Sunday, September 12, 2021

Mark 8:27 - 9:1

Who do you say I am?

 I apologize for failing to post last week. Here's what you missed:

Jesus is in a boat with his disciples. They've missed bringing bread to eat. Jesus warns them to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.

Focused on bread, the disciples think that bread is what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus becomes furious with them. "And still you don't understand?!" Jesus is talking about evil influences that, like yeast in dough, work silently and unseen but have great effect. As Jesus sees it, both the Pharisees and the court of Herod are polluting Israel. 

But his disciples seem only to be worried about lunch.

Mark's story of Jesus could have ended right there. Jesus could have dismissed his disciples and sent them home, and recruited less clueless ones.

Instead, now ashore, Jesus heals a blind man. Get it?

This week, then, Jesus and his disciples are in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi. It's a decidedly secular area, at least to Jewish perception. The Gentile Roman occupiers and their local collaborators have offices there. It is a good place for Jesus to ask the disciples this question:

Who do people say that I am?

The answers are as divers as one might expect, then or today. But then Jesus asks:

And what about you? Who do you say that I am?

Peter is portrayed in the gospels as impetuous. Like here.

You are the Christ.

 Funny, Peter's answer is both right and wrong.

The very first line of Mark's story of Jesus was

 The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God's Son, (Mk. 1:1 CEB)

So at least we readers know that Peter is correct. And Jesus doesn't tell Peter that he's wrong. Actually Jesus switches the language, calling himself "the Human One" ("the Son of Man" in older translations). And what does he say about the destiny of the Human One? 

The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days, rise from the dead.

Mark then relates something astounding. Mark tells us that Peter took hold of Jesus, scolded him, and began to correct him. Would you do that? Would I? 

Jesus' response is swift and brutal. Turning to look at his disciples (as if they were all complicit) Jesus berates Peter:

Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God's thoughts but human thoughts.

And then, to the disciples and to the crowds and to anyone ready to listen:

All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this unfaithful and sinful generation, the Human One will be ashamed of that person when he comes in the Father's glory with the holy angels.

Several things to notice here. Jesus doesn't carry the cross for us, we carry the cross with him. And being Jesus' follower means giving up absolutely everything else.  That's not what the Street Religion says. Do we say these things to people who come to join our congregations?

You may have some memory that Matthew tells this story differently. Or that Luke does. Actually, they both do. Mark was writing when the Romans, tired of Jewish intransigence, were about to put Jerusalem under siege and tear it down stone by stone, slaughtering the defenders. Jesus' followers in that time had to make decisive choices about what they would do and who they would follow, and how they would follow. Matthew and Luke wrote a generation or so later when the problems were entirely different. 

So. Who do we say Jesus is? Is he the all-conquering Messiah, one we should take up the sword and follow? Or does Messiah mean something entirely different from that? Like denying ourselves and taking up a cross?

This story is the hinge of Mark's larger story of Jesus. Before this story there are teachings and healings and crowds of followers. After it, basically, it is just the disciples and Jesus, as they traverse the road to Jerusalem. And we all know what happens there.

Sunday, August 22, 2021

Mark 8:1-10

Feeding in a foreign land

Wait, haven't we heard this story before?

Didn't Mark tell us this story already, back in Mark 6?

So is Mark getting forgetful? What is Mark up to here?

Yes, indeed, the two stories are quite similar indeed. And Mark, always in a hurry, is not one to waste ink or parchment or our time.

There is, however, one very important difference between the two stories, one that made it worth Mark's time to tell it again:

In Mark 6, Jesus is working in home territory, in the "holy land". Everyone in that story, including the disciples and Jesus himself, were Israelites.

But in this week's story, Jesus -- and his disciples -- are out of territory, on foreign soil, outside the pale.

In last week's story, Jesus had crossed the line into the region of  Tyre, near a major Roman seaport. Not exactly home territory. There, in response to a foreign woman's plea for help, he had exorcised a demon from the woman's daughter. And afterward, instead of returning to home soil, "Jesus went through Sidon toward the Galilee Sea through the region of the Ten Cities." All of that is foreign territory, out of bounds. Especially for the One whom Mark has told us is the [Jewish] Messiah. ("Messiah" and "Christ" mean the same thing, "anointed".)

So when Mark tells us that "In those days there was another large crowd with nothing to eat" we are to understand that all those hungry folks were Gentiles, foreigners, infidels.

You would think that the disciples would remember how this story goes. But they ask the same dumb questions that they asked back in Mark 6. As if it mattered to them whether they were dealing with God's own people, or with Gentiles.

And yet the result was the same.

One of the undercurrents of the entire New Testament, beginning with Paul's letters (which were written before any of the gospels) was that the new thing that happens with Jesus is that all the world, and not just God's unique historical people, are the subjects of God's grace and redemption through Jesus Christ. In New Testament days that was a new thing, and clearly it took some convincing. Paul said it this way in Galatians:

You are all God's children through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now if you belong to Christ, then indeed you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise. 

So perhaps we should ask ourselves: Are we confused about this, even as Jesus' disciples seem to have been confused about it in this morning's story? 

Who do we think of as "foreign" to God's kingdom?  

What class of people are beyond God's grace? 

When we go out on mission, are we bringing Jesus to people, or are we meeting a Jesus who is already there waiting for us?

It's worth thinking about. When we choose to follow Jesus, where do we end up following him to?