Nothing can destory the work done for a sermon fastern than the work of the Holy Spirit.

I was out riding my bicycle today so I could lose some of the weight that I have gained during seminary.

While I was riding, I was thinking about Mark 5:21-43, the Gospel reading for June 28, 2009. I have been drawn to three phrases of this pericope. The first phrase is “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The second is “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this.” The third phrase is “Give her something to eat.” I was also thinking what Dr. Hank Langknecht kept saying to me in class “One text, one theme, one doctrine, one image, one need, one mission.”

At first, I was first thinking that my sermon would focus on the statement “no one should know this.” Jairus and his wife knew what a person looks like when a person is sleeping, when a person is alive, and when a person is dead. They knew what was happening and what did happen to their daughter.

I was thinking that if I had a daughter, she had just died, she was brought back to life, and then I was told to be quiet by the person who brought her back to life; I would tell this person that he/she is nuts. I would not be able to keep this good news to myself. As I see it, telling Jairus and his wife not to tell anyone what just happen to their daughter is like telling the wind to stop blowing or water from being wet.

But it wasn’t just anyone who told Jairus and his wife to be quite, it was Jesus, the one who even the winds and the sea obey. It was Jesus who gave Jairus’ daughter her life back. While it is Jesus who asked the impossible, it is also Jesus who does the impossible.

I figured this would preach.

Then came my bike ride today. Sometime while the wind was in my face and my bike tires throwing mud in my face, the Holy Spirit came. (I am assuming that the Holy Spirit was in the wind – not the mud. But, who knows?)

Every time I saw something on this bike ride, the phrase “give her something to eat” kept resurfacing. When I saw a baby chipmunk having lunch near the path, “Give her something to eat.” When a bunny crossed the path right in front of me, “Give her something to eat.” When I saw a person fishing in Alum Creek, “Give her something to eat.” When I saw a family BBQ’ing, “Give her something to eat.” When I was drinking some water, “Give her something to eat.”

As I was pondering what the phrase “give her something to eat” meant for me (the requirements for life – food, water, air), an ambulance was leaving a house with its lights on and its siren blaring. Then the words “give her something to eat” once again re-emerge.

As of right now, I am not sure what to do with “give her something to eat” as it relates to my sermon, bur I am sure that I will be rewriting what I have written so far.