Opposites attract!  The maxim is undeniably true in electromagnetism.   But not reliably so for relationships.  Molecular bonds are strong and binding.  But in relationships, while opposites may attract, they often fail to form strong bonds.  Intimacy and like-mindedness are directly proportional.  The former will only increase as the latter increases. 

Opposites in personality and giftings may offer complementary strength.  But if the opposition strikes at core values the relationship is doomed. Some things can simply never coexist without destruction.   Some things just do not play nicely with others.  Despite the seeming tolerance of “COEXIST” bumper stickers, the reality is that some things are fundamentally irreconcilable. 

In fact, even that word, “coexist” unwittingly expresses the impossibility of what it aspires to promote.  To exist simultaneously, but not together.  To exist separately, tolerantly, but without any basis for exercising real love.   In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, then Wal-Mart President, Don Soderquist addressed the Information Systems Division in which I worked.  He said something that struck a chord, “Tolerance is a passive form of hatred.”

Love does not simply “coexist.”  Love recognizes that some things are not compatible.  Love does not just go along to get along.   Love draws lines, love makes new demands, love does not settle for the status quo.  As Jesus comes forth proclaiming the Gospel and the Kingdom, he draws lines, makes demands and challenges the status quo.   The Gospel of Mark finishes only one chapter before Jesus’ acclaim turns to controversy.  Jesus forgives sins, receives sinners, and explodes every self-righteous religious view of his contemporaries with the long-promised grace of God. 

Often the Law and the Gospel are set in opposition.  And to be sure there are proper distinctions, but, as Paul reminds us in Romans 3:31, “Do we overthrow the Law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”  No, it is not the Law and the Gospel which are in opposition, but it is the Gospel and “works righteousness” that are in opposition.   And they simply cannot coexist.  The confusion of Jesus’ contemporaries was that they could be justified by God through their own piety and qualified obedience to the law.  

While the Scribes and Pharisees felt the weight of God’s law, they failed to find it weighty enough.  They constructed a fence of human tradition they believed would allow them to keep it sufficiently to be declared righteous in God’s sight.  Yet Jesus would teach time and time again, “you have heard it said, but I tell you.”  And then he would take the law to the heart, where the scribal fence had gaping holes.  Jesus minced no words, calling proselytes of the scribes and the Pharisees, “twice as much a child of hell” as they were.

Grace and works-righteousness simply cannot coexist.   And the collision of these views accelerated Jesus’ controversy with the religious leaders to the point that very early they are plotting his death.   Why don’t you fast like us?   Why don’t you observe the Sabbath like us?  Why don’t you wash your hands like us?  They wanted Jesus’ teaching to conform to the shape of their dried out old wineskins.   But the Gospel explodes the old wineskins of self-righteous, works-righteousness.  And shreds the worn-out garments of grace-plus-works salvation.   The Gospel gives the joy of a wedding feast, not the sorrow of a fast. 

Join us as we examine Mark 2:18-22 and consider Jesus’ response to demands that the gospel coexist with somber, self-righteous religion.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.  

We all fear it.  We are only rarely able to relieve it.  Watching someone go through it is gut-wrenching.  Few things feel more helpless than the suffering of a loved one.  We try to stay positive and struggle to know how to help.  But we rarely have what is needed.   Sometimes only in suffering’s aftermath are we able to find a way to help others. 

In 1983 a young man named Michael Aureli wrapped his mother, suffering terribly from ovarian cancer, in a blanket and carried her to the emergency room only to hear, “There is nothing we can do.”   Her death was agonizing.  After her death he determined to find a way to do more for the suffering of the terminally ill.  In 1992 he co-founded Arkansas Hospice.  Michael’s motto was, “when you are told, ‘there is nothing we can do,’ there is more that can be done.”

Nancy Brinker’s story was similar.   When her younger sister, Susan G. Komen died at the age of 36 of breast cancer in 1980, Nancy became a tireless advocate for education and research into breast cancer and its treatment.   In 1982 she founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.  Her foundation was known for its iconic “pink ribbons” and its signature fundraising event, the Race for the Cure.  And though controversial, it has been instrumental in raising awareness and advancing research into breast cancer treatment. 

We will do almost anything to relieve the suffering of our loved ones.  Mark 2 recounts a remarkable story of four men who go to extremes to help a man crippled by palsy.  Jesus arrived home from his first preaching tour of Galilee, and it did not take long for word to get around that he was back.  The house was soon filled with both disciples and detractors.   Luke records that critics from as far away as Jerusalem were present in Jesus’ home, waiting to catch him in some condemnable heresy.   As Jesus speaks to them the Word, the four men arrive carrying their friend on a mat, confident that Jesus can heal him.

It is impossible to even get to the door, let alone through it.   But they will not be deterred.  These are men we would want in our corner and on our side.   They go up on the roof, dig through the ceiling and lower their friend in front of Jesus as he is teaching.  There is no word of request, no plaintive plea from either the friends or the invalid, no apology for the damage.  Before a word is spoken, we read that “Jesus saw their faith, [and] said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

It was a stunning moment.  The man’s suffering was much deeper than his friends knew.  They knew he was bed-bound.  But Jesus knew that a more debilitating, insidious, terminal condition bound this man.  His suffering went far deeper than his lifeless legs.  His most pressing affliction was a lifeless heart and soul.   Seeing the faith of the man and his friends, Jesus speaks words we all long to hear. “Your sins are forgiven.”

Everyone’s expectations are rocked.   The man is free, the friends confused, the scribes indignant.  What just happened?  Despite their motives, the theological instincts of the scribes are correct.  “Who can forgive sins but God alone? Why does this man speak like this?”   Why indeed?  Who is this who speaks the word with authority, who commands evil spirits, who rebukes fever and cleanses leprosy – and who forgives sins.    More is needed than healing.  And Jesus is more than a healer.  Much more.

Join us as we examine Mark 2:1-12 and consider our greatest need and the only one who can meet it. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

A poker face, a robust sense of humor, and a securely restrained tongue.  These are the go-to tools in the caregiver’s toolbox.  Caregiving is not for the faint of heart.   It costs, big-time!   No day is ever what you expect.   Just when you think you have a routine, the unexpected occurs.  And the routine is shattered.  The feeling of always being ‘on’ is draining.  Even the small respites are rarely sufficient. 

Caregiving is a physical, emotional, and spiritual roller coaster.   Yet, we give care because we love someone.   Those we care for are never just “recipients.”  We care for them because we love them, or because they have loved us, or because we have compassion for their needs. 

Caregivers speak often of relational and professional boundaries.   And those are, of course, critical.  But the reality is that when you love someone, “boundaries” are hard to maintain, mirky and mutable.  At some tangible physical, spiritual, and emotional level their crisis becomes ours. Their pain becomes ours.   Their sorrow becomes ours.  Their grief becomes ours.  Their frailty becomes ours.   We own it.  We wear it.  And it wears on us.  Like Frodo’s burden, with every step it gets heavier.

But there is one who bears us as we bear our beloved burden.  The Lord who tells us to cast our cares upon Him for He cares for us.   The prophet Isaiah declares.

 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
    all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
    carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
    and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
    I will carry and will save.” -Isaiah 46:3-4

And in speaking of Christ, Isaiah goes on to write

Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed. -Isaiah 53:3-5

The weight of compassion and caregiving often seems unbearable, but how much more was the weight of our grief and sorrow and sin, upon the sinless Son of God, the Lord Jesus?  Yet he bore it all.  He carried every grief, sorrow and sin. 

Mark’s Gospel moves quickly.  Story after story is introduced with the word ‘immediately.’   The first chapter takes us from the ministry of John the Baptists, through Jesus’ baptism and temptation, the calling of the first disciples and the inauguration of his public ministry at Capernaum.  Demons are cast out, the sick are healed, and the good news of the kingdom is proclaimed.   The King of Glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle has come in.  He is destroying the works of the devil.  He is binding the strong man.  He is liberating the captives of sin from the dominion of darkness and calling them into the kingdom of the beloved Son.

As Mark’s first chapter closes, we see Jesus working late into the night, exercising care and compassion for the people’s earthly griefs, sorrows and sicknesses.  Then we see him rise long before dawn for prayer.  The Lord Jesus’ care goes much further than broken fevers, silenced demons, and cleansed lepers.   As weighty and exhausting as Jesus’ caregiving appears in this passage, he is quick to remind us, along with his disciples, that He came not just to mitigate the symptoms of life in a fallen world, but to effect the cure.

We read in Matthew’s gospel.

Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Matthew 9:35-37

As devastating as fevers, demons, and isolating contagion are, we all face a more disastrous condition.  The Fall plunged us into an estate of sin and misery which has stripped us of any original righteousness and corrupted our whole nature.  Consequently, we lost communion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever. 

Yet the mighty One, the Lord Jesus, who with a word rebukes fevers, casts out demons, and cleanses what no physician would attempt, has come reverse the Fall and rescue us from sin, death, and hell.  And to give us abundant and eternal life!   That is good news indeed.  Have you heard it?  Have you believed it?  Have you received it?

Join us as we examine Mark 1:29-45 and consider how Jesus has come with compassion and authority to restore those who are harassed and helpless by the ravages of the Fall.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.  

Bowling?  We were both a confused by the question.  Up to this point, the nurse’s questions were routine, expected.  “Are you eating well? Sleeping well? Any pain today? Are you stressed or anxious? Do you exercise regularly?”  And then “What about bowling?”  My daughter was unsure how to respond.  I was waiting for context to give us a hand.  “Bowling? My daughter repeated.   And then the nurse articulated more carefully, “no b-u-l-l-y-i-n-g!”  Ah! Now the question made sense.

Apparently, bullying has become such an epidemic that it has found its way into the standard of care for the routine doctor’s visits of school-aged children.   But it is so new?  Most of us remember other children whose self-appointed task was to make our lives as miserable as possible for a variety of inexplicable reasons.  

For me it was a neighbor who delighted to demand I do the impossible.  Most memorable was when he told me that if I did not uproot a hundred-year-old oak tree, he would blow my house down with his cannon while my family slept.   It was a credible threat.  I had seen his toy cannon.  And I went to bed for weeks expecting to hear the fateful shot at any moment.

The bully exercises power over others without legitimate authority.  And sometimes employs legitimate authority for illegitimate tyranny.  The relationship between power and authority is sometimes hard to discern.  But it is instantly clarified when abused by either the brazen bully or the cowardly ruler who has authority but will not exercise power justly. 

The relationship between power and authority is at the root of sociology and informs our relationships and conflict management.  When relationships lack a proper balance between authority and power, we feel bullied or, perhaps, neglected.  Often counseling seeks to identify and restore a consensual balance.  While sin is a distortion of this balance.  We claim the authority that belongs to another.  Or exercise power outside the will of the One who entrusted it to us.

Jesus exercised power over the wind and the waves, over sickness, hunger, and thirst, over temptation, sin, death and the Devil and his demonic hosts.   In a moment of doubt, the imprisoned John the Baptist asked, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”

While their hearts were unbelieving, the question of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day was legitimate. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”  Jesus’ power was undeniable.  But did he have authority?  Throughout the Gospel of Mark, this question is like a beating drum.  Every time Jesus teaches, heals or casts out a demon, the crowds are astonished and exclaim, “what is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 

Who is Jesus?  What has he come to do?  And what is our response?  As Mark asks and answers these questions, they are all bound up in the larger question of Jesus’ authority.  Not only does he have power to save but he has authority.  The implications of this are tremendous.  If his word and works are authoritative, then we not only may believe them, but we must.  

Authority demands a response.  It is not enough simply to see and consider who Jesus is and what he came to do.  His authority urgently demands we respond.  What is your response to Jesus?  Have you accepted the authority of Jesus word and works?  The people of Capernaum heard and saw Jesus’ authority.  They declared it with their lips but refused to believe it with their hearts and lives.   Jesus would later say of Capernaum.

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. -Matthew 11:23-24

In Jesus we see the power and authority of God to save men from the strong-man, the prince of this world, the enemy of our souls, the accuser of the brothers, the Devil, Satan himself.  Hebrews reminds us.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. -Hebrews 2:14-15

Join us as we examine Mark 1:21-28 and consider the authority of Jesus to save and our response to it. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.  

The most rigorous theological exams are given by five-year-olds from the back seat of the car.  While we are busy navigating traffic and directions, our children are staring out at the passing world, pondering deep mysteries. They are not interested in subtlety. Only clarity.  “Where is heaven?”  “How do people get there?”  “Can we go and visit grandpa?”  And these are but the merest sampling.  

Unfortunately, our theology too often lives only in abstraction.   But children demand a theology that lives in time, space, and daily life.  When Jesus’ disciples tried to shoo children away, he rebuked them sharply. “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Children understand.  The Kingdom of God must be a real, tangible realm.  Not just an ideal or an idea.  Jesus’ preaching is centered on the kingdom of God.  It is referenced nearly a hundred times in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.   Jesus’ first sermon was about the Kingdom of God. Warning and inviting his hearers that it is near.   And we are taught to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

But where is it?  And what is it, exactly?   The Bible speaks much about the kingdom.  It is near.  It is not of this world.  It is within us.  It has citizens.   Not everyone will enter it.  Unless you are “born from above you cannot even see it.”  Old Testament saints, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have entered it.  It grows like leavening bread and mustard plants.  The gospel is called the “Gospel of the Kingdom.”  It is called both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Heaven.  It is the “kingdom of the beloved Son.”  It is like a great treasure, that when a man finds it, he will give up everything to possess it.  Other kingdoms cannot encroach upon it.  “The kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.”

But what it is?  And where is it?  The people of Jesus’ day were obsessed with the idea that the Kingdom of God was a political and national kingdom.  They hoped for a kingdom with geographic borders and nationalistic and ethnic identity.  And frankly, many people today believe the same thing.  But, as Jesus told Pilate, “[his] kingdom is not of this world.”   Yet this does not mean it is ethereal or abstract.  It has a real, mighty King who has come to bind the strong-man and plunder his real kingdom to bring glorious liberty to the real prisoners of darkness.  

And so, the imprisonment of John by a capricious, earthly, petty tyrant is not the end of budding kingdom of God.  But just the beginning.  Jesus comes at this moment proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”   And in this opening sermon and the calling of his first disciples, we learn simple lessons about the kingdom.  What it is. Where it is.  And how we enter it.  Lessons any five-year-old can understand. 

Join us as we examine Mark 1:14-20 and consider the kingdom of God.  Where is it?  What is it? And how can we enter it?    We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.