Rev. Brent L. White

Scripture: Mark 10:32-45

I’ve been to Israel on two “Holy Land” tours over the years. One item on the itinerary each time, which isn’t, strictly speaking, related to the Bible, was a tour of the ruins of Masada. Masada was a mountain fortress on the southern coast of the Dead Sea, which Herod the Great built about 30 years before Jesus was born. After Rome invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in the year 70, Jewish rebels fled to Masada… where they fought the Romans off—bravely, valiantly—from atop that mountain perch, for many months. 

But they couldn’t hold them off forever. And the Romans slowly but surely advanced up the mountain. Until literally, the night before the Romans reached them, nearly all one-thousand men, women, children committed suicide… Almost like Jonestown, if you remember that from the ’70s!

Scripture: John 11:1-6, 17-44

Today’s scripture includes the shortest verse in all of the Bible. Verse 35: “Jesus wept.” I first learned that this was the shortest verse many years ago, when I was eleven or twelve. I learned this because my friends down the street, Wes and Tim Drake, invited me to attend their church’s Vacation Bible School. I did not know Jesus as my Savior and Lord at the time, and as I now see, inviting me to their VBS was their well-intentioned effort to get me saved! So they really wanted me to go to VBS. And they were describing how much fun I would have… how much I would like it… if only I would go.

It was going to be fun, but they did warn me that there was just a tiny bit of Bible stuff… just a short Bible story, it won’t take long… And then they also warned me that their church makes kids memorize a Bible verse every day, but even that isn’t so bad. Tim said, “You can just memorize John 11:35, ‘Jesus wept.’ Just two words. And they’ll give you credit. That’s nothing!”