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God Doesn’t Care…

Read Mark 14:53-15:40

…He suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died, and was buried.

So goes a small phrase of the Apostles’ Creed, an early memory device taught to people to encapsulate the Christian faith in a few brief words. Today when churches and organizations write statements of faith they are normally wordy, not pithy. That is the result of over thinking and unlimited paper.

The Apostles’ Creed works on an economy of words. There is much of Jesus life that is not mentioned: no miracles, no healings, no excorcisms, no teaching, and no baptism. Not every Christian denomination or group uses the Apostle’s Creed (“We have no creed but JESUS!”), but you might be hard pressed to find a group of Christians that can not agree with at least 95% of the creed.

Christianity has always been a faith that is rooted in a specific, verifiable, historical time. Pontius Pilate is mentioned outside of the Bible in documents that still exist. He was a real person who had imperial responsibilities in a region that included Jerusalem during the years in and around 30 CE.

This is archaeological evidence of the existence of Pontius Pilate

Of course the Apostles’ Creed doesn’t say why Jesus was crucified. The creed is not an evangelism tool, it’s function is not to convince someone of the faith, but rather to be an acknowledgement of the faith by a believer.

This blog has been a project that has taken far too long to work through the Gospel of Mark. It is also been primarily aimed at someone who already knows about Jesus and who he is. For better or worse that is how it has played itself out.

The title of this post is a shorthand. “God Doesn’t Care…” That ellipsis is your clue. The rest of the sentiment is as much as we do about the things that we care about.

Why did Jesus have to die? Because people care way too much about the wrong things. Here are a list of the wrong things that Jesus did during his public ministry that led him to being arrested, beaten, and turned over to the Roman authorities for capital punishment.

  1. He healed people on the Sabbath, in other words he felt it was more important to do good on the day of rest than to blindly honor the day of rest.
  2. He ate with outcasts and people whom the “good” people of society deemed to be on the outside. He cared more about a community that ever expanded with mercy and grace at its center than the lines and boundaries that were drawn between people.
  3. He was willing to be in contact with lepers, blind people, children, and women who were menstruating. Not one person was ever unclean in his eyes.
  4. He called out religious leaders and people who came up with narrow interpretations of God’s law to make it ever harder and harder for people to feel a part of good society as the real vipers and sinners.
  5. He openly questioned whether station in society mattered, whether wealth and success equaled the blessing of God, and if making money off of poor people through burdensome taxes, bad exchange rates at the temple, and other forms of organized corruption were just.
  6. He suggested that the religious authorities of his day might value their positions of honor more than their piety.

That list can go on and on. Interestingly enough he did not openly question the authority of the Roman Empire to rule over the traditional land of Israel. In fact, he told people that they should do whatever a roman soldier asked and more. Jesus was even quoted as suggesting that the taxes paid were to be paid because they were Caesar’s due. To get Rome to put him to death the local authorities of Jerusalem had to convince Pilate that Jesus was seditious and claimed to be the King of the Jews.

So why does he have to die? As I mentioned above the Apostle’s Creed leaves the stuff of Jesus life out and focuses on the fact that he “was crucified dead and was buried.” Now to be clear all of the things that Jesus did in that list of 6 were good things and worthy of our attention and response. Those 6 things are simply not reason enough for the only begotten Son of God to die.

Many Christians think that they are reason enough. I suspect that they have a view of Jesus that makes him like Ghandi or Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. namely a peace-loving person who speaks truth to power and becomes a threat to the powers that be and therefore must be stopped. That is often the fate of the person who bucks the system; crushed by the machinations of power to maintain the status quo. I suggest that is also too little a reason for Jesus death.

Later in Apostles Creed after the section on Jesus there is a brief litany of doctrines that the Christian believes in: “I believe in the holy, catholic church (little C), the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

This is the part that the other Christians emphasize. Jesus is not just some worthy do-gooder who runs afoul of the authorities. That’s no savior for the world. For these Christians, the death of Jesus is about the forgiveness of sins. It is safe to say that for them the death of Jesus is ONLY about the forgiveness of sins.

That forgiveness would include the things I mentioned above in that list of 6 things that Jesus did to cause trouble; however, they tend to focus on the things that people do individually that violate the 10 commandments. So, under that formulation, Jesus’ death pays the penalty for all who believe in Jesus for their murders, lies, adulteries, stealing, idolatry, and coveting. They say that Jesus dies to free each of us from the penalty of our sin which is death. His death provides a means to be right with God because his blood is shed for us vicariously and becomes our substitute in judgment.

Apologies for oversimplifying some really important theological concepts. Truth be told though, this idea of why Jesus had to die is also too small. In some ways it is arrogance to suggest that the reason that the Son of God has to die is because I got in trouble in the second grade for bringing a toy car to school, had it taken up by the teacher, months later took it back from her desk, and lied when she asked if I had taken it out of her desk. (It was a Hot Wheels of the Speed Racer Mark V so as the kids say if you know you know!)

Fun fact: I started this post 4 years ago! Apparently, then I wasn’t ready to say why Jesus had to die. In the interim, I have led some fairly comprehensive in-person Bible Studies on Luke, Hebrews, Philippians, and Romans. Through that process and my own study, prayer, pondering and angst I have wrestled with this seemingly simple question: why did Jesus have to die?

Again, I point out that the Apostle’s Creed does not list any details of Jesus life apart from his virgin birth, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, and his resurrection. Forgiveness of individual sins is a corollary at best in the Creed and grouped in with a litany that includes belief in the Holy Spirit, the Church and baptism. (Note: it is true that in the Nicene Creed we have a purpose for Jesus: “for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven”, but none of that is explicitly in the Gospel of Mark. Particularly not in Chapters 14 and 15.)

Stay with me. I have wrestled with this question a long time and I am going to sum up with answers that may or may not satisfy. I am prepared to be wrong, and I will admit that while I can show my work like any good math student, I am not going to make this post even longer by going through it all here. I am simply going to go to the two conclusions I have drawn (so far) and humbly say that I am still working out all the details.

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (The only words of Jesus on the cross mentioned by Mark and translated: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?)

“Bartender you see, the wine that is drinking me, came from the vine that hung Judas from the devil’s tree, its roots deep, deep in the ground.”

These are lyrics from a song by Dave Matthews (who while not a professing Christian is often a pretty solid theologian) about a person who is bargaining with the bartender because of his fear of death. Roots deep, deep in the ground. The sin problem. It has some very deep roots that go well beyond both our everyday individual sins to encompass the extraordinary depths of our collective evil (racism, war crimes, genocide, child abuse, corruption to name only a sampling) and the ultimate penalty of those sins great and small and cumulative. Death.

Not only that, if that weren’t enough, but the sin problem is also the reason for the tortured natural world. What the Bible calls futility. Futility is why there are weeds in the garden and why there are virus that make us sick. Futility is why we have to work so hard to grow food (or a houseplant) and why dogs and cats so often fail to live in harmony. And all over that futility is the shroud of death.

The sin problem encompasses so much more than the foibles and excesses of you and I.

Roots deep, deep in the ground.

I have come to the conclusion that when Jesus is crucified, he became sin itself. Not simply that he took on all of our individual sins (as the atonement crowd likes to trumpet), but that he literally became the embodiment of sin. This is why he is forsaken by God. Like apathy to love and hate, the absence of feeling to strong feeling; sin is the absence of God. When Christ cries out these words from the cross it is because he is feeling for the only time in his life what it is to exist in a vacuum where God is not present.

Why did Christ have to die? So that sin could be destroyed. He dies to begin the unravelling of the eons old sin problem. To allow sin itself to stand in judgment before a righteous God. So that all the evil (sin) that ever was and ever shall be is dealt with in its entirety. Jesus became sin and took on the judgment that sin merited so that it could be dealt with once and forever. That is why he has to die, and in accepting the cold fingers of death (that we all experience and fear as the separation from all that love is) he puts himself in the position to defeat that enemy as well.

If that conclusion doesn’t make sense to you then I apologize because I have yet to fully comprehend how to express the thoughts in words. I fear it is a conclusion that goes beyond a rational explanation.

But I am thoroughly convinced that something that can best be described as cosmic is happening on the cross.

I mentioned two conclusions. The second one is much easier to express. At the end of the day the cross is not about judgment but about mercy. While judgment is being rendered (on sin through the death of Christ) what is being pronounced is the exceptional, never-ending mercy of God.

Not mercy limited to pardon extended to those who ask for it. But mercy flowing like a never-ending stream that overwhelms all who wade into it. For the One who is the rightful Judge is also the One who embodies the sin.

And that feels more like the mysteries of grace to me.

Earlier I said that the title of this post was God Doesn’t Care… (as much as we do about the things that we care about) and that is still true. The better completion of the title would be:

God Doesn’t Care as Much as We Do About the Things that We Care About Because He Cares So Completely About the One Thing that Truly Mattered.

Now that is wordy and not at all pithy!

Feel free to use this Bible Study for your own groups or discussion.  It is freely given. If you do I merely ask that you acknowledge where you got it and if you find it useful that you encourage others to seek it out. It is freely given and written with fear, foreboding, and prayer by a fellow hypocrite who is simply trying to figure out the road ahead.

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Sure we focus on this is my body but is this the real focus of the Last Supper

 

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Read Mark 14:12-31

When I was in High School I took Chemistry 2 because the State of Texas said I needed 4 sciences.  I had done well in Chemistry and sort of liked it, but I was too afraid of Physics to give it a shot.  So Chem 2 it was.  This was the first year it was offered at my High School and while our teacher was a seasoned veteran of many high school chemistry campaigns this was new ground for everybody.  It did not go well.  As a class we were some of the brightest my small east Texas town had to offer.  We were all failing during the first six weeks. I don’t mean floundering, I mean straight-up failing with grades well below 70.  More than one of us feared our GPA would plummet like the stock market following a terrorist attack on Silicon Valley.  One day our teacher—who had a reputation for being one of the strictest in school- announced to us the greatest thing that any of us had ever heard: “There is going to be a curve on our six week final.”  We stared at one another in genuine disbelief unable to fathom our good fortune.  And at the end of the six weeks, most everyone had passed.

There are times in our lives when we really want to hear someone say a certain thing.

“Will you marry me?”

“The results are negative.”

“You are hired.”

“Go ahead, take off early, no problem.”

Some are life-changing while some just effect the immediate future, but we all know the feeling of hearing longed-for words.

That fateful night when Jesus sat with his disciples (including Judas) to celebrate Passover he said words that they did not expect, but once he said them, I know that their hearts were filled with joy.

What words? “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this in remembrance of me.”

It is difficult for us so many centuries later to hear those words the way the disciples would have, still I think it is worth the effort for us to try.  If you have been following this blog you know that in the Gospel of Mark there is a lot of kingdom stuff. At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (stay with me now) those gathered ask Jesus if this is the moment that he is going to restore the Kingdom to Israel.  Because as good Jews, they were all anxious to see Israel’s fortunes renewed and a few of them were looking forward to being in good with the new King.  I am looking at you John and James, sons of Zebedee.

Their collective focus was somewhat limited compared to what the LORD was actually up to; but we can forgive them of that.  After all, we think God blessed us with an up-front parking space sometimes so they are not the only ones who can be a bit myopic. Spoiler alert: Jesus reminds them that it is not theirs to know the times and circumstances that God has ordained for the big-ticket items. I bring this up to point out that the disciples would have been thinking kingdom thoughts a lot during their time with Jesus.

Kingdom thoughts for them would mean the relationship of God to Israel. Now we need to look more closely at three words so the full import of them can wash over us as they would have those lucky enough to share Passover with Jesus.   The words are blood, covenant, and new.

First, the setting. Passover as a meal is filled with symbolism.  At the risk of being over-simplistic, Passover is a ritual meal meant to remind the Jewish people how God weakened Pharaoh’s resolve to keep them as slaves in Egypt through a series of plagues. The culminating plague was the death of all first-born children in Egypt from “Pharaoh on the throne to the slave girl (see Exodus)”.  The Israelites were instructed to save their own children by sacrificing a lamb for dinner and sprinkling its blood on the mantle of the door.  That’s the Biblical story that is at the heart of Passover (where the blood was death passed-over); yet, the ritual of Passover remembers not just this specific moment but also the broader truth that God had kept his covenant with Abraham and established an additional covenant through Moses and the Law (Ten Commandments) carved in stone. The disciples would be reminded of all of this that night.

Blood represents life in the Old Testament.  Passover lambs, all sacrificial animals really, give their life in exchange for the lives of the spared. When Moses consecrates the behavioral covenant of the Ten Commandments  between God and the people he sprinkles the blood of a sacrifice on the people saying, “See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”  A covenant is a binding, solemn agreement between two parties.  The significant difference of a covenant is that the parties agree to perform their actions regardless of the actions of the other party.  This is what makes it different from a contract.  The Mosaic covenant establishes the Israelites as the people of God with God as their King.  The covenant is that God will be the King and lead them; the people will set themselves apart from their neighbors by living the commandments.

Alright, if you are still with me it is about to get real!

Passover understood (check).

Blood even if icky understood (check).

Covenant understood (check).

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Years pass, Israel goes back in forth in their commitment to God and the covenant.  Eventually, they ask for an earthly King.  They again vacillate between being a faithful people and being a hard-necked people. The Kingdom divides.  Then the prophets show up to help call them back to their roots and the requirements of the covenant.  Amidst those prophets was young man named Jeremiah through whom God brought a very distinct message.

“Behold days are coming declares the LORD, when I will make a NEW covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… I will put my law within them, and on their hearts I will write it; and I will be their God and they shall be my people… they shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.” (obviously there are things that are said in the ellipsis above.  You can read the whole passage here)

Jeremiah goes on to assure his listeners that God is faithful to this promise.  That the arrival of this new covenant will also mark the restoration of the Kingdom of David and a perpetual presence before God of a priest to prepare sacrifices continually.  God offers as assurance the certainty that there exists a perpetual cycle of day and night that cannot be broken.  (side note: last I checked day and night still happening with regularity)

And now it all comes together.  Imagine you are Mary or Martha; Peter or John.  Having grown up hearing the scroll of Jeremiah read and the promise above being highlighted.  So you are sitting their experiencing the normal elements of Passover: unleavened bread, bitter herbs, etc.  No doubt there is whispered conversation because Jesus says he will be betrayed.  Maybe you weren’t looking when he poured the wine.  Maybe you were half listening.

What did he say?  Did I hear correctly?

If you have read this far, you know enough about every word to get the meaning.  Like them you would have heard “new covenant in my blood.”   The long-awaited new covenant that God promised through Jeremiah.  Finally, it was there.  How your heart would have soared.  Like me and my fellow Chem 2 students, you may not have realized how badly you wanted to hear those words until they happened.

Together, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and what came to be known as the Last Supper explain everything you need to know about Jesus.  Together they fulfill everything that the prophets promised about the Messiah and the only thing that remains is for Christ to return and effectively put the period on the sentence.

Jesus is the Passover lamb, the one whose life was laid down for others at the crucifixion.

With Resurrection, Jesus demonstrated God’s power over death and he became both the eternal king and the perpetual priest.

The New Covenant is sealed with His blood and delivered by Him to us.  With it, those who trust in God have their sins forgiven and the ways of God are written on their hearts though the Holy Spirit. They become the children of God.

Every time communion /eucharist is celebrated (as Jesus commanded that we do at that Last Supper) believers are remembering what Jesus did and who He is until He comes.

Are you a believer?  Perhaps as you read this you are thinking that you need to learn more about this whole Jesus thing?  If this is so, the Holy Spirit is scribbling on your heart right now trying to get your attention. Lean into it and respond!  Above all else, do not be afraid; after all, one thing we can trust is that God grades us on the curve!

 

 

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Thank you for reading.
2

Lions, Tigers, and End Times Oh My!

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Read Mark 13:1-37

As I type this, the USA leads the world in total deaths due to the Novel Coronavirus, Covid-19.  The virus having erupted all over the world since last fall has led to a nearly world-wide shutdown, killed nearly a half-million people world-wide, and as restrictions are lifting throughout the states is surging once again.

Many Christians will be quick to add this pandemic to an ever growing list of proofs that we are in the end times and that the return of Christ is imminent.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are some erstwhile Christians who are missing car payments right now because they figure rapture will make their indebtedness moot.

Anyone looking for signs of the end times, just this year, could add to their list of proofs any article they want about climate change and its effect on agriculture, race riots in countless US cities, the future world of hyper-sonic missile attacks, murder hornets, election year commentary about US politics (the Left: Trump revealed as Antichrist; the Right: Trump to usher in last days), and my own personal sign of the Apocalypse, peanut butter flavored Whiskey!

Scholars refer to the 13th chapter of Mark as the “little apocalypse”.   Apocalypse means uncover, or to pull back the curtain.   Apocalypse means to reveal.  Now you know how Revelation got its name.  Notice I said scholars call it the little apocalypse.  Jesus doesn’t call it that he is just making chit chat as he leaves the Temple with his disciples. That is a little glib on my part.  The bulk of Chapter 13 consists of Jesus sharing with Peter, James, John, and Andrew the answer to their question of “what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled.”

I admit that I am always a little glib about end of times conversations, because they so often miss the point because the people asking the questions and the people giving the answers almost always have agendas.  All concerned, in my experience, miss the forest of the Kingdom of God as they look for each individual tree.

In just my life time, which daily isn’t as short as it once was, there have already been countless predictions of the end of the World.  Some of the predictions have come from extremist cults like those poor folks who committed suicide expecting to wake up on the Hale Bop Comet in the late 1990s, some from  religious teachers like Hal Lindsay (Late Great Planet Earth) and Jerry Falwell predicting with specifics, still more from novelists like (LaHaye and Jenkins) who bought into the Y2K worries and extrapolated the effect it would have on the arrival of the Anti-Christ, and even those who were convinced that somehow the fact that the Mayan Calendar only worked in 12 year cycles meant that it would all end for us in 2012.  Wikipedia, conveniently, maintains a list of such predictions in one of its articles.  The list can be found here.

I am reminded of the wit of one of my seminary professors who posted on Facebook several years ago following the coming and going of one of these predicted dates for the Second Coming of Christ: the mistake that all of these guys make is assuming that God uses base 10 math!  Ha! Priceless.  Of course, we are told in 2 Peter that 1 day is like a 1000 years to God meaning I suppose the corollary is also true (although geometric theory has never been a strong suit for me) that a 1000 years is like 1 day.  With that in mind, everybody needs to chill out because Jesus has only been “gone” for a little over 2 days.  Can’t a God get any rest?

And allow me for a second to cast a little shade on James and John asking Jesus these questions.  These are the same 2 disciples who wanted to be seated at the left and right hand of Jesus when he inaugurates the Kingdom of God; so, I have a hard time thinking that they have given up that desire when they start asking what signs will show them that the whole shebang is underway.

But Christ is returning, some day, that is a certainty, although even He is unaware (vs 32) of when that day comes!  So, what are we to do? What can we know?  How are we to engage with this prophetic material about the Kingdom of God whether it is here in a gospel, one of the New Testament letters, or Old Testament prophets?  Roll of your sleeves with me for a moment and rush in like the fools we all are.  I respectfully submit 3 principles and a Jesus given truth to help us better understand the End of Days, alleviate some of our anxieties, and show us how to live.

The End of the World is inseparable from the Kingdom of God.  At the end of times, Jesus will return and initiate the reign of God on the Earth.  This is the New Jerusalem of Revelation, the “every knee bowing and tongue confessing”of Philippians, and what the Apostles’ Creed refers to with “thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.”

And yet, the Kingdom of God is the reign of God and the presence of God in the world.  Recall the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is now”.

The Kingdom of God is then, now, and on-going.  Yes, at the end, the Kingdom of God will be seen in its fullest expression when Christ returns and the reign of God (the eternal renewal and reunion of God and His Creation) exists in its entirety; but, it is also right now every where in the world, even the universe, that the Spirit of God is present.  So, even though the Kingdom comes, according to Jesus it was present with him, then, and it is present eternally in every believer today and all that will follow.  True faith is having eyes to see and hearts to accept the Kingdom in the now, not just in the future, or the past. So, the Kingdom is always then and just now! 

If both of the preceding is true, then the Kingdom of God is wherever Jesus is.  The Kingdom is most certainly amidst the heavenly hosts as John the Revelator sees the lamb sitting on the Throne.  The Kingdom is also in the New Jerusalem described at the end of the Revelation where the Tree of Life is planted and the nations are healed from its fruit all-year round.  The Kingdom is also present when Jesus preaches the gospel declaring the need to repent because it is “at hand” and in the home of Zaccheus when Jesus comes for lunch and declares that “today, salvation has come to this house!”.  All that is most certainly true, but if the Kingdom of God is where ever Jesus is then it is also wherever two or more are gathered in His name as He promised He would be also.  Not only there, but also in the hearts of every believer who has been born again by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The Kingdom of God is everywhere and just there!

{hint: the bolded statements are the 3 principles}

So, how are we to live then?  Well for one thing, if you are a believer, then you should live as though the Kingdom of God is now, because it is, and hope for the future return of Christ and the Kingdom, because it is that, too!

To do this, let me suggest that we not spend a lot of time worrying about every little earthquake, war, pandemic, stock market crash, wrong candidate elected, stubbed toe, and lost parking space as a potential sign of the imminent return of Jesus.  Remember, we don’t know the when which means looking for it we will never find it. Since we have no way of knowing when Jesus suggests that we be alert! (vs 37) This does mean to be looking for it so much as to be doing the right things when it happens.  The parable that he tells says that it is like a man who goes on a journey and leaves his servants in charge assigning to each one his task.

Perhaps, each of us, daily, have a charge from the Lord to have eyes to see his Spirit at work around us, so we can join in and get to work doing our assigned tasks.  The charge, is deceptively simple and wicked hard all at once: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

When we spend time worrying about the when we become “clock watchers” and miss the assigned God-work; opportunities we have to love and share and be blessed while blessing others.  Given that I do know this, the delay of Christ’s return (if that is even a thing) is the ongoing expression of the mercy of God.

If you have been enjoying these reflections consider subscribing so that they appear in your email conveniently for you.  Also consider sharing the site or a reflection with just one friend.  Remember that if you wish to use one for a bible study or meditation at the start of a meeting or for any other purpose all I ask is that you let people know from where you got it in the first place.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

1

The Kingdom of God

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Read Mark 10:13-27

One of my lasting memories from seminary comes from the daily worship services.  On occasion, when communion was being offered we would follow a liturgy derived from John Chrysostom in the way back days of the christian church.  At some point the celebrant (that is the person offering up the prayers for the bread and cup) would say “Holy Things for Holy People.”  I remember this because I was very fond of my liturgics (study of worship) professor Dr. Stanley Hall; and– though he was suffering from a rare condition that deteriorated his lungs — Stan would fill the chapel with his sonorous voice from the back of the hall with the response of the people: ONE is HOLY, ONE is LORD, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God. 

The purpose of the response is to direct the attention of those in attendance to God alone.  Even though the communion is considered holy (because the bread is set apart) and the gathered church can be called holy (set apart from other communities of people), God and God alone IS the only, truly holy thing.

Jesus does somethign similar when approached by a wealthy man in this reading from Mark.  After being addressed as “good teacher” Jesus quickly sidesteps the complement saying that God alone is Good.  In a world conditioned to consider every little hang up and fetish a lifestyle choice demanding special recognition and community acceptance it can be jarring to hear that only God is good.  Before we rationalize that Jesus was either having a bad day or displaying false humility we should accept that maybe he really meant what he said.  Limiting actual goodness to God alone is consistent with what we heard Jesus saying about the human heart earlier in Mark.

This is not to say that people cannot do good things or exhibit good character.  The young man speaking with Jesus at least claims to be doing those things himself.  The initial question that the man asks is what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus directs him to the commandments to which the man says that he has studiously kept them.  “You only lack one thing then,” Jesus suggests, “go and sell all that you have and give to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.”

We are told that the man walked away dejected because he had a lot of things.

dejection

Jesus laments “how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Many times this episode is preached all by itself divorced from the rest of the Gospel of Mark.  Some folks point to it as proof that wealth is bad.  “See! the rich will get theirs in the end because rich people cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Although Jesus doesn’t actually say that. Other preachers, perhaps apologetically for their wealthy members, will teach that the episode is absolutely limited to this particular  wealthy man.  This was the particular problem for this guy because he was just like Ebeneezer Scrooge and loved his possessions more than others. “Fear not generous members of (insert name of wealthy church) so long as you are here in this moment and tithing you can rest assured that you have a place in the house of the Lord.”

The truth is in neither of these interpretations although there is a particularity to Jesus’ charge to this young man.  As always reading and interpreting this passage by itself prevents us from considering what Mark is communicating to us.  In the verses right before this young man appears we see Jesus playing around with little kids. He seizes the moment to teach his disciples that only those that receive the Kingdom of God like a child will enter it at all. 

Do you see the connection now? The episode with the rich man is illustrating the point about entering the Kingdom of God like a child.  Mark is giving us a way to understand what Jesus meant by demonstrating how Jesus taught this one particular grown man what it would mean for him.

Apart from age, what was the difference between the young man and the children? What makes a child different from an adult?  Self-sufficiency.  Children are dependent on others to care for them and to protect them.  Whenever a child loses a parent at an early age we say that they had to grow up too fast meaning that they had to take on adult responsibilities.

The problem for the rich man was not that he had wealth.  Resources are just resources to God.  Abraham had wealth.  Jacob had wealth. David had wealth. Jeremiah, Elijah, and Paul not so much. The problem was not in the possession of the property.  The problem was that the availability of means left the rich young man deluded into thinking that he didn’t have to rely upon God for eternal life.  He was doing the right things and keeping the commandments. He wanted to know from Jesus what else he needed to do. Goodness for him was about merit and merit was about accomplishment. The path to the Kingdom of God must surely be marked with road signs indicating how close you were along the way he thought.  In this he demonstrated at least one child like quality:  “Jesus, am I there yet?”

When I was a child we had gold stars in school.  You got a gold star at the end of the day if you were well behaved and did your work. I have heard of some schools today using a color chart (red, yellow, green) in a similar fashion.  At week’s end we could get a little surprise or treasure if we had a sufficient number of gold stars.  As I recall, some teachers expected perfection while others gave a little more grace.  Some had treasure boxes with trinkets while others were sure good behavior was its own reward. Had I known then what I know now I could have psycho-analyzed my teachers based on these things.  The rich young man was using the wrong child like approach to the Kingdom of God.  He was trying to gold star his way in.

It cannot be done that way.

It is telling that Jesus instructs the young man to follow him. In the Letter to the Hebrews we are told that Jesus is the author and pioneer of our faith that he has provided a more perfect way to God through the veil of his own flesh, a reference to the veil in the tabernacle and temple that separated the people from the presence of Yahweh.  Following Jesus is not just following Him at the end to the presence of God but it is also following him along the path to the Kingdom of God.

God wants to be a part of all of our lives: our work, our parenting, our relationships, our inner selves. To live the most abundant form of this life and the life of the world to come, we have to recognize and live a dependence on God.  A daily dependence on Him.  If faith is an expression of trust then self-sufficiency is a debilitating condition.

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This year I have taken up a charge from my pastor, Eric Waters, to practice “The First 15”,  beginning each day with 15 minutes that belong to God.  It is deceptively simple.  I read a few lines of scripture and offer a prayer.  My prayer in the first moments of my day tends to be very simple as well because I am not awake enough to flourish it with useless extra words.  So I tend to just thank God for the morning, for another day, offer up someone or something else for God to bless, ask Him to handle something in my life and end it with the Lord’s prayer.   It is certainly simple and once the habit forms it shapes the day, the week, the life in a different pattern than not starting each day with God.   I admit that I also sometimes forget.  If you try the “first 15” for yourself understand that you will achieve imperfectly as well. When I do miss my day is more frustrating.  While my days are not perfect when I do start with the “first 15”, I find that whatever the day brings I am more in tune with the peace that Jesus promised us.

The Kingdom of God is open to those who approach as a child, dependent on the Lord to provide, to teach, to protect, and to guide.

Ask yourself:

What is keeping me from trusting God more completely?

Now is the time to give it up. 

Where in my life am relying more on my own abilities or power than God’s help? 

Invite God into all of it through prayer and meditation today.

Are you seeking to earn God’s favor rather than respond to God’s acceptance?

All I can remind, gently, is that the first never works.  If you ask, God will show the second, more perfect way.

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Thank you for reading.

1

What Can an Exorcism Teach Us About Prayer?

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read Mark 9:14-29

A lot has transpired since Jesus spoke truth about the heart of man. He has performed an another miraculous feeding, this time 4000 people, received the profession of faith of Peter that he was the messiah, and revealed himself upon a mountaintop to be the chosen one of God. More about that in a future post.

If you have been reading this blog all along you know that Jesus is repeatedly demonstrating proof of his role as Messiah. This is Mark’s goal for his hearers.  “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” is another way to read the opening statement in Mark 1.  Mark wants non-Jewish people to see that Jesus is the true Son of God, rather than Caesar.  Mark wants Jewish listeners to see that Jesus fits the definition of the Messiah (Christ in Greek) based on the actions he takes.  In Isaiah, the arrival of God amidst the people is linked to the blind, deaf, mute, and lame being restored.  Jesus has been doing these very things all along in this gospel not too mention walking on water, raising the dead, and feeding thousands with minimal resources.

Back to the current passage.  Jesus, Peter, James and John come down from the mountain where Jesus was revealed transfigured. They encounter a controversy broiling between the Jewish religious leaders and the other disciples.  It seems that the disciples have attempted to heal a young person who is tormented by an evil spirit to no avail.

A father brought his son to the disciples for exorcism (the disciples have been doing this since the Lord’s commission for some time c.f. Mark 6:13) but their efforts failed. Admittedly, the condition described by the father sounds to our modern ears a lot more like epilepsy than demonic possession. Regardless of the source of the torment, the young man has suffered since childhood with this affliction.

Jesus enters the conversation and asks some questions about the nature of the affliction. The father has reached a point of deep frustration. He feels desperate. He feels helpless.  He isn’t even sure that Jesus is willing or capable either saying: “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

It is useful to read Jesus response to the father with the right inflection.  Note that earlier he expressed frustration that the disciples had failed in their efforts.  He is irritated that they are demonstrating a lack of faithfulness again and demands that the boy be brought to him.  So when Jesus replies to the father’s jeer “If you can do anything” it behooves us to hear the correct tone.

“IF you can?!? all things are possible to him who believes.”

In effect, Jesus is saying that the fault lies not in the capabilities of God to achieve the outcome but rather the fault lies with the faith of the disciples or the father or both. The boy’s father clearly picks up on Jesus meaning because he replies, “I believe, help me in my unbelief.”

The boy is healed.

It can seem dangerous or crazy to us to hear that the limiting factor for healing the boy was the faith.  It seems to some unreasonable or frightening to think that anything is possible through prayer to the one who believes. The seminary I attended worked hard at not letting any of its students get too far down such non scientific thinking.  Who knows they may have thought that we would all end up handling snakes and doing televised faith healings if they didn’t pump the brakes on our belief in the power of prayer. And yet, it is in the New Testament time and time again clear as daylight.  Jesus taught that just a little seed of faith can result in commanding mountains to move. The letter of James says “the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous accomplishes much.

There are 4 separate types of prayer on display in this little episode in the life of Jesus. I think that they can help us to understand why prayer sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.  The first kind of prayer demonstrated I am going to call challenge prayer.  This is the sort of exasperated prayer that the boy’s father was offering up.  “If you can then prove it” is the nature of the challenge prayer. It is spoken by many a person on evenings feeling awful from drinking. “If you just get me through this then…”  It is also spoken by people seeking to bargain something from God “If you love me then let me win the lottery.” etc.

There are 2 problems with challenge prayers.  The first problem is that the person praying the challenge prayer is holding back on total belief.  At the core of all challenge prayers is either the desire for God to prove something (existence, power, love) or to reward the petitioner regardless of the depth of faith. The second problem is that they sometimes work!  God reserves the right to honor any prayer including the ones that are centered in negotiation.  If the petition requested lines up with God’s will then God may answer it.  Lottery ticket winnings are seldom gonna be on the divine agenda I suspect.  Sorry if that disappoints you.  If it helps, it is disappointing to me, too.

Lining up with God’s will is not enough though.  This is the second kind of prayer in our tale, the kind that the disciples must have been demonstrating in their own efforts to expel the demon from the boy.  This I am gonna call the champion prayers. A champion prayer is one where the assumption is that God will do whatever is asked because the request “must be” in God’s will.  This kind of prayer is often seen in religious leaders who feel so confident that God is on their side that whatever is asked God will champion.

There is a conversation that Jesus has with his disciples in a home after the boy is healed.  They ask why they failed to be able to expel the demon even though they had enjoyed previous success with exorcisms. Jesus tells them “that this kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

It is hard for me to fathom that they were not praying when they were setting about healing the sick, etc. ; but something was limiting them.  The disciples had been give the power to heal the sick and cast out demons and they began I suspect to forget that the power was not a static thing that they possessed and controlled but rather that they were capable of being a conduit through which God could act. I bet they began to become confident in their own capabilities they quit trusting in God to accomplish the work that surely He would endorse and champion. So when they encountered a truly pesky demon they failed. The fault was not the effort of the prayer but the wrong starting place in the heart.  We can see this more clearly by contrasting champion and challenge prayer with the 3rd kind of prayer.

The third kind is centered prayer.  The disciples no doubt had asked in God’s name for the demon to exit the boy.  When Jesus does the say the fight is engaged and naturally the demon loses.  What made Jesus better able to pray?  Of course you might say well he is God so its not really a fair comparison. Sure.  Keep in mind that one of the aims of Jesus is to model behavior for the future believer.  He teaches us how to pray, encourages times of rest and reflection, gets baptized as an example, etc.  So what made Jesus different in his effort than the disciples.  He was perfectly centered on God.

My good friend, Rev. Dr. Paul Burns has a program called soul-metrics.  People who wish to grow in their spiritual health can take an assessment and really see where they are at in their relationship with God, with self, and with others.  It is a wonderful tool and if Jesus were to answer the questions there can be no doubt that he would get excellent marks! When Paul is teaching about the processes and research behind the GPS survey he designed he invites his students to use the following image for what one aspect of spiritual health is: a spigot!

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Don’t laugh.  You may recall that Jesus said that he is living water and that any one who drinks from him will never thirst. Dr. Burns uses the spigot image to suggest that the spiritually mature person has connected their hose to the spigot of God’s living water. It is connected and the flow is open to water the landscape of their lives and the lives of others.  Because as Jesus said it isn’t just that we are supposed to go to the well of the living water we are to become fountains of living water ourselves.  In other words we are meant to share the blessing.

Because Jesus is centered on God he is in alignment with God’s will. As such his prayer is effective.  Whereas the disciples represent those that think that the power of God is something to control for the causes that they championed, Jesus understood that the power of God is something that flows through a believer and accomplishes great things.  That is what he modeled.  Just to belabor the point, the disciples treated it more like bottled water rather than a connected hose.

The fourth and final prayer is the one uttered by the boy’s father.  This prayer is a model prayer.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that after the Lord’s Prayer it may be the best example of prayer that we have in all of the scriptures. Why?  Because the wording of this prayer communicates in a true and faithful way to God where the heart of the every person, believer or not, always lies — trapped in the tension between what is known and what is yet to be revealed.

“I believe! Help my unbelief!”

Amen

 

2

The Most Important Thing Jesus Ever Said

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Read Mark 7: 1-23

I have a confession to make.  In our increasingly enlightened, progressive era of church attendance ( you know come as you are in jeans and a t-shirt or only engage digitally) there is something that still bothers me. Coffee in the sanctuary. I know there has been coffee shops in churches for decades now.  Also, let me be clear, I do not mind the relaxing of expectations about the way we are dressed.  I am in favor of relaxed expectations about the way that children behave in the sanctuary.  All this is true and good; yet, when I see a coffee cups in the sanctuary it just bugs me.  Recently, I even tried to get over it.  While ushering I had a small Styrofoam Cup o’ Joe in the back with me. It didn’t take.  I felt horrible having it in there even with it out of sight.

If you regularly have your travel mug with you don’t worry I am not judging you. Even if I were judging you you shouldn’t worry because that would be a me-problem not a you-problem. I bet there are similar things for you though.  Stuff that happens in church that irritates you a little inside. Maybe it is drums in the chancel? People not bringing their Bible with them? Folks talking during the sermon or songs. Little ones standing on the pews?

Whatever it is that bothers us 9 out of 10 times it is about us and not about God.  The Lord does desire orderly worship, but let’s be real, most of our worship hang-ups are about us not wanting things to change or being presented the opportunity to feel morally superior to the perceived miscreant.

Mark 7 begins with the Pharisees challenging Jesus on their perceived slights of his Disciples.  Seems His followers were failing to wash their hands before they ate or to follow all the rules that the Pharisees had teased out of the Torah for washing pots and pans, etc.  As I write this we are in social isolation for Covid-19 so washing hands and disinfecting things is crucial.  But that is a health concern not a worship thing.  So while it may seem like a big deal in our context right now, it shouldn’t have been that big a deal back then. This didn’t stop the Pharisees from trying to make it a thing.

Jesus engages in the debate and points out to the Pharisees ways in which they had stretched the Torah to accommodate behaviors that were outside the intent. In this case he highlighted how they had made a way for a person to essentially disown his mother or father and not care for them in their dotage all the while supposedly not have to be concerned with the commandment “to honor your mother and father.” 

In this way, Jesus claps back at the shade the Pharisees were casting upon him and his disciples. Saying that they contradict the very law of God by the traditions that they have handed down.

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It isn’t just then and it isn’t just the Pharisees.  Every single Church and denomination throughout the history of Christianity has been guilty adding burdens on to people or explaining way things that should not be explained away about God from time to time.  Usually it is the former. 

For instance.  When I was a kid in a small East Texas town the Baptists were opposed to dancing and drinking.  Now I can see where they might have some concerns when these things were happening simultaneously, but there is a reason for the old joke: What is Grace?  That Baptists don’t recognize each other at the liquor store.  In that same small town, there were members of the Church of Christ and they did not have music in worship because they saw no proof of instruments in the New Testament.  Never mind the litany of instrumentation found in Psalm 150 all that is mentioned in the early church is singing. Even though the Old Testament couldn’t be trusted about guitars, organs, and drums, I would bet serious money they still pulled from Isaiah at Christmas time and from Daniel throughout the year to scare people about the end of the world. Many in the Assemblies of God are told that you cannot be a Christian and smoke.  I am sure that would come as quite a surprise to C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. I don’t know that they smoked pipes while they talked faith, but it was the mid-twentieth century and they were English. You do the math.

All this stuff is rules of man.  These are the ways that we separate ourselves and pass judgment on our fellow believers.  It is a variation of salvation by what we do (works righteousness) dressed up in the altar clothes to look more holy.  I suspect Jesus was thinking to himself, “Are you serious right now?  These guys have been going around doing the work of the Lord: exorcising demons, healing the sick, proclaiming the good news, and all you guys can think to complain about them is that they don’t wash before lunch?  Me, Give Me Strength!”

This may be why he gathers everyone around him saying “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand:  there is NOTHING OUTSIDE of a person going in that defiles them rather the things that PROCEED OUT FROM WITHIN a person are what defiles them.”

This means none of the food we eat, music we listen to, television that we watch, clothes we wear, or a thousand other things we say or do are causing our damnation.  That isn’t to say that there are not some choices that are better than others.  That isn’t to say that our choices cannot shape our character negatively. It also is not to say that none of things that we do work at odds with our salvation.  As the Apostle Paul writes “all things are permissible but not all things are beneficial.”

It is to say that when we get caught up in these arguments that we are missing the point.  We are misdiagnosing the problem.  We are failing to understand why we were in need of Jesus in the first place.

The disciples didn’t get it either and later asked him to clarify. By way of an answer, Jesus quoted Jeremiah to them and told them (and all of us) who we truly are:

“What comes out of people’s hearts are evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adulteries, deeds of coveting, wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  These things from the heart are what defiles a person.”

Take a moment. You are on that list somewhere.  If you think are not, then you need to stop lying to yourself.  As Martin Luther cautioned, “You have yet to consider the depth of your own sinfulness.”  I know that you are on it.  Everyone is.  Even if you are sexually pure, are never slothful or gluttonous, and have refrained from killing someone, you are there.  You are there because you have had evil thoughts (i.e. hatred, judgment, prejudice, etc.) or you have had covetousness ( i.e. wanted something that belonged to your neighbor or a stranger).   Face it you have been red hot angry with someone before or you have watched MTV Cribs.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.   In case you are wondering foolishness is a technical term that describes the person who does not have God in their life (either though atheism or stubbornness) and does not want God in their life.  Everyone is on this list because this list describes the human condition. The tragedy of the human being is not just that we sin but that we want to sin.

This may be the most important thing that Jesus ever taught.  This is the great physician diagnosing the virus infecting us all.  There is no cure. There is no magic combination of steps and behaviors that can solve it. No manner of hand washing, no specific religious practices, no carefully constructed moral principles, nothing whatsoever can solve the problem.  The virus will always run its course, we never develop natural immunity, and the outcome is always death.

This is the diagnosis and spiritually healthy people understand it.  Spiritually healthy people recognize their utter helplessness to do anything about it.   Go ahead take a moment and let it sink in.  Take a moment and argue with me.  All I ask is that you look in the mirror and be honest with yourself.  Again, spiritually healthy people recognize the illness and the inability to heal themselves.  Everything else is various shades of self justification.  Nothing more; nothing less.

This is why there is a Good Friday.  Make no mistake, Good Friday had to happen before there could be an Easter morning.  No Crucifixion; no Resurrection.  Neither are metaphorical but actual events that occurred.  Jesus wasn’t crucified because he was saying impolitic things and upset the powers that be.  That is liberal Christian modernity claptrap.  Jesus wasn’t just some great moral teacher trying to help us live enlightened lives. That is a dismissive label that allows for people to treat Jesus words like a buffet line and only consume what suits their tender palate.  Christ died because our hearts needed it.  Christ died because we have sinful hearts and the outcome of sin is death.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God, died for every one of the ways you related to that litany of evil that springs forth from the human heart.  From your heart. Every lie, every lustful moment, every judging comment, every action taken in anger, every hurtful word or gesture, every single way you violated the expectation to love your neighbor as yourself. 

That is why Christ died.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“For God demonstrates his love for us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.” (Romans 5: 8-9)

And all you have to do is believe that it is true and, believing, trust that God is at work in you and your life through Jesus Christ.  

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves but is the gift of God, not the result of works, that no one should boast.  And we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that we should do them.”  (Ephesians 2:8-9)

This the gospel.

And you may recall what Jesus had to say at the beginning of Mark:

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is now; repent and believe in the gospel”

 

 

 

 

2

Unexpected Provision

person offering orange fruit to a deer during day
Photo by Chris Czermak on Pexels.com

Read Mark 6:32-52

I think that most Christians experience the Bible in bits and pieces.  They listen to a sermon here they see a scripture verse on a t-shirt there. Its all very piecemeal.  Even if you go to Church every Sunday morning you wouldn’t experience the whole of scripture in a year.  Your church could be one that follows the Common Lectionary (a 3 year cycle) with every single reading done each week and you could read every single additional daily reading and after 3 years you still would not have seen every single verse in the Bible.

I mention this because getting our scripture as we do in bits and pieces we get our understanding in bits and pieces as well.  That’s partly why this blog is working through a single book systematically rather than jumping about.  My hope is to help all of us, myself included, read a book of the Bible straight through and get the feel for the whole rather than just a bit here and there.

Some things are richer in the sum of the parts. Some things are different.  Dark Side of The Moon, the Pink Floyd album, was released the year after I was born.  It was the #1 album in the United States for a bit but then simply remained on the charts for over 740 weeks (14 straight years!) after a brief drop it returned to the Billboard top 200 and for all intents and purposes has never left.   It has a couple of tunes that you probably know and some others that you would recognize if you heard them.  The most successful single is entitled Money.  My personal favorite is Time.  Both of those songs are great but listening to the entire album start to finish is a different experience.  When it was an actual vinyl album each side was one continuous piece of music drifting in and out of the songs until the needle reached the end.  The sum was different than the parts.

So it is with a book of the Bible, the sum is greater than the parts.  At the end of Chapter 6 we find two stories of Jesus that are usually encountered separately but have another meaning when brought together.  They are the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water.

Speaking of hearing stories one after another, just encountering the feeding of the 5000 after the tale of John the Baptist’s death conjures up all sorts of comparisons and contrasts.  The opulence of Herod’s party versus the simplicity of the gathering in the wilderness. The death that ends that gathering versus the life sustaining element of the loaves and fishes.  The ruler who kills versus the ruler who provides.

And it is Jesus that provides.  A crowd has gathered to see these disciples who have been going out teaching, performing exorcisms, and healing the sick.  They naturally also want to see the one who has sent them out in the first place, Jesus.  By the way the size of the crowd is sort of mind boggling.  It is recorded as around 5000 men.  Archeologists estimate that a typical village or town in the region like Bethsaida or Capernaum numbered no more than 3000 people. If CNN had existed this gathering would have made the news!  It did make the oral tradition of the early church that culminated in 2 different strands, the synoptic gospels and John.  With crowds like that you can begin to see why everyone knew who Jesus was by the time he went to Jerusalem for the last time.

Mark writes that when they encountered the crowd that Jesus took pity on them and started to teach them because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” This is a huge hint for how Mark intends for the story to be heard by us.

Moses towards the end of his life prays that the people will be given a new shepherd in the wilderness to lead them into the promised land.  God calls Joshua for this purpose.  Incidentally, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, Joshua is rendered as Jesus.  The prophet Ezekiel delivers an oracle where God speaks judgment against the priests and leaders of the people of Israel for failing to be good shepherds.  Instead of relying on them the LORD promises to gather the people himself and place over them a shepherd who is from the line of  David to care for them.

This is the background of what is happening next and what Mark wants us to be aware of when we encounter this feeding in the wilderness.  Of course, there are other allusions like God providing sustenance through quail and manna during Exodus.  There is the feeding and providing for Elisha and Elijah in the wilderness as well.

So it gets late.  The disciples are mindful that the crowd needs to go home because who wants 5000 HANGRY people on your hands?  No one does, obviously.  Ask Marie Antoinette, bad things happen.  So they gently suggest to Jesus that he needs to wrap it up so that the multitude might go into the neighboring towns and overwhelm the local restaurants.

Jesus suggests that the disciples should feed them.  He gets some sarcasm in return.  What are we supposed to spend 200 denari on bread?  Basically, where are we gonna get that kind of money? If you are curious the amount quoted was roughly the annual wages of a day laborer.  The argument was escalating quickly.

As you probably know, Jesus asks them what they have and they come up with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.  Jesus blessed the meal looking up to heaven and had them distribute and everybody ate until they were satisfied.  There was even left over bread and pieces of fish.  We don’t know specifically how it happened but that isn’t the point.

Now taken by itself this story has a lot to teach / remind the believer about the nature of God.  “The Earth is the Lord’s and all that it contains” the Psalmist writes.  So naturally God can multiply any resource to match the need.  A later Psalmist shares that “YOU open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”  This is a story that urges us not to be afraid for our provision for our God provides.  It is a story that teaches believers that when they see a great need around them that encouraging the need to go away will only result in God saying “NO.  You feed them.” Whether individually or collectively it is a message that we all need to be reminded of from time to time.

Have you been afraid of how you might make ends meet lately?  How might it look if you gave that fear to God and trusted in gracious provision?

Has your Church been arguing about the financial wisdom of taking on a new mission or ministry? How might it look if they stepped out in faith with their 5 loaves and prayed for God to provide for the need they see?

This is not the only message that is present in this story though.  The unspoken question is who is this person in the middle who prays and bread and fish become inexhaustible?  Mark in alluding to the “sheep without a shepherd” begs us to ask ourselves this question.  Who is Jesus?

Very quickly after the baskets of left-overs are collected, Jesus sends the disciples off in the boat while he also departs to go pray.  The nature of this miracle is that the disciples dispersing the food would have realized what was going on long before the crowd figured it out.  Jesus wants everyone to get going before he has to deal with 5000 people who are now satiated and would expect more miracles from him.

Over night a storm whips up on the waters as the disciples are making their way to the other side.  Imagine how tired they had to have been.  Spent the day dealing with crowd control, arguing with Jesus, distributing and collecting the food, and now having to row against the wind and waves of a storm.  The storm and their exhaustion must have been awful because when they see Jesus walking toward them at 3AM they are convinced that they are seeing some sort of ghost.

Jesus tells them to not be afraid (the first thing that the messenger of God always says) and reveals himself to them.  He gets in the boat and the storm settled and they were amazed. That in itself is pretty amazing as they have already experienced Jesus waking up in the boat and commanding a storm to stop.

Psalm 107 reads “He caused the storm to be still so that the waves of the sea were hushed” and Job says to his friends regarding God, “who alone stretches out the heavens and tramples down the waves of the sea”.

Jesus is for the second time in Mark 6 disappointed in people.  In Nazareth he marvelled at the disbelief of the people there and now in the boat his own disciples “had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”  That last turn of phrase is Bible speak for being spiritually blind.

When Jesus gets into the boat he says in Greek “Ego Emi” and this little phrase is so perplexing.  On the one hand it means simply “I am” or in this case “it is I”; just what anyone might say about themselves at any time.  On the other hand it is also the Greek translation of the name of God that Moses received at his encounter with a bush that burned but was not consumed.  The name of God, YHWH, or  “I AM”.  Is it possible that when Jesus was getting into the boat (having been tramping down the waves as Job describes) what he actually said to the disciples was “Fear Not for I AM”?

The two stories together certainly lead to a conclusion that it had been the intention of Jesus to reveal to his disciples through the loaves incident and the calming of the water that he was the One that had been promised long ago.  For Mark, who intends for us to read his book as the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God it becomes another piece of evidence about who Jesus is ultimately.  That it comes in a chapter that starts with the troubling disbelief of the people in Nazareth and ends with the disciples also not understanding it begs the question to each of us– do you get it?  Do you understand who this is before you?

No matter where you are in life right now,  perhaps you are unemployed because of the Coronavirus or are simply feeling the long term effects of social isolation.  Maybe you are struggling financially or dealing with depression or addiction.  You might have cancer or some other chronic illness.  You may be estranged from your children or flailing in an unhappy marriage.  There is no end to the struggles and trials that we can face in this life, but remember who it is in whom you believe, Jesus Christ.

Your God is the one who graciously provides for every living thing from his own hand.  Are not you more important than the animals, the insects and the plants?

Your God is the one who walks upon the waves and calms the storm with a word.  Can God not counter that which you fear most?

Your God is the one who conquered death through resurrection and promises that all who trust in Him need never fear death again.  What do you have to lose by trusting in Him?

Whatever it is, whatever the circumstance, whatever the fear, wherever you are in your heart on the question of who Jesus really is give it to God.  Begin to pray, ask God to open the eyes of your heart to see the work that He does in secret all around you and learn to trust Him deeper and deeper.  Do not be like the people in Nazareth who never took the first step in belief.  Do not be like the disciples who walked along with him and struggled to realize the truth.

It starts simple, just open yourself to the possibility that Jesus is who he says he is.  Follow that thought and listen to what the Lord shows you.  Go where he leads you literally and spiritually.

Follow the one who “opens his hand and provides for every need.”

3

He Marveled at Their Disbelief

 

Read Mark 6:1-32

“He could do no miracles there except laying hands on a few sick people and heal them; and, he wondered at their lack of faith.”

This is the description Mark has for Jesus’ time in Nazareth teaching in their synagogue on the Sabbath. It is remarkable because of all that Jesus has done in the Gospel of Mark thus far: healing the sick, casting out demons, wakening a girl from death, commanding the weather.  News of these things surely would have reached Nazareth.

We know that some found his teaching exceptional because they wonder where one of their own “got this stuff” in the first place.  They know the family, his parents, his brothers, and his sisters. They haven’t had any reason to suspect that that family was gonna produce someone like Jesus.

Mark in just a few verses lays out a very human experience for Jesus.  He is judged by the people he grew up with and the provincialism of his hometown places restraints on him.  Many people can relate to this “who does this guy think he is?” experience.

To be clear the lack of miracles is not an indictment on Jesus.  The power of God is not limited by lack of belief, that is not the message to be drawn from this story.  In a few chapters, Jesus will say that “nothing is impossible for God” and even before this he commanded the sea to be still despite the disciples’ fear and lack of belief.

And yet, in so many of the healing stories in Mark faith is commended.  “Your faith has made you well” is a consistent refrain.  We can be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that faith is a key component.  I don’t believe that Mark has shared with us about this rejection to imply that God is limited to only helping those who believe in Him but I do think that Mark wants us to wrestle a little with disbelief.

When my children were young we lived in Corpus Christi.  One afternoon the excitement at our house and our neighbor’s house across the street was that a dog was stuck in a tree.  That is not a typo there was a dog in the tree.  I do not know where it came from, I do not know if it chased a squirrel, or how it managed to be there in the first place.  I simply know that when my young son came and told me to come quick because there was a dog in the tree it was not a Mulberry Street moment.

For those of you who are struggling with picturing this, it was not a straight up and down kind of tree like an Oak or an Elm.  Because of the more or less constant wind trees grow a little crooked all the time in South Texas.  This tree had a long trunk that grew sideways for some distance so I am pretty sure that this sure-footed dog had chased something up into the tree.  But make no mistake it took a ladder in the bed of a pick-up truck to get high enough to grab the frightened fellow in a blanket and get him down. He was high up in the tree in the sort of place that only cats or squirrels usually go.

I cannot prove to any one this story is true.  I know the names of a few witnesses.  I have the little “book” that my son made after the fact that he entitled How Many Aggies Does it Take to Get a Dog Out of a Tree. Some of you who are reading this will not accept my word for it because dogs just don’t climb trees. You do not trust me enough to believe me even though I know what I saw and remember getting the dog down.

God has this same problem.  Faith is trust between two parties.  You may choose to not trust the story God is telling us about what he has done for us.  When we choose to reject the story we are demonstrating our disbelief.

Are you struggling to accept God’s love for you?

Do you wonder if trusting Jesus can make any difference in your life circumstances?

The rejection in Nazareth reminds us that some people will miss out on what God is doing in their midst because it comes in the every day and the mundane.  To them, Jesus had no chance to be a great teacher or a miracle worker because he was always gonna be the boy who grew up working with his hands alongside Joseph. It didn’t matter what they heard from neighboring towns or even what they heard that day in the synagogue, they knew what they knew and instead of accepting the truth in front of them they chose to get mad.

This happens to churches and denominations all the time.  God begins to do some good stuff, some times miraculous stuff, and the kabosh is put on it quick by counsels, committees, etc. because of fear of what changes may come.  This happens to individuals who miss the teaching and wisdom of God because it is coming through the ordinary and the mundane.

Have you stopped listening on Sunday mornings because you think you already know what will be sung, prayed, and taught?

Have you quit seeking the Kingdom of God through scripture and worship because it all seems so just like it has always been?

Have you given up on asking for big things from God because you aren’t sure God cares any longer?

God wants our trust.  When the Israelites were gathered at the foot of the mountain awaiting the Ten Commandments, they ended up getting distracted and made an idol to worship since God seemed too busy and was invisible.  God was very angry and really wanted to just get rid of them all and start over with some other group of people. Moses told God, “Look here, Pal, I didn’t do all that stuff you asked me to in Egypt where I was a felon and trekked across the desert with those ingrates and climb this big ole mountain by myself for you to just change your mind!” (clearly I am paraphrasing) So God relented and a covenant was formed between the Israelites and God.  That covenant was formed around the law and the first commandment ushered in tells us about what God wants.

I am the Lord your God.  You will have no other gods except me.

God wants an exclusive relationship.  He wants to “go steady” with us, as they used to say.  He wants our faith and trust that he did act, does act, and will act for the future of all creation.  He wants our commitment to Him.

It wasn’t that Jesus couldn’t heal any one in Nazareth.  Jesus didn’t want to because he was being rejected.  The power of God was not diminished it simply wasn’t going to be wasted in a town that didn’t want to accept the truth in front of them.  No doubt what Jesus had taught that day in the synagogue was a variation on what Mark tells us his message was “The time is now and the Kingdom of God is among you. Repent and believe the Gospel.”

So the lack of faith resulted in God not wanting to act.  Just like at Sinai when the lack of faith made Him so angry he wanted to call off the whole make a covenant with the people plan. Just like the seven churches in Revelation that have their lampstands removed (the Light of the World taken from them) because of their lack of faith.   Suddenly, it doesn’t seem as harsh when Jesus instructs the 12 that if any town does not receive them or listen to them they are to dust off their shoes and move on as a testimony against them.

God will work wonders where He is welcomed, recognized, and trusted.

I think this also explains why Mark has injected the story of the death of John the Baptist into this section.  This may not seem odd; after all, John is an important figure and the first person we encounter in the gospel. True. Consider this, in a book that only has 678 verses, Mark uses 16 verses to tell this story.  In contrast it only takes 7 versus to introduce John the Baptist and his ministry.  Mark only uses 3 versus to describe the baptism of Jesus!

And the story comes in-between the verses where Jesus sends his 12 most trusted disciples out on their mission (to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons) and when they come back and tell him how it went.  We get almost no detail into the mission.  We don’t learn which villages got the shoe treatment.  We don’t know any statistics for how many were baptized, how many were healed, how many demons were cast out, etc.  But we do get an in-depth look at how it came about that John the Baptist’s head wound up on a platter.

So it seems that John the Baptist was imprisoned because during his ministry preaching about the need for the repentance of sins he often raised the point that Herod was a bad example to the community through his relationship with his brother’s wife.  It is not always safe to call into question the activities of a high official even when you are right. True today and true back then.

Mark tells us that Herodias, the wife, held a grudge against the Baptizer, but Herod was afraid because he knew “he was a righteous and holy man”. So Herod kept John safe.  Mark goes on to share that whenever Herod heard John speak he was perplexed and even enjoyed listening to him.

Seems that Herod was hearing the message, felt the stirrings of conviction, but was afraid of the implications to his current situation.  If Herod were to convert it might make trouble for him with Rome.  If Herod were to convert it would clearly make trouble for him with the missus.  So he chooses not to and then finds himself in this circumstance where a carelessly delivered promise in the midst of a party with prominent folk leads to the unnecessary death of John.  Consequences.

And that I think is the secret to this portion of the Gospel of Mark.  Our lack of trust in God, our failure to believe has real consequences for our lives.  Our lack of faith can cause God not to act like he chose not to in Nazareth. Our collective disbelief may cut off an entire community from the blessings of God like those the disciples were told to shake the dust off their feet rather than continue to labor there.  Our further disbelief, the choosing to believe in our position, status, or the upholding of ill-considered oaths may lead us to deeper depths of sinfulness at the expense of other people.  Our disbelief can cost us the privilege of taking part in the resurrection of the people of God on the last day.

Disbelief may cost momentarily; disbelief will cost us eternally.

If you are struggling with the truth about who Christ is or if you believe but struggle with where to find God right now, I encourage you to take on this simple prayer from a little later in Mark’s Gospel:

“I believe Lord help my unbelief”

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Fearing Trembling and Knowing

Read Mark 5: 21-43

If you have been waiting for nearly 3 years to find out what happened to Jesus after he healed the “crazy” man in chains by banishing his many demons into a herd of pigs, I have 2 things to say:   1) I am really sorry and I promise not to let such a long period of time pass between posts to this blog any more.  2) Seriously?!? Do you even remember what happened? If for some reason you want a refresher you may read it here.

So having been uninvited from the land of the Gerasenes, Jesus and his cohort head back to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  Here, in contrast to the angry mob that they just left, is an expectant crowd gathered to greet them.  We aren’t entirely sure of what has drawn the crowd.  It could be that word is spreading about what Jesus is capable of in terms of healing, that they have heard about the destruction of the pigs, or they know what Jairus is about to ask of Jesus and they have come for the show.

Jairus is described to us as a leader in the synagogue.  This means he is a prominent person in the community.  Here in Texas, he might be compared to someone who was not only an elder / deacon / alderman in a local congregation but also like a local office holder.  Some thing like being a councilman or a constable.  The point is that Mark wants us to realize that he is significant.  We do not know yet if seeking out Jesus is akin to political suicide (remember Nicodemus met Jesus at night) but the circumstances demand that he find Jesus soon.  His twelve year-old daughter is dying.

So they set off.  Jesus, the disciples, Jairus, and the crowd.  There is jostling and bumping, elbowing and maneuvering.  Probably the group formed into some sort of line working their way through the crowd each member occasionally looking back to the person who should be behind them and ahead to the person they should be following.  You have been in crowds like that before haven’t you?  Maybe to make it to the entry point of a popular ride at Disney World?  I have been in lines like that to get to parking lot after a concert.  No doubt Jairus was moving as fast as possible up ahead looking back frantically to make sure Jesus was still coming and Jesus was probably trying to make sure that the disciples were still in the group.

Mark tells us about only one other person in the crowd that day; a woman who has been actively bleeding for twelve years!  Mark says that she has been to the doctor so many times and nothing has helped.  She has spent all of her resources and, according to the Greek, having benefited nothing but into worse having come she has decided to do the only thing that is left for her.  She has heard about the things Jesus has done and she is going to find him and she believes that if she can even just touch his robe she will be healed.

Let’s stop right there for a minute and consider a few things.  Why would she be convinced of something being magical about Jesus’ robes?  Obviously this is a pre-scientific mindset but there are plenty of people today that adopt some magical thinking even though our world is mostly steeped in scientific thought.  Whatever logic she is using is not important, I really only ask to point out that every one around her that day would be convinced that they could be made ceremoniously unclean simply by touching her robes because she was bleeding. In a world where people can become unclean by touching someone’s clothes then certainly they might be healed by the clothes of a righteous person, right?

This would be the every day for this woman.  In fact so long as she was bleeding she probably had to announce to people that she was unclean as to warn them.  For more than a decade she has had to let people know that being near her is a threat.  What sort of fellowship did she have? what sort of community?  Did she always eat alone?  Did she have to go to the well for water at odd times?  She may have been a person of means and didn’t have those issues, but did her servants look at her with judgment instead of pity.  She wasn’t allowed in the synagogue; couldn’t go to the temple during Passover.  Was she married, did she have children?  Were her family members treated differently because of their connection to her? There hasn’t been anything that can fix it for her and nothing can change the pain that she has already endured.

Have you ever felt that sort of isolating pain before?

As I write this the world is in the midst of the Corona Virus outbreak.  Most of the United States is in some sort of imposed isolation.  In our efforts to “flatten the curve” of infection, a good thing, we are dealing with tremendous economic hardship and isolation.  For families this has been a time when they can grab some rare togetherness and connection and that has been a blessing.  For the single people it has been the opposite because it is hard to make connection from 6 feet away with a stranger.  I think many people, like myself,  eventually go out for either a walk or to get something from the store. It is surreal to see so few people out and about but also because of the looks that you receive when you encounter someone.  There is this moment where heads turn away or a glance signifies the unspoken question “are you safe?”.  Most of us have used more soap and hand cleansers in the past month than we did in the previous year.

It gives us a little insight into this Biblical woman’s life.  We do not know her name, but we do know her faith.  If she can just touch the robe she knows that something good will happen– that she will be healed.

Somewhere in the crowd she sees Jesus trying to keep up with Jairus making his way through the throng.  She herself presses and elbows and pushes and finally gets close enough that she can just touch his robe.  It happens.  Her flow stops.  She has lived with it so long she knows.  She knows!

Jesus knows too.  Mark relates that he felt power go out from him.  Someone in this crowd has experienced the healing touch of God.  He immediately stops to figure out who.  Salvation has been received Jesus would like to meet the recipient.  I don’t believe that Jesus is angry, I believe that he wants to affirm an act of faith, I believe he wants the relationship that comes from the grace granted.

Jesus asks who it was that touched him.  The disciples do not know.  Jairus doesn’t know and is frustrated by the delay.  No one knows except the woman.  She ventures forth Mark says “fearing, trembling, having known” falls at Jesus feet and tells him everything.

Jesus replies with grace and love, commends her faith, and sends her out with a declaration of peace and the assurance that she is forever healed of that affliction. I submit to you that it is not just her belief that touching Jesus robe would heal her that did heal her, but it was also her response to what Jesus had done for her.

“fearing, trembling, having known”

Having known what?  That she was healed, certainly.  That she had been healed despite having reached a point in her life where she was convinced that she would never find release from this sickness that gripped her perpetually?  Was she fearful and trembling because she had felt unworthy for so long that she believed the lie that she was fundamentally unclean and in that one moment experienced not only healing but that unbelieveable cleansing that comes from realizing that God does love you despite how unloveable you have felt or how unloveable you have allowed others to make you feel? Was she fearful and trembling because she now knew what Jesus could do and as a result who Jesus must be?  Recall the function of Mark’s gospel is to share with us the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Many years after this, the Apostle Paul would write to the Christians in Phillipi one of the most significant passages in all of the Bible.  After  reminding them of who Christ Jesus is he implores them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.  WOW.

I always wondered what Paul meant and I never realized the parallel language with this story.  So what did the woman do?  She sought out God. She found salvation and healing.  She recognized what God had done and she responded with appropriate awe and respect.  Her knowledge of God expanded by recognizing what he had done for her and she responded with the appropriate fear of the Lord and confession.  She entered into a deeper relationship by telling God everything.

What has God done for you? How has He made you whole? When have you experienced His power and might? What prayers has He answered? What hope has He sustained in you?

Whatever the answer keep telling God everything;  deepen the relationship. The One who has created everything that is is The One who has done this for you.  A little fearing and trembling at the truth of who God is appropriate; a lot of sharing is more so.

The story of chapter 5 isn’t over though.  No sooner does this encounter finish, then someone comes to Jairus and informs them that his daughter has died. There is no longer any need to trouble Jesus to help. Mark tells us that Jesus gives a call to deeper faith.  Do not be afraid but believe.

At this point a lot happens.  Jesus presses on with Jairus and only 3 of the disciples.  When they arrive the professional mourners are already at work playing the appropriate sad music and weeping.  When Jesus suggests that the girl is merely still asleep they laugh at him.  Not just a mild laughter but based on the Greek mocking laughter, derision.  Nothing to this point is helping Jairus with his trusting faith.

Jesus enters the room where the daughter is with just the 3 disciples and her mother and father.  Taking her hand and with a word (literally little girl get up) she opens her eyes and gets up.  Jesus tells her to feed their daughter and asks that no one say anything about what transpired.

This is the God that we worship, follow, serve, seek to know.  Sometimes He works in the pubic throng.  Some times he works in private and seeks no publicity.  But He is bigger than anything in this world, even death.

So get to fearing and trembling and knowing all that has happened to you and tell God everything.

 

 

 

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