Mark: Pick Up Your Cross

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 8:27-38:

Today marks the half way point in our series on the Gospel of Mark, and appropriately enough, today’s passage is also seen to represent the ½ way point in the gospel itself, and not just because Mark has 16 chapters, but more importantly because Peter’s confession, and what comes after marks a shift in emphasis for the entire story. The chapters leading up to this have been about the call to discipleship to prepare for what is to come, and then it shifts to be about the passion story, with the first passion prediction coming in the passage we just heard. It’s been said that Mark’s gospel is really a passion story, with a longer introduction, and if we look at the amount of time comprising the story, that is true because the three years of Jesus’ ministry are covered in ten chapters in Mark, and then the last week of Jesus’ life comprise the final eight chapters. So, the first chapters set up the passion story, just as the first three weeks have, hopefully established some groundwork for what is yet to come and the focus in Mark’s gospel on discipleship. And I know I keep saying that it’s about discipleship, and the cost of discipleship, and the fact that the disciples are set up as foils for what discipleship doesn’t look like, and yet I really haven’t proven that point yet, but today begins the start what where we will build on this theme over the next few weeks. But before we dig into that, we need to take a step back to what has happened immediately before Peter’s confession, because once again Mark has set us up for what to expect and how to interpret these stories by the stories that have come immediately before this passage.

The disciples have seen Jesus heal people, sometimes by casting out demons, and they have even seen him feed first five thousand and then four thousand people with only a few loaves and fish, and they have even received private instruction from Jesus, but they don’t get it. Immediately after the last feeding of the multitudes, Jesus warns the disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is it only takes a little bit to corrupt the whole batch, but the disciples think he is talking to them about literal bread, and say they don’t have any bread, and Jesus does a palm plant and says “why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand?... Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?... Do you not yet understand?” Then immediately after they encounter a blind man, and this is an unusual healing, first because we are not told that the man is made well because of his faith, or even the faith of those who brought him to Jesus, and secondly because this is a two-part healing. Jesus lays hands on him and then says, “Can you see anything?” and then man says, “I can see people, but they look like trees walking.” That is his seeing is not yet complete. Then Jesus lays hands on him again, and then we are told that the man sees everything clearly. They then made their way to Caesarea Philippi, an important change, which we’ll get to in a moment, and then Jesus asks the disciples the questions that will change the direction of the story. But how many questions does Jesus ask them? Two. First, he says, who do people say that I am? And they give him an answer. They don’t quite see clearly yet; their eyesight is not yet good. Then Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter says, presumably answering for all of them, “You are the messiah.”

Mark: Bearing and Giving Fruit

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 12:1-12:

In 1^st century Palestine, everyone was connected to the soil in some way. While they might not be farmers themselves, more than likely they had family or friends who worked the soil, or perhaps they were the owners of the land. That is certainly not the case anymore, and so perhaps we might miss some of the understanding of the agricultural metaphors that are found throughout Jesus’ teachings, especially in the parables, but that are also found throughout scripture. Going all the way back to the second chapter of Genesis, in the second creation story, and yes there are two very different stories, we are told that “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East… out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” That is God is a gardener. Later, the prophet Isaiah says that God, and this becomes important for today’s passage from Mark, had a vineyard on a very fertile hill, and God dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines and built a watchtower in the midst of it. Now metaphorically we are supposed to know in Isaiah that the watchtower represents the Temple, and that the vineyard is Israel, and in this telling in Isaiah, this song of the vineyard is a judgment on Israel. Then, of course, we have a reworking of that story here in the Gospel of Mark, which is also told in Matthew and Luke, which has become known as the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, even though the word wicked is not every actually used in the parable.

Once again, a man, who we assign the role of God to, prepares a vineyard and does all the work to prepare it to make sure it brings about a bountiful harvest, then he leases out the land to tenants to work the fields. Some translations use the term vinedressers, instead of just tenants, indicating that this vineyard is not just being entrusted to anyone, but to people who are specialized in their fields. As we think about whom the judgment is made against, that, I think, can play an important role. But we have to remember that the tenants are not the ones who do all the work, much of the work, and the hardest work, has already been done for them. They are recipients of others work. Then the owner goes away. Now, one of the problems we sometimes have when looking at parables, or more probably allegories, and an allegory is where the characters in the story compare to people in reality, is to try and make them very literalistic. Jesus is not saying that God has left humanity to our own desires. Instead, Jesus is very deliberately setting this story up for the priests, scribes and elders whom Jesus is telling this story to, many of whom we know were absentee landlords. That is, they owned land that they did not toil on, but which produced money for them. They are the ones who send servants to collect their share of the harvest, and so in the way Jesus tells this story, the way he structures, it, Jesus flips the story around on them. They want to identify with the absentee landlord, and yet they also know that they are the tenants that Jesus is talking about.

Mark: Sowing the Seeds

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 4:1-20:

Today we continue in our series in the Gospel of Mark by looking at what has become known as the Parable of the Sower, and what it says to us about us and about discipleship and the cost of discipleship. The parable is one of 8 parables that are found in all three of the synoptic gospels, that is Matthew, Mark and Luke, which compares to around 33 total parables found in those three. And I say around 33 because there are some arguments about whether some of the stories that some include as parables are actually parables or not. But, this is a significant parable, first because it is one that Jesus explains, or at least seeks to explain, and secondly because of the role it plays in telling the story of Jesus’ ministry. According to New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert in her book Sowing the Gospels, which many consider one of the best books on the gospel of Mark, says of the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, which we will look at next week, that they “present in concise, summary form the Gospel’s view of Jesus: He is the sower of the word and the heir of the vineyard. The first emphasizes his task and the second his identity; together they make up the gospel’s basic narrative.” (122) That is to say that these two parables, although she argues that the Parable of the Sower is the more important of the two, orient us to not only what the gospel is about, and what Jesus’ message is about, but about how to identify the characters in the story and what is to be expected if we truly understand and follow Jesus’ message.

Now, what Jesus’ interpretation of this parable would seem to say is that he intentionally teaches in parables so that some people won’t understand anything about the teachings, but those who are in the know will know, and that as verse 34 later will tell us that Jesus explained everything in private to the disciples. Some of you, in having read some of the parables may agree with that in that you don’t understand what they are saying, although what I always say is that as soon as you think you have the parables figured out you need to go back and read them again because you’ve probably missed something. But that doesn’t match what we see in the actual teachings, because one of the things that we hear about in Mark about the disciples is that they didn’t understand either Jesus’ teachings or what they had just witnessed, because they just don’t get it, and as I said last week the disciples as used as foils for what true discipleship looks like, and so it turns out, counter to what we might expect as we think about the soil in this parable, the disciples, at least right now, are not the ones who yield an abundant harvest. But, although this translation says it’s a secret of the Kingdom that Jesus given to the disciples, an idea we’ll return too, a better translation is probably mystery, and can we ever truly ever understand a mystery? No, that’s why it’s a mystery. Additionally, where is the seed spread? Is it only spread on the good soil? No, it’s spread everywhere, and it doesn’t say that it’s different seed spread in different places. It’s all the same seed, so the efficacy of the growth has nothing to do with the sower or the seed, but with the soil, which is why some suggest that this shouldn’t be called the parable of the sower at all, but instead the parable of the soil.

Mark: The Baptism

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:1-11:

Today we begin a new sermon series on the gospel Mark that will take us through the next six weeks, which is when Lent begins. We are doing this series for several reasons. The first is because in the lectionary, which are the recommended scripture readings for each Sunday of the year, it’s broken into 3 years, and the second year, which is what we are in now, uses Mark predominantly for the gospel reading. The second reason is that of the four gospels, Mark is my favorite, and we’ll get into the reasons for that, but I actually rarely preach from Mark. In the 4 ½ years here at Mesa View, I’ve had 9 messages from Mark, versus 49 and 44 messages from Matthew and Luke, respectively. I’ve preached a lot more from John than from Mark, and I’m not particularly a fan of John, and so for the next six weeks I, at least, get to indulge my interest in this gospel. But, I can add that Mark not being covered as much has historically been the tradition of the church, because it is much sparser than the other gospels, especially when compared to the other two synoptic gospels, which are Matthew and Luke, and these three are called synoptics because they have roughly the same synopses as each other, whereas John is just totally different in most ways. Additionally, Matthew and Luke have additional stories, such as the sermon on the mount, and others that have been popular within the tradition, and where they have the same stories Matthew and Luke tend to have fuller accounts than Mark does as well. That has led some to make a claim about Mark being too simple, and that he does not have the literary capabilities that the other gospel writers have, but that totally misses the absolute artistry that Mark displays when we pay attention to what he’s doing and let Mark tell his own story, rather than asking him to be like Matthew and Luke.

We have four gospels for a reason, and they all tell a different story, they have a different purpose for being. These days it’s harder to know that because we most often hear the gospels only in short sections, and rarely told against each other, and since they can sound the same, we think they are they same. So, let me just give one example to illustrate the point. Both Matthew and Luke give us the beatitudes, although Mark does not. In Luke we are told, “blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the Kingdom of God,” and Jesus preaches that message from a flat area, whereas in Matthew, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs in the Kingdom of God.” What is the difference between those? Matthew has spiritualized the message. It’s not about economic poverty, as it is for Luke, as well as being directly focused on the poor who are hearing the message, whereas Matthew is speaking about a generic group that’s out there. So, listen to what each gospel writer is telling and pay attention to their story, and for Mark, at the heart of his message is about the example and the cost of being a disciple. As we’ll see, in Mark’s gospel the disciples continually fail, they are sort of bumbling fools at times who never seem to get it, because they are being set up as foils against others, but more importantly against Christ as the ultimate example of discipleship and the cost of discipleship.

Consolation of Israel

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 2:22-40:

Today’s passage from Luke, although little known or covered, is actually the conclusion to Luke’s birth narrative, but I am pretty sure that you cannot find figures of Simeon and Anna anywhere to add to your nativity display. If you were here throughout Advent you will remember Luke’s gospel begins, and the nativity story starts, in the Temple in Jerusalem with the announcement to Zechariah, a priest, that he and his wife Elizabeth are to have a son, who is John the Baptist, even though they are both advanced in years. The angel tells Zechariah that this child is in answer to his prayers, although it is not clear how long he, and presumably his wife, have been praying for a child. But, Zechariah does not believe the pronouncement made by the angel, and so he is struck mute until after John’s birth when he is filled with the spirit and given a prophecy in the form of a song, typically referred to as the Benedictus.The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth is then sort of mirrored and interspersed with the announcement to Mary, including Mary’s song, called the Magnificat, with a significant difference being that Mary believes what the angel tells her. Then, of course we have the birth story, the announcement to the shepherds, which is also similar in construction to what has already taken place, and then today’s passage, which begins by telling us that on the 8^th day, according to Jewish law, the baby was circumcised and named Jesus, which means God’s saves, as the angel had decreed. I remind us all of this so that we can understand in greater detail what is going on in today’s passage, because not only is this the closing of Luke’s birth narrative, but it forms a book end with how the story begins. We again find ourselves in the Temple, encountering an old man, who like Zechariah we are told is righteous and devout. Luke only applies the term righteous to four people in his Gospel, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Joseph of Arimathea, who provides the tomb for Jesus.

In the second century a tradition arises that Simeon is 112 years old at the time he encounters Jesus.  There is no basis to this in scripture, and in fact, even though I just said otherwise, the passage doesn’t even tell us that he is advanced in age, but I think the purpose behind the tradition is to help illustrate his age.  We are told that he has been looking forward to and praying for the consolation of Israel, that is has been looking forward to the coming of the promised messiah. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that he is not in fact 112, but that instead he’s only 80. The best guess is that Jesus is born somewhere between 6 and 4 BCE. I know that our calendars are supposed to start at year 1 with Jesus’ birth, but they don’t, and we don’t know how the monk who did the dating in the year 525 came up with year 1. But most scholars date the death of Herod the Great to the year 4 BCE, and so if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod, then the latest he could have been born was around 4, but most scholars believe it was earlier than that. But for argument and simplicities sake, let’s say that today’s passage takes place in the year 5 BCE. 58 years earlier, in 63 BCE, a 22-year-old Simeon would have witnessed the end of the last Israelite independence when the Romans took Palestine from the Hasmoneans, the last Jewish ruling family, which began the prayers for the consolation of Israel, to return Israel to Jewish rule, to throw off the foreign oppressors, which is what the messiah was supposed to do.<