The Daily Guide. grow. pray. study. The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas, United States for Sunday, 17 April 2016 – "Prayer Tip: The Man Who Lived Among the Tombs"
Daily Scripture: Luke 8:26 They sailed on and landed in the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite the Galil. 27 As Yeshua stepped ashore, a man from the town who had demons came to meet him. For a long time he had not worn clothes; and he lived, not in a house, but in the burial caves. 28 Catching sight of Yeshua, he screamed, fell down in front of him and yelled, “Yeshua! Son of God Ha‘Elyon! What do you want with me? I beg you, don’t torture me!” 29 For Yeshua had ordered the unclean spirit to come out of the man. It had often taken hold of him — he had been kept under guard, chained hand and foot, but had broken the bonds and been driven by the demon into the desert.
Prayer Tip:
In this sermon series, we are exploring second chances. The cynic in me can’t help but thinking about times in life I frankly didn’t want a second chance. For instance, when I was in the third or fourth grade, I went out for the neighborhood swim team. My dad was a high school swimmer, and I really wanted to prove my skills to him. All you had to do to make the team was swim back and forth across the pool. Despite my vision of following my dad’s legacy, somehow imagining that I would be a state champion swimmer and heroic life guard, I barely made it to one end of the pool. I remember the neighborhood volunteer who had offered to coach the “hopeful Olympians” offering me a second chance: “Try again. If you make it back and forth without stopping, I will qualify you.” I quickly said “no,” got out of the pool and started crying. I felt embarrassed and defeated for rejecting my second chance. Looking back, I realize that accepting a second chance doesn’t always mean trying the same thing we have failed at in the same way. I wasn’t supposed to try to make the swim team. I was supposed to start playing basketball and fall in love with bike riding.
While this story might seem trivial, it points to a deeper truth about second chances. We don’t know what form our second chances will take. For someone dealing with divorce, a second chance doesn’t necessarily mean marrying someone similar and making the relationship work. It might mean taking on single life with new perspective and self-love. For someone facing the loss of a loved one, a second chance doesn’t always mean replacing that beloved one, but instead facing life with their memory and strengths encouraging you to be better each day. For someone who has lost a job in business, a second chance doesn’t necessarily mean finding an equivalent job. It might mean working part time to spend more quality time with the kids. Living into the second chances God offers us often requires that we develop a bigger imagination for what God might make of us and our stories.
This week, my challenge for you is to pray the following blessing from John O’Donahue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings. Reflect on the areas where you need a second chance. How might the second chance you are being offered be different than anything you could imagine?
For A New Beginning
In the out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plentitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.[Katherine Ebling-Frazier, Pastor of Prayer]
Join us for worship today - click here for information on worship times and locations. If you are not in the Kansas City area, you can take part in our worship via live Web stream at rezonline.org.
Download a printable version of this week's GPS.
April 17, 2016 Second Chances – Stories of Restoration and Redemption “The Man Who Lived Among the Tombs” Scripture: Luke 8:26-29
As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a certain man met him. The man was from the city and was possessed by demons. For a long time, he had lived among the tombs, naked and homeless.
When he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down before him. Then he shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” He said this because Jesus had already commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had taken possession of him, so he would be bound with leg irons and chains and placed under guard. But he would break his restraints, and the demon would force him into the wilderness.
“He threw out many demons” MONDAY 4.18.16 Mark 1:21-26; 32-34
In Jesus’ day, most of today’s medical and psychological insights into human pain didn’t exist.
Nearly all inexplicable ills were called “demon possession” (like a probable case of epilepsy reported in Mark 9:14-27). On the other hand, nothing we know about epilepsy or mental illness would automatically lead a person to rightly identify Jesus as “the holy one from God.”
The central reality is the same, however much or little we believe in literal demons. Then, and now, humans need physical, emotional and spiritual healing.
• Verse 34 used a Semitic idiom that implied that Jesus healed everyone brought to him. In his day’s view, that also took in nearly every human ailment: he healed “all kinds of diseases” and cast out “many demons.” Today, God usually works through people with human training in physical and emotional healing—but it’s still God at work. What hurt(s) do you bring to Jesus today? Are you open to whatever type of help and healing he gives you?
• Scholar N. T. Wright said Jesus came to rescue people “from the destructive forces that enslaved them. So whether it was shrieking demons, a woman with a fever or simply whatever diseases people happened to suffer from, Jesus dealt with them all…. Jesus had joined in a struggle against the forces of evil and destruction.”1 Are you ever tempted to shrug off the forces of evil that cause suffering and destruction as “the way things are”? In what ways, as a follower of Jesus, have you joined in his struggle against those forces?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, you did not stay comfortable and safe while destructive forces were loose in the world you created. Give me the caring and courage to enlist as one of your servants in working with you to heal those who hurt for any reason. Amen.
1 N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2001, 2004, p. 13.)
“A man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs”
TUESDAY 4.19.16 Mark 5:1-5
The central figure (besides Jesus) in this week’s central story lived like an animal. He was terrifyingly strong, unstable, living isolated “among the tombs,” where “he would howl and cut himself with stones.” He was not just “unemployable”—he was, for the people of his area, completely uncontrollable, except to drive him out of their environs. It’s hard to imagine a person who more urgently needed a second chance!
• This man was frightening, a violent, disturbed outcast. Yet even meeting him in a weird, scary setting (“among the tombs”), Jesus maintained his calm self-possession. What enabled Jesus to resist fear in situations that trigger it in most people? Do you believe his quiet confidence created a more supportive, safe environment for others, including this raving madman, to change their lives for the better?
• In his book Why Do Christians Shoot Their Wounded?, 1 Christian psychologist and physician Dwight Carlson showed the tragic way some Christians use a story like this to suggest that anyone experiencing a severe mental/emotional illness is out of harmony with God. Mark gave us no back story on the man, and Jesus did not condemn him—he simply healed him. How can activities like Resurrection’s Care Night (www.cor.org/carenight) make church a safer place for people experiencing mental and emotional struggles, as well as physical ailments?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, when you met a man from whom everyone else wanted to run away, you cared, and you healed. Thank you for being willing to care about and heal the parts of me that frighten even me, too. Amen.
1For a more in-depth study, see Dwight L. Carlson, Why Do Christians Shoot Their Wounded? Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994.
“Legion is my name” WEDNESDAY 4.20.16 Mark 5:6-13
Some world religions picture good and evil as equally strong, fighting eternally for supremacy.
Even some Christians become obsessed with trying to identify demonic forces, which they may portray as terribly strong. Yet when the gospels pictured demons, they always said the spirits feared Jesus and cowered before his power. The gospel writers were convinced the battle between good and evil was hopelessly one-sided for the forces of evil, that God’s power was far, far greater.
• One clear message from this story was that evil is ultimately self-destructive. The forces haunting the man, whatever their exact nature, brought him no good, but triggered selfinjurious behavior. Then, when Jesus granted the request to go into the pigs (a clear sign that he was in Gentile territory), the demons promptly destroyed their new “abode.” In what ways have you seen evil’s destructive nature, in yourself or in others you know?
• The word “Legion” was not a neutral word just meaning “a lot.” Scholar William Barclay wrote, “A legion was a Roman regiment of 6,000 troops…. The legions, at their wildest and most irresponsible, could sometimes be guilty of atrocities that would make the blood run cold.”
1 So Mark’s writing identified Roman troops with evil. What are some prominent, obvious names of evil forces today? In what ways can evil cause pain or illness, even through less obvious forces in our world?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, in the end, you healed the evil in our world by allowing the legions to do their worst to you. Send your healing, and your sacrificial spirit, into my heart. Amen.
1William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Mark, (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976, p. 119.
“They pleaded with Jesus to leave their region” THURSDAY 4.21.16 Mark 5:14-17
Those who had tended the pigs ran into town to tell the wild tale. Curious, many people came out to the area of the tombs. There they saw the man who had been such an outcast source of fear and disorder now “fully dressed and completely sane.” You’d think the response would have been, “Wonderful! How did this happen?” Instead, sadly, when they heard about the lost herd of pigs, they begged Jesus to leave their region. Apparently for them the value of some ham or bacon outweighed seeing a man restored to life and health.
• William Barclay noted that, whether there is a herd of pigs involved or not, “A frequent battle-cry of the human mind is, ‘Please don’t disturb me.’” We have an inner tendency, he observed, to dislike anything that disturbs our comfort, our possessions or our settled religious patterns and beliefs.1 When have you sensed God’s claims touching a part of life that you’d rather not have disturbed? How did you respond?
• Psychologists have observed that even positive change can make us nervous, or even depressed. So it makes a sad kind of sense that the townspeople were bothered seeing the man dressed and calm—it was not what they had grown accustomed to. What positive change would you like to see in your life? What fears are making it hard for you to actually move toward changing?
Prayer: Jesus, if I’m comfortable when I shouldn’t be, please disturb my life. And give me the courage to work with you to make the positive changes I long to see happen. Amen.
1William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Mark, (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976, pp. 122-123.
“Tell them what the Lord has done for you” FRIDAY 4.22.16 Mark 5:18-20
It made sense that the man wanted to stay with Jesus, who had healed and restored him. But a profound sense of mission had sent Jesus across the lake, and into Gentile territory, to heal a desperate man who lived among the tombs. Jesus shared that mission with the restored man, sending him back to his village to “tell them what the Lord has done for you.” Before the apostle Paul coined the phrase (cf. Galatians 2:8), the man was an apostle to the Gentiles.
• One spiritual truth that sometimes hurts is that any kind of healing God gives us is never just for our own sake. Of course God wants to see us physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy—but God also wants us to become his hands and voice to restore others to health.
Who worked with God to bring healing into your life? How can you extend that healing to others?
• The healed man, like Jesus’ apostles on the night before his crucifixion (cf. John 14-16), thought he needed to be in Jesus’ physical presence in order to experience his power. But, although God did some amazing things at the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was not non-existent until then. Do you believe Jesus’ power stayed with the man as he “began to proclaim in the Ten Cities”? Are you confident that Jesus’ power is with you today?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, you haven’t redeemed me just so I can hoard your grace and love for myself. Guide me and empower me for God’s mission in the world, which you’ve called me to join in. Amen.
“He healed them” SATURDAY 4.23.16 Matthew 4:23-24; 11:28-30
Jesus was always healing. Pastor Myron Augsburger wrote, “The man who preached radical change, who announced the kingdom, was performing deeds of mercy. He healed and restored common people to wholeness and elevated them to a sense of worth.... His ministry overcame ignorance, religious formalism, disease, and demonic attacks; it was a ministry designed to liberate and enable people to be their best in the grace of God.”
1 He didn’t limit his actions, or his call in Matthew 11, to any one type of human affliction—he offered everyone divine rest and healing.
• Certainly Jesus’ words about a “light burden” and giving us “rest” spoke to people who found themselves weighed down by a rule-bound, guilt-producing idea of what it means to serve God. But they also spoke to people whose lives were made heavy and difficult by the power and results of evil forces. In what ways is it most true of you that you are “are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads”? Hear Jesus speak to those painful, heavy realities in your life, whatever they are: “You will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.” Allow Jesus’ power to lighten your burden(s) today.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, you already know the places where I struggle and carry a heavy load. By your grace and your power, help me to move forward with the glow of your hope and grace lightening my load(s). Amen.
1 Myron S. Augsburger, The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 24: Matthew. Lloyd John Ogilvie, general editor. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1984, comment on Matthew 4:23-25.
Family Activity: Gather old newspaper or scrap paper and a large plastic container. Invite your family to use the paper to make some kind of flying object—a ball, airplane or whatever they can imagine. After everyone has created a flying object, take turns trying to throw your objects so they land in the container. Cheer and celebrate when objects land in the container.
Then allow everyone to take a “second chance” to make something different or throw again until their object lands in the container. As you are taking turns, talk about how God gives us “second chances” to do things right when we make mistakes. After everyone has gotten their object in the container, end by praying, “Thank you, God, for second chances. Amen.”
Prayer Requests
Prayers for Peace & Comfort for:
• Jim Gann and family following the death of his father, Ray Gann, 4/7
•Kim Davis and family following the death of her mother, Jaci Crumpler, 4/10
•Dave Loeffler and family following the death of his mother, Agnes Loeffler, 4/4
•Becky Thomas and family following the death of her father, Robert Redd, 3/31
•George Porter and family following the death of his wife, Sheila Porter, 4/6
• Mary Hockstad and family following the death o her father, Richard Dusenbury, 3/26
Download the GPS App
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, Kansas 66224, United States
913.897.0120
---------------------
---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment