Desperate Faith

Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 28, 2009, Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B
Mark 5:21-43

Someone once said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”  In this morning’s Gospel Lesson from Mark, we meet two desperate people facing desperate times.  The first was Jairus, one of the synagogue rulers.  We know his name because he was a highly respected leader perched on the upper crust of Jewish society.  Yet, despite his power, his influence, his connections and his resources, he was helpless in the face of his twelve-year-old daughter’s progressing illness.  Jairus had access to all the best medical care of his day, but they didn’t work out and his daughter’s life was rapidly slipping away.  One wouldn’t blame Jairus if he had resigned himself to his daughter’s death, for in his culture, daughters were not valued as sons.  But she must have been a very special child, the apple of his eye.  Now, he had heard about a faith healer from the podunk town of Nazareth, who, by all reports, was casting out demons and performing miraculous healings.  Talk about alternative medicine!  All the doctors Jairus had talked to thought Jesus was a quack, and all his friends on the synagogue ruling council said that they wouldn’t be caught dead getting help from an uneducated, hick-town preacher.  But Jairus was desperate, and for his beloved daughter, he would try anything.  So when he heard that Jesus was arriving to town from the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Lake of Gennesaret, he decided to leave his dying daughter’s side for one final, desperate mission.

Mysterious Growth

Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 14, 2009, Second Sunday After Pentecost, Year B
Mark 4:26-34

I’ve got a question for you this morning.  How many of you have a garden or a farm?  That’s great!  I admire people who can take simple seed and plant and grow beautiful flowers and tasty crops.  As summer officially arrives next Sunday, we are at the height of the growing season.  Farmers and gardeners are eagerly waiting for signs of a coming harvest – like tomatoes, vegetables, cotton and wheat.  In Jesus’ day, since they didn’t have packaged and frozen foods shipped from half-way around the world, everyone eagerly awaited the arrival of the growing season because that meant that pretty soon, they would have fresh produce on the table and harvested grain to turn into flour for bread.  Jesus used this familiar agricultural image of planting and growing to teach his disciples what the kingdom of God is like.

Do we really know what the kingdom of God is like?  That term is mentioned 53 times in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John, and the phrase the “kingdom of heaven” is mentioned 32 times in the Gospel of Matthew.  Obviously, this is an important concept for Jesus and the early church.  For a long time, I thought of the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven as a physical place – you know, hovering somewhere up there, lined with streets of gold with angels playing harps.  But as I examined the Gospels closer, almost every time Jesus described the kingdom of God, he used earthly and earthy images, not to describe a physical place we go to when we die, but a realm in the midst of earthly matters that is under the reigning power and authority of God.

Do we really know what the kingdom of God is like? 

A Saving Mystery

Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 7, 2009, Trinity Sunday, Year B
John 3:1-17

My name is Nicodemus.  This morning, I want to share with you my story and my strange but memorable encounter with Jesus late one night.  But first, let me tell you about my credentials: First, I’m a member of the Pharisees, which means that I’m a smart and learned man, a scholar of Jewish law.  Second, I’m a member of the Jewish ruling council, which means that I am seen as a leader in my religious community.  I have authority and power to make decisions and I’m very concerned about the future of my community’s faith.

It was my concern for the faith that got me interested in Jesus.  You see, I first heard about Jesus when he drove out the money changers in the Temple at Jerusalem.  It was all over the news and so many members of the Jewish ruling council were furious at what he did.  I however, was also intrigued – not so much by what he did, but by what he said.  He said to the money changers as he overturned their tables: “Get these out of here!  How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”  What could he have meant to describe the Temple as his Father’s house?  Isn’t that blasphemous?  But then I saw all the miraculous signs he was doing and how many people believed in his name.  So I decided to visit him and get to the bottom of this mystery.

One night, I went to see Jesus.  I went under the cover of darkness because I did not want my colleagues to know.