Failures For Jesus
Stories
Contents
“Failures For Jesus” by David O. Bales
“Easter’s Alternative” by David O. Bales
“Purpose and Plan” by John Fitzgerald
Failures For Jesus
by David O. Bales
Mark 16:1-8
His first day in the eastern synagogue was ending badly. “Jesus’ traveling with women isn’t the most important,” his disciple Thaddaeus said. “I’m surprised you’re stuck on this.” The men, sitting around the tiny synagogue gave no indication that his statement made any difference to them. Always before Thaddaeus found unbelief in Jesus’ resurrection to be the greatest impediment to faith. Not in this village far to the east of Judea.
An older man rose slowly. “It’s not proper,” he spoke with his hands lifting his back, “even in the countryside for women to be with men they aren’t married to. You told us Jesus traveled with men and women who weren’t married to each other. This is a scandal. We can’t accept a person who doesn’t practice basic propriety.”
Thaddaeus was about to respond, but another man stood up, younger, yet with bushy, old-man eye brows, “And we’ve heard Jesus resisted sacred things, from the sabbath to the temple. While he was still tramping around the Galilee we received word of his sacrilege. This was at least a year before news of his crucifixion reached us. We’re two weeks walk east of Judea, but we’re observant and for every festival some of our men journey to Jerusalem. A couple of them were near the temple when Jesus tossed out the animals and money changers.” He paused, cradled his chin in his hand, “I’m not pleased with animals being sold in the temple. Many others must have agreed; because the chief priests left him free for a few days. But, his practice with women isn’t proper.”
Thaddaeus was stymied. Somehow his message about Jesus’ resurrection had meandered into a side stream about Jesus’ relationship with women. The men in the synagogue were kindly enough, hospitable to another Jew, eager to hear news from beyond their small Jewish outpost. For now, he thanked them for receiving him and exited their gathering before he stirred up trouble.
After an evening of prayer he returned the next day to take a different tack. As he arrived at the assembly building, a number of women stood outside, obviously having accompanied their husbands. Thaddaeus wondered what conversations might have transpired between husbands and wives the evening before.
A few men spoke pleasantly to him as he entered their small gathering room. They led him to the front, expecting him again to speak. “Friends, thank you for receiving me today,” He said. “I’m glad you’ve come and I appreciate you brought your wives.” A young man let out a chuckle, but quickly stifled it.
“I’ve prayed about how I should fill in what you know about Jesus. I believe you’re hanging precariously on a small branch because you missed the tree’s trunk. I respectfully must state that you’re wrong about Jesus. I’m not sure how fully you know Jesus’ earthly ministry; but, strange as it might sound, we were all wrong about him during his life.
“You’ve heard of his healings and casting out demons. I told you he multiplied food for the hungry and calmed the sea for us imperiled with him in the boat. Yes, he resisted strict Sabbath restrictions but always for human good as a way of glorifying God. Yet for all his graciousness to us, our religious officials deemed him possessed and his family believed he was out of his mind. Now, this is what I think you also need to learn: We, his closest disciples, never fully understood him. He’d tell us he was going to be betrayed, suffer and be resurrected and we never caught on. We wanted him to be the grand earthly savior who’d free us from the Romans and set us on top of the world’s government. That’s the kind of kingdom we wanted God to inaugurate on earth.
“Jesus never went along with that. No matter what we wanted, he continued to care for the weak and despised or forgotten -- children, the deaf, the blind, the leper, the poorest -- and even the rich. Even Gentiles. Even women. It was because his love for us was beyond anything that had ever walked the earth. Yes, he befriended women, forgave them, cured them and they loved him and followed with us. They couldn’t help following him. No one could who felt the compassion of his heart. It wasn’t a matter anymore of sex, rank, or race. He included everyone.
“However,” Thaddaeus sighed deeply, “I’m here to report more than our being drawn to Jesus by his love and concern. I’ve come because no matter how much he cared about us, put up with us, even mediated our squabbles, in the end, as throughout his ministry, we failed him. When we could’ve stood up for him, we fled.
“And you know what? Those women who followed with us who took care of him when we didn’t, those women first at the tomb, failed Jesus also. At Jesus’ empty tomb the angel commanded them to tell us he’d been raised from the dead. Those women, who had a dozen more reasons to be grateful to Jesus for how he elevated them to the level of true children of God, fled in terror and didn’t say anything to anyone.
“We all failed him. Having been loved greatly, we failed to respond to God’s goodness.” His voice became softer, “Yet God raised Jesus from the dead to forgive us and to start the world over in a different way. I recognize your concern about women in the old world before Jesus. But in Jesus’ resurrection God started life over -- men and women, old and young, Jew and Gentile. We all fail God, but in Jesus God loves us, forgives us, and accepts us anyway. That’s the center of Jesus’ resurrection, and I pray that you’ll join in this faith and share in God’s wonderful new life.”
The men asked a few questions. Some exited the gathering. Some stayed to pray. Outside Thaddaeus noticed that the women seemed particularly eager to join their husbands to hear what they had to say about Jesus.
Preaching Point: No matter our reasons to be grateful and obedient we fail God; yet, in Jesus’ resurrection God loves and forgives us anyway.
* * *
Easter’s Alternative
by David O. Bales
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
My wife and I never thought we’d visit Washington, D.C. However, a brief opportunity in her limited health allowed us to go in September, 2015. We saw what we wanted: the Smithsonian Museum(s) and the monuments on the National Mall. We’d been in many museums before, so that part of our trip wasn’t as astounding as being on the Mall. We were overwhelmed to walk up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I’ve been a Civil War buff for 40 years. Then to be actually in the gigantic structure before the statue whose size demonstrates the significance of what Lincoln accomplished for the U.S. and the world -- at the cost of personal and national suffering.
The commotion of our fellow tourists didn’t deter me from meditating upon Lincoln and upon an event that had taken place on this site. I turned at the top of the steps and looked east as did the black contralto Marian Anderson on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. No matter her fame beyond America’s shores, much of the U.S. then was still segregated: Not only in the southern states (who’d never list her name in the newspaper as Miss Anderson), but from her home city of Philadelphia, to the finer hotels in Los Angeles, to the capital of our nation. When the Daughters of the American Revolution were requested use of their Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. for Marian Anderson to sing, they turned her down as a black person. The DAR’s stated purpose is “to cherish, maintain, and extend the institution of American freedom.”
Instead of Constitution Hall the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt and dedicated friends secured the use of the Lincoln Memorial as an alternative venue for Marian Anderson to perform an outdoor concert on that Easter Sunday. 75,000 people attended. Her first song was “America.” Her last, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” The alternative location she was forced to use became an opportunity for change of direction in the U.S.
Who could miss the comparison between her efforts and Lincoln’s and of God in Jesus? For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection was the huge alternative that God brought about from the suffering of Jesus’ crucifixion, the great alternative to human ignorance, prejudice, and sin. Jesus was the alternative from Paul’s life of legalism, an alternative Paul experienced inside himself and into the whole world.
Jesus was killed, certified dead, carefully buried. Then here he was again, alive and meeting people, heaven’s alternative walking, talking, eating, and teaching again about God’s love. He was God’s new start. Now instead of fear, faith. Instead of sin, forgiveness. Instead of hate, love.
People still trek to Jerusalem to be near the place God’s grand alternative burst from the tomb and into all of history. Having visited Jerusalem, my experience at the Lincoln Memorial was similar. Here again, even in the U.S., Jesus’ resurrection could be experienced as a chance for individuals and whole cultures to start over. In his Gettysburg Address Lincoln called it “a new birth of freedom.”
We can change, as did the DAR. Having recovered from shame and embarrassment, finally in a World War II relief concert the DAR invited Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall and persons of all colors were allowed to attend. Thus the alternative of God’s new world in Jesus continued in human history. Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator driven by a biblical faith, knew how it works and what it costs. When during the Civil War a fiery patriot rebuked him for referring to Southerners not as foes to be exterminated but as erring humans, he responded, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Jesus’ resurrection was God’s announcement of an alternative of grace. Jesus’ resurrection proclaims that God deals with our evil with love, wipes out our sin by forgiveness, and makes us friends though we might have been enemies before. Jesus’ resurrection remains God’s eternal alternative in any venue. God’s grace changes things, no matter the suffering involved. We don’t have to continue our hates, prejudices and sins. No matter the suffering involved in Jesus’ life, or Lincoln’s, or Marian Anderson’s, God offers the alternative of new, eternal life.
When on Easter Sunday we sing of Jesus’ resurrection, we celebrate God’s wonderful alternative offered to the world in a Jerusalem garden, and on Paul’s disrupted journey to Damascus, and at a concert’s change of venue necessitated by ancient hates and fears. If I couldn’t be in my local church on Easter Sunday, I’d rather be standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial celebrating God’s repeating the alternative of grace. I wouldn’t even have to hear the music.
Preaching Point: Because of Jesus’ resurrection people no longer need to remain in the old ways of prejudice, hate and sin.
* * *
Purpose and Plan
by John Fitzgerald
Acts 10:34-43
The scriptures proclaim that God has a purpose and plan for every human being. It is not by chance or accident that you or I are born into the world at this particular time and place. Jesus has been dreaming and scheming about us since the foundations of our universe
Sometimes we lose sight of a basic premise that God has willed us into being. Our life is thrown a curve ball and we end up going in directions that are outside of divine will. If this has happened to you, take heart. You are in good company. A brief look at characters found in the Bible demonstrate that everyone at some point has problems discovering the Lord’s purpose. When examining scripture consider these facts:
Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Isaiah preached naked
Jonah ran from God
Peter denied Christ
Timothy was too young
Disciples fell asleep while praying
Lazarus was dead
Each person has a predicament that only God can overcome. People in biblical times had the same kind of challenges we face today. The hope of Jesus is our only way of realizing the intended purpose of God.
In our scripture reading, Peter is preaching the essence of why Jesus came into this world. God had a plan for Jesus to accomplish. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter are all part of the events which God prepared for his son to partake in.
The key verses from our biblical passage are taken from Acts 10: 39-40: “We are witnesses of everything he (Jesus) did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead and on the third day and caused him to be seen.”
Easter Sunday is a glorious affirmation of God’s plan fulfilled by Jesus. Christ is no longer in the grave, but has conquered death and offers us a gift of eternal life shared with him. Our message today is: Christ the Lord has Risen Today!
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 1, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Failures For Jesus” by David O. Bales
“Easter’s Alternative” by David O. Bales
“Purpose and Plan” by John Fitzgerald
Failures For Jesus
by David O. Bales
Mark 16:1-8
His first day in the eastern synagogue was ending badly. “Jesus’ traveling with women isn’t the most important,” his disciple Thaddaeus said. “I’m surprised you’re stuck on this.” The men, sitting around the tiny synagogue gave no indication that his statement made any difference to them. Always before Thaddaeus found unbelief in Jesus’ resurrection to be the greatest impediment to faith. Not in this village far to the east of Judea.
An older man rose slowly. “It’s not proper,” he spoke with his hands lifting his back, “even in the countryside for women to be with men they aren’t married to. You told us Jesus traveled with men and women who weren’t married to each other. This is a scandal. We can’t accept a person who doesn’t practice basic propriety.”
Thaddaeus was about to respond, but another man stood up, younger, yet with bushy, old-man eye brows, “And we’ve heard Jesus resisted sacred things, from the sabbath to the temple. While he was still tramping around the Galilee we received word of his sacrilege. This was at least a year before news of his crucifixion reached us. We’re two weeks walk east of Judea, but we’re observant and for every festival some of our men journey to Jerusalem. A couple of them were near the temple when Jesus tossed out the animals and money changers.” He paused, cradled his chin in his hand, “I’m not pleased with animals being sold in the temple. Many others must have agreed; because the chief priests left him free for a few days. But, his practice with women isn’t proper.”
Thaddaeus was stymied. Somehow his message about Jesus’ resurrection had meandered into a side stream about Jesus’ relationship with women. The men in the synagogue were kindly enough, hospitable to another Jew, eager to hear news from beyond their small Jewish outpost. For now, he thanked them for receiving him and exited their gathering before he stirred up trouble.
After an evening of prayer he returned the next day to take a different tack. As he arrived at the assembly building, a number of women stood outside, obviously having accompanied their husbands. Thaddaeus wondered what conversations might have transpired between husbands and wives the evening before.
A few men spoke pleasantly to him as he entered their small gathering room. They led him to the front, expecting him again to speak. “Friends, thank you for receiving me today,” He said. “I’m glad you’ve come and I appreciate you brought your wives.” A young man let out a chuckle, but quickly stifled it.
“I’ve prayed about how I should fill in what you know about Jesus. I believe you’re hanging precariously on a small branch because you missed the tree’s trunk. I respectfully must state that you’re wrong about Jesus. I’m not sure how fully you know Jesus’ earthly ministry; but, strange as it might sound, we were all wrong about him during his life.
“You’ve heard of his healings and casting out demons. I told you he multiplied food for the hungry and calmed the sea for us imperiled with him in the boat. Yes, he resisted strict Sabbath restrictions but always for human good as a way of glorifying God. Yet for all his graciousness to us, our religious officials deemed him possessed and his family believed he was out of his mind. Now, this is what I think you also need to learn: We, his closest disciples, never fully understood him. He’d tell us he was going to be betrayed, suffer and be resurrected and we never caught on. We wanted him to be the grand earthly savior who’d free us from the Romans and set us on top of the world’s government. That’s the kind of kingdom we wanted God to inaugurate on earth.
“Jesus never went along with that. No matter what we wanted, he continued to care for the weak and despised or forgotten -- children, the deaf, the blind, the leper, the poorest -- and even the rich. Even Gentiles. Even women. It was because his love for us was beyond anything that had ever walked the earth. Yes, he befriended women, forgave them, cured them and they loved him and followed with us. They couldn’t help following him. No one could who felt the compassion of his heart. It wasn’t a matter anymore of sex, rank, or race. He included everyone.
“However,” Thaddaeus sighed deeply, “I’m here to report more than our being drawn to Jesus by his love and concern. I’ve come because no matter how much he cared about us, put up with us, even mediated our squabbles, in the end, as throughout his ministry, we failed him. When we could’ve stood up for him, we fled.
“And you know what? Those women who followed with us who took care of him when we didn’t, those women first at the tomb, failed Jesus also. At Jesus’ empty tomb the angel commanded them to tell us he’d been raised from the dead. Those women, who had a dozen more reasons to be grateful to Jesus for how he elevated them to the level of true children of God, fled in terror and didn’t say anything to anyone.
“We all failed him. Having been loved greatly, we failed to respond to God’s goodness.” His voice became softer, “Yet God raised Jesus from the dead to forgive us and to start the world over in a different way. I recognize your concern about women in the old world before Jesus. But in Jesus’ resurrection God started life over -- men and women, old and young, Jew and Gentile. We all fail God, but in Jesus God loves us, forgives us, and accepts us anyway. That’s the center of Jesus’ resurrection, and I pray that you’ll join in this faith and share in God’s wonderful new life.”
The men asked a few questions. Some exited the gathering. Some stayed to pray. Outside Thaddaeus noticed that the women seemed particularly eager to join their husbands to hear what they had to say about Jesus.
Preaching Point: No matter our reasons to be grateful and obedient we fail God; yet, in Jesus’ resurrection God loves and forgives us anyway.
* * *
Easter’s Alternative
by David O. Bales
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
My wife and I never thought we’d visit Washington, D.C. However, a brief opportunity in her limited health allowed us to go in September, 2015. We saw what we wanted: the Smithsonian Museum(s) and the monuments on the National Mall. We’d been in many museums before, so that part of our trip wasn’t as astounding as being on the Mall. We were overwhelmed to walk up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I’ve been a Civil War buff for 40 years. Then to be actually in the gigantic structure before the statue whose size demonstrates the significance of what Lincoln accomplished for the U.S. and the world -- at the cost of personal and national suffering.
The commotion of our fellow tourists didn’t deter me from meditating upon Lincoln and upon an event that had taken place on this site. I turned at the top of the steps and looked east as did the black contralto Marian Anderson on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. No matter her fame beyond America’s shores, much of the U.S. then was still segregated: Not only in the southern states (who’d never list her name in the newspaper as Miss Anderson), but from her home city of Philadelphia, to the finer hotels in Los Angeles, to the capital of our nation. When the Daughters of the American Revolution were requested use of their Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. for Marian Anderson to sing, they turned her down as a black person. The DAR’s stated purpose is “to cherish, maintain, and extend the institution of American freedom.”
Instead of Constitution Hall the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt and dedicated friends secured the use of the Lincoln Memorial as an alternative venue for Marian Anderson to perform an outdoor concert on that Easter Sunday. 75,000 people attended. Her first song was “America.” Her last, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” The alternative location she was forced to use became an opportunity for change of direction in the U.S.
Who could miss the comparison between her efforts and Lincoln’s and of God in Jesus? For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection was the huge alternative that God brought about from the suffering of Jesus’ crucifixion, the great alternative to human ignorance, prejudice, and sin. Jesus was the alternative from Paul’s life of legalism, an alternative Paul experienced inside himself and into the whole world.
Jesus was killed, certified dead, carefully buried. Then here he was again, alive and meeting people, heaven’s alternative walking, talking, eating, and teaching again about God’s love. He was God’s new start. Now instead of fear, faith. Instead of sin, forgiveness. Instead of hate, love.
People still trek to Jerusalem to be near the place God’s grand alternative burst from the tomb and into all of history. Having visited Jerusalem, my experience at the Lincoln Memorial was similar. Here again, even in the U.S., Jesus’ resurrection could be experienced as a chance for individuals and whole cultures to start over. In his Gettysburg Address Lincoln called it “a new birth of freedom.”
We can change, as did the DAR. Having recovered from shame and embarrassment, finally in a World War II relief concert the DAR invited Marian Anderson to sing in Constitution Hall and persons of all colors were allowed to attend. Thus the alternative of God’s new world in Jesus continued in human history. Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator driven by a biblical faith, knew how it works and what it costs. When during the Civil War a fiery patriot rebuked him for referring to Southerners not as foes to be exterminated but as erring humans, he responded, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Jesus’ resurrection was God’s announcement of an alternative of grace. Jesus’ resurrection proclaims that God deals with our evil with love, wipes out our sin by forgiveness, and makes us friends though we might have been enemies before. Jesus’ resurrection remains God’s eternal alternative in any venue. God’s grace changes things, no matter the suffering involved. We don’t have to continue our hates, prejudices and sins. No matter the suffering involved in Jesus’ life, or Lincoln’s, or Marian Anderson’s, God offers the alternative of new, eternal life.
When on Easter Sunday we sing of Jesus’ resurrection, we celebrate God’s wonderful alternative offered to the world in a Jerusalem garden, and on Paul’s disrupted journey to Damascus, and at a concert’s change of venue necessitated by ancient hates and fears. If I couldn’t be in my local church on Easter Sunday, I’d rather be standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial celebrating God’s repeating the alternative of grace. I wouldn’t even have to hear the music.
Preaching Point: Because of Jesus’ resurrection people no longer need to remain in the old ways of prejudice, hate and sin.
* * *
Purpose and Plan
by John Fitzgerald
Acts 10:34-43
The scriptures proclaim that God has a purpose and plan for every human being. It is not by chance or accident that you or I are born into the world at this particular time and place. Jesus has been dreaming and scheming about us since the foundations of our universe
Sometimes we lose sight of a basic premise that God has willed us into being. Our life is thrown a curve ball and we end up going in directions that are outside of divine will. If this has happened to you, take heart. You are in good company. A brief look at characters found in the Bible demonstrate that everyone at some point has problems discovering the Lord’s purpose. When examining scripture consider these facts:
Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Isaiah preached naked
Jonah ran from God
Peter denied Christ
Timothy was too young
Disciples fell asleep while praying
Lazarus was dead
Each person has a predicament that only God can overcome. People in biblical times had the same kind of challenges we face today. The hope of Jesus is our only way of realizing the intended purpose of God.
In our scripture reading, Peter is preaching the essence of why Jesus came into this world. God had a plan for Jesus to accomplish. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter are all part of the events which God prepared for his son to partake in.
The key verses from our biblical passage are taken from Acts 10: 39-40: “We are witnesses of everything he (Jesus) did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead and on the third day and caused him to be seen.”
Easter Sunday is a glorious affirmation of God’s plan fulfilled by Jesus. Christ is no longer in the grave, but has conquered death and offers us a gift of eternal life shared with him. Our message today is: Christ the Lord has Risen Today!
*****************************************
StoryShare, April 1, 2018, issue.
Copyright 2018 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
