Jesus Chose Both (Mark 5:21-43)
This week at Grace, we're going to talk about Mark 5:21-43, a passage with two intertwined healing stories. The two women (one young, one older) are both in desperate need of Jesus' healing touch. Yet the situation makes it seem like he will need to choose one or the other.
In this powerful account, Jesus challenges the expectations of his time (and ours) that the goodness of God is limited to either me or you, the powerful or the outcast, even the living or the dead.
I'm eager to talk with you about this passage that I love and marvel together at Jesus' goodness, power, and love.
In Christ,
Pastor Bob
25 For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.
35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him.
- Mark 4:25-36