Day of Praise

Fr, 01/17/14, my Mom's birthday, "Day of Praise"

John 6:59-61 - "Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, 'This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?' But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, 'Do you take offense at this?'"

So let's have a little fun. When Jesus talked, many responded with "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" In other words, they said, "Do I really have to listen to this? Cut me some slack, Jesus!" As a pastor, I hear a lot of that; ya know, asking for slack. As a person, a sinner, I do a lot of that; ya know, asking for slack.

Slack is not helpful when you're talking about the words of life from Jesus Christ. We need the life that Jesus is willing to give.

So here's where the fun comes in. Jesus is trying to teach us how to listen to his words of life. We're asking for slack. So let's say that "slack" is an acronym; S-L-A-C-K all stand for some word that gets in the way of our listening. For example, "K" stands for "Know-it-all". When we think we know it all, we don't listen to Jesus or anybody else.

I'm preaching on this on Sunday, so I've already come up with my "S" is for "S_____", and so on for each letter in SLACK. But what would you say? What keeps you/us from listening to Jesus? Does "S" stand for "Schedule"? And "L" for "Lack" of time?

Let's see what we all come up with. I'll compile the list and send it back out to all of you next week.

And while we're thinking about all our reasons to not listen to Jesus, let's also lay them before the Lord, asking Him to forgive us and to give us a new appetite for his word, which is always the word of life. And God will give us that appetite so we can eat!

Praise God!


Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson