Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
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.
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.
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