Posts Tagged ‘Micah 6:6-8’
CONVERSION – Br. David Vryhof
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Micah 6:6-8; Luke 19:1-10
This evening we begin a five-part preaching series entitled, “Breaking the Word.” Each Tuesday in Lent we’ll be considering a different word. The words we’ve chosen – conversion, forgiveness, grace, redemption and passion – are words that we Christians use frequently but which we may not fully understand. We seldom take time to explore their meaning or to reflect on their significance for us. That’s the purpose of this series.
Tonight’s word is “conversion.” It’s a word that, for some of us, might have some mixed, or even negative, associations:
- It may elicit unpleasant memories of encounters with religious groups or individuals that make it their chief aim to convert others to their point of view.
- It may bring to mind a certain style of evangelism that strikes us as manipulative or intrusive.
- It may conjure up images of “hell-fire and brimstone” sermons, or of massive crusades in which charismatic preachers try to whip up the emotion of the crowd to affect a response to their message.
- It may remind us of people we have know who have been “converted,” but who bore witness to their conversion in remarkably unattractive ways.
As our bulletin notes, the word itself simply means “to turn around.”
Investing in Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Micah 6:6-8
Mark 7:1-13
“Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.”Mark 7:7:1-2
The criticism about Jesus’ disciples not washing their hands was not the Pharisees’ concern about the spread of germs. This is about ritual purity. The Pharisees believed that in addition to the Ten Commandments, Moses had received other commandments from God which had been communicated privately to the Pharisees down through the generations.