This is one of the most important passages in Mark’s gospel. In the previous section (see last week), Jesus has been traveling with his disciples and he asks them who people say that he is. After giving him several answers, Jesus pointedly asks them who they say that he is. Peter says what they have been thinking for some time: “You are the Christ.” And yes, Peter is right—Jesus is indeed the “anointed” one. When Jesus next tells them what it will mean for him to be the Christ—that he must suffer, be rejected, and die—Peter rebukes him because what Jesus is describing doesn’t make any sense to him. The Christ, for Peter, is called to lead and conquer, not suffer and die.
That is the scene that we are in the middle of right now. Jesus next proceeds to move from telling them what being the Christ will mean for him to telling them what it will mean for them: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We spent the rest of the hour this morning dealing with this one sentence. What does it mean?
If we want to become a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, then we must deny our egos, our plans, our control, out desire to be in charge, our notions of perfection. If we hold onto any of these we cannot follow Jesus. I asked the fellows this morning if any of them wrestled with this piece of scripture and they all had the good sense and honesty to raise their hands. We all struggle with denying ourselves.
“Take up their cross…” Jesus then says. By picking up your cross Jesus is not talking about the daily grievances or challenges that we all have. He is not talking about the in-laws coming for a visit. He is not talking about putting up with a boss that tries your patience. By taking up your cross Jesus is talking about two things. First, we must, if we are to follow him, be willing to die for him—die to self, die to control, die to being judgmental, die to playing God. Second, Jesus is talking about picking up our cross to do redemptive work, just like he did when he picked up his own cross. I asked the fellows this morning what redemptive work looks like and they said, “rescue,” and “reconciliation,” and “forgiveness,” and “love.” Jesus didn’t go to the cross to simply suffer for sufferings sake. He was not a masochist. He suffered for a reason, he picked up his cross for a reason, and that was to make us right with God, with each other, and with ourselves. In all the places that sin infects and separates, Jesus came to bring his sacrificial and redemptive blood. When Jesus tells us to take up our cross he is asking us to join him in redemptive work, rescue work, reconciling work.
One of the themes that kept coming up this morning was that the men talked about having to come to terms with their own imperfections. They seemed reluctant to do so, but there they were—their imperfections and mistakes and messes—and there was nothing else to do but to admit them and accept them. I asked them to think about their imperfections in another way. “O happy sin. O happy fault.” I quoted a medieval mystic (Dame Julian) who said the above. Why “happy” sin? Why “happy” fault? Without our flawed humanity, our sins and imperfections and messes, we would never really turn to God and admit our need for God. Without coming to our knees we will never really know grace. It is when we have hit the wall, made a hash of things, wondered what our life is all about, faced into our own culpability, that we give room in our hearts for the grace of God to touch us and forgive us and heal us. Until then we are all too likely to play God. At this moment a man got up and just started to cry—cry because he had received grace in that group; cry because he felt God’s healing and forgiving presence. He thanked the others with tears rolling down his cheeks. All we could then do—I felt—was to sing the first verse of “Amazing Grace.”
I commend this one sentence to your own reflections and prayers. It is at the very heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesdays with Mark (8:22-25)
We dealt with two stories yesterday, two stories that I didn’t see were connected until yesterday. Funny how you can look at scripture for so many years and not see things.
Anyway, the first story is about Jesus healing a man who was blind (see verses 22-25). What is interesting about this particular healing is that Jesus needs to lay his hands on the man twice. The first time he does so that man only receives partial sight. Jesus needs to repeat the laying on of hands in order for the man to see clearly. Hold onto to that “double touch.”
Jesus moves from this healing to Caesarea Philippi. As he is walking along with his disciples he asks them who do people say that he is. After they give him several answers he turns the question on them and asks, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds with “You are the Messiah.” Peter has it right; Peter has it wrong.
Before we proceeded to talk about how Peter had it both right and wrong, I began to call out individual men by asking them who Jesus was for them. If you are reading these words right now, I would ask you to pause and ask yourself that question: Who is Jesus for you? How do you think about him, talk about him, visualize him, feel him? As three men shared the room became very quiet and this was a tender and personal time. As you ponder who Jesus is for you, I would also ask you to think and pray about who you are for Jesus.
Back to Peter. He had the title “Messiah” right; but he was wrong about what he thought the Messiah was going to do. Peter thought that Jesus was going to be a second David, a warrior king, a savior to defeat the Romans and to vanquish all other enemies. (Please note that before savior was a theological term it was a military one.) But this is not what Jesus came to do—he didn’t come to fight, to conquer, to pick up arms, to lead people into battle. He came to give his life. He came to show us how to live. He came to help us not to fight; to befriend and not conquer, to embrace and not to pick up arms, to join in the battle for—for justice, for peace, for love, and not against. With Jesus there are no foes—or to be a bit more precise, all people are God’s children and he came for one and all, and his way to conquer sin and death—that was his battle, those were his foes—was through giving his life. Not by picking up arms, but by laying his arms down on the cross—that was Jesus’ way.
Peter is not pleased when Jesus tells him that he has to be persecuted and suffer and be rejected and die. Peter is not pleased because Jesus is not living into the script. So he rebukes Jesus. He is here not acting like a disciple, but a patron; not like a follower, but like a boss. Jesus, though, will not be bossed or patronized. Instead he rebukes Peter with the strongest language possible: “Get behind me, Satan!” Who is Satan? He is the betrayer, the accuser, the adversary, the liar, the bully, the imposter, the tempter, the “rebuker.” Many of us know the voice of Satan in our own lives.
I asked the guys why Jesus reacted so strongly, and one fellow said, “Because Jesus was indeed tempted to walk away from the cross.” I think there is something for us to think about in this fellow’s reflection. Jesus was human—yes, he was divine, too; but, again, let us not forget his humanity. Even at the very end of his life at the Garden of Gethsamane Jesus is asking, pleading, praying for another way, another way to be the Messiah, another way to live into his mission.
In this scripture Jesus is talking about what it means for him to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. From his understanding he will then tell us what it means to follow him as his disciples.
More on all this next week. Again, though, please think and pray about who Jesus is for you. The question that he asked those disciples he asks us.
Anyway, the first story is about Jesus healing a man who was blind (see verses 22-25). What is interesting about this particular healing is that Jesus needs to lay his hands on the man twice. The first time he does so that man only receives partial sight. Jesus needs to repeat the laying on of hands in order for the man to see clearly. Hold onto to that “double touch.”
Jesus moves from this healing to Caesarea Philippi. As he is walking along with his disciples he asks them who do people say that he is. After they give him several answers he turns the question on them and asks, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds with “You are the Messiah.” Peter has it right; Peter has it wrong.
Before we proceeded to talk about how Peter had it both right and wrong, I began to call out individual men by asking them who Jesus was for them. If you are reading these words right now, I would ask you to pause and ask yourself that question: Who is Jesus for you? How do you think about him, talk about him, visualize him, feel him? As three men shared the room became very quiet and this was a tender and personal time. As you ponder who Jesus is for you, I would also ask you to think and pray about who you are for Jesus.
Back to Peter. He had the title “Messiah” right; but he was wrong about what he thought the Messiah was going to do. Peter thought that Jesus was going to be a second David, a warrior king, a savior to defeat the Romans and to vanquish all other enemies. (Please note that before savior was a theological term it was a military one.) But this is not what Jesus came to do—he didn’t come to fight, to conquer, to pick up arms, to lead people into battle. He came to give his life. He came to show us how to live. He came to help us not to fight; to befriend and not conquer, to embrace and not to pick up arms, to join in the battle for—for justice, for peace, for love, and not against. With Jesus there are no foes—or to be a bit more precise, all people are God’s children and he came for one and all, and his way to conquer sin and death—that was his battle, those were his foes—was through giving his life. Not by picking up arms, but by laying his arms down on the cross—that was Jesus’ way.
Peter is not pleased when Jesus tells him that he has to be persecuted and suffer and be rejected and die. Peter is not pleased because Jesus is not living into the script. So he rebukes Jesus. He is here not acting like a disciple, but a patron; not like a follower, but like a boss. Jesus, though, will not be bossed or patronized. Instead he rebukes Peter with the strongest language possible: “Get behind me, Satan!” Who is Satan? He is the betrayer, the accuser, the adversary, the liar, the bully, the imposter, the tempter, the “rebuker.” Many of us know the voice of Satan in our own lives.
I asked the guys why Jesus reacted so strongly, and one fellow said, “Because Jesus was indeed tempted to walk away from the cross.” I think there is something for us to think about in this fellow’s reflection. Jesus was human—yes, he was divine, too; but, again, let us not forget his humanity. Even at the very end of his life at the Garden of Gethsamane Jesus is asking, pleading, praying for another way, another way to be the Messiah, another way to live into his mission.
In this scripture Jesus is talking about what it means for him to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. From his understanding he will then tell us what it means to follow him as his disciples.
More on all this next week. Again, though, please think and pray about who Jesus is for you. The question that he asked those disciples he asks us.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesdays with Mark (7: 24-37)
“From there he [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.” (7: 24)
Have you ever felt like you didn’t want people to know where you are? Have you ever been glad to be in a place where your cell phone doesn’t work anymore? Have you ever looked at your computer and breathed a sigh of relief when you saw that you didn’t have any messages?
I imagine that this is where Jesus was at that moment that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was. He was tired, spent, exhausted.
But that was not going to happen for him. “Yet he could not escape notice,” the scripture tells us. He wanted a break, but no break was to be had for a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit came to him and asked him to cast it out. This is a woman, a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin—in other words she was someone who was pretty far removed from Jesus’ background and origins. She knelt before him and begged him to heal her daughter and Jesus said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children he is talking about are the Jews; the dogs he is talking about are the Gentiles.
This is, for me, a very challenging piece of scripture. It would seem that Jesus dismisses her, that he ignores her plea, that he insults her, that he doesn’t really see her or the little girl’s need.
When I pointed all this out to the folks this morning in bible study, one person said that he had heard from a biblical scholar that when Jesus is using the word “dogs” here that he is not referring to mongrel dogs, but to pet dogs, lap dogs, so that his words to this woman were really not quite as derogatory or dismissive as may seem. I then asked all of the gentlemen how the women in their lives would respond to being called any kind of dog. That seemed to end that part of our conversation.
One way into this piece of scripture is to know that there is indeed some evidence that Jesus did see that his mission was first to the Jews so that he could then remind them and reignite them to embrace and live into their mission to the world. (See more on this in Matthew 10:5.)
I think another way into this piece of scripture is to ask whether or not Jesus was just having a bad day, and that this interchange was displaying his humanity. Now, this may seem a little controversial or challenging. We believe, we proclaim, that Jesus was “truly God and truly man” in the Chalcedonian Definition (see the Book of Common Prayer, p. 864). Since New Testament times it has been a challenge for the church, for all of us, to hold together both truths—that Jesus was both totally God and totally a human being. Most often in the last two thousand years the church has leaned more towards his divinity than his humanity. When we do that, though, we are denying one important aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus became flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. There was an understanding in the early church that went this way: Jesus could only save what he became, what he took on, what he assumed. Which means that if he were not fully one with us he would not be able to fully and completely redeem and forgive and save us.
For me this is a very important piece of scripture. I do think that Jesus was tired, that he didn’t see this woman, that this was not one of his finest moments, and that the woman changed his mind. When Jesus denied her request, she said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus then healed the little girl.
I think that this woman is one of the most important and influential characters/persons in scripture. She bested Jesus in the debate, and she called forth the universal mission that we see Jesus live into from this moment forward.
Seeing what I would call Jesus’ humanity gives me more hope with my own. If he can change, if he can have a bad day, if he can turn on folks and not “get it” the first time around, then he will understand and have mercy when I don’t.
This woman had moxie. Jesus liked that. You can almost see him wryly smile by the end of this interchange. She is a model of faith for us. Look and see what she does and ask yourself how it might speak to you and your faith.
Little theological caveat: by emphasizing the humanity of Jesus in this passage, please don’t hear or think that I am for one moment denying his divinity or that he is the Son of God. I do, though, think that holding both his humanity and his divinity together in tension is important for us.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t want people to know where you are? Have you ever been glad to be in a place where your cell phone doesn’t work anymore? Have you ever looked at your computer and breathed a sigh of relief when you saw that you didn’t have any messages?
I imagine that this is where Jesus was at that moment that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was. He was tired, spent, exhausted.
But that was not going to happen for him. “Yet he could not escape notice,” the scripture tells us. He wanted a break, but no break was to be had for a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit came to him and asked him to cast it out. This is a woman, a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin—in other words she was someone who was pretty far removed from Jesus’ background and origins. She knelt before him and begged him to heal her daughter and Jesus said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children he is talking about are the Jews; the dogs he is talking about are the Gentiles.
This is, for me, a very challenging piece of scripture. It would seem that Jesus dismisses her, that he ignores her plea, that he insults her, that he doesn’t really see her or the little girl’s need.
When I pointed all this out to the folks this morning in bible study, one person said that he had heard from a biblical scholar that when Jesus is using the word “dogs” here that he is not referring to mongrel dogs, but to pet dogs, lap dogs, so that his words to this woman were really not quite as derogatory or dismissive as may seem. I then asked all of the gentlemen how the women in their lives would respond to being called any kind of dog. That seemed to end that part of our conversation.
One way into this piece of scripture is to know that there is indeed some evidence that Jesus did see that his mission was first to the Jews so that he could then remind them and reignite them to embrace and live into their mission to the world. (See more on this in Matthew 10:5.)
I think another way into this piece of scripture is to ask whether or not Jesus was just having a bad day, and that this interchange was displaying his humanity. Now, this may seem a little controversial or challenging. We believe, we proclaim, that Jesus was “truly God and truly man” in the Chalcedonian Definition (see the Book of Common Prayer, p. 864). Since New Testament times it has been a challenge for the church, for all of us, to hold together both truths—that Jesus was both totally God and totally a human being. Most often in the last two thousand years the church has leaned more towards his divinity than his humanity. When we do that, though, we are denying one important aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus became flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. There was an understanding in the early church that went this way: Jesus could only save what he became, what he took on, what he assumed. Which means that if he were not fully one with us he would not be able to fully and completely redeem and forgive and save us.
For me this is a very important piece of scripture. I do think that Jesus was tired, that he didn’t see this woman, that this was not one of his finest moments, and that the woman changed his mind. When Jesus denied her request, she said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus then healed the little girl.
I think that this woman is one of the most important and influential characters/persons in scripture. She bested Jesus in the debate, and she called forth the universal mission that we see Jesus live into from this moment forward.
Seeing what I would call Jesus’ humanity gives me more hope with my own. If he can change, if he can have a bad day, if he can turn on folks and not “get it” the first time around, then he will understand and have mercy when I don’t.
This woman had moxie. Jesus liked that. You can almost see him wryly smile by the end of this interchange. She is a model of faith for us. Look and see what she does and ask yourself how it might speak to you and your faith.
Little theological caveat: by emphasizing the humanity of Jesus in this passage, please don’t hear or think that I am for one moment denying his divinity or that he is the Son of God. I do, though, think that holding both his humanity and his divinity together in tension is important for us.
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