Sermon: Weldon D. Nisly
TITLE: The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark
THEME: God’s faithfulness calling us to Word & Table
TEXTS: Mark 1:1-15;
INTRODUCTION – Gathering the people & telling The Story
One of my favorite biblical storytellers, John Shea, often reminds us that in worship we:
Gather the people,
Tell the Story,
Break the bread.
I know of no simpler or fuller way to speak of worship then to “gather the people, tell The Story, and break the bread.”
We express these three “movements” of worship through scripture and song and silence and prayer and enactment. Our worship of God as the gathered community, telling The Story, and breaking bread is a sacred endeavor glorifying and encountering God in a real time and place with real people.
God is both the source and summit of our worship. God is present and at work making holy what we are and do. Our words and silence and action in worship become more than mere words and silence and action.
They become the sacrament of the Word and the sacrament of the Table which we hear and celebrate today.
Listen then to The Story as the Word of God from
Mark’s Gospel.
Bread
The seeds of life.
The blessings pour from the clouds,
Oh sweet rain.
Movement, sprouting
Your light, growth and development
From the earth, nutrients,
Community,
The richness of those gone before me
What wonder-full soil.
Harvest, time now to become loaf.
Patti Pansa
March 11, 2002
Soul of the Executive
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 9/1/02 – p. 2
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Chosen One of God.
As it is written
in the book of the prophet Isaiah,
"See, I
am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will
prepare your way;
the voice of
one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the
way of the Lord,
make the
Lord’s paths straight,'"
Then John the baptizer appeared in the
wilderness,
proclaiming a
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
And people from the whole Judean countryside
and all the people
of Jerusalem
were going
out to John,
and were
baptized by him in the river Jordan,
confessing
their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel's hair,
with a leather
belt around his waist,
and he ate locusts
and wild honey.
John proclaimed,
"After me
comes one who is more powerful than I;
One whose sandals
I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
I baptize you
with water;
but he will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of
Galilee
and was baptized
by John in the Jordan.
And just as he was coming up out of the
water,
he saw the heavens
torn apart
and the Spirit
descending like a dove on him.
And a voice came from heaven,
"You are my
Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
And immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out
into the wilderness.
He was in the
wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;
and wild beasts
were with him;
and the angels
waited on him.
Now after John was arrested,
Jesus came to
Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,
and saying,
"The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;
repent, and
believe in the good news."
SMC sermon – WDNisly – 9/1/02 – p. 3
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Jesus called disciples to come and follow…..not believe this doctrine or say it that way…
….Healing and teaching and telling stories and parables….The
conflict mounts quickly and sharply around Jesus. It comes from religious leaders and from his
family….The people around him say he is demented and the leaders say he
is demon-possessed. They try to quiet Jesus or at least to get
him under their control. But Jesus will not cease and will not be
controlled.
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Then his mother and his brothers came;
and standing
outside, they sent to him and called him.
A crowd was sitting around Jesus; and they
said to him,
"Your mother
and your brothers and sisters are outside,
asking for
you."
And Jesus replied,
"Who are my
mother and my brothers?"
And looking at those who sat around him, he
said,
"Here are my
mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the
will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
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Mark 4:1-9….Parable of the Sower
Again Jesus began to teach beside the sea.
Such a very large
crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there,
while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land.
Jesus began to teach them many things in
parables,
and in
his teaching he said to them:
"Listen! A sower went out
to sow.
And as he sowed,
some seed fell on the path,
and the birds
came and ate it up.
Other seed fell on
rocky ground, where it did not have much soil,
and it sprang
up quickly, since it had no depth of soil.
And when the
sun rose, it was scorched;
and since it
had no root, it withered away.
Other seed fell
among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.
Other seed fell
into good soil and brought forth grain,
growing up
and increasing and yielding
thirty and
sixty and a hundredfold."
And Jesus said, "Let anyone with ears to
hear listen!"
SMC
sermon – WDNisly – 9/1/02 – p. 4
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The apostles gathered around Jesus,
and told him all
that they had done and taught.
Jesus said to them,
"Come away to a deserted place all by
yourselves and rest a while."
For many were
coming and going,
and they had no
leisure even to eat.
And they went away in the boat to a deserted
place by themselves.
Now many saw them going and recognized them,
and they hurried
there on foot from all the towns
and arrived ahead
of them.
As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd;
and he had
compassion for them,
because they were
like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began
to teach them many things.
When it grew late, his disciples came to him
and said,
"This is a
deserted place, and the hour is now very late;
send the people
away so that they may go into the surrounding
country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat."
But Jesus answered them,
"You give
them something to eat."
The disciples said to him,
"Are we to go
and buy two hundred denarii [dollars] worth of bread,
and give it to
them to eat?"
Jesus said to them,
"How many
loaves have you? Go and see."
When they had found out, they said,
"Five, and two fish."
Then Jesus ordered them to get all the people
to sit down in
groups on the green grass.
So they sat down
in groups of hundreds and of fifties.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he
looked up to heaven,
and blessed and
broke the loaves,
and gave them to
his disciples to set before the people;
and he divided the
two fish among them all.
And all ate and were filled;
and they took up twelve baskets full of
broken pieces and of the fish.
Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five
thousand people.
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This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Whoever has ears to hear listen!