Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Mark inserts the healing of the woman who had been hemorrhaging into the story of the healing of Jairus’s daughter. This builds the contrast between the two stories, of the esteemed (and therefore named) synagogue official and the nameless woman.
• Not just a physical ailment, the woman’s bleeding would have been an economic and social ailment as well. The text says she spent all her money on doctors to try to cure her affliction. Per the social norms of the time, contact with the woman would cause ritual impurity, so society would have isolated her.
• The woman touching Jesus for healing identifies Jesus as a “thaumaturge,” a performer of miracles. When the woman touched Jesus, she was “stealing” a healing from him. The belief of the time could have been that then there would be no healing power left for Jairus’s daughter. This story demonstrates Jesus’ healing is not magic, and there is no such limitation on Jesus’ healing power.
• The woman’s response (“fear and trembling” v. 33) demonstrate the woman’s recognition of what happened to her. Fear and trembling is a common response in scripture to being in the presence of the divine.
• Jesus addressed the woman as “daughter,” which imparts a level of intimacy.
• On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue, a position of power, wealth, and influence, someone from whom others often begged for favors. Yet like the unnamed woman, Jairus was powerless against the illness that plagued his daughter.
• Seeing a leader of the synagogue come to Jesus for help may seem like a surprise. After all, Jesus’ last encounter with synagogue leaders led to a plot against him (the healing of the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath in 3:1-6). But in Mark, Jesus’ struggles are not with local leaders, but with the religious and political officials who are distant and detached from local churches.
• Jairus’s friends present obstacles to Jesus’ healing, first by telling Jairus not to bother Jesus since his daughter has already died (v. 35) and then by laughing when Jesus told them the girl was sleeping (v. 40).
• Once again, Jesus’ miracles are different than those of magicians as there is no show of magic. Jesus simply took the girl’s hand and she got up.
• Jairus asked that his daughter be “made well” (v. 23) and Jesus said the woman was “made well” (v. 34). The Greek word is sōthē, which better translates to “be saved.” Sōthē shows up several times in the crucifixion story, when Jesus was challenged to “save” himself (15:30), when the scribes accused Jesus of saving others but not himself (15:31), and when they challenged him to comes down so they can “see and believe” (15:32).
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Monday, June 25, 2018
Romans 13:1 and How Jesus Calms the Storms: A Sermon on Paul's Letter to the Romans and Mark 4:35-41
In our tradition, the Lutheran tradition, part of the role of the clergy is to be the theologian-in-residence for their communities. One of the factors behind the Reformation was Luther’s concern about the lack of education of the clergy, and the effect that had on the faith of the laity. This is why our tradition has such high academic requirements for ordination.
Normally, I fulfill the part of my letter of call that directs me to “preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions” through preaching and teaching on the assigned lectionary texts. But these are not normal times. And while we will get to the Gospel text I just read, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently brought a verse from Paul’s Letter to the Romans into public discourse, I feel an obligation as the one you have called and ordained to be the resident biblical scholar of this community to start there.
The verse Sessions referenced is Romans chapter thirteen, verse one, which reads: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”[1] After citing the verse, Sessions added, “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”[2] And Sessions is not wrong; our Lutheran theology makes a similar argument. Article Eleven in the Augsburg Confession states: “the gospel does not undermine government or family but completely requires both their preservation as ordinances of God and the exercise of love in these ordinances.”[3] Laws help us live in healthy community with one another. When Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and to freedom, one of the first things God did was give them Ten Commandments, ten laws, to help them live together well. My Confessions professor in seminary described it like stoplights. Just because we are free from judgment under the law does not mean we are free to interpret stoplight colors any way we want, because that would be chaos. But there is a difference between lawless anarchy and unquestioned obedience. Article Eleven of the Augsburg Confession continues: “Christians owe obedience to their magistrates and laws except when commanded to sin. For then they owe greater obedience to God than to human beings.”[4] It references Acts chapter five, verse twenty-nine, where Peter said, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”[5]
So what was Paul up to in the thirteenth chapter of Romans? Paul’s most systematic and thorough explanation of the gospel, the letter to the Romans clearly articulates how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ set believers free from the bonds of sin and death and created a new community for everyone, whether Jew or Gentile. The central most important theme of Romans is that salvation comes through the grace of God alone, and not by anything that we can do. Romans chapter three, verse twenty- three, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is Christ Jesus.” And later, chapter five, verse eight, “But God proves God’s love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Paul drove this home at the end of chapter eight with one of my favorite lines of scripture, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing. That, dear people of God is the good news of Jesus Christ according to the Apostle Paul.
Having made that assertion, in chapters twelve and thirteen, Paul laid out for the Romans what that Christ community was to look like. In chapter twelve, Paul described the marks of the true Christian, starting at verse nine, “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor.” These ways of living within the community spill out to how believers are to interact with those outside of the community. Starting at verse thirteen, Paul wrote, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers… do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly… if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” For Paul, since God showed love to us when we were God’s enemies, then we too are to show love to others.
So then, finally, we get to Romans chapter thirteen. As we read Paul’s admonition to “be subject to the governing authorities,” it is important to remember that the head of Roman Empire claimed divine status, he claimed to be Son of God. When Jesus used the term “Son of God,” Jesus was not only making a claim about his own divinity, he was making a statement about his authority over and above that of the Emperor. For Paul, there is one Lord, and it is God, not any earthly political figure. Verse seven reads “Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” The Roman leadership is worthy of honor, but only as they are God’s servants. The reference to “what is due” implies an obligation on the part the one receiving the honor.[6] Part of earning “what is due” means living in accordance with the marks of Christian leadership outlined in chapter twelve. But Paul provides an even clearer summary of our most important obligation in the next couple verses, the obligation of mutual love. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Paul quotes Jesus, “The commandments… are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[7]
OK, so having fully analyzed Paul’s Letter to the Romans, let’s get to the Gospel now, shall we. One of the themes of Mark’s Gospel is Jesus showing up in liminal spaces—places of transition and risk, marginalized places on the border between one place or time or reality and another. After crossing the sea, Jesus will heal the Gerasene Demoniac in a graveyard, bring a girl back from the brink of death, and heal a woman who’s bleeding had isolated her on the edge of society. Much of his ministry took place at geographical boundaries, like the wilderness, mountaintops, or even the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi. And he regularly crossed socio-political boundaries, eating at the home of the tax collector, and entering Jerusalem in a mock political parade at the beginning of the Passover. The Sea of Galilee is just such a borderland. It is both a geographical boundary, separating one shore from the other, it also has socio-political implications, both sustenance for the Galileans and a resource for extraction for the Romans.[8] Jesus crossing the Sea in Mark, something he does several times, is a demonstration of how borders, geographic and political, have no sway over the one whom “even the wind and the sea obey.”[9]
And as important and powerful as Jesus crossing boundaries both natural and man-made is, this story is more than that. Because this story takes place in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, right in the midst of the barrier between one people and another, between the haves and the have nots, between life on the land and death at sea. And right there, right in the middle of the borderline, right in the place of separation, right in the middle of the chaos of those divisions, when the disciples were panicking, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing,”[10] with a word Jesus rebuked the chaos, declaring, “Peace! Be Still!” And at once there was stillness. A “dead calm” in the NRSV, but a better translation is “a great calm.” Because the same Greek word is used to describe both the intensity of the wind and the severity of the calm that followed.[11]
So what does this mean for us, today, in the places and spaces where boundaries exist both natural and manmade? For me, what this text tells me is that in those places of separation and fear, Jesus is already there. Jesus is in El Paso and Laredo and the Chihuahuan desert. He is in gang-ravenged streets of Honduras and El Salvador, in the volcanic destruction of Guatemala, in the civil war of South Sudan, in Gaza, in Myanmar, and in all the places where people flee in desperate search for a better life for their children. Jesus is with those seeking asylum, those so poverty or panic-stricken as to not have that option, and those who return to rebuild destroyed lives. He is in the so-called “tender age” shelters in Combes, Raymondsville, and Brownsville Texas,[12] in the refugee camps in Jordan, Kenya, and Bangladesh, and just down the street with the ICE detainees at the Calhoun County jail. In all those places and in so many more, I have to believe that Jesus is already there proclaiming peace amidst the chaos, calming the storms of fear, and easing the hearts of those who struggle in such troubled waters.
I believe Jesus is in all of those places, but I believe Jesus is somewhere else as well. I believe Jesus is here (head), and here (heart). I believe Jesus is in us, bringing peace and calm to the storms that rage within us. Because often in my own life, when Jesus calms the storms around me, the storm that often gets calmed is not the one outside, but the one within. The storm of fear and anxiety, of isolation and helplessness, the storm that paralyzes me in uncertainty like the disciples were paralyzed on that day on the sea, and prevents me from moving forward. In my life the storm Jesus generally calms is the one within me, so that I am set free to go and be about the work he has called me to do.
After Jesus calmed the storm, he and the disciples came to the other side where there was more work to be done. There was a man whose demon confined him to life in a graveyard, a leader of the synagogue who’s daughter was gravely ill, and a woman pushed to the fringes by a hemorrhage that would not quit. And just as Jesus showed control over the storm at sea, with a word and even a touch he cast out the demon, raised the girl, and healed the woman. Whatever storm needs facing, the promise of this story, of the gospel itself, is that Jesus is there. “For I am convinced,” wrote Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[13] Thanks be to God. Amen.
Footnotes:
[1] Romans 13:1 (New Revised Standard Version).
[2] Emily McFarlan Miller and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
[3] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 49, 51.
[4] Ibid 51.
[5] Acts 5:29 (NRSV).
[6] Michael J. Gorman, “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community,” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 396.
[7] Romans 13:8, 9 (NRSV).
[8] Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41,” Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[9] Mark 4:41 (NRSV).
[10] Mark 4:38 (NRSV).
[11] Skinner
[12] Kendall Karson, “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS, June 20, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[13] Romans 8:38-39 (NRSV)
Works Sourced:
*Gassman, Gunther and Scott Hendrix. “Chapter 6 The Lutheran Confessions: The Christian Life, The Arena: Church and World—Two Reigns of God.” Fortress Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999. Pg. 141-149.
*Gorman, Michael J. “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community.” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. Pg . 338-411.
*Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jensen. “10: Christian Life—Brave Sinning. The Crucible: Life in Two Kingdoms.” Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976. Pg. 142-145.
*“”. “13: Politics—Two Kingdoms?” Pg. 179-190.
*Karson, Kendall. “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS. June 20, 2018. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
*Kolb, Robert and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text.” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000. Pg. 31-105.
*Miller, Emily McFarlan and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
*Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41.” Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
Normally, I fulfill the part of my letter of call that directs me to “preach and teach in accordance with the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions” through preaching and teaching on the assigned lectionary texts. But these are not normal times. And while we will get to the Gospel text I just read, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently brought a verse from Paul’s Letter to the Romans into public discourse, I feel an obligation as the one you have called and ordained to be the resident biblical scholar of this community to start there.
The verse Sessions referenced is Romans chapter thirteen, verse one, which reads: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”[1] After citing the verse, Sessions added, “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”[2] And Sessions is not wrong; our Lutheran theology makes a similar argument. Article Eleven in the Augsburg Confession states: “the gospel does not undermine government or family but completely requires both their preservation as ordinances of God and the exercise of love in these ordinances.”[3] Laws help us live in healthy community with one another. When Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and to freedom, one of the first things God did was give them Ten Commandments, ten laws, to help them live together well. My Confessions professor in seminary described it like stoplights. Just because we are free from judgment under the law does not mean we are free to interpret stoplight colors any way we want, because that would be chaos. But there is a difference between lawless anarchy and unquestioned obedience. Article Eleven of the Augsburg Confession continues: “Christians owe obedience to their magistrates and laws except when commanded to sin. For then they owe greater obedience to God than to human beings.”[4] It references Acts chapter five, verse twenty-nine, where Peter said, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”[5]
So what was Paul up to in the thirteenth chapter of Romans? Paul’s most systematic and thorough explanation of the gospel, the letter to the Romans clearly articulates how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ set believers free from the bonds of sin and death and created a new community for everyone, whether Jew or Gentile. The central most important theme of Romans is that salvation comes through the grace of God alone, and not by anything that we can do. Romans chapter three, verse twenty- three, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is Christ Jesus.” And later, chapter five, verse eight, “But God proves God’s love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Paul drove this home at the end of chapter eight with one of my favorite lines of scripture, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing. That, dear people of God is the good news of Jesus Christ according to the Apostle Paul.
Having made that assertion, in chapters twelve and thirteen, Paul laid out for the Romans what that Christ community was to look like. In chapter twelve, Paul described the marks of the true Christian, starting at verse nine, “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with mutual affection outdo one another in showing honor.” These ways of living within the community spill out to how believers are to interact with those outside of the community. Starting at verse thirteen, Paul wrote, “Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers… do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly… if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” For Paul, since God showed love to us when we were God’s enemies, then we too are to show love to others.
So then, finally, we get to Romans chapter thirteen. As we read Paul’s admonition to “be subject to the governing authorities,” it is important to remember that the head of Roman Empire claimed divine status, he claimed to be Son of God. When Jesus used the term “Son of God,” Jesus was not only making a claim about his own divinity, he was making a statement about his authority over and above that of the Emperor. For Paul, there is one Lord, and it is God, not any earthly political figure. Verse seven reads “Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” The Roman leadership is worthy of honor, but only as they are God’s servants. The reference to “what is due” implies an obligation on the part the one receiving the honor.[6] Part of earning “what is due” means living in accordance with the marks of Christian leadership outlined in chapter twelve. But Paul provides an even clearer summary of our most important obligation in the next couple verses, the obligation of mutual love. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Paul quotes Jesus, “The commandments… are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[7]
OK, so having fully analyzed Paul’s Letter to the Romans, let’s get to the Gospel now, shall we. One of the themes of Mark’s Gospel is Jesus showing up in liminal spaces—places of transition and risk, marginalized places on the border between one place or time or reality and another. After crossing the sea, Jesus will heal the Gerasene Demoniac in a graveyard, bring a girl back from the brink of death, and heal a woman who’s bleeding had isolated her on the edge of society. Much of his ministry took place at geographical boundaries, like the wilderness, mountaintops, or even the Roman city of Caesarea Philippi. And he regularly crossed socio-political boundaries, eating at the home of the tax collector, and entering Jerusalem in a mock political parade at the beginning of the Passover. The Sea of Galilee is just such a borderland. It is both a geographical boundary, separating one shore from the other, it also has socio-political implications, both sustenance for the Galileans and a resource for extraction for the Romans.[8] Jesus crossing the Sea in Mark, something he does several times, is a demonstration of how borders, geographic and political, have no sway over the one whom “even the wind and the sea obey.”[9]
And as important and powerful as Jesus crossing boundaries both natural and man-made is, this story is more than that. Because this story takes place in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, right in the midst of the barrier between one people and another, between the haves and the have nots, between life on the land and death at sea. And right there, right in the middle of the borderline, right in the place of separation, right in the middle of the chaos of those divisions, when the disciples were panicking, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing,”[10] with a word Jesus rebuked the chaos, declaring, “Peace! Be Still!” And at once there was stillness. A “dead calm” in the NRSV, but a better translation is “a great calm.” Because the same Greek word is used to describe both the intensity of the wind and the severity of the calm that followed.[11]
So what does this mean for us, today, in the places and spaces where boundaries exist both natural and manmade? For me, what this text tells me is that in those places of separation and fear, Jesus is already there. Jesus is in El Paso and Laredo and the Chihuahuan desert. He is in gang-ravenged streets of Honduras and El Salvador, in the volcanic destruction of Guatemala, in the civil war of South Sudan, in Gaza, in Myanmar, and in all the places where people flee in desperate search for a better life for their children. Jesus is with those seeking asylum, those so poverty or panic-stricken as to not have that option, and those who return to rebuild destroyed lives. He is in the so-called “tender age” shelters in Combes, Raymondsville, and Brownsville Texas,[12] in the refugee camps in Jordan, Kenya, and Bangladesh, and just down the street with the ICE detainees at the Calhoun County jail. In all those places and in so many more, I have to believe that Jesus is already there proclaiming peace amidst the chaos, calming the storms of fear, and easing the hearts of those who struggle in such troubled waters.
I believe Jesus is in all of those places, but I believe Jesus is somewhere else as well. I believe Jesus is here (head), and here (heart). I believe Jesus is in us, bringing peace and calm to the storms that rage within us. Because often in my own life, when Jesus calms the storms around me, the storm that often gets calmed is not the one outside, but the one within. The storm of fear and anxiety, of isolation and helplessness, the storm that paralyzes me in uncertainty like the disciples were paralyzed on that day on the sea, and prevents me from moving forward. In my life the storm Jesus generally calms is the one within me, so that I am set free to go and be about the work he has called me to do.
After Jesus calmed the storm, he and the disciples came to the other side where there was more work to be done. There was a man whose demon confined him to life in a graveyard, a leader of the synagogue who’s daughter was gravely ill, and a woman pushed to the fringes by a hemorrhage that would not quit. And just as Jesus showed control over the storm at sea, with a word and even a touch he cast out the demon, raised the girl, and healed the woman. Whatever storm needs facing, the promise of this story, of the gospel itself, is that Jesus is there. “For I am convinced,” wrote Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[13] Thanks be to God. Amen.
Footnotes:
[1] Romans 13:1 (New Revised Standard Version).
[2] Emily McFarlan Miller and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
[3] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text,” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 49, 51.
[4] Ibid 51.
[5] Acts 5:29 (NRSV).
[6] Michael J. Gorman, “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community,” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 396.
[7] Romans 13:8, 9 (NRSV).
[8] Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41,” Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[9] Mark 4:41 (NRSV).
[10] Mark 4:38 (NRSV).
[11] Skinner
[12] Kendall Karson, “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS, June 20, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
[13] Romans 8:38-39 (NRSV)
Works Sourced:
*Gassman, Gunther and Scott Hendrix. “Chapter 6 The Lutheran Confessions: The Christian Life, The Arena: Church and World—Two Reigns of God.” Fortress Introduction to the Lutheran Confessions. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999. Pg. 141-149.
*Gorman, Michael J. “Romans: Gentile and Jew in Cruciform Covenant Community.” Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. Pg . 338-411.
*Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jensen. “10: Christian Life—Brave Sinning. The Crucible: Life in Two Kingdoms.” Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976. Pg. 142-145.
*“”. “13: Politics—Two Kingdoms?” Pg. 179-190.
*Karson, Kendall. “What are ‘tender age’ shelters?’ abcNEWS. June 20, 2018. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tender-age-shelters/story?id=56028638 [accessed June 21, 2018].
*Kolb, Robert and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., “The Augsburg Confession—Latin Text.” The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000. Pg. 31-105.
*Miller, Emily McFarlan and Yonat Shimron, “Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is the bible verse so often invoked?” USA Today, June 16, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/16/jeff-sessions-bible-romans-13-trump-immigration-policy/707749002/ [accessed June 20, 2018].
*Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 4:35-41.” Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3677 [accessed June 21, 2018].
Conversation Points for Mark 4:35-41
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus calming the storm at sea kicks of a series of miracle stories meant to emphasize Jesus’ powers, demonstrating his control over nature, demons, and death. Yet after this series of miracles, the people of Jesus’ hometown still didn’t believe him.
• In Ancient Near East mythology, the forces of chaos are often portrayed as a raging storm, with a storm god demonstrating power by conquering the storm. This is also an occasional image in Hebrew poetry like the Psalms, like for example Psalm 107 this week, where God rescued people from trouble at sea. All of these familiar images should have helped the disciples know the answer to the question in v. 41, “who is this then, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
• The storm that emerged in v. 37 was a “great” (megas) storm, and when Jesus spoke in v. 39, there was at once a “great calm.” The NRSV translated it as “dead calm” but the adjective describing the calm was megas, echoing the storm itself.
• Jesus’ method of calming the storm, rebuking the wind, have echoes of an exorcism, reinforcing the cosmological context. Just as sea monsters in ancient mythology represented the powers of evil, here the storm represents evil which Jesus controlled because Jesus is stronger than evil. While others could perform some of the miracles Jesus did, none but Jesus could calm a storm.
• There are various echoes of the Jonah story in this story. Jesus, like Jonah, was asleep in the boat when the storm struck and had to be awakened. Also the disciples accused Jesus of being indifferent, just like the captain had to Jonah. But the captain asked Jonah to pray to his God, whereas the disciples made no such request.
• The disciples’ failure to ask Jesus to do something hints at their lack of faith in Jesus’ abilities to protect them. This helps create distance between the readers of Mark’s Gospel and the disciples. Despite the disciples privileged position of being with Jesus, they do not have the faith that the readers of Mark’s Gospel have, helping to increase the readers’ confidence in their faith.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus calming the storm at sea kicks of a series of miracle stories meant to emphasize Jesus’ powers, demonstrating his control over nature, demons, and death. Yet after this series of miracles, the people of Jesus’ hometown still didn’t believe him.
• In Ancient Near East mythology, the forces of chaos are often portrayed as a raging storm, with a storm god demonstrating power by conquering the storm. This is also an occasional image in Hebrew poetry like the Psalms, like for example Psalm 107 this week, where God rescued people from trouble at sea. All of these familiar images should have helped the disciples know the answer to the question in v. 41, “who is this then, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
• The storm that emerged in v. 37 was a “great” (megas) storm, and when Jesus spoke in v. 39, there was at once a “great calm.” The NRSV translated it as “dead calm” but the adjective describing the calm was megas, echoing the storm itself.
• Jesus’ method of calming the storm, rebuking the wind, have echoes of an exorcism, reinforcing the cosmological context. Just as sea monsters in ancient mythology represented the powers of evil, here the storm represents evil which Jesus controlled because Jesus is stronger than evil. While others could perform some of the miracles Jesus did, none but Jesus could calm a storm.
• There are various echoes of the Jonah story in this story. Jesus, like Jonah, was asleep in the boat when the storm struck and had to be awakened. Also the disciples accused Jesus of being indifferent, just like the captain had to Jonah. But the captain asked Jonah to pray to his God, whereas the disciples made no such request.
• The disciples’ failure to ask Jesus to do something hints at their lack of faith in Jesus’ abilities to protect them. This helps create distance between the readers of Mark’s Gospel and the disciples. Despite the disciples privileged position of being with Jesus, they do not have the faith that the readers of Mark’s Gospel have, helping to increase the readers’ confidence in their faith.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
The Kingdom of God is like an invasive weed: A Sermon on Mark 4:26-34
One of my favorite podcasts is a radio show from Canada called The Vinyl Café. The show is a series of stories about the misadventures of Dave, the owner of a record store in the suburbs of Toronto with a penchant for making humorously poor decisions. One of my favorite episodes is called “Dave and the Mexican Climbing Mint.”
One winter Dave and his wife Morley spent a week visiting friends who owned a vacation home in Mexico. They spent their days lazing around, drinking mojitos made with fresh mint picked from their friends’ yard. They had such a good time that Dave decided that, as a surprise to Morley, he would take a cutting of the mint back to Canada with them, so they could replicate their vacation at home. Dave planted the cutting in their yard where it, unsurprisingly since it had been transplanted from the Mexican tropics to a Toronto winter, did nothing. And Dave, in a way listeners to the show would be familiar with, promptly forgot about it.
That is, until the next spring when Dave realized his tiny cutting had sprouted a few leaves. He rushed outside to examine it closer, when he noticed another, similar looking, sprout a few feet away. He went to pull it out and discovered it wouldn’t come. The new sprout wasn’t a separate plant at all, it was connected to the original by an underground root system. Now that Dave knew what to look for, he realized there were sprouts all over his yard. All that long winter when his plant had seemed to be doing nothing at all, it had been sending out root systems across his backyard. Dave went inside and looked up “Mexican Climbing Mint” on the computer, and the very first page that popped up opened with the title “Invasive and Noxious Weed.” He rushed back outside, following the path of the sprouts, pulling them as he went, until he peered over the fence and yes. There, in the middle of Mr. Mortenson’s prized tomato plants, was the unmistakable sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
Not knowing what to do, Dave went to talk to his best friend, Kenny Wong, owner of the local dining establishment Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies. Kenny assured Dave he had the answer. Kenny knew a guy who could get Dave some herbicide that would do the trick. Powerful stuff, Kenny assured him, so powerful its illegal in Canada, the kind you can only get in the states. That night, dressed all in black, Dave filled his sprayer with the American made herbicide and set out across the neighborhood.
The next morning, Dave woke up to the sound of commotion. He looked out his window to see half the neighborhood gathered in his driveway. When he had been filling his sprayer, Dave had accidentally spilled some of the herbicide and gotten it on the bottom of his shoes. Paths of dead grass led across every yard in the neighborhood, with all of the paths leading directly to Dave’s garage.
Looking down at his neighbors, something across the street in the Turlingtons’ yard caught his eye. Mary Turlington was everything Dave was not, organized, careful, and fastidiously precise. The Turlingtons had just had a new patio installed, and all spring long Mary had been bragging about the quality—and the cost—of the patio. Italian crushed limestone, all hand-laid, had cost a fortune, but was worth it. The patio was indestructible; it could withstand an earthquake, a volcano. Those things may be true, but it turns out there was one thing it couldn’t withstand. Because that morning as Dave looked out his window he noticed something he had missed the night before. Right in the middle of the Turlingtons’ hand-laid, crushed Italian limestone patio, so precisely centered as to look planned, poked the very beginning of a tiny sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
I don’t want to ruin the ending, and also I don’t really remember how it ends, so I’ll stop there. But Mark’s parable of the mustard seed describes the kingdom of God as being like Dave’s experience with the Mexican Climbing Mint, seemingly small and fragile, but in fact strong, tenacious, and all but impossible to eradicate. Theologian Matt Skinner, who’s commentary I read this week, remarked, “Be careful what you pray for when you say, ‘Your kingdom come.’”
Our Gospel this morning gave us two parables. The first is sometimes called “The parable of the seed growing on its own.” Skinner described it, fondly I would add, as “boring. Its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook.” The sower sowed the seed, and then left it to the earth which “produced on its own,” until it was time for the harvest. Skinner thinks this parable is to act as a corrective to the parable of the sower earlier in chapter four. That’s the very famous parable where the sower sowed seed a different kinds of soil, and only in the good soil did it take root and grow. The point of that parable is the abundance of the sower, but lest the hearer worry that the kingdom of God require very precise growing conditions, this story of seeds growing without the sower’s help is comfort for that.
What this parable assures us is that the kingdom of God is not dependent on us. It will grow whether we know what it is doing or not, because that is what it does, that is it’s nature. This does not mean that there is not a role for us to do in growing the kingdom of God, it does mean that there is not work for us in the kingdom of God, but it does mean that the success of that growth is not our doing. The earth produces of its own; God is growing the kingdom of God no matter how much effort and intention we put into it.
I don’t know about you friends, but in this time and place where every decision, every effort, every choice and idea and attempt, feels fraught with the risk of collapsing this whole house of cards down around us, this parable feels not just like good news, but like a gift. Because what this parable says is that the world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. At the congregational meeting a couple weeks ago I mentioned that the budget is not booming, but it’s OK again and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. That is not an invitation to apathy, but it does feel like a promise that clearly the Holy Spirit is not done with us yet, so we might as well put the fear of failure aside and get on with the work of being the people of God. The earth produces of its own, and as long as we are producing, we will be here, so rather than waste our energy on worrying, let’s be about the work of production.
And the parable of the mustard seed tells us not just about the tenacity of the kingdom, but also about the unexpectedness of its appearance. The Ezekiel reading this morning talked about the mighty cedars of Lebanon, a common image to described imperial power. And if you’ve seen a cedar tree, you know they are impressive. Tall and majestic, standing like a statue over all the other trees in the forest. If the goal is to impress, the cedar is a good image for the kingdom of God.
But Jesus described the kingdom of God as a mustard plant, “the greatest of all the shrubs.” A comment that must have had his audience snorting with laughter; shrubs after all being not the most impressive of plants. But while a cedar may stand tall and mighty in the sky, it takes up very little space on the ground. A mustard plant on the other hand, is ground cover. It will spread like wildfire, taking over anything in its path. And good luck trying to keep it out of your garden. Skinner remarked, “As a result, some people will want to burn it all down in a pointless attempt to restore their fields.”
Dear people of God, spreading the kingdom of God is good work, it is hard work, and it is our work, but it is not solely our work. That is to say, the success of that work is not dependent on us. The world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. So let’s feel free to try new things, to fail, to take risks, and to sow the seeds of the kingdom widely, trusting that the earth will produce of its own, without our doing. In the words of one of my favorite poems by Bishop Ken Utener, “We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs, we are prophets of a future not our own.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
One winter Dave and his wife Morley spent a week visiting friends who owned a vacation home in Mexico. They spent their days lazing around, drinking mojitos made with fresh mint picked from their friends’ yard. They had such a good time that Dave decided that, as a surprise to Morley, he would take a cutting of the mint back to Canada with them, so they could replicate their vacation at home. Dave planted the cutting in their yard where it, unsurprisingly since it had been transplanted from the Mexican tropics to a Toronto winter, did nothing. And Dave, in a way listeners to the show would be familiar with, promptly forgot about it.
That is, until the next spring when Dave realized his tiny cutting had sprouted a few leaves. He rushed outside to examine it closer, when he noticed another, similar looking, sprout a few feet away. He went to pull it out and discovered it wouldn’t come. The new sprout wasn’t a separate plant at all, it was connected to the original by an underground root system. Now that Dave knew what to look for, he realized there were sprouts all over his yard. All that long winter when his plant had seemed to be doing nothing at all, it had been sending out root systems across his backyard. Dave went inside and looked up “Mexican Climbing Mint” on the computer, and the very first page that popped up opened with the title “Invasive and Noxious Weed.” He rushed back outside, following the path of the sprouts, pulling them as he went, until he peered over the fence and yes. There, in the middle of Mr. Mortenson’s prized tomato plants, was the unmistakable sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
Not knowing what to do, Dave went to talk to his best friend, Kenny Wong, owner of the local dining establishment Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies. Kenny assured Dave he had the answer. Kenny knew a guy who could get Dave some herbicide that would do the trick. Powerful stuff, Kenny assured him, so powerful its illegal in Canada, the kind you can only get in the states. That night, dressed all in black, Dave filled his sprayer with the American made herbicide and set out across the neighborhood.
The next morning, Dave woke up to the sound of commotion. He looked out his window to see half the neighborhood gathered in his driveway. When he had been filling his sprayer, Dave had accidentally spilled some of the herbicide and gotten it on the bottom of his shoes. Paths of dead grass led across every yard in the neighborhood, with all of the paths leading directly to Dave’s garage.
Looking down at his neighbors, something across the street in the Turlingtons’ yard caught his eye. Mary Turlington was everything Dave was not, organized, careful, and fastidiously precise. The Turlingtons had just had a new patio installed, and all spring long Mary had been bragging about the quality—and the cost—of the patio. Italian crushed limestone, all hand-laid, had cost a fortune, but was worth it. The patio was indestructible; it could withstand an earthquake, a volcano. Those things may be true, but it turns out there was one thing it couldn’t withstand. Because that morning as Dave looked out his window he noticed something he had missed the night before. Right in the middle of the Turlingtons’ hand-laid, crushed Italian limestone patio, so precisely centered as to look planned, poked the very beginning of a tiny sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
I don’t want to ruin the ending, and also I don’t really remember how it ends, so I’ll stop there. But Mark’s parable of the mustard seed describes the kingdom of God as being like Dave’s experience with the Mexican Climbing Mint, seemingly small and fragile, but in fact strong, tenacious, and all but impossible to eradicate. Theologian Matt Skinner, who’s commentary I read this week, remarked, “Be careful what you pray for when you say, ‘Your kingdom come.’”
Our Gospel this morning gave us two parables. The first is sometimes called “The parable of the seed growing on its own.” Skinner described it, fondly I would add, as “boring. Its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook.” The sower sowed the seed, and then left it to the earth which “produced on its own,” until it was time for the harvest. Skinner thinks this parable is to act as a corrective to the parable of the sower earlier in chapter four. That’s the very famous parable where the sower sowed seed a different kinds of soil, and only in the good soil did it take root and grow. The point of that parable is the abundance of the sower, but lest the hearer worry that the kingdom of God require very precise growing conditions, this story of seeds growing without the sower’s help is comfort for that.
What this parable assures us is that the kingdom of God is not dependent on us. It will grow whether we know what it is doing or not, because that is what it does, that is it’s nature. This does not mean that there is not a role for us to do in growing the kingdom of God, it does mean that there is not work for us in the kingdom of God, but it does mean that the success of that growth is not our doing. The earth produces of its own; God is growing the kingdom of God no matter how much effort and intention we put into it.
I don’t know about you friends, but in this time and place where every decision, every effort, every choice and idea and attempt, feels fraught with the risk of collapsing this whole house of cards down around us, this parable feels not just like good news, but like a gift. Because what this parable says is that the world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. At the congregational meeting a couple weeks ago I mentioned that the budget is not booming, but it’s OK again and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. That is not an invitation to apathy, but it does feel like a promise that clearly the Holy Spirit is not done with us yet, so we might as well put the fear of failure aside and get on with the work of being the people of God. The earth produces of its own, and as long as we are producing, we will be here, so rather than waste our energy on worrying, let’s be about the work of production.
And the parable of the mustard seed tells us not just about the tenacity of the kingdom, but also about the unexpectedness of its appearance. The Ezekiel reading this morning talked about the mighty cedars of Lebanon, a common image to described imperial power. And if you’ve seen a cedar tree, you know they are impressive. Tall and majestic, standing like a statue over all the other trees in the forest. If the goal is to impress, the cedar is a good image for the kingdom of God.
But Jesus described the kingdom of God as a mustard plant, “the greatest of all the shrubs.” A comment that must have had his audience snorting with laughter; shrubs after all being not the most impressive of plants. But while a cedar may stand tall and mighty in the sky, it takes up very little space on the ground. A mustard plant on the other hand, is ground cover. It will spread like wildfire, taking over anything in its path. And good luck trying to keep it out of your garden. Skinner remarked, “As a result, some people will want to burn it all down in a pointless attempt to restore their fields.”
Dear people of God, spreading the kingdom of God is good work, it is hard work, and it is our work, but it is not solely our work. That is to say, the success of that work is not dependent on us. The world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. So let’s feel free to try new things, to fail, to take risks, and to sow the seeds of the kingdom widely, trusting that the earth will produce of its own, without our doing. In the words of one of my favorite poems by Bishop Ken Utener, “We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs, we are prophets of a future not our own.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
Conversation Points for Mark 4:26-34
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The first parable (v. 26-29) is commonly called “the parable of the seed growing of itself” because the seed grows with no help from the sower. Dr. Skinner calls this parable “boring” noting, “its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook.” One possible reading is the certainty of growth. The “seed” of the kingdom of God will take root and grow without our knowledge of how it happens or our help.
• This parable is a counterbalance to the more famous parable of the sower (also in Mark 4), where seed is sown on a variety of soils and only some of it grows. Whereas there, so many seeds fail to produce that one might question God’s commitment, here the growth is inevitable.
• Where Jesus lived, mustard was a common and sturdy weed, think dandelions. It had some medicinal qualities, so it was not completely useless. But it was definitely not a cash crop. Mostly it grew like crazy, was not easily eradicated, and good luck keeping it out of your garden. Dr. Skinner quipped, “Better be careful what you pray for when you say, ‘Your kingdom come…’”
• Jesus referred to the mustard plant as “the greatest of all shrubs,” which is a strange description. Rather than raising the level of shrubs, Jesus was shocking people into a different way of understanding greatness. Rather than something extraordinary, Jesus described the kingdom of God as something that will show up and take over the whole landscape.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 4:26-34.” Working Preacher.. Accessed: 11 June 2018.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The first parable (v. 26-29) is commonly called “the parable of the seed growing of itself” because the seed grows with no help from the sower. Dr. Skinner calls this parable “boring” noting, “its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook.” One possible reading is the certainty of growth. The “seed” of the kingdom of God will take root and grow without our knowledge of how it happens or our help.
• This parable is a counterbalance to the more famous parable of the sower (also in Mark 4), where seed is sown on a variety of soils and only some of it grows. Whereas there, so many seeds fail to produce that one might question God’s commitment, here the growth is inevitable.
• Where Jesus lived, mustard was a common and sturdy weed, think dandelions. It had some medicinal qualities, so it was not completely useless. But it was definitely not a cash crop. Mostly it grew like crazy, was not easily eradicated, and good luck keeping it out of your garden. Dr. Skinner quipped, “Better be careful what you pray for when you say, ‘Your kingdom come…’”
• Jesus referred to the mustard plant as “the greatest of all shrubs,” which is a strange description. Rather than raising the level of shrubs, Jesus was shocking people into a different way of understanding greatness. Rather than something extraordinary, Jesus described the kingdom of God as something that will show up and take over the whole landscape.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on Mark 4:26-34.” Working Preacher.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Conversation Points for Mark 3:20-35
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• It is still quite early in Jesus’ ministry, yet already Mark describes how every time Jesus stops, crowds gather around him so that he cannot move. This is similar to what happened last time he was in Capernaum, when he healed Simon’s mother-in-law (Mark 2:2).
• This periscope includes a scene embedded within a scene, a typical Markan composition technique. The first scene is Jesus and his family (3:21, 31-35), the embedded scene is Jesus and the scribes(3:22-30).
• Accusations of the exercise of satanic power was a formal, legal charge, requiring investigation.
• The scribes in v. 22 did not speak to Jesus directly, but spoke about him. And Jesus similarly did not address them directly, but answered them “in parables” (en parabolais). The word parabole refers to various forms of metaphoric speech, from riddles and proverbs like these to short narratives to illustrate a point. The point of proverbial sayings is to turn the tables on an opponent by showing how any intelligent person would recognize the absurdity of the opponent’s views. Their memorability and shortness makes them fundamental to oral culture.
• There is never mention of Jesus’ father (besides God) or Mary’s husband, while there is mention of Jesus’ mother and brothers. Peter and Andrew also never have a father mentioned, and James and John leave their father to follow Jesus. Possibly the lack of fathers is part of Jesus’ rejection of the patriarchal culture of the time that placed all power in the hands of the male head of household.
• Despite Jesus’ ignoring of his family, this passage was probably not an indication of hostility between Jesus and his family. Rather it probably demonstrates Jesus’ insistence that nothing can be set above doing the will of God, even family.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• It is still quite early in Jesus’ ministry, yet already Mark describes how every time Jesus stops, crowds gather around him so that he cannot move. This is similar to what happened last time he was in Capernaum, when he healed Simon’s mother-in-law (Mark 2:2).
• This periscope includes a scene embedded within a scene, a typical Markan composition technique. The first scene is Jesus and his family (3:21, 31-35), the embedded scene is Jesus and the scribes(3:22-30).
• Accusations of the exercise of satanic power was a formal, legal charge, requiring investigation.
• The scribes in v. 22 did not speak to Jesus directly, but spoke about him. And Jesus similarly did not address them directly, but answered them “in parables” (en parabolais). The word parabole refers to various forms of metaphoric speech, from riddles and proverbs like these to short narratives to illustrate a point. The point of proverbial sayings is to turn the tables on an opponent by showing how any intelligent person would recognize the absurdity of the opponent’s views. Their memorability and shortness makes them fundamental to oral culture.
• There is never mention of Jesus’ father (besides God) or Mary’s husband, while there is mention of Jesus’ mother and brothers. Peter and Andrew also never have a father mentioned, and James and John leave their father to follow Jesus. Possibly the lack of fathers is part of Jesus’ rejection of the patriarchal culture of the time that placed all power in the hands of the male head of household.
• Despite Jesus’ ignoring of his family, this passage was probably not an indication of hostility between Jesus and his family. Rather it probably demonstrates Jesus’ insistence that nothing can be set above doing the will of God, even family.
Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Set Apart: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and Mark 2:23-3:6
This is year B, the year of Mark in the lectionary, but so far you might not have noticed. Today our Gospel readings finally move back there. And, with the brief exception of five weeks in the middle of the summer where we randomly read the sixth chapter of John, we’re going to be with Mark until December. So before we get into the text itself this morning, let’s take some time to reorient ourselves in the world of Mark.
Most scholars place Mark as the earliest of the four Gospels, written around 70 CE. If you remember your history, you may remember what else was taking place around that time. 66 CE was the start of the Jewish Revolt, leading to the siege of Jerusalem and the eventual destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Mark is writing in the immediate aftermath of all of this violence and warfare. The big question Mark’s Gospel addresses is how to be followers of Jesus in such tumultuous times. What did Jesus’ ministry thirty years earlier have to say about how Mark’s community was to live in this time of warfare and chaos, and similarly what does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection two-thousand years ago have to say about how we are to live today? These are the questions we are to consider, not just this morning, but throughout the rest of the summer as we journey with Mark through Jesus’ ministry.
Another piece to keep in mind as we read Mark’s Gospel is the role of the Pharisees and the bigger question of the Law. There’s this tendency to cast the Pharisees as the foil to Jesus, the strict holders of this outdated law that Jesus came to set us free from. But the Pharisees weren’t classic villains; they were good, law-abiding, religious folk, not unlike you and I. The conference I was at last week included a text study on this text, and one of the presenters remarked on the common trope of Pharisees bad, Jesus good, end of sermon, by very abruptly saying, “That’s not a good sermon.” So we’ll try not to go there. Jesus doesn’t undo the law. Rather, what Jesus does is reorient the law back to its intention. Like any good religious scholar, like the Pharisees themselves, Jesus interprets the law for us, helping us understand through these very concrete examples what it means to be followers of the law and of Jesus, not in ways that are so defined, so concrete as to be abstract, but in ways that have real life and meaning in our world.
The law Jesus dealt with in our reading this morning was about Sabbath-keeping. We heard the specifics of the law in our reading from Deuteronomy, how God commanded the Israelites to “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” The Hebrew word here translated “holy” is qodesh, which means to be set apart, set aside for a different purpose. According to the end of verse fourteen, they were to set aside the Sabbath day for the purpose of rest. And not just the Israelites were to observe Sabbath, but also “your son, your daughter, your male or female slave, any resident alien in your towns,” even “your ox, your donkey, or any of your livestock.” Everyone in Israel is commanded to be permitted a day of rest after six days of labor.
And the reason for this day of rest? God said, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out.” Remember that you were a slave, and God set you free. Sabbath-keeping, this pattern of work and rest is about God restoring to the people of Israel the freedom to live full and fulfilling lives, lives that were not controlled by the whims of overseers with no regard for their well-being. Karoline Lewis calls this command to observe the Sabbath “the first labor law, God inventing the weekend.” Observing the Sabbath, then, is not about worship. Or rather, not exclusively about worship. The point of worship is to restore us spiritually so worship is certainly part of Sabbath keeping, but it is not the only part. Observation of Sabbath should encompass all parts of our beings, worship for our souls, relaxation for our bodies, rest for our minds. Both the Sunday morning worship and the Sunday afternoon nap can be important parts of Sabbath keeping. The inclusion of all of Israelite society, not just the religious, but the foreigners who worshiped other gods and even the animals demonstrated that God’s first intention in ordaining the Sabbath was about justice, about making sure that within kingdom of God everyone and everything had what they needed to thrive.
Flash forward a thousand years or so and we find Jesus and his disciples walking through a field on the Sabbath, picking heads of grain as they traveled. We should note here that Jesus and the disciples are not stealing grain. Remember, there are no convenience stores and such for travelers back in those times. So per Deuteronomy, travelers were permitted to pick food from fields along their way. They couldn’t take bushels of the stuff and sell it; that was stealing. But if they could carry it in their hands and eat it as they walked, it was fair game.
But the Pharisees see them picking grain on the Sabbath, and they were like, who do these guys think they are! Have they not read the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath is a day of rest. How dare they pick grain on the Sabbath!
The mistake the Pharisees made is something that is all too easy to do, and certainly something I, and probably some of you, are guilty of. This temptation to take a thing that is good, and so over-regulate it that the life and freedom get sucked out of it. They know that Sabbath is a day of rest; that God created this day so we can rest. A day to remember that we are free from all that holds us captive and because of that, we are free to live rich, full, good lives. But by regulating that rest so tightly, the Pharisees took the freedom, and thus the life-giving restoration, out of observing the Sabbath.
I don’t see the Pharisees here as villains but as victims. Victims of their own making certainly, but still victims. Think of how exhausting it must have been for them to spend so much time and energy worrying about whether or not they were resting in the right way. Which is why Jesus came along and gave them this new interpretation of the old Sabbath law, so that the Sabbath could once again be what God had created it for, a day of restoration and rejuvenation, a day to bring life and health and wholeness.
Dear friends in Christ, let the example of the Pharisees be an invitation for us. An invitation to look closely at our own lives and see what things, good things, may not be serving us well any longer. Are there things that we have done so long that they have become drudgerous and obligatory? Things that once brought us life and now we do only out of habit? Let this command to observe the Sabbath, to set apart days for work and days for rest an invitation to us to set apart that which is not life-giving for that which is. If there are things we do because they are the way we’ve always done them, let us read in this passage an invitation not to do them anymore. The world will not end, I promise. And, what’s more, when we remember that we are not slaves to anything, that God led us to freedom, that God created us for freedom, then in the putting aside of old things, we will certainly find space and time for new and life-giving things. Like Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, in this practice of setting aside, we will find the withered parts of ourselves restored. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Most scholars place Mark as the earliest of the four Gospels, written around 70 CE. If you remember your history, you may remember what else was taking place around that time. 66 CE was the start of the Jewish Revolt, leading to the siege of Jerusalem and the eventual destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Mark is writing in the immediate aftermath of all of this violence and warfare. The big question Mark’s Gospel addresses is how to be followers of Jesus in such tumultuous times. What did Jesus’ ministry thirty years earlier have to say about how Mark’s community was to live in this time of warfare and chaos, and similarly what does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection two-thousand years ago have to say about how we are to live today? These are the questions we are to consider, not just this morning, but throughout the rest of the summer as we journey with Mark through Jesus’ ministry.
Another piece to keep in mind as we read Mark’s Gospel is the role of the Pharisees and the bigger question of the Law. There’s this tendency to cast the Pharisees as the foil to Jesus, the strict holders of this outdated law that Jesus came to set us free from. But the Pharisees weren’t classic villains; they were good, law-abiding, religious folk, not unlike you and I. The conference I was at last week included a text study on this text, and one of the presenters remarked on the common trope of Pharisees bad, Jesus good, end of sermon, by very abruptly saying, “That’s not a good sermon.” So we’ll try not to go there. Jesus doesn’t undo the law. Rather, what Jesus does is reorient the law back to its intention. Like any good religious scholar, like the Pharisees themselves, Jesus interprets the law for us, helping us understand through these very concrete examples what it means to be followers of the law and of Jesus, not in ways that are so defined, so concrete as to be abstract, but in ways that have real life and meaning in our world.
The law Jesus dealt with in our reading this morning was about Sabbath-keeping. We heard the specifics of the law in our reading from Deuteronomy, how God commanded the Israelites to “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” The Hebrew word here translated “holy” is qodesh, which means to be set apart, set aside for a different purpose. According to the end of verse fourteen, they were to set aside the Sabbath day for the purpose of rest. And not just the Israelites were to observe Sabbath, but also “your son, your daughter, your male or female slave, any resident alien in your towns,” even “your ox, your donkey, or any of your livestock.” Everyone in Israel is commanded to be permitted a day of rest after six days of labor.
And the reason for this day of rest? God said, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out.” Remember that you were a slave, and God set you free. Sabbath-keeping, this pattern of work and rest is about God restoring to the people of Israel the freedom to live full and fulfilling lives, lives that were not controlled by the whims of overseers with no regard for their well-being. Karoline Lewis calls this command to observe the Sabbath “the first labor law, God inventing the weekend.” Observing the Sabbath, then, is not about worship. Or rather, not exclusively about worship. The point of worship is to restore us spiritually so worship is certainly part of Sabbath keeping, but it is not the only part. Observation of Sabbath should encompass all parts of our beings, worship for our souls, relaxation for our bodies, rest for our minds. Both the Sunday morning worship and the Sunday afternoon nap can be important parts of Sabbath keeping. The inclusion of all of Israelite society, not just the religious, but the foreigners who worshiped other gods and even the animals demonstrated that God’s first intention in ordaining the Sabbath was about justice, about making sure that within kingdom of God everyone and everything had what they needed to thrive.
Flash forward a thousand years or so and we find Jesus and his disciples walking through a field on the Sabbath, picking heads of grain as they traveled. We should note here that Jesus and the disciples are not stealing grain. Remember, there are no convenience stores and such for travelers back in those times. So per Deuteronomy, travelers were permitted to pick food from fields along their way. They couldn’t take bushels of the stuff and sell it; that was stealing. But if they could carry it in their hands and eat it as they walked, it was fair game.
But the Pharisees see them picking grain on the Sabbath, and they were like, who do these guys think they are! Have they not read the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath is a day of rest. How dare they pick grain on the Sabbath!
The mistake the Pharisees made is something that is all too easy to do, and certainly something I, and probably some of you, are guilty of. This temptation to take a thing that is good, and so over-regulate it that the life and freedom get sucked out of it. They know that Sabbath is a day of rest; that God created this day so we can rest. A day to remember that we are free from all that holds us captive and because of that, we are free to live rich, full, good lives. But by regulating that rest so tightly, the Pharisees took the freedom, and thus the life-giving restoration, out of observing the Sabbath.
I don’t see the Pharisees here as villains but as victims. Victims of their own making certainly, but still victims. Think of how exhausting it must have been for them to spend so much time and energy worrying about whether or not they were resting in the right way. Which is why Jesus came along and gave them this new interpretation of the old Sabbath law, so that the Sabbath could once again be what God had created it for, a day of restoration and rejuvenation, a day to bring life and health and wholeness.
Dear friends in Christ, let the example of the Pharisees be an invitation for us. An invitation to look closely at our own lives and see what things, good things, may not be serving us well any longer. Are there things that we have done so long that they have become drudgerous and obligatory? Things that once brought us life and now we do only out of habit? Let this command to observe the Sabbath, to set apart days for work and days for rest an invitation to us to set apart that which is not life-giving for that which is. If there are things we do because they are the way we’ve always done them, let us read in this passage an invitation not to do them anymore. The world will not end, I promise. And, what’s more, when we remember that we are not slaves to anything, that God led us to freedom, that God created us for freedom, then in the putting aside of old things, we will certainly find space and time for new and life-giving things. Like Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, in this practice of setting aside, we will find the withered parts of ourselves restored. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)