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