February 16 - Mark 9:1-13: An Unexpected Christ

You have probably said about someone, "That day I saw the real Ted." (if you know someone of that sort.)  Not that the Ted you knew for the past two years was a fictional character or a simulation of Ted.  What you meant, if you had known a Ted and this had happened to you, was, I saw through to one of his essential qualities.  We have shared jokes and done jobs together but that day (imagine some experience you shared that allowed you to see something that truly represented Ted's inner, more permanent character) you saw something that was central to his identity.

In the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John saw, that day, the real Jesus.  Jesus had always been divine; He did not hide from them His true identity.  For reasons we would probably have well understood, the disciples could not come to grips with the Messiah's true identity.  In this story, Mark reveals not only the real Jesus, but also the disciples' sense of shock.  Peter was stupefied by what he saw to the point that he blurted out the only ceremonial suggestion he could think of; the sight left James and John dumbfounded.  The man they had been following around was in fact God.  Sure He claimed to be the son of God, but anybody can say the words.  And yes He did miracles,  but even Pharaoh's wise men could turn staffs into snakes.  But for this... there was no explanation.  Jesus, still with a fleshy body, revealed His true character - a timeless, glorious God who talked with the long dead founders of their religion, culture, and national identity.  He shone with an unparalleled radiance and participated in resurrection.  Such a sight would have been as unbelievable then as now and his closest friends had no way of processing it.  They beheld the divine and lived - this was the real Jesus.  When he came back to them He was the man they had come to know, but now there was something more to him.  Just think, if the disciples had a difficult time believing in Jesus as the incarnate God, how tough is it for us?  The eyes of faith see what the disciples fleshy eyes beheld - the unbelievable truth: Jesus as God and man.

January 5 - Mark 6:41-56

I put my oldest daughter on my shoulders when she was three.  The verbal screech she let out was accompanied by an anaconda like grip around my neck and the weight of her face pressed against my hat.  I tried desperately to convince her that I would not let any harm to come to her - she would not believe me.  Her reaction bothered me not because she was afraid, not everyone deals well with heights.  What hurt me was that in spite of her fear, she did not trust me.  If not me, whom would she trust?

The disciples found themselves in a situation similar to my daughter's, one which revealed more about themselves than about the one they called the Christ.  I think I would have been afraid of my mentor gliding along the top of a raging sea.  No matter how much time we spent with Jesus, actually watching him walk across a raging sea would have terrified even the most dedicated believer.  Doubt would be natural but that is not what Mark says about the disciples.  Mark reveals something else about the disciples in the boat.  They did not believe in Him.  The question is, if they harbored disbelief, in whom did they believe if not Jesus?  Mark's statement is more telling than at first glance.  When it comes to our relationship to the creator God, we either believe in and trust Him or we believe in and trust something/someone else.  Scripture is clear, there is no position of neutrality.  Christ warns that we are either for him or against him; to disbelieve is to trust in an idol.  My guess is that the disciples trusted in a Christ who was different than the one they encountered on the water.  That different Christ was an idol.  Their disbelief revealed their misplaced loyalties - they wanted their idol back, not this son of man who walked past them on the water.  The text does not say what they wanted and so we are left to guess but the fact is, they did not want the Jesus who had come to them.  The disciples' response is instructive to us, doubt and fear are normal, but disbelief is an act of idolatry.  Whom do we believe in if not Christ?  Whom do we trust?  Who else do we credit with having the words of life?

November 17, Mark 4:35-5:20

As a child I had an overactive imagination.  I could turn a cardboard box into the cockpit of a modern fighter, then spend hours imagining thrilling takeoffs and risky landings.  Of course, no matter how real the flimsy casement felt, I would have given anything to sit in an actual fighter with working gauges and a running engine.  After a few seconds, excitement would give way to terror - I never could have lost control of the make-shift make-believe plane.  The Jews had, for a long time, built up the expectation for a cardboard Messiah.  From their national infancy they recalled mighty men who fought against chariots and soldiers, waging war and dividing seas.  The coming king would surely be cut out of the same material but would stand much taller and slay greater enemies - maybe like Rome, a power that made Ancient Egypt look inept.

In the story of the raging sea Jesus reveals that he is far more real, more powerful, and more dangerous than any Moses, David, or Noah.   In his messianic office, he reaches back before Israel and even Abraham to reveal the power of creation.  In Genesis 1 Moses writes that when the earth was pure chaos (fomless and void in the ESV) the Spirit of God hovered hover the waters then commenced the creative act.  For ancient Jews, water represented evil, that is the un-orderable.  But God brings order to the waters - only God the all powerful can organize the tumultuous, amorphous ocean.  When Jesus calms the waves he does more than time his words with a waning storm, he brings creational order to the chaos of the sea.  The disciples were right to be afraid for they realized with whom they had been spending time - none other than the God of creation.  The real Messiah is dangerous.  C.S. Lewis, in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, places the same words in the mouth of Mr. Beaver when Lucy asks about Aslan.  "Is he safe?"  Mr. Beaver answers, "'Course he isn't safe, but he's good."

November 10, Mark 4:21-34

In the movie, The Matrix, Neo, the protagonist, is gifted with abilities that make him the one who will save humanity.  His mentor, Morpheus, calls on the Oracle to confirm Neo's calling, only to have this esteemed authority deny it.  Toward the end of the movie, Neo saves Morpheus revealing incredible abilities which can only reinforce his mentor's claim.  Morpheus congratulates Neo but the hero demures, "the Oracle said that I am not the one."  Morpheus seems defeated, Neo should have been quite sure of his status.  Morpheus takes the opportunity to teach Neo a lesson, "you must learn the difference between knowing the path and walking the path."  The Oracle told Neo just what he needed to hear to perform the rescue that would confirm his gifting.  Ok, so maybe using a Wachowski brothers film is not the most pious analogy for the Gospel of Mark, but there is something here.  Jesus, in his teaching, does not simply describe the path, he shows them what it means to walk the path.
Jesus did not come to teach a lecture series on the Kingdom of God, but rather to build it.  Neither the Sadducees nor the Pharisees wanted to hear him but more so, they did not want him.  They waited for an earthly nation led by a warrior king while the Christ laid the cornerstone of an eternal city.  Maybe most frustratingly, rather than assuming a military role, Christ would suffer the death of a tiny, historically insignificant seed - only through worldly failure would He be reborn as a mighty tree.  Paul explains in Philippians that Jesus' obedience laid the groundwork for the law of humility which His subjects would imitate to populate the heavenly empire.  So the kingdom came right before their eyes, established by the Son of God who talked in profound mysteries so that no one would miss the fact that He walked the walk.

November 3 - Mark 4:1-20

Sometimes it feels as if our modern, western Evangelicalism has no place in it for a Gospel as difficult as the one Christ announced during His ministry.  We have turned him into a far more ameliorative leader, intent on making people happy through a soft humanism.  Yet He quotes from Isaiah to remind His disciples that He does not intend all to hear; He does not heal all; He does not save everyone.  Sometimes it surprises us that the truths of God do not flex to the demands and needs of humanity, rather Christ forces us to bend around Him.  The parable of the seeds makes this point.  The sower does not tend the soil, he does not fertilize, or plow.  The sower casts that which brings life but the soil's condition determine's the seed's future.  We know theologically that God must save but that ought not dull the sharp edge of Jesus' teaching.  No matter how great the news, it will fail to bear fruit in the lives of people who allow it to be choked out, who pay it no heed, or whose intransigence renders their hearts too hard.
I believe that we, like Isaiah, should ache over this part of Christ's message.  We should weep with those who weep; Christ Himself cried for Jerusalem.  But the costs of sin are serious and it causes suffering.  I think it is important to remember that the narrowness of the road leading to salvation does not represent a failure either of God's imagination or of His kindness.  Rather these are reminders of sin's pervasiveness and its power to twist truth into a lie.  It is unsettling to read about Christ stopping short in His ministry but maybe that is because we have not fully understood what He came to do.  He came to assert His dominion, to save the sheep that know His voice, and build a kingdom which will never fail

Alright, I am in!  I hope this works..... I guess I need a cool moniker like Mindsplynter..... but I cant spell!

October 12: Mark 2:13-22

Jesus came as Messiah to the Jews living in a Roman world.  His epiphany served two roles which ran at odds with one another.  As Messiah Jesus was to fulfill the Jewish prophecies, assuming the combined roles of David, Moses, and Elijah.  He should have been the Jew of Jews, the religio-cultural icon of ceremonial Judaism; a political head that would end the house arrest of a nation exiled in its own land.  At the same time, the promised Messiah would gather the lame and sick into a grand nation.  How could he bridge the two roles, be the perfect Jew while serving as the leader of a pan-racial nation?  In Mark 2 Jesus squarely faces the tension between his polar responsibilities: he gives aid and comfort to a Jewish traitor.  Assuming both roles, he stretched each of them beyond recognition.  Jesus came to lead by serving; he came not to rebuild a nation but rather to establish a kingdom.

Jesus used the example of wine to illustrate His Messianic role.  Institutionalized ceremonial traditions and social structures grew out of God's commands in the Old Testament.  God gave Moses laws to organize Jewish life around His moral demands, creating a society which would prepare its people to welcome the future kingdom.  The leather of the skins made to house the older covenants had toughened and grown rigid, however.  When the true Messiah came, the old ways should have been exchanged for a grace expansive enough to welcome Samaritans, Greeks, tax gatherers, and Americans; and a law so demanding that only the perfection of the Father would do (Matthew 5:48).  So Christ brought the new wine of a new covenant, one consisting of blood, running out of a divine sacrifice.  How could the sacrificial ceremonies of Israel contain the Son of Man's atoning crucifixion?  It must have been difficult for the Jews to grasp the profundity of Jesus' rather simple analogy, one that even we, with the benefit of the Holy Spirit, strain to appreciate.