Dear Family at Christ Community,

This Sunday we will hear Jesus’s warning about the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod from Mark 8:11-21. Commentators contextualize these leavens as religious doubts about the Lordship of Jesus and worldly fears born of political circumstances. I suspect that most of us have wrestled (or are wrestling) with one or both these concerns. It may look something like this: If Jesus is truly Lord and King, then why are so many things going wrong and so many things so profoundly broken? Confessionally, I’ve been wrestling with this question lately with all that’s been going on near and far.

In God’s providence, I read Psalm 73 recently.  It struck me in a way that it hadn’t before. Asaph, the Psalmist, wrestles with the prosperity of the wicked who actively oppose God. The conclusion of the Psalm hit home in a new way. Asaph writes in verse 28, “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of your works.” The Holy Spirit convicted me of spending too much of my time entertaining the evidence that calls Jesus’s Lordship into question and staring into the abyss that declares this world is going to hell in a handbasket. The leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod had made its way into too much of what I’ve been consuming and was deforming my heart. My nearness to God and ability to recount His good works started to feel malnourished. I could also sense my heart growing harder and my hope waning. I found myself hungering for some good news!

In preparing for the sermon on Mark 8:11-21, I kept coming back to Jesus’s declaration in John 6:35-40:

³⁵ Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. ³⁶ But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. ³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. ⁴⁰ For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Though He doesn’t say this directly to the disciples who think not having enough bread is a greater concern than what they’re consuming that (de)forms their hearts and minds, Jesus calls them to recognize that He alone is the bread of life. Their union with Him proves to be the most important truth for them (and us) to know! It serves as the only nourishing antidote to their (and our) doubts and fears.

We have the opportunity this Sunday to be reminded of who and Whose we are in Christ. Please pray that our hearts will be tendered and nourished by the Word read, prayed, confessed, sung, preached, and offered to us in the Lord’s Table. May worship help us to fix our eyes not on the things of the earth but on Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father as Lord and King!

In Christ,
Cameron