...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. As we’ve gone through the chapters of Mark these last weeks, it continues to hit me how the experiences of the community in Jesus’ day mirrors in many ways our present day world. Even the grisly executions done by ISIS echo and multiply the violent death of John the Baptist for standing for the truth. This Gospel reading is marked by rejection and misidentification of Jesus—so that right from the first verse, King Herod and the community are mistaking the miracles and works of Jesus and His disciples, for John the Baptist risen from the dead. With misidentification, superstition, scandal, incest, a prophet speaking the truth and righteousness, a conflicted conscience, a murderous grudge, rash vow, persecution, and gory ending, this story has all the elements of a modern movie drama. The reading explains through a flashback, that Herod had recently killed John, and he and the peop...