A Much Better Day: Mark 16

Today is Friday the 13th, which many people take as a bad omen. For me, while there is some measure of historical significance to why we tend to think Friday the 13ths are a bad day, the day itself? Not scary. Most superstition falls under the category of self-fulfilling prophecy. You expect bad things to happen, then bad things happen.

I’d need to find and cite a sociologist or psychologist to prove that to you as a fact, but that’s not my point here. My point is this: whatever you think of today, whether you expect it to be good or not good, there has been a much better day. It was better both objectively and subjectively.

Put yourself in the sandals of those who had followed the earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. They have followed and then watched Him be executed at the hands of the Roman government. That Friday was one of the worst days that they could have experienced. Many had left everything and suffered rejection by their culture to follow Jesus, and He was now dead.

That’s just their feelings. That’s what made that Friday a subjectively bad day. It was an objectively bad day because all of the tendencies of human nature were on display. In the Jewish leaders, we see the willingness to do whatever it took to retain power. In the crowd, the herd mentality is demonstrated while the crowd easily condemns a known innocent man. In Pilate, the cowardice to stand for right. In crucifixion the sheer willingness of man being inhuman in his treatment of his fellow man. All of the worst of who we are as people was on display that Friday.

If Mark ended there, at the end of Mark 15, showing the downside of giving up everything to follow Jesus. Showing the destructive nature of humanity. Showing the absolute horror of sin. If Mark had stopped there, life would be tragic.

Yet Mark does not stop there. Mark 16 (link) comes along next. Think about that day:

First, for the followers of Jesus, it must have been a relief. I actually think that may have been one of the first emotional reactions to the Resurrection. Yes, relief. More even than astonishment: the followers of Jesus had seen the dead live again before. This time it is greater, of course, because no one but Jesus could raise the dead, so His Resurrection was independent of other actors.

Yet they would have been relieved that what they had been doing was not in vain. I think the evidence shows they did not fully understand what had happened, but they knew it was a better day for them, personally.

Objectively speaking, it was a great day. Why? All of those evils that showed the evidence of mankind’s fallen nature? Each wrong suffered by Jesus was not enough to keep Him dead. He took all the sin that we could offer and still, His righteousness and power raised Him from the dead.

That puts us in this position: we can be forgiven. Sin was not able to overpower God. Light is stronger than darkness, truth greater than lies—all of this reality breaks through on this one day. Death is not co-equal with life, but is subject to the power of God.

If that’s not a better day, I do not know what is. Whatever issues of bad luck you suppose today, recognize that there is a great day in the past you need to remember. The Resurrection was that day, and because of that day, every day you live should be drawing closer to the God who saved you from sin and makes you righteous in His sight.

Today’s Nerd Note: It’s the end of Mark. You can’t skip all those italicized sections in modern Bibles about the ending of Mark in the Nerd Note, now can you?

Here’s the deal: we do not have Mark’s original written work. Instead, we have thousands of copies and fragmentary copies. The science of determining what Mark originally wrote is called “Textual Criticism.” I wish it had a better name than “Criticism” but that’s what we have.

The original work Mark wrote is called an “autograph.” Not because he signed it, but because it is “self-written” which is essentially the meaning of autograph. That work is lost to us, unless it is blended in with a stack of papyri in a museum but we don’t know it is what it is.

In pre-printing press times, writings were generally copied by hand and circulated. There is a general historic understanding that many times in the Christian world in those first centuries, when a copy of a writing came into an area, it would be copied by the local Christians. If they could afford to do so and if they had time before the courier moved on with the writing. In time, one ends up with a great many copies of the original text. Those copies are copied, and then copied, and then…(you get the point.)

While the people doing the copying would have been careful, haste and weathering of the source would have raised issues. Further, what we have now is based on what has survived and been examined. The term for that is extant. That means "surviving and known.” The extant manuscripts cluster into groups, typically showing their original source locations.

As Christianity spread, manuscript clusters developed in various places. Most of the extant manuscripts we have are from Egypt because the climate lends itself toward their survival. However, there are other areas where manuscripts survive.

The textual critic then has to take those extant manuscripts and compare them. Two major factors weigh on which text goes forward to be used in a Bible translation: age and number. The age is how old the reading is—typically, a reading that is known from the 2nd century will be favored over one that only ages to the 10th century. It is closer in age to the original and so more likely to be correct.

The second is number: how many manuscripts exist with a reading? The high number gives the likelihood that the reading was common and widespread, favored by those who knew it. Imagine if we had the previous generation of Baptists recreate hymns: the majority would get Victory in Jesus right. If it was wrong, they would correct it and trash the incorrect copies.

Mark’s ending puts these two factors in conflict: the older texts leave off Mark 16:9-20, while more texts have Mark 16:9-20. It is fairly well accepted that Mark should not end with verse 8, but how should it have ended?

The so-called “Longer Ending” fits with both the Matthew account of the Resurrection and the experience of the Apostles and early church in terms of attesting miracles to their message. It may not have been part of Mark’s original writing, but it does not conflict with any point of Scripture and so does no harm to be there.

Unless, of course, you misinterpret Mark 16:17-18 to be instruction rather than observation and go picking up deadly snakes and drinking poison on purpose. That will get you killed most of the time.

Not so good to be the King: Mark 15

We are one chapter short of finishing the Gospel of Mark. Since each one of the gospels gives an account of the whole earthly life of Christ, that means we’re in a pretty dark place. Mark 15 (link) gives us the narrative account of Jesus’ trial at the hands of Roman authorities and His crucifixion and burial.

This chapter is ripe for the picking when we consider injustice in this world. Here are a few examples:

1. Mark 15:7 tells us that Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in an insurrection. Not that he’s specifically guilty, but the round up of the usual suspects had gotten him a spot due for execution. The other Gospel accounts do find the Barabbas was likely guilty of something, but Mark’s account makes one wonder: Why is he in prison, really? Prison is a place for the proven guilty—not a storehouse for the unwanted.

2. Mark 15:6 give a hint why Pilate may have been okay with rounding up more than the necessarily guilty: every year he releases at least one prisoner at the request of the crowd. Guilty, innocent, political prisoner—it apparently does not matter. This is not justice: the guilty going free or the innocent sitting in chains to watch it happen. This leads to a capricious system: Pilate could ensure that he executed anyone he didn’t want out the day before. Just in case, you know, the crowd wanted that person.

3. Mark 15:10 clues us in about the system: it’s not about guilt or innocence anyway. It’s about politics. And if that does not show it, then Mark 15:15 shows it. Justice is perverted when truth is not the goal—if power and control is the end-goal, then it is not about justice.

Yet in the midst of this, we have not considered the greatest injustice present in the situation. God is the author of life, the sustainer of the universe—these things we find throughout Scripture. Pilate is not able to walk from one end of the Praetorium to the other without the providence of God enabling it. Yet he sits, in judgment, determining the fate of Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Himself.

Really?

Yes, really.

Here sits a man in judgment of his Maker. The idea that Pilate or the Sanhedrin or Caesar himself would have the ability to judge whether or not God Almighty is guilty of something staggers to the top of human arrogance. Pilate is nearly legendary for this even to the modern age: a man who thought it his place to judge God.

Certainly many of us would think that we would do no such thing, so let’s visit the other three examples of injustice and consider our actions in regards to these first:

1. Ever pulled out the extra-wide paint roller to paint that “guilty” mark on people? Where you have assumed that they were guilty simply because of who their parents were or where they were born? Many of us think we’re far too sophisticated for that, but we’re really not, unfortunately. We show a preference for those whose backgrounds are similar to ours and an awe for some whose backgrounds appear grander. Else why do we consider the election of Bill Clinton an anomaly when he graduated from the University of Arkansas? Even around here, there’s almost a need to apologize and point out his Rhodes Scholar days.

Folks, we may not quite auto-judge a skin color like once happened, but we are often as guilty of pre-judging someone as guilty as the Romans had done here. If you think that’s not true, compare the reaction the next time someone in a turban or kaffiyeh leaves a car running by a tall building and the next time you do.

2. We also have this tendency to want justice to roll in our favor. If the person was probably guilty but not “one of us” then we’d just as soon leave them locked up or fired or blacklisted. On the other hand, if there’s the possibility of any doubt, if maybe aliens did it or were responsible and the person is “one of us” then we want grace or a little pardon, notwithstanding the circumstances.

Oftentimes, we are worse about this with non-legal crimes rather than with legal issues. We don’t want anyone, including friends, to get away with murder under any circumstances. But we’ll let our allies commit a little character assassination while ripping our opponents for the slightest impugning of character. When our candidate does it, it’s just politics, but let the other guy do it and it’s dirty pool. Sure, when my theological camp lobs arrows, we’re justified but when theirs does it, their very salvation is in question.

3. Then there’s power and control. Too much of our lives are about gaining and keeping those two things. As Christians, our lives are to be about God’s truth: not about our own power or control. The last thing we should be seeking is to control anyone else. We should seek to first control ourselves to the glory of God and then to speak, act, and lovingly demonstrate what being controlled by God looks like. Then, let God deal with others.

Finally, we come back to sitting in judgment of God. We don’t do that, right? We don’t determine that we do not like His ways and so find loopholes around them, do we? We don’t determine that we do not like His holiness, His righteousness, His truth, or His grace and so try to explain these attributes into nothingness, do we?

Most of us as Christians would never admit that we do such a thing. We’d never really consciously do it. Yet we do it just the same. We apologize for the hard truths of Scripture. We keep God’s grace and love to ourselves. We judge that our way is better than His.

In this, we’re no better than Pilate.

Yet Jesus died for sinners like us. Let us recognize the grace inherent in that truth and commit ourselves ever forward to live for Him.

Today’s Nerd Note: Not very nerdy, but keep in mind that Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21) was likely a dark-skinned North African man. After all, he’s from North Africa. So, anyone who prefers to judge by skin color alone, keep in mind that the soldiers with the nails likely looked more like Europeans and the man pressed into service to carry the Cross of Christ was an African.

Also, while I just have not had time to seek it out today, the reference to Simon as father of Alexander and Rufus likely indicates that these two young men became important in the church in the years ahead. Mark is likely writing about 30 years after this happens, so these could be leaders in the church. We see in church history that North Africa is an important center of Christianity for the first 600 years. It is possible that Simon, Alexander, and Rufus were involved in the opening stages of that.

What are you talking about? Mark 14

Mark 14 (link) is another of those really extended chapters in Mark. It runs to 72 verses, and would likely take me about 10 sermons to scratch the surface of it. Instead, though, we’re going to have to cover this quickly.

Overviewing the chapter, we move through the whole of the events at the Last Supper. Jesus celebrates the Passover meal with His disciples, which includes the shocking moment where He washes their feet and the announcement of His impending betrayal. Moving ahead, we see the time in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prays, asking the cup to pass from Him but accepts God’s will in the issue.

We have His arrest and the beginning of His trials. Much ink has gone into discussing how many forms of injustice, even by first century standards, are involved in these events. To read through the mockery that these trials contain and consider that the Roman scourging and crucifixion will be worse strains, or should strain, our conscience. Here is the one innocent man to ever walk the earth, and we would go on international television complaining had we simply been blindfolded at trial. That does not even consider being spit on or beaten or slapped.

What I want to point your attention to, though, is not the center portions of this passage. Rather, I would point you to the framework around the chapter. Let’s look at these two stories in-depth:

The first is the story of the woman who anoints Jesus with an expensive perfume and wipes His feet with her hair. The latter is the story of Peter’s three denials of Christ. He starts with a simple “No, not me” and finishes with a curse.

Both of these stories show people with a personal cost to pay for identifying with Christ. Both show the two options in front of us when that cost presents itself to us.

We can take our cue from Peter. We can follow through the easy times and the moderately difficult times, as he did. We can learn all the right answers and even recognize Jesus as the Messiah. The time with Jesus has developed Peter’s understanding, given him many advantages as a follower of Jesus.

Yet we see him come to the point of standing at a distance, watching what happens to his Lord and Savior. We see him, having just recently lopped the ear off of Malchus, following the mob to the home of the high priest. It does not take long for someone to notice him, his appearance, and his accent. Yet in each of three opportunities to acknowledge Christ, he denies that he even knows “this man.”

We could follow this cue: first try to prevent what God has willed, then passively wait for someone to ask about our relationship with Christ and then fumble the answer. Many times I have done so, and I regret every one of those moments. That is the path of Peter in this chapter, but it is not the better path to choose.

Better is the path of Mary in this chapter. At dinner one evening, she comes into the home of Simon the Leper (rough name, dude) and publicly demonstrates her love for Jesus and her understanding of what is about to take place. Jesus declares that she has recognized His coming burial and praises what she has done.

Consider it: she did not wait to be asked, nor did she expect a benefit from what she did. Instead, she receives a scolding from one of the Twelve and the silent treatment from many. After all, she has violated a few social norms to directly honor the One who she worships.

Which example will we follow? It is true that we should recognize how Peter recovers and moves forward, in that his example is exemplary. Yet in this moment, we would do well to consider the actions of a woman Mark did not even name in his retelling of the events. Let us not wait to be asked, but let us boldly fill the room with the fragrance of our worship of Jesus.

Today’s Nerd Note: Anonymity. The Gospels are written in it, for there is no direct statement of authorship. Yet sometimes what is left unsaid is strongly hinted at in the text.

In this case, let us consider Mark. Let us consider, especially, his presence in the Garden of Gethsemane. Longstanding tradition makes Mark the young man in Mark 14:51-52 who flees the arrest scene, leaving behind only the sheet he was wearing. Other traditions make it someone else, yet we cannot know for certain.

I like the Mark tradition. It’s hardly a detail that anyone else would have noticed in the chaos, except perhaps the guard that came away with the sheet. Why recount it otherwise? Some commentators will make it a more symbolic remembrance: whoever the guilty party is, this is about the shame of fleeing Jesus. That’s possible, but at this point there is a more factual telling, which is Mark’s style in general, than a symbols and images style.

There is, further, an additional consideration in the anonymity Mark records of the woman in the events we looked at. While it is hard to connect, there are many women in the New Testament named Mary. The diversity of the isolated stories about them, though, causes most scholars to assume that nearly every “Mary” story that does not have a clear definition of which Mary it is must be a different Mary.

That is, that Mary of Bethany must be different from Mary Magdalene, who in turn is different from this Mary or that Mary. Logos Bible Software’s Biblical People tool gives us SEVEN women named Mary.

What if, though, the name was not quite so common among the followers of Christ? Certainly His mother, Mary, is distinct. However, are there really six others? There is no definite reason why Mary, the mother of John Mark and a widow with a house in Jerusalem, could not also be sister to Martha and Lazarus. This could explain her willingness to house the early church in persecution in Jerusalem. It would explain her son, Mark, having such a devotion to the Gospel.

Now, I have not yet found any full-time scholar who even thinks this way, but I think it’s possible that the reason Mark does not name Mary in the anointing is the same reason he does not name himself: it is part of the writing style that demands anonymity. It would be appear almost bragging for Mark to name his own mother as the woman that Jesus said, essentially, would always be remembered with the Gospel.

His leaving her name unmentioned is not chauvinism, then, but family humility. Maybe even because his mother told him so, and we all know the second greatest truth not recorded in Scripture is this: “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

This does not end well: Mark 13

While I have the utmost of sympathy for those who have been, in times past, let down by the doom and gloom predictions of the end of the world, it is time to admit the truth. This world does not end well. Whether you want to contemplate the end of human history or the destruction of the Earth, whether you think Jesus comes back and takes some of His or if you think He waits until all of His are set, things are going to get ugly someday.

How do we know that? Take a look at todays’ passage, Mark 13 (link [oh, and please, if you click through, disregard the poor choice of words on the NLT section heading.]) In this passage, Jesus speaks to His disciples about the things to come before He comes to finalize justice on this earth.

The occasion that sparks the discussion is when one of the disciples points out the beautiful stonework and construction standards at the Temple. This disciple, unnamed in the Synoptic Gospels, was highlighting the work the people of Israel had done to honor God. It has a bit, also, of a redneck feel to it for me: I think of how I feel at fancy churches and big buildings, like the State Capitol, and how I am sometimes awestruck at the beautiful buildings and the amazing stone work.

Then, though, I think of changing the lights in those chandeliers and I get over my awe pretty quickly. I do think that whatever disciple it was who said this was likely one who had come from a more rural and distant setting, away from Jerusalem. He would have been one to be around the Temple only at major events, when the place was crowded. Now, he’s here in a lull time, up close and astounded.

What has astounded him, though, is temporary. No matter how impressive it looks, no structure built by human hands will hold up. Even the secular efforts of the History Channel show us this: take a look at their Life After People series sometime. You’ll see how the simple ravages of time will ultimately destroy everything mankind has built.

Except what Jesus goes on to teach in this chapter is even more bleak. The works of humanity will not have the opportunity to fall to the ravages of time, for the ravages will not have time. Instead, nations will war against nations and kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes and famines. And those things are just the beginning. It goes downhill from there.

It will be so bad that you should not stop to get your coat or pack a few things. You will not want to grab your evac pack or your Bear Grylls Limited Edition Super-Duper Survival Combo Gear. Pregnant women and those nursing will have terrible times, and winter will make it worse! (Note to modern folks: consider that this was a no-formula-because-it-does-not-exist time. Why is it bad for nursing mothers? Because that’s any woman with a child under two. Hard for her, hard for the child.)

Alongside these events will be the shift in humanity from any form of compassionate society into an every man for himself! mindset. Parents will turn on children, friends and brothers on each other, and the whole world will hate the people who follow Jesus. That’s what He says, not what I say. When we start feeling like the world is turning against us as believers, we might consider that this is actually a good thing.

This area of life is a major debate topic in the current day. There are those who view life from a godless perspective, who feel that someday mankind might extinct itself. Those who think man will go on until the Sun expands, and will hopefully move onwards before that happens. Then there are those who look to the text of Scripture and see that God will come in a very different way than He is always present now and address the issue of a world corrupted by sin.

When that happens, it will not be good for a time. This world does not end well: the stones of the Temple? Torn apart by Romans to get the gold that melted between the rocks when they destroyed it by fire. A fire and destruction, for the record, that their commander attempted to prevent but the typically very disciplined Roman Army did not follow orders. Nothing stops the Word of God from being fulfilled.

The world at large will also be purified via fire and other means that feel destructive. The human-driven chaos will give way to divine work of wrath and cleansing.

The question for us is not really whether or not it will come. It is not even relevant when it will come. What is relevant is this question: when it comes, when He comes, how will you see Jesus? Will you see Him as the fulfillment of all you have hoped for or the fulfillment of all you have feared?

Either you will face the wrath of men or the wrath of God. One is as temporary as the Temple. The other is less so.

Today’s Nerd Note: This is heavily nerdy. The fact that the disciple who comments on the stones is unnamed just drives my curiosity crazy. And with the much larger issues roaming through the rest of the chapter, the identity of that disciple is not a heavy topic of discussion.

The story is present in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but none of them give an identification for the Architectural Disciple. Was it one of the Twelve? A different disciple? Was this Mattathias?

There is a theory that it’s Judas but he is not named because he turned out as the traitor, and there’s no real negative commentary here, so there’s no value in naming him. That’s just one theory, and it’s not heavily supported. It’s an argument from silence, and those are always sketchy.

What’s an argument from silence? It is where you look at what is said and try to infer what happened. In this case, since the disciple is unnamed, you try and guess why he’s unnamed, and argue (reason) from why you think someone would not be named.

It’s dangerous to argue from silence. When there is no evidence, there is no clear argument, so do not build too much on silent foundation. It may not be there when you need it the most.

Questions, Questions: Mark 12

It's political campaign season here in America, and we're going to see something repeated over and over and over again: the loaded question. It's a political maneuver that is older than our country, but one both candidates and media have learned to play to a nearly perfect note in these days. One of the joking examples of the loaded question is the old “When did you stop beating your wife?” question. You cannot provide a short answer to that question: if you say you haven't stopped, are you admitting you still do it? If you give a date, are you admitting you used to?

Or there's the question my old chemistry teacher used to ask: “Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” The two halves are non-related, creating a false dichotomy. What if you walk to school while carrying your lunch? Historically, we see the question-framing continue. At the outset of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther was brought before the imperial powers in his home nation, but rather than being allowed to speak freely, he was told only to answer a couple of questions with yes and no. That shuts down discussion, doesn't it?

When we look back into the Gospels, we see the Pharisees and Sadducees were good questioners. Throughout the life of Christ, these two groups, along side the scribes and lawyers, asked Jesus a multitude of questions. Many times their efforts were attempts to trap Him into saying something that would embarrass Him or shut down His ministry. This effort did not stop, even in this closing week of His life.

Mark 12 (link) contains several of these questions. First, there is the question of paying taxes to Caesar. Then, there's a question from the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead. You get the classic question of “What is the greatest commandment?”

The one consistent feature in these questions is the wisdom of the answers. The responses from Jesus show us important ideas about dealing with critics with loaded questions:

1. Do not let the opening throw you off: take a look at Mark 12:13-17. The question is political and it starts with an attempt to flatter Jesus. They pay lip-service to how independent minded He is, and then hit Him with a question that will either upset the people or upset the government. Jesus, though, does not let the flattery sink in. Why? Likely because He trusts in His identity rather than people's statements about Him. That's not a bad thought for all of us to consider, but that's not the point today. The point is this: do not allow the flattering or attacking opening of a critical question to keep you from sorting through the truth of it.
2. Do know your questioners: Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. What do you know about them? The Scribes knew the Word of God well, the Pharisees sought to follow it to a fault of perfection, and the Sadducees were the upper-class who were mainly worried with holding on to their own place of power. The Pharisees were less involved politically, the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, and the scribes tended to know more than they acted on. So, Jesus responds to them directly on point. Not the point they want to make, but the point they need to hear.
3. Do not miss the opportunity to communicate truth: Jesus could have softballed each of the questions He faced. Or He could have given short answers: “Pay your taxes.” “No one's wife.” “The commandment that makes you obey all the other commandments.” Instead, He presents not just the answer but the reasoning, not just a momentary relief of curiosity but a full explanation.
4. Do address the real issue: Is the issue taxes or the heart of ownership? Is it about a hypothetical wife or the denial of truth? Is it about theoretical righteousness or doing something in obedience? Answer the real question. Now, if you are not the infallible God of the Universe, you would do well to make sure you actually do understand the real question. Sometimes it really is the question the person is asking.

In all, we can learn not just from what Jesus did but how He did it.

Today's Nerd Note: The end of this chapter features the story of a widow who put two lepta into the offering at the Temple and Jesus' commendation that she gave more than the rich because she gave all she had, while the rich gave only a portion of what they had.

This passage has been used by some to advocate that you should, for example, write a check for the balance in your checking account to a church or ministry and then trust God to make it back up. Now, it may be that you should do that from time-to-time, but that is not what this passage commands. Or commends. Rather, let us consider a couple of realities:

#1: The Temple, at the time, was the central place of the work of God on earth. More than that, it was the symbolic center of God's presence. If you are a Christian, you ought to go to church, but that's not because it's the center of God's presence but because it's a center point for meeting and drawing near to God's people. Churches and ministries, while they ought to be good, are not the same as the Temple.

#2: The widow lived in a society where there should have been certain care for her even without money. She gave in trust that God, through His people at the time, would provide for her ongoing needs. We should cautiously consider this alongside the other Scriptural commands of stewardship and recognize that sometimes God provides for tomorrow by funding given yesterday.

#3: The story is as much, if not more, about the rich who acted a big game about their “sacrifice” that was not a sacrifice than it is about the widow whose true sacrifice was uncelebrated. Think about this: the millionaire who gives the church a fraction of his money gets the gym named after him, but the kid who gives his paper route money so that there is a facility to assist in reaching his fellow kids gets no recognition. We do the same thing, don't we?

Clean this mess up! Mark 11

Mark 11 (link) moves us from the general life and ministry of Jesus and into the last week of His life. We open up with the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday and start progressing through the events that lead to the arrest, trial, and the Cross.

What do we get in this week? Much of the focus for this chapter tends to fall on the first section, called the Triumphal Entry. This is where Jesus enters Jerusalem to the acclaim of many, riding on a donkey, and they wave palm branches. He then goes out to Bethany, from which He is essentially commuting for the week.

The real center of this chapter is not the Triumphal Entry, though. It's the narrative descriptions of Jesus exercising His authority in all matters. Let's take a look at those:

First: well, there's the "Go get a donkey" in the opening story. The simple statement to bystanders of "The Lord has need of it" takes care of any accusations of Grand Theft Beast of Burden, and on they go. Consider how you would feel if someone showed up, started to crank your new car and just said "The Lord has need of it" before driving away. You'd call the police, wouldn't you? (And, likely, the men with the nice jacket and the padded cell for the guy.)

However, that simple spoken phrase expresses Jesus' authority, and the donkey is freely allowed to Him.

The next day, as Jesus is leaving Bethany, He takes a look at a fig tree and finds no figs. The tree is green and leafy, but there is nothing edible present. Jesus then performs the only recorded destruction in the Gospels: the tree is cursed. That evening, the disciples notice on the way back to Bethany that the tree has withered. At the word of Jesus, a fully green tree turns to withering firewood. We'll spend some more time on this in the nerd note.

The big moment of this section comes when Jesus drives the moneychangers and merchants from the Temple. This is the image of Jesus that many people want to overlook. Certainly there is much appreciation for His condemnation of those who turn worship into a business, but we get very, very uncomfortable with Angry Jesus in this passage.

He does not walk up and calmly suggest the moneychangers leave or recommend alternate places to practice business. Neither is He gentle in speech: the accusation that the Temple has been turned to a den of thieves is calling the merchants thieves. Don't pretend that this is not a personal, direct, attack on them. If I called your house a "den of thieves" you would feel insulted.

Of course, if your house was filled with stuff that you took from others under the threat of force or by deception, you would feel insulted but the statement would be true. In this case, that's the fact as well: these men are effectively stealing, as they are deceiving and coercing funds from innocent worship participants.

Yet He is simply exercising His authority at this point. The Temple was intended to be the center-point of the worship of God on earth at the time, and yet it had become the center of man-driven organization. There were business decisions intruding into spiritual behaviors and it was all being allowed by those who should have been guarding righteousness.

So Jesus overturns their tables and drives out those who are distracting and wrongly profiting from worship. He then also refuses to answer the chief priests and scribes who questioned Him about it.

My fellow believers, we need to understand something about the Lord Jesus Christ that this passage should make quite clear: that "Lord" that we tend to address Jesus with? That's not there just to add a word. That is about His authority, His rule over His people.

It is a compassionate rule, but compassion sometimes requires strong action. We must be cautious, especially anyone who stands as a leader of those who worship Christ. He expects that you will allow Him to exercise authority, not you. He expects that you will not stand between the hearts drawn to Him and the One who is drawing them.

It is a warning worth considering for individual churches and for religious structures as a whole. For my fellow Southern Baptists, it's something to consider as many of our "great lights" will meet in New Orleans. Are we letting business come between us and serving Christ? Do we allow our debates and debacles to build obstacles between people and the God who saves them?

Woe be unto us if we do. Not just on an earthly level or even a denominational survival level, but on the level of damaging our relationship with Jesus.

Today's Nerd Note: Back to the fig tree: some people, like Bertrand Russell, found so much fault in this incident that they discard either the story or Jesus. Russell, generally, discarded Jesus. After all, if God Incarnate was so temperamental as to curse and destroy a tree for not having fruit out of season, what kind of God are we dealing with?

First issue: Interestingly, to discard Jesus (and theism, generally) over this story is somewhat contradictory. Here is a man, claiming to be God, that can kill a tree in a day with a sentence. There is power there, at the very least. While you may question the use of the power, there is another question: if it was not right, would it have happened? In this, we have an event that shows Jesus' divine nature, whether we like it or not.

Second issue: Fig trees, true, do not have mature figs until August-October. However, prior to sprouting leaves, the immature buds that will become figs sprout on the trees. By March-April, these buds are edible immature figs, called paqqim. It appears, based on my reading, that these should be in place before the leaves grow. Finding a tree in full leaf with nothing edible means it's a tree that will produce no fruit that year. It has nothing immature but edible, and will have nothing. So the curse is deserved.

Third issue: There is a measure of symbolism. The tree story bookends the cleansing of the Temple. The Temple is like the tree. It has full leaves, but what fruit does it have? At the time, none, for it is filled with robbers and thieves. The literal event echoes the point.

Finally: everything God does is good. Not because He meets the human standard of good, but because the human standard of good should be "anything that is what God would do, based on what God has done and has said." If God does it, it's good. If Jesus cursed a tree and it died, that action was good. When we read Scripture, what God does is good, whether or not we like it.

Stop looking for the loopholes: Mark 10

One thing that keeps me in a consistent state of awe regarding the Bible is how clearly God's standards and ways are expressed in Scripture. This happens partly because I think there is an entire industry that exists to find ways to make the clear less-than-clear while also using the less-than-clear to build personal kingdoms. Some of that, though, is another sermon for another day.

Rather, let's dig back into Mark and take a look at Mark 10 (link). Here are few of the stories in this chapter:

First, you have a few of the Pharisees trying to get Jesus to settle one of their disputes. The Pharisees, to their credit, wanted to get the Law of God exactly perfect so they could obey it. The Pharisees, to their discredit, seemed to believe that they were better than anyone else for this effort and that God liked them better, too. One of the Pharisaic debates at the time was over divorce.

Back in the Old Testament, when Moses gathered from God the laws to govern Israel, divorce had been permitted. The law, though, was vague and only stated that a man was to write a certificate of divorce for his wife and send her away. It did not address the idea of causes or reasons for divorce. So, two basic views arose: one was that the law was permissive, that as long as you wrote the certificate, you could have a divorce. The other was restrictive: there had to be a reason, something based in the portions of the law that related to finding your newly-married bride was not what she should have been, to get a divorce. These two groups were the main lines of thought about divorce at the time.

Since this was a big deal, much like divorce and marriage are now, the Pharisees were assured that if Jesus sided with one side or the other, He would be angering a large contingent of the people. Should He side with the "wide-open" group, those who had struggled to make their marriage work or who thought this was a wicked, loose moral position would pounce on Him. So, too, would the groups of women who were disadvantaged in that society because of capricious divorce. Yet if He takes the stronger position, many would find Him being excessively legalistic and attack Him for that. After all, is this man not speaking much of grace? Plus, that puts Him adding to the words of Moses, which would have been more fuel for their fire.

Except Jesus does not truly side with either side. Instead, His response is this: the reason you guys want the divorce answer? It's because your hearts are hard and sinful. My Creation was this: a man and a woman marry, starting a new relationship of unity, and it lasts for their entire life.

He turns the whole problem on its head and points out that the Pharisees were, really, looking at the wrong issue. They wanted to know how to get out of a marriage. The real question, the real problem, was this: they were not paying attention to how to get into a marriage in the first place.

They were not supposed to go in while looking for the exit doors, but rather go in looking to glorify and honor God by holding true to their commitments. Instead, they were looking in marriage only for what would benefit them—whether they wanted to bail out for any cause or only if they found something "inappropriate" about their wives.

Marriage in the Scriptural ideal is one man, one woman, married to each other for life. This is what we should be striving toward in Christian community, teaching the next generation to seek this. To make this their commitment when they come down the aisle.

Does that make anything else unforgivable? Heavens no. Yet one area that we have got to mature in the American Church is this: we have to learn to acknowledge sin as being sin while knowing that grace abounds. We have to be mature enough to admit when even our own lives have gone down a sinful path without trying to excuse it or make it "off-limits" and something that cannot be spoken of.

One certain way to keep a cycle of failing marriages is this: never speak of the importance of marrying to honor God in the first place, and never speak of divorce as bad. That way, no one feels guilty for what has happened, but no one grows up enough to make sure it does not happen again.

Today's Nerd Note: More of an EMPHASIS point: Marriage is intended as a lifetime commitment between two people with a sinful nature. It may be a redeemed sinful nature, and ought to be. Christians ought only marry those who share their faith.

There are things that happen, though, that wreck this covenantal relationship, and man does render asunder what God has joined together. Further, there are people who seem one way and turn out differently, and that difference is violent and dangerous. The totality of the ethics of the situation are more than I will address here: you should seek spiritual counsel from those whom you trust. I will say this: life is too precious. Each human on this earth is made in the image of God, and no portion of obeying God regarding marriage should put your life at risk against your will. (I know some missionary couples who jointly risk their lives, and this is obedience.)

However, if one spouse is threatening bodily harm against the other, the right course of action is to find a safe place and remain, as best you can, in a place of safety. I believe that God can change the vilest offender, but God can do so through your prayers from another state. No amount of my belief that the marriage covenant is intended for a lifetime should be taken to mean that one spouse has the right to threaten (or take) the life of their spouse to get out. Nor that it is the responsibility of a spouse to "take it" for the sake of the marriage. Get safe. Get God-honoring counsel and pray for healing and restoration, but do it from a place of safety.

Now is not the time to build something: Mark 9

Mark continues to write long and diverse chapters. Here, in Mark 9 (link), we go from the Mount of Transfiguration all the way through casting out a demon, on to having child-like faith and finishing on gouging out your eye to not go to hell. At the very least, there’s a dozen sermons in this chapter. I will not attempt to preach them all right here.

Not that I wouldn’t like to. Let’s take a look just one part:

The Mount of Transfiguration. This is, by my estimate, the number one moment of “weird” in the earthly ministry of Jesus. The healings are great, the teaching is awesome, and the nature-controlling moments just reinforce the divinity of Christ. The Resurrection is the biggest event in history and the Virgin Birth of Jesus is close alongside.

Yet then there’s this story. Peter, James, and John go up on an undisclosed mountain with Jesus. Suddenly, Jesus and his garments become radiant and “exceedingly white” (Mark 9:3, note that “no launderer on earth” could do that). Also, Elijah and Moses show up to talk with Jesus.

That we look back and see the symbolism of Jesus talking with Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the Prophet as valuable does not truly diminish the oddity of this story. I have yet to find a single point in a Protestant Evangelical Theology that hangs solely on the Transfiguration. This despite the presence of the event in all three Synoptic Gospels.

It’s just an odd story. We don’t know much about what to do with it. The biggest point of theology here is the voice from heaven, what we would assume is the voice of God Himself. In this case, God is attesting again what was said at the Baptism of Jesus: “This is My beloved Son.” That’s not a bad reminder.

Where I find the help in this passage is in the action of Peter. In this chapter, Peter proves that he was not the first Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, but rather the founder of the First Baptist Church. When faced with an amazing, once-in-eternity spiritual event, Peter wants to…

Build something. Actually, three somethings. He’d like to build three tabernacles, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. Now, we Baptists are big fans of building stuff and this sounds just like us. There’s a moment here to be learned from, there is something amazing happens.

And Peter’s concern is to find a way to put a roof over it and hold it tight. His motives here are unknown, except Mark notes Peter’s fear. He could have wanted to note a great moment and be reminded of it for years to come. He may have thought that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were going to be there a while and would need a place to sleep. He might have wanted to be rewarded for his building.

I think it’s safe to give Peter the benefit of the doubt and admit that I would not have known what to do either. I would have fallen into an action bias at that point as well. In case I’m making up terms, I’ll explain action bias: it is a tendency to say “let’s do something, even if it’s wrong.” It is a bias to act without thinking.

By the way, the opposite is ‘inaction bias’ which is the assumption that nothing should ever be done. That’s bad as well.

There is a time, though, to stop and learn. A time to realize that nothing that your hands can put forward will be memorial enough for the moment. A time to learn at the feet of the Master: for Peter, James, and John, they likely would have grown up with great respect for Moses and Elijah, but here is Jesus being highlighted as greater than even these two.

That’s a big deal. Don’t miss the big deal moments of life because you’re too busy trying to blog them or take pictures or make memorials. Sometimes, it is better to live the moment and let your mind do the remembering later.

Today’s Nerd Note: I’m trying to get my word count for these posts back down, it’s been creeping way up. So, the Nerd Note is more of a question:

Do you read both the Transfiguration story and the demon-casting story that follows immediately after it together? You should. This is what met Jesus coming down the mountain. Keep them together in your mind. While there are separable lessons in each, there are lessons paired here as well.

Halfway out of the darkness: Mark 8

When reading through the whole Bible, there are places where just a few short verses really pack a lot of meaning. When you get to Mark 8 (link) those verses are Mark 8:22-26, and they summarize the entire chapter.

In these verses, Jesus is brought a blind man. One of the quirks of this passage is that the "they" brought a blind man to Jesus. We get no clear answer in trying to answer who "they" is referring to. The closest nominative would be the disciples in the paragraphs before, but that seems unlikely. Instead, my guess it that we're talking about the townspeople of Bethsaida.

On track, what we see here is the only story I can remember in the Bible where there is a half-way healing. Jesus first spits on the man's eyes (possibly puts saliva rather than a rude spit) and lays hands on him. He then asks the man if he sees anything.

The man sees, but he sees men unclearly, as if they are trees walking about. Likely, this clues us in that he was not born blind, but had lost his sight. This would not surprising: there are several diseases that can result in lost sight if untreated. Whatever else is inherent here, this much is certain: the man has not been completely healed. He's not blind, but you would not hand him the reins of the chariot, either.

Now, zoom back out to the whole chapter. What is happening in this whole chapter? First, we have the feeding of the 4,000. Once again, people follow Jesus without food. Once again, the disciples question how they are all going to eat. Once again, Jesus feeds the whole lot. The disciples still don't get it, the Pharisees and Sadducees don't get it, and Jesus has to explain it all again.

These folks see, but they fail to see clearly.

After the blind man, we have Mark's explanation of Peter's recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. Well, that and Peter's attempt to tell Jesus that He does not need to be crucified. These two need to go together: some Bible translations put a heading between Peter's confession and Jesus predicting the Cross and the Resurrection. These two go hand-in-hand: Peter makes a smart statement and a not-so-smart statement in them, and they are as much about showing the disciples' issues as they about Jesus.

Again, we see this: the disciples see. They see that Jesus is the Messiah but do not see that He has come to suffer for their sins and rise again. It seems that blurry vision runs through more than just the blind man. It runs through this whole chapter.

So, let us return to the blind man. He spends more time with Jesus. Really, just a few more moments. Yet those moments are all it takes. Those moments and one more touch, and the man can see everything clearly. The ISV uses the modifier of "even at a distance" showing that the man had truly gotten a very good healing of the eyes in this case.

What shall we do with this?

I would point you to our own times. There are many people who see, but see dimly, the words of Christ and the Word of God. They can quote portions of Scripture, but they have difficulty seeing the whole of what is happening.

In all honesty, most of us live somewhere in that, though some see more clearly than others. What we all need is to spend that extra few moments with Jesus and let Him touch us through His Word and the Spirit of God to get that much more clarity about what is really happening around us.

This is the only real solution to what is going on around us today. Whether it is within the church or with how the church relates to whatever culture we sit in the middle of, we need to draw near to Christ. Let Him help us to see rather than continue to be led about, running into trees and away from men.

Let's get more than half-way out of the darkness. Let us stay with Him until we see it all clearly, even the distance of eternity.

Today's Nerd Note: The miracle of healing the blind man here is one of only two that Mark records but no one else does. The other is the healing of the deaf man in Mark 7:31-35. Both of these miracles used the touch of Jesus and not just His word. This goes to the depiction in Mark of Jesus as a man of action.

Additionally in Mark 8 we see that the miracles of feeding the 5,000 and feeding the 4,000 are two separate events. Jesus refers back to both as He tries to get through to His disciples. This gives us one other key point: if Mark gives us an accurate record of the words of Jesus, then Jesus believed that 5,000 were fed from five loaves and 4,000 from seven loaves.

For those who would "demystify" the text and remove the miracles, holding only to the teachings, you are kind of stuck here. The Teacher Himself claims these two miracles to be true and uses them to illustrate His point. That means we either accept His teaching about Himself, that He could do such things, or we doubt His teaching. Alternately, you could claim Mark is inaccurate, but when you do that you need to answer this one: How do you know anything about Jesus if the Gospels are not accurate? The "this does not sound like Jesus" will not work: how do you know what He sounds like? Only through His Word. We either know Him from His word, or we don't know Him. He really did not leave us any other way.

You can eat that! Mark 7

One of the big questions surrounding Christianity is how we understand the Old Testament. Throughout the Old Testament, there are various rules for life in the ancient nation of Israel. Those rules range from taxation to morality to dietary laws. In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of Christianity comes from an expectation that Christians would like to impose all of those laws on modern society.

And worse still is the danger we do to ourselves when preachers attempt to foist those laws on modern society, as happens far too often. Better explanations and views can be cited regarding morality and the Bible without going to suggesting we start executing people based on Old Testament laws.

How do we really reconcile the differences we see in the Old Testament and the New Testament? After all, one core belief of most Christians is that the whole of the Bible is God’s Word, so there is some value, right? And how do we know that we are not picking and choosing only the parts we like as if we’re scoping out the local buffet restaurant? You know, a little bit of the General Tso’s Chicken, an egg roll, but no Moo Goo Gai Pan?

As a Christian, I start on this from the New Testament and work backwards. And one of the better places to start is in Mark 7 (link). Why Mark 7?

Within this chapter, Jesus teaches the Pharisees and the scribes some important truths about how they handled God’s commandments. These two groups were convinced of the importance of following every last commandment, but they had become somewhat myopic on several issues. It is quite likely that they intended the best as is often the case, but the intention and the performance were quite different.

Within this chapter, Jesus addresses a few areas where the religious leaders had gotten wrong in the implementation of following God’s Word. He starts off in response to the criticism that His disciples were not washing their hands enough. On the one hand, there is some merit to washing up before dinner, this much is certain. On the other side, though, missing that every now and then is not likely to be fatal. It is certainly not as fatal to one’s relationship with God as the Pharisees make it.

So, Jesus reaches back to something He had said through Isaiah years before:

This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. (That’s in Isaiah 29)

He then highlights the tradition His critics held that a person could declare their intention to give their excess income to the Temple or to other godly things. This declaration, called “Corban,” then was used as an out to avoid caring for their parents or other family members in times of need. What it really did was kept the finances in a person’s own control.

And it really violated the intention of the commandment to honor one’s parents. It would be like refusing to provide for your aging parents by selling an unnecessary piece of land by claiming you were going to use it for charity. In the meantime, you use it for golf, but maybe someday you will use it for charity or give it to a church.

Jesus clearly condemns this. He then goes further: the Old Testament dietary laws are among the most famous of the Old Testament rules (though the commands regarding sexuality get a lot of play these days, too). Yet he abrogates those rules in Mark 7:14-15. Here He points out plainly that uncleanness has to do with the inside of a person, a person’s heart, attitudes, behaviors. Whether or not one eats bacon is not a sign of holiness. Whether one gives in to theft, murder, adultery, slander, foolishness---that shows whether or not one is a righteous person.

The heart of the matter is the heart—is the heart of a person, their deepest will and desires, focused on the things of God? Not the things that please them the most but on the character of the Creator?

When we look back into the Old Testament Law, this place is a good start. We look at the Law as the tool used to show where the heart of humanity drifts to apart from God.

Now, why, specifically, are some foods ok back then and some not? That discussion could take ages, and will. It’s probably a combination of creating a society that functioned differently than the surrounding cultures, health issues, and some additional practical reasons.

The chapter ends with a pair of healings. One has bothered me for a while, because Jesus seems a bit rude to the Syrophoenician woman. That’s another spot that needs a long explain, whether it was a test of faith for her or a point to the apostles, or what. I know this, that Jesus would not have gone to Tyre and expected not to run into the occasional Syrophoenician. It was their city.

Perhaps what happens here is that Jesus echoes what the apostles were thinking: look, lady, once He’s done with the important people, He can deal with you.

Except He does not wait until the “important” people are done. One of the glories of the life and ministry of Jesus that reflects the reality of God is this: all people are important. Now, when Mitt Romney or Barack Obama say “all people are important” you know they’re full of it. They really mean that all the people who give to their campaigns, all the people that will help them win swing states are important.

(For the record, Arkansas, neither one of them really give a hoot about this state. The first President that had some care for Arkansas was Clinton, and he’ll probably be the last. Our 6 electoral votes just are not enough to help or hinder them. And it would be worse if we throw in with the notion of using a nation-wide popular vote for President. New York City alone would cancel out every vote in this state.)

Yet with God it is the truth: there are no insignificant lives to God. Since Jesus is God, no one is insignificant to Him, either. Not this “foreign” woman, not you—after all, unless you’re of Jewish ethnic descent, you’re a foreigner, too.

Today’s Nerd Note: If you looked up Isaiah 29, you might have noticed that there is a difference in what I quoted above (and what Jesus quotes in Mark 7) and what your Bible has in Isaiah.

The reason for that is this: most of the Old Testament citations in the New Testament are drawn from the Septuagint, the translation into Greek of the Scriptures made by Jewish rabbis in about the 2nd Century BC. The translation choices they made are sometimes different from the ones made by modern English translators of the Old Testament.

When a word is translated from one language to another, it almost never lines up perfectly in the dictionaries for those languages. Think of a word like “run” in English. Is your refrigerator running? You had better go catch it…

To take run into another language, you might have to use different words depending on what you think the meaning is in that instance. So, translating from Hebrew to Greek is different than translating Hebrew to English. Add in the 2200 year difference in time, and there’s a lot of variances that come into play.

I have yet to see a variance that truly disrupts the meaning of a text. The closest is the height of Goliath, but we’ll get there.

It is not always easy: Mark 6

One of the difficulties of going through the whole Bible chapter by chapter is that some chapters are just too big. Mark 6 (link) is just such a chapter. We have the diversity of events that range from Jesus teaching at Nazareth to the feeding of the 5,000, to walking on the water, and then back to more teaching and healing.

There's a lot here. You should read it more than twice. I would draw your attention to the juxtaposition of the stories of Mark 6:7-13 and Mark 6:14-29. These two stories about one time in which Jesus sent out the Twelve to preach and the execution of John the Baptist are put together.

We would tend to think they ought not go together. After all, one is a story of great triumph and the other is the sad tale of a preacher killed for his stand on righteousness. If Jesus is looking to recruit disciples, then only one story should be included here: the story of triumph! The news that not only Jesus but His disciples can heal, drive out demons, and preach would surely attract a good many folks to the cause.

That's worth doing, right? We want to do whatever it takes to draw in new disciples, so we should emphasize the positive possibilities of life as a Christian. Any downside should get mentioned later, if at all. After all, only John the Baptist has been executed at this point in the narrative, so there's no cause for alarming other disciples until we see if the pattern of life will really continue.

Except in the inspiration of the text, Jesus does not do that. He places these two situations right beside each other, even though the text itself is clear that the execution of John had happened some time before. There are good things and bad things that happen in the life of following Christ, and we do not do anyone any favors by hiding those.

What happens? The life of discipleship is a life of obedience to Christ. It is not simply about the power that comes through the Holy Spirit. In fact, life is barely about that—the primary work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian is the ability to live that obedience.

In some ways that obedience is an outward obedience: go here, do this, preach that. That obedience is to treat this person with grace or to show that person love, as this is the command of God that we do so.

Other ways show up that the obedience is internal. It is common to think of the self-sacrificial ideas that are trumpeted in modern American Christianity: the person who moved from the 4,000 square foot home to the 2,000 square foot home to give more money, the missionary, the school teacher—all of these do show a level of self-sacrifice. There is more, though, at stake, and it is this more that truly demands the aid of the Spirit of God.

One key point of understanding the Bible and the Christian faith is realizing that everything from the end of Genesis 3 through Revelation 20 reflects a world that is marred and wrecked by sin. The very nature of mankind is harmed by sin—we are born with tendencies to sinful behavior. Each one of us carries this issue, though it may come to the surface differently for one than for another.

The Spirit of God is what gives us the ability to push those tendencies toward more godly usage. We see example after example in life and in the Bible of people who would not do so: David with his many wives; Samson with his issues; the Israelites; even Peter, Barnabas, and others show how many ways sin rises up and pulls people away from living in obedience to God.

A huge portion of the life of a disciple is learning to let the Spirit of God rebuild our hearts and minds to not seek those sins any longer. That is a substantial part of what being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2) is all about.

The warning of Mark 6 is this: some will live life to satisfy the nature all humanity is born with. Herod was one of these—his desire was for his brother's wife, and he took her. John called out that this was sin. It was not the only thing John called sin, for though we lack a large record of his preaching, he also called out religious pretense and social injustice in his days at the Jordan.

He hit on one big nerve, though, and it put him in prison first and cost him his life later. That's the path that discipleship may take: those who follow human nature will rise up against those who strive to follow the Spirit of God. As Christians, either be ready to deal with it or be ready to deal with it, because it has been this way for two millennia. It does not change until The Millennium.

Today's Nerd Note: The Feeding of the 5000 is recorded in Mark 6:33-44, and also in the other 3 Gospels. It's a rare event in that: most of John outside of the Passion Week differs radically from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in terms of narrative flow.

One should consider how important that makes this moment. I think John's recollection that the people intended after this to make Jesus king by force is why it is important: He could have ruled that way rather than taking the road to the Cross. The world would have allowed that, approved that, followed that. Instead He met the greater need: not merely a good life now but eternal life through His sacrifice.

Also, consider this: believing that God is the author of Scripture means that we do not count one set of the words as more important than any others. In other words: how the narrative is arranged is as much a work of God as the specific words of Jesus spoken and recorded. It is reasonable to examine those types of factors to seek clear meaning in the text.

When Pigs Fly! Mark 5

Or, perhaps, when pigs angrily stampede after being possessed by demons—but that’s a pretty long title. Either way, that’s the opening story of Mark 5 (link), our next stop going through the whole Bible.

Mark 4 had ended with Jesus calming a storm on the Sea of Galilee as He and the disciples are headed across that body of water. The storm had the disciples convinced they would perish, yet Jesus had no concern over the issue. Jesus knew that He had not come to earth to drown nor had He called the Twelve for them to drown this early in the story.

After getting over the storm, they come to the region of the Gerasenes. There is some difficulty giving a clear identity to the location: the various textual variants and parallels use “Gerasenes,” “Gadarenes,” and “Gergesenes” interchangeably. Gadara is a bit far from the edge of the Sea of Galilee to be the feet-dry moment that Mark indicates. Instead, it’s likely best identified with the village known in Arabic as Kersa. This name lines up well with the Greek for Gerasa and has the appropriate topography and features. The village would have been part of the Decapolis region, even if not a major city within it.

Upon their arrival in the area, Jesus and His disciples do not go straight into the populated area but instead go into the cemetery. Now, that’s not typically my first stop in a new town, but I have been known to put it on the list. Jesus and the disciples go straight there, though, and encounter a man.

A man who has been driven from society to live in the tombs because of his demonic oppression. In their encounter, Jesus drives the demons from the man, allows the demons to take over a herd of pigs, and the pigs rush headlong to their destruction—likely taking the demons with them. At the very least, this removed the demonic threat from the area.

The most noteworthy aspect of this miracle?

It happens outside of Israel. I have seen a few try to extend the area into Israel or try to explain that this was a region mostly inhabited by Jews. It is true that there were Jews in the Decapolis region, but this is not Jewish land. It’s Gentile space. It is the world outside—those not considered a part of the covenant of God.

Yet we see the hand of God strong and mighty present there. We see that Jesus is not inhibited either by the exertion of calming the storm nor by distance from home. We see that geography is no barrier to the work of the Almighty.

Apparently, after giving the man permission to spread the news of what God had done, Jesus goes back to Israel. Mark appears not to record anything else happening except that the people ask Jesus to leave. Really?

In doing so, they express a sentiment that too many of us hold: they have put an economic value on a human life and on the presence of Jesus in their life. It’s somewhere around 2,000 pigs. Now, I do not know precisely how much we’re talking in terms of sisterii here, but that’s not right.

We cannot put an economic value on the life of a person or on the presence of God in our lives. When we do either, we start crossing into a place that will destroy us as people.

Consider trying to attach a cash value to a person in general: once you have done that, you put yourself in a place to choose stuff over a person. If you’re offered 2,000 pigs then will you dispose of that person? Would you commit that murder? Or ostracize that person for your wealth? What price you would walk away from a relationship shows what you count people as worth to you. That price should not be attainable. Your fellow humans are worth more than 2,000 pigs. A lot more.

Then there is the costs we decide are too much to pay in obeying God. That’s a frequent topic of sermon and blog alike: how much are you willing to sacrifice? Yet that’s not a fair question. It’s like asking me how much of the material in my closet you should give to me at your yard sale. It’s all mine in the first place: there is nothing you have that does not exist due to the grace and creation of God. It may be marred and warped by sin, but He made it.

Rather, we should focus on the grace that allows us to draw near in the first place. It is not what we would pay to have God with us. It is what Jesus paid that we might be near to God that is the focus of our lives.

Length holds me back from looking at the woman healed by touching Christ and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. Summarizing these two, consider this: both of these women were of value to Jesus. Not because of what they could do for Him: the woman is destitute due to medical bills, the girl is too young. They were valuable because they were His people. If people only have value for what they can do for you, you are not acting like Christ. For some additional thoughts, check Carl Trueman here.

Today’s Nerd Note: As if the location info above was not nerdy enough, there’s a few other things here. First, you might have noticed that Jesus asks the name of the demon, and the reply is “Legion, for we are many.” Now, a Roman Legion had anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 warriors plus auxiliaries and support staff. However, the term could also mean “lots of chaos” because that’s what the opponent of Roman Legions felt—much like “company” is a technical term in the US Army as well as being a business term and referring to just a group of folks.

It is not necessary to think that there were 6,000 demons in this guy. Instead, there were several and they were the source of his chaos. Neither do the 2000+ swine give us a number.

Also, the “what is your name?” is not instructive for dealing with the demonic. Keep in mind that while we have power through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we are not, nor will we ever be, Jesus. We might be striving to be like Him, but Him we are not. So, just because He dealt directly with a demon does not mean that we ought to.

Our focus goes to God alone. Our focus is on Christ Jesus Himself and we seek Him. After all, whatever size mob of demons this man was afflicted with, in the end they fall to one, and only one, Jesus. Shouldn’t that cheer us all? Had you asked any Caesar, any proconsul, if one man could defeat a legion, they would tell you “When pigs fly!”

And so it was.

Take Root! Mark 4

Living in a pluralistic society, one of the interesting things to learn is what other people think of Jesus. For me, I cannot escape the conclusion that the testimony of history and Scripture shows Him to be nothing less than God Incarnate. Over the course of time, I would hope to show why I think that to be true—and why it is that truth is truth, regardless of individual acceptance.

However, not everyone thinks this way—and it' is fascinating to see how they react to Him. There are many who will respect at least portions of the Biblical narrative and the teaching of Jesus. They respect His use of parables and the methods and manner of how He taught and lived.

It seems odd that one can hold to part of what He taught while rejecting other parts of His teaching, but Mark 4 (link) shows that Jesus Himself expected this to be the case. We see in this parable that He speaks of those who hear His words and the four differing reactions to those words.

There are those who reject outright whatever the Word of God says. These people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and some even come in Christian-looking T-shirts or stand behind pulpits and preach on Sundays. Others come in forms that a church-going person might readily identify, but it is the ones within our midst that are the danger. These are the wolves that should raise our concern, the ones within the fold. The ones outside? Keep your distance isn’t such a hard thing to do, there, is it?

This is certainly its own special challenge in the modern American world. Our national heritage is certainly more Bible-focused and Christ-acknowledging than our future is, even with all of the sinful behavior that happened under those banners. It is important, after all, to recognize that most abolitionists fought slavery on grounds of Biblical truth—it was not just those who sought to justify that evil that used the Bible. How do those who wish to follow the Word of God as their guide live among those who have no similar desire? Those who have decided to ignore the Word?

We should recognize that it is not the job of those who have never accepted the seed of the Word to bear fruit in keeping with that seed. Take a look back at this parable: The Sower sows the seed and the seed on good soil bears fruit. The seed on the road? Bears nothing. If there is no future adherence to the teaching and life of Christ, it is not the fault of the seedless. It is the fault of the unfruitful.

How so? We have allowed a few of the seedless into places of respect in the Christian community, but we also lean too close into allowing the other soil types to be our example and our leaders.

Take, for instance, the seed that falls into rocky soil. It springs up quickly but has no root. Yet what does it look like to begin with? It appears to be a glorious early riser. It has all the hallmarks of a good crop. The leaf sprouts, the plant grows. It has the inputs: sun and water and nutrients. Yet is there a crop?

No. The sun rises, the dry days hit, the storm blows—and the truth is laid forth. There is no root. Where there is no root, there is no real fruit. So we see Christian leaders that buckle to the first temptations or that entrench when challenged—we see anger and bitterness rather than Christlikeness.

We allow those to teach and influence us that are among the thorns: they have not weeded their own plots and gardens and are eventually dragged down by the prior issues that had troubled them. Be it the pursuit of material gain or political power, be it a proclivity towards one sensual sin or another, those weeds and thorns were not rooted out and those rise up to choke out the great potential.

Instead, we must learn to patiently await the rooted crop to rise. This is the crop that bears fruit and that fruit is what demonstrates the power of God. That fruit is what shows the grounded basis of the people who have received the Word. These should be our example.

And this should be us: those who take in the Word and who apply it throughout our lives. Not just in some areas and not woodenly, but wisely: the religious and civil festivals of the people of Israel are not commanded nor commended to us today; there are laws governing slavery not because it was right but because it was there—and honest examination of the whole culture of the world at the time shows that these laws were groundbreaking in requiring humane treatment of those most religions and cultures treated as worse than garbage.

Rather, we apply the Word properly: self-control guided by the Spirit of God. Love shown in truth. Kindness and gentleness coupled with a passion for righteousness in our own lives.

This is what we ought to be focused on and how we ought to seek those who would lead us as Christians, those who we allow to speak for us. And if the world sees us they will see one of two things: either that they want that seed to take root in their lives or that they would rather burn the field to the ground. Either way, our life counts for this, the glory of God.

Today’s Nerd Note: Mark is action-oriented, but this chapter is one where he focuses on the teaching of Jesus. It is also not a “parable of the Kingdom” describe either heaven or the earthly following of Christ. Rather, it is a focus on what the hearers of Jesus must become, an explanation of why some follow and some do not.

Mark’s detachment from the action to reflect the teaching is valuable for us to consider. This parable is important enough for him to do so.

Abraham Lincoln Quoted by Jesus! Mark 3

Mark records a curious event in his third chapter (link). If you look at Mark 3:25, you'll see that Jesus quotes the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. After all, one of the highlights of the Lincoln years is his famous speech regarding slavery in the United States where he used the phrase that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

This speech was given in 1858 when he accepted the nomination to run against Stephen A. Douglas for Senate, but is still remembered as the defining speech regarding slaveholding in the United States. I recall being taught in school how brilliant and groundbreaking the speech was, how Lincoln had used such wise words to convey his thought.

Yet the idea was not original to Lincoln. Rather, it was embedded in Lincoln from his time reading the Bible. Now, I have read varying reports about Lincoln's personal religious beliefs: some place him as a nearly completely committed Christian while others have him somewhere on the outside edge. I'm not going to even attempt to comment on that.

What I want to highlight is this: Lincoln was educated in a time where most of the culture around him was soaked in the Bible. He was, the people around him were, the world was driven with a Biblical knowledge. Even those who chose to push back that they did not believe in various parts of Scripture (as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both have left evidence of) still respected the idea of a culturally central source of morality. Lincoln knew the crowd would hear his "house divided" reference and connect his speech with Jesus. He most likely counted on it.

Moreover, there should be no doubt how he expected the division to be resolved. The crowd he stood before that day was a new political party formed with the goal of eliminating slavery and they would never have accepted continued slavery for the sake of unity. Only a united country with no slaves would be acceptable for the Republican Party.

Lincoln was connecting the fight against slavery and for the unity of the country with the wisdom and teaching of Jesus. His crowd would have understood it and that would have strengthened his position. Even his opponents would not have been able to argue against that viewpoint.

Today, though, where are we? Mention the Bible as your source of anything and non-believers shut down—they have no use for the Bible as anything. Mention the Bible as your source for anything and half of the believers get confused—they have not learned the Word well for themselves. In short, we are functionally illiterate of the Bible as a whole.

Some people might exult at this but underneath it is this problem: we have not replaced that national knowledge base with anything else. Some now find their morality in other religions, some find it themselves, and others still hold to the Bible. There is no national narrative or other unifying cultural force anymore. Now, admittedly, even settling on one would not solve everything. After all, while Republicans were seeing in the Bible reasons to eliminate slavery, Democrats were find in the Bible reasons to keep it.

The end-result? We are now the house divided. And whether you want to take your wisdom from Lincoln or from his source, Jesus, we cannot stand this way either. We may need to dial back to the bare minimum of unifying statements and work harder to live and let live—yet even that statement will be hard to parse. After all, the pro-abortion crowd would say to let "women alone" about abortion, while the pro-life crowd would say to let "children live" about ending it. All women should be free to not get pregnant—and all people should be free to live, no matter how small or weak they are.

In the end, we cannot maintain the house as it sits. It is divided because it lacks a foundation—the one that it was built on has been removed, more by neglect of those who know it than by anyone else. What do we do now? That is the question.

Today's nerd note: I know this was a departure from the typical through the whole Bible post, but I go where the thoughts take me. Let's look at one key part of Mark 3, though:

Jesus speaks of blaspheming the Holy Spirit as an eternal sin, stating that this cannot be forgiven. Yet we in evangelical Christianity hold that nothing is beyond the power of the blood of Christ, nothing cannot be forgiven by the grace of God. How does that belief not contradict this verse.

The simplest answer, and the best, is that it does not because of the finer detail of how one receives the forgiveness that Jesus' atoning death on the Cross brought. His death did not atone universally and unilaterally, rather it was the particular redemption of those who accept His grace. While the atonement does bring a certain effect to all of Creation, the specific forgiveness of all sin is only to those who are His, known by Him in the time before He even said "Let there be light!"

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit? That would be seen in denying that God is speaking when the Holy Spirit does His primary work in the life of the unbeliever: moves the spirit of a person to see God for who God is, to accept grace, mercy, and love from God. Denying that throughout life is unforgivable because that is how God draws His people to salvation and forgiveness.

Not Here to Quilt: Mark 2

One of the great things about Mark's Gospel is that he records Jesus as a man of action, as one who gets right to the work that He was there to do. John, Luke, and Matthew record both action and parables, but the pacing by all three of those is slower. Mark writes like he's putting together an action film, Matthew more of a contemplative movie, Luke wrote a miniseries with two parts (Luke and Acts), and John wrote a multi-part theological documentary.

Mark wrote the nuts-and-bolts of the life of Christ. It's for this reason that I have shifted my guidance to new believers or those trying to start a Bible-reading habit. Formerly, I recommended one start by reading the Gospel of John as their starting point. John's great, but I now recommend starting by reading Mark and then 1 John. Mark to get the first look through the life of Christ and 1 John to began to grasp the theology underneath it.

Mark 1 gives you the opening of the life and ministry of Jesus, and Mark 2 (link)  gets you straightway into His ministry. He's in Capernaum on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Mark makes the reference in Mark 2:1 that it was heard the Jesus was "home" when He was there. We tend to think of Jesus as being completely homeless, and I think that during the bulk of His ministry He essentially was (Matthew 8:20), though I think it was by choice. He certainly had not invested His life into houses and earthly wealth that He did not need.

The issue at hand, though, is not where He lives but what He teaches while He's there and elsewhere. Let's take that and see what we gather:

First: He's teaching in a house (possibly His own) and we see four men bringing a paralyzed man to Him, cutting a hole in the roof, and lowering the man down to Jesus. Jesus promptly seizes the moment, tells the man his sins are forgiven, and sends him out of the room. Before the crowd clears out of the way, though, Jesus acknowledges what the people in the room are thinking: No one has the right to forgive sins not committed against them.

No one.

Yet Jesus takes the prevailing idea of the time, that sin and affliction were the direct result of sin, and turns that on its head right in front of everyone. Now, it's possible that the people knew why this particular person was paralyzed—maybe he had actually brought it on himself, but we do not know now. Jesus asks a very direct question: Which is easier? Forgiveness or healing? This question hits the point: forgiveness is hard to do but easy to say—healing is easy to say but hard to do, and the crowd would have expected no healing without forgiveness. So Jesus pronounces both.

It's a serious opening salvo in His preaching. He is putting forth that He will not be just another rabbi along the way. Truly, much of what He does will follow in the pattern of the rabbis before Him, but this is different. He does not stop with this one pronouncement, though.

He goes on to accept a tax collector as a disciple, eat with sinners and tax collectors (Jesus came to save both parties: sinner Republicans and tax collector Democrats), corrects the religious misunderstanding of who He is, upends unnecessary legalism about holy days, and speaks forward of His death.

All of this is summarized when He points out that He's not here to quilt. That is, He is not here to put a new patch on an old cloth or to put new wine into old wineskins, but rather He is here to show what the garment looks like brand new. To show how things ought to work from the beginning. No one before Him or after Him can make that claim: He is the One with that authority.

Our old lives, bound up in sin and selfishness, driven by rebellion against God, all must pass away and be remade by Him in us. We cannot squeeze Him into our religion but must be transformed by the Word of God, shown in His life and His teachings.

Today's Nerd Note: There is much debate today regarding whether or not Jesus held material riches in His lifetime. There are actually a few books and preachers that fully hold that He not only had enough, but actually was quite wealthy in His earthly life. One point of disagreement with those who hold this view is the above mentioned passage that notes Jesus telling one of the disciples that He "had no place to lay his head."

That is, of course, not exactly true of His whole life as we see in this passage where His being "home" is referenced. However, there's a pretty big gap between recognizing that Jesus had a home before He started His obvious ministry and that He was always rich and healthy and happy.

This does not bear out throughout His ministry. There is little Scripture to support that He lived in abject poverty, but He also lived at a level lower than He deserved. Given that all of Heaven was His, all of Creation was His, and He instead took on the form of servant, then even if you found ancient chariot titles made out in His name, would you not agree that He was poor on this earth? (Philippians 2:5-11)

In that, we should follow His example and not seek more than we truly need and can truly use for His glory. After all, all that we have is His if we are His.

Let’s Get Started: Mark 1

Opening Note: I’m going to work on alternating between Old Testament and New Testament. I’m not sure if it will alternate every day or part of the time, but we’ll bounce back and forth to break some of the monotony as we work through the Law and still go through the whole Bible.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at Mark 1 (link). Generally speaking, it appears that Mark is likely the earliest written of the Gospels, though that’s debatable. A good New Testament survey or quality study Bible will give you some of the different arguments.

Mark does not start as Matthew or Luke does in addressing the birth of Jesus or the announcement of His coming. Rather, Mark jumps straight in by bringing out the coming of John the Baptist and his role as the forerunner of Jesus.

John is one of those strange characters in Scripture. Other Gospel accounts give more of his heritage, but for Mark he just pops up in the wilderness, preaching repentance. Preaching repentance and pointing ahead toward Jesus, that is. Mark then gives us that Jesus comes to John and is baptized in the Jordan River. As this happens, the voice of God speaks from the heavens and commends not simply the message or methods of Jesus, but the person Himself. Mark records it as direct address: “You are my beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

While there is plenty of other material in the first chapter of Mark, camp out there in Mark 1:11. Consider what is being said here by God Almighty, that here is One who is actually pleasing to God. Without getting over-Greeky here, the phrasing shows that the “well-pleased” is a completed action. It doesn’t really refer to one specific action, but is a summary statement about all that has happened until this point in time. It does not, though, preclude the idea that it is possible for God to be more pleased with Jesus later—and that is actually what we see going through to the Cross.

God expresses that He takes pleasure in Christ. Contrast this by looking all the way back at Genesis 6:5 where the only thoughts of man are evil at all times, or by looking forward to Romans 3:23 where we see that all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Jesus is the exception that proves the rule here: only the Begotten Son of God can actually live life that is pleasing to God.

That’s without the miracles, without the parables, even without the Cross and the Resurrection. In His very being, Jesus was pleasing to God. Fundamentally, this is something that is not true of us as descendants of Adam. We are born with a depravity that is inescapable apart from the work of grace from the hand of God.

This is the beginning that Mark gives us here: not just a beginning of miracles or teaching, but a beginning that declares from the start the very nature of this Jesus he will write about. The only One capable of pleasing God.

Today’s Nerd Note: Mark is one of three Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic comes from the Greek words that mean “see” and “together” or “with.”  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called this because they see the life of Jesus through very similar lenses.

That leads to some speculation that the three authors used common sources, or a common source, to develop their writings. It is entirely possible that this is the case. This does not, however, practically affect our response to these texts or our understanding of the inspiration of Scripture.

The inspiration of Scripture is the belief that the words of the Bible are not just the words of the human authors, but actually are the words of God Himself. As a conservative evangelical, I think this extends to the actual words of the original texts themselves, as penned by the authors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This is how source theory comes into the question: if Mark used a source, is the source inspired and Mark copied it or are only the words Mark used inspired? My response would be that the words that Mark used, wherever drawn from, would be the inspired words. Finding documents that help us undercover any of the potential source documents would be educational, but it would not shake any key doctrine: Mark’s use of the source is inspired, not the source itself.