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| Summary: In today’s Gospel, words from Isaiah are applied by the Lord Jesus to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who, as Jesus says, “leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8).
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| Summary: The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) strongly believes that junk food is dangerous to one’s health. You don’t need to be a foodie, the agency says, but you shouldn’t be a junkie either. But in today’s scripture reading, Jesus seems to disagree. He has a radical theory about what truly makes us sick. |
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| Summary: The Pharisees of Jesus’ time took the Mosaic law seriously and tried to protect it. Unfortunately, the practices of some, like those in today’s gospels, led Christians to caricature all of them. Jesus’ criticisms of some Pharisaic practices were a source of Christian insistence that works don’t save us. That might produce a caricature of Christians who don’t care about good works. But while God doesn’t need our good works, our neighbor does. |
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| Summary: What defiles us does not come from outside of us. Its origins are usually within us. This teaching of Jesus isn’t about food or outdated ritual. It hits us right where we live, just as hard as it did back then. |
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| Summary: Not everything is as it seems to be at first sight. The Pharisees prided themselves on keeping the rules and assumed that this made them superior. Jesus, however, was not impressed by the moral measure that they used to justify themselves and to judge harshly those who failed to follow their example. His response to their arrogance gives us a framework by which we can determine our relationship with him. |
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| Summary: Not everything is as it seems to be at first sight. The Pharisees prided themselves on keeping the rules and assumed that this made them superior. Jesus, however, was not impressed by the moral measure that they used to justify themselves and to judge harshly those who failed to follow their example. His response to their arrogance gives us a framework by which we can determine our relationship with him. |
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| Summary: We each carry within us sinful impulses, and things and people outside of us can bring this darkness to the surface. Empty ritual does not prepare us for the battle with temptation but with God’s help, we can heal what lies within us and gain strength to face a world that sometimes calls out the worst in us. With grace, ritual becomes a means of feeding our souls. |
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| Summary: The incident here foreshadows 1 Corinthians 13, in that we see love, hope and faith in action. We learn further that a community of friends overflowing with faith, hope and love is not sufficient unto itself. One thing is still needed: personal encounter, personal interaction, with Jesus. Put community and personal encounter together, and there will be a movement that tells the world about the Gospel. |
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| Summary: In healing the deaf man, Jesus restored him to wholeness, community and perhaps to worship. This act of healing represents the incursion of God’s kingdom, which will be marked by wholeness, peace and justice, into God’s broken creation. |
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| Summary: Jesus met a man confined by his impediments to a silent, frustrating situation. The man’s mind was fine, but there was no way for him to get what was in it out to the world around him. Jesus changed all that and gave him a way out. Even when we’re trapped in situations of birth, disease, accident or prisons of our own making, Jesus offers hope and a way out. |
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| Summary: We can learn by watching the Great Physician, and perhaps prove to be his assistant. |
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| Summary: Faith in God is a vital component of our lives and of our courage. That was modeled for us in the action of a Gentile woman of the New Testament who convinced Jesus of her faith and thus saved her daughter. She reminds us that faith in God is a foundation for courage and love, and that with that kind of faith, Jesus can accomplish miracles in our lives. |
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| Summary: When Jesus healed the man who was deaf, he also restored him to wholeness, to his community and to relationship with God. God’s surprising grace comes into our lives as well, restoring us in ways that we never expected. |
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| Summary: Just as speech and participation in the conversation of life is a primary way we express our personal identity, so, too, speech and participation in the conversation of life is a primary way we express our identity as followers of Jesus Christ. |
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| Summary: Hearing requires more than having ears. There are and have always been those with ears to hear but they do not hear. Perhaps such deafness can be attributed to the fact that we tune out what we do not wish to hear. The deaf man in today’s gospel could be healed, because he could admit that he did not hear. Such an admission might also be the beginning of our personal and collective hearing. |
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| There are 15 sermons in your results. |
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