Pastor Scott's Thoughts

Reflections on a Year in Mark

It was a transformational experience for me to have to wrestle my way through the Gospel of Mark this last year. It is fun for me to look through my bible now and see all the marked up places in the second book of the New Testament. I hope your bible got a little “marked up” also (pun intended).

I have been spending some time these last few days reflecting on what parts of Mark have stuck deep inside me.

Without question the first thing I think about is the kingdom of God. There are many stories and sermons in the Gospel, but there is one primary message: “…the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15). Whatever else the early church thought about Jesus, they knew this one truth; Christ had come to announce the reign of God in creation. That reign establishes a new reality, a new people, and a new way of living in the world. The call of the Gospel, first and foremost is to repent of all of the former ways of life and to enter into God’s new kingdom through Jesus. 

The second thing I think about, however, is how hard it is for us to imagine that a new kingdom is present. I am convinced that this is a major part of the reason Mark gives the reader the parables of Jesus. The parables help disciples discover the unusual reality of God’s kingdom. Parables help to subvert our imaginations. The parable that resonates with me most from Mark is the Parable of the Sower (4:1-9). When we hear the word “kingdom” we usually think about power, might, wealth, pomp, and circumstance. But the kingdom of God is not like a warrior who went out to conquer. It is not like an emperor who goes out to expand his empire. The kingdom of God is like a sower who went out to sow seed. What a contrast! Every kingdom that has come in human history has come through conquest and revolution. God’s kingdom will come like a farmer faithfully distributing seed and waiting for the good soil to respond. Amazing! I have a hard time even imagining that. (Which is exactly the point).

The importance of the signs of the kingdom breaking into the world is the third thing that sticks with me from Mark. The miracles of Jesus are clearly not just present in the Gospel to let the reader know the power present in the life of Jesus. Rather, the signs reveal something about the nature of the kingdom as it breaks in. Those paralyzed by sin are able to walk. Those who cannot hear or speak about the kingdom are healed. Lepers who are considered unclean and thus excluded from community are not only restored to health but to relationship with others. People oppressed and possessed by the principalities and powers that bring destruction are set free to be what God created them to be. But most importantly for Mark, those who are blind – those who simply cannot see what the kingdom of God is about – are touched so that they can clearly see the truth of the kingdom clearly.

The most marked up places in my bible are chapters 8 through 11 where three times Jesus talks about how the Messiah must suffer, but the disciples simply cannot see what he means. He keeps talking about the self-giving love that is the essence of the kingdom, while they keep fighting over who is the greatest and arguing about who will get to sit at the right and the left in the kingdom. They, like us, need a complete do-over. Unless we become like little children, we will never see, let alone enter, the kingdom of God.

The fourth and perhaps most important idea that sticks with me from Mark is the call to take up the cross (8:34-35). When the good news about Jesus is proclaimed today it is often preached as something Jesus did for us so that we now don’t have to do anything except cognitively ascent to a few propositions. Certainly Jesus did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. He alone brought the kingdom and he invites us by grace alone to share in it. But the call is for disciples not just to cognitively ascent (to “believe”) in what he has done, but we are called to share in the kingdom. The invitation to discipleship in Mark is for the disciple to take up their cross also and follow Jesus.

Discipleship is a call to kingdom work, but it is not a call to “works righteousness.” This is the fifth thing that I take away from Mark. The call of Jesus is to kingdom faithfulness but it is not a call to religiosity. I have been deeply shaken by Mark chapters 11-13 that deal primarily with the fall of Jerusalem and the religious establishment that gave structure to the life of Jesus and the disciples. Readers of Mark should always be keenly aware that the Pharisees, scribes, and other Jerusalem leaders, who so badly missed seeing the kingdom, were not secular people but very religious. I do not believe that the religious leaders were evil people. In fact, I think they probably look a lot like me. I believe their intentions were to protect the faith that they loved and the temple establishment that gave meaning to their existence. Before we get too critical of the pagans in our world today we should never forget that well-intentioned religious leaders crucified Jesus. Lord, have mercy.

Finally, I take away the young naked man who fled from the Gethsemane (14:51). I don’t know if the scholars who see this young man as a literary devise used by Mark to symbolize the church are right. But that interpretation does make a lot of sense to me. I love that like the rest of the disciples who run away when persecution comes, this young man’s flaws, fears, and sin are exposed. Before the cost of discipleship we are all exposed as naked and broken. But I am convinced that it is this same young man who reappears in chapter 16 at the empty tomb as the witness to the resurrected Lord. He is no longer naked but wrapped in the white robe of the saints. He is the Church. He is every one of us. He is the sinful person redeemed by God’s grace to be a witness to the most important truth in the world: the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and forever.

I love that Mark begins his account of the life of Jesus this way, “The beginning of the good news (the Gospel) of Jesus, the Son of God” (1:1). What Mark has given us is the beginning of the coming of the kingdom. The continuation of the Gospel takes place in and through you and me. May it be so.

Review of Wright and Borg: The Meaning of Jesus

A few weeks ago I attended the annual combined meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion which was held this year in San Francisco. It was a four or five day conference attended by 10,000+ bilblical and religious scholars. Papers were presented. Thousands of books were on display. Receptions and gatherings took place. It is quite a bit of nerdy fun, but these kinds of conferences can also be quite overwhelming - especially for someone raised in conservative Evangelicalism.

My first trip to the conference - several years ago now - was quite troubling because it was certainly not what I was used to. The purpose of both the SBL and the AAR is to advance the academic scholarship of the Bible and religion (as a discipline) not necessarily to advance the Christian faith. That was what seemed so foreign to me. It felt so odd to spend several days talking about God as an object of our intellectual speculation and not as the subject of our worship. (I remember calling my dad and telling him that the conference was great, but if the Lord returned, I think the conference would carry on). I don't ever want to grow fully accustomed to dealing with faith as an academic pursuit, nevertheless I have grown in my appreciation for what even the most suspicious scholarly work contributes to the conversation of vital Christian faith.

In particular, I've grown a bit in my appreciation of what the so-called "Historical Jesus Movement" has contributed to biblical scholarship and even to evangelical thinking about the Gospels. As Christians read the Bible with any degree of thoughtfulness we recognize that what we find there is the product of both divine and human interaction and synergy. Even the most conservative Christian who is convinced that the Scriptures contain the authoritative "Word of God" recognize that the divine Word is received and then transmitted through human agents.

In the conservative Evangelical church our emphasis tends to be on the divine voice revealed through the Old and New Testaments - and rightly so. We are, as the Body of Christ, most interested in discovering what our Creator and Father has to say to us through the preaching and teaching of the church. Religous and Biblical scholarship on the other hand, tends to focus more on the role particular humans and particular human communities played in the writing and formation of the Scriptures. The interest of current scholarship tends to be on the historical contexts, the political motivations, and the social constructions that were at work in the development of Hebrew and Christian sacred texts.

By the way, both are important. I would argue that when conservative Christians fault it is when we pay no attention to human aspects of history, politics, sociology, religious development, etc. at work in the writing (and interpretation) of the Scriptures. But when scholarship faults (at least from my perspective as a Christian) it is when it only pays attention to the human element and leaves out (or nearly leaves out) the presence, revelation, and work of the divine in the Bible.

The Historical Jesus Movement is and was primarily a scholarly pursuit. The basic premise of the movement is that because the four Gospels contained in the New Testament are products of the early community of Christian faith written to inspire others to have faith in Jesus as the Christ, they are faith histories and not what we would consider today to be "acutal" histories of the person Jesus of Nazareth. (Which by the way is a premise we conservatives would not disagree with). So the pursuit of the Historical Jesus Movement is to try and recover - as much as possible - the actual historical Jesus (what he said, what he did, and what he meant) from the Jesus described by the community of faith. That likely means - for those scholars - that much of what we receive in the Gospels are faith additions, embellishments, and products of the later church placed within the mouth (and actions) of Jesus. (Which is the point where they lose most conservatives).

One of the leading advocates and respresentatives of the Historical Jesus Movement is Marcus Borg - Professor of Religion at Oregon State University. I just finished read the book The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions which is a dialogue between Borg and well-known and much more conservative scholar NT Wright. The book takes eight questions about Jesus - How do we know aobut Jesus? What did Jesus do and teach? Why was Jesus killed? What is the resurrection? Was Jesus God? What do we believe about the birth of Jesus? Is Jesus coming again? And what is the impact of Jesus on the Christian life? - and allows Borg and Wright to each write a response (and some dialogue) on each of those important questions. Borg writes from his "Historical Jesus" standpoint and Wright from his more conservative Orthodox vantage point.

The book is actually quite a fascinating read. Subject by subject they alternate who writes first and it is interesting how civil, thoughtful, and convincing both writers are with one another. I found the book stimulating. It was like getting to go to lunch with both of them and asking them the questions you have always wondered about.

Here are three quick thoughts about the book:

1. Although I really enjoyed the book I don't recommend it for everyone. Not because the book raises some hard issues, but because some people aren't wired in ways that will allow them to fully appreciate it. There are a lot of brothers and sisters in Christ who prefer - or are at a place in their walk with Christ - when they desire or even need indoctrination. They want to know what they should believe and are not ready to wrestle with the challenging perspectives of others. I think at some level it is healthy to have to wrestle with hard questions, but not everyone is ready for that or even wants that. So consider yourself warned.
2. Although I largely don't share Borg's perspective, I am very thankful for the work of the Historical Jesus Movement. I think the basic flaw of the movement is that it is always forced to set up rules ahead of time to try and recover the historical Jesus from the Gospels. When we have to set up rules to help us discover what is historical from what is not, the rules always determine what we are looking for ahead of time. For example, if we begin to look for the "historical" Jesus by determining that miracles were added to the Gospels by the faith community after the life of Jesus and anything that is unique to one particular Gospel and not found in the other three is a later addition, then we don't really know in the end if we discovered the historical Jesus or the non-miraculous, highly repetitive Jesus we were looking for at the beginning. If historians assume Jesus was a politically profound peasant, then that's usually who they discover. As Wright points out in the book, all we have today is the Jesus of faith because that is the only Jesus the Gospels tell us about. Nevertheless, the work historical scholars have done in helping us root Jesus back into the historical, political, and sociological context is invaluable. Too much teaching and preaching decontexutalizes Jesus which easily turns into a form of idolatry on our side of history as we assume the words and actions of Jesus are decontextual and therefore easily translated and recontextualized into the twenty-first century. The truth is, the more we discover Jesus in his historical and social setting the more we are able to discover his radical kingdom message for our day.
3. Even though I sided with Wright's perspective in the debates, I left the book deeply moved by Borg's own personal sense of Christian faith. And there are even parts of Borg's articulation of faith that I found not only informative but significant for my own faith. What I appreciated most about this book is the ability of Borg and Wright to dialogue with Christian civility about their differences. There should be more of what Richard Mouw calls "Convicted Civility" or "Uncommon Decency" that marks our conversations with one another as followers of Jesus (both the one of history and the one of faith). For that alone I am thankful to have read The Meaning of Jesus.

Cue the Locusts

Pay attention, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a town. We will stay there a year, buying and selling, and making a profit." You don't really know about tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for only a short while before it vanishes. Here's what you ought to say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

- James 4:13-15

 

This last week has certainly been a wild one in the Pasadena area. Debbie and I have often commented that one of the reasons we like living in Southern California is because we seemingly get a different natural disaster (or human disaster like a riot) about once a year which forces all of our friends and family to get in contact with us to make sure we are okay. We have found that it's a good way to maintain long distance relationships.

The winds last Wednesday night into Thursday morning were simply awesome. Not in a skater sense of "that's awesome dude," but in the sense of truly forming a sense of overwhelming awe. Driving around and witnessing the destruction the winds caused around Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and Pasadena has been awe-inducing. Trees that have been standing longer than any of the currently living humans have been around fell to the winds with their deep and complex root systems now exposed for all to see.

This certainly wasn't the way those of us at PazNaz hoped to make the national news, but the destruction of the roof caused by what some speculate to have been 100 mph wind gusts or better was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen. Long, heavy sheets of metal had been twisted into every conceivable shape and were scattered in no discernible pattern.

About 1:30am Thursday morning the three of us (and the dogs) with bedrooms at the back of the house were awakened by the flying debris hitting the windows and so we huddled together in the front of the house praying that the trees would stay up and the roof would stay put. In that moment I realized something critically important. At a very significant level we are all powerless in the face of greater powers. I had no way to stop the wind. No way to keep the trees up. No way to make the shingles on the roof stay in place. If the winds wanted to continue until everything clinging to land had been blown into the Pacific I suppose that it could. And there would be nothing available in any of our humanness to stop its force.

Call me Exodus obsessed, but I couldn't help but think about Pharaoh Thursday morning while I laid fearful in the dark. I couldn't help but think about Pharaoh with all of his power and wealth, Pharaoh with all of his mythology of universal control, huddling behind a wall in his palace powerless to stop another of the plagues sent by Yahweh through Moses. Apparently one of my staff members at church thought of Pharaoh also because as we were trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces at the church Thursday morning, one of them said, "It seemed so Apocalyptic last night that I felt like someone should say, 'Okay, stop the wind, cue the locusts.'"

Some of the apocalyptic talk came about because I have been preaching through Mark 13 during this Advent season. We are two weeks into Advent and I will admit that it has been a challenge. These days Advent has really become an extended celebration of Christmas filled with frankly sappy songs, stories, and movies about family, mistletoe, and gentle drifts of snow on the roof. I like all of those Hallmark-ish kind of things, but it has been really hard to figure out how to fit biblical texts about the desecrating sacrilege in the Temple, the moon turning to darkness, and the stars falling from the heavens around tinsel, baby Jesus, and cute little children dressed like shepherds and angels.

The advent of the Santa Ana winds may have saved my preaching this year. The season of Advent really is about being reminded that things that seem permanent - Rome, Caesar Augustus, Herod, taxes, Temples, over-populated cities, Black Fridays, Cyber-Mondays, BCS standings, stock market downturns, presidential politics, and continuing wars on terror - are not only temporal but are quietly being subverted by a kingdom that actually is eternal. The Temple becomes rubble, the moon turns to darkness, and the stars fall because another empire that believes itself to be eternal (an empire that drinks the same kool-aid as Pharaoh) is being replaced by a new heavens and a new earth.

So in a strange way I'm thankful for the Advent Santa Ana winds that blew away an awful lot of what seemed permanent in the San Gabriel Valley. It is an important reminder that we are very, very temporal and that we live most of our days living out Pharaoh's same myth of control. James is right. Our language should more often reflect what ought to be a deeper conviction. We more frequently ought to say: "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

I found myself on Thursday morning deeply thankful for God's mercy in not allowing the winds to keep blowing. But I also found myself more grateful for what I do have, grateful for the kingdom work I have been gifted with today, and grateful that I am ultimately free from the burdensome myth that I am ultimately the one that controls all the outcomes of my existence. 

It took ten plagues to try and teach Pharaoh that he was not in control. His hard heart never learned the lesson and so his mythology of over-blown self-importance came to an ugly and unfortunate end at the Red Sea. I'm sure by this time next week I too will be right back into my self-reliant mythology of control, but I am thankful for this moment of grace to try and break out of my Pharaoh-complex. But I'm sure it will be back soon. So, cue the locusts.