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Advent Devotional for Saturday, December 6
Mark 11: 27-33
We might be able to relate, at least a little, to Mark’s chief priests, scribes, and elders. We arrange, plan, and try to control our lives, especially our religious lives, by our rules, calendars, schedules, books, politics … We think we have things in pretty good order. And then we meet Jesus walking down the street a day after he has turned over tables and cleared out our temple courts. By what authority did he come into our temple, bust up the place, turn what we know upside down, and then show up again (as if he owned it)? And what will Jesus do the next time he comes around?
We know that the chief priests, scribes, and elders in this passage choose their own religious authority over the Authority that could save them from themselves, yet are we any more ready than they were to have our own worlds shaken? Are we ready to hear how we are wrong?
As we wait for the babe in the manger, let us consider the presence of our Lord here and now. When we come before him and we hear “answer me” (11:30), what will we say? I suspect the chief priests, scribes, and elders knew the right answer. But somehow they felt too much was riding on things remaining the same. “We do not know.” “Go away and let us live as we are accustomed to live.” “Let us be.” As we read the story of their fumbling, let us remember the cost of their trying to protect what they had. Spending their time trying to live as if Jesus were not who he is, they lived in precarious lies. These lies are the kind of lies that cost us ourselves. And cost Jesus the cross.
Our king is coming and has come. Let us let him into our lives and show us our foolishness. Let us let him save us.
Dearest Lord, clean our hearts so that we may more and more see who you are.
Kris Brown
Senior MDiv Student
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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