Woman, Here Is Your Son

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was John 19:16b-27:

One of the mistakes we often make when reading scripture, especially when it comes to the gospels, is that we think they tell exactly the same story, but they don’t. Most of you have heard me say this before, but each of the gospel writers has a particular story, a particular view point, a particular emphasis that they want to talk about in telling the story of Jesus, and so we have to pay attention to those particulars in order to get at the heart of their message. Remembering they are writing theology, not biography. This is particularly true with the Gospel of John, which is just radically different from what are known as the synoptic gospels, that is Matthew, Mark and Luke, which basically have the same synopses, even if they might have different details. But in John, while we see some overlap with the tradition about Jesus contained within the synoptic gospels, we also see a tradition that seems to be independent from the synoptics. While this will become clearer in the next few weeks, just one illustration from the passage we heard today can show the large differences we can see.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, does Jesus carry the cross out to the execution site by himself? No, Simon of Cyrene is pulled off the street and forced to carry it for him. But, today’s passage says that Jesus carried the cross by himself as he went to the place of the skull. I can make an argument for why I think John does that, but that’s perhaps for another day. Now, in reality, John is not the only one to have differences at the cross, as, again, all of the them have differences, and if you want a nice little Lent or Easter practice, I would encourage you to go through each gospel and mark out the details each tell of the crucifixion and resurrection in four different columns, one for each gospel, and then note the similarities, but also the wide differences. I think most of you will be surprised. But, it’s really the differences that also mark the heart of this Lenten series, because we are talking about the 7 last statements Jesus makes from the cross, which, for the most part, also tend to be unique to the gospel in which they are found, and today it’s Jesus statement to his mother and to the beloved disciple.

Forgive Them... Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 23:32-43:

As Jesus is hanging on the cross, he says different things depending upon which gospel account you are reading. These saying are commonly referred to as the 7 last words of Christ, although they aren’t words, but sayings, and so I am calling them the 7 last sayings of Christ, and we are going to be spending the Sundays of Lent looking at each of these sayings. Now there are seven sayings, but only 5 Sundays to cover them, so twice, like today, we are going to look at two at a time. There is some argument that takes place in which order did Jesus say them, which is really unanswerable since, again, they are recounted in different gospels, and you will sometimes find them in different orders, but for simplicities sake for me, we are going to go in the order in which they are traditionally found, with today looking at Jesus’ statement of forgiveness and to one of the other men being crucified that today he will be in paradise.

Now, Luke has Jesus being mocked three different time while Jesus is on the cross. The  religious leaders scoff at him. The soldiers mock him, and one of the other men being crucified also taunts him. This is important as we think about who it is that Jesus might be intending his forgiveness for and why.If you were paying attention to the text as the passage from Luke was just read, you will have noticed that this passage about forgiveness is found inside double brackets. So a test of remembrance for those who were here last week when we talked about the ending of Mark’s gospel, or perhaps the lack of ending, what did brackets in scripture indicate?

That’s right, it means scholars have questions about its authenticity to the original manuscript. There is a divide in the manuscript evidence in whether this passage is included or not, and the evidence just on that will favor seeing this as a later addition to the text. Now that does not mean this statement is not original to Jesus, right, but maybe not original to the text. When scholars are looking at this and trying to make decisions, they usually use Occam’s Razor, which basically says that the easiest answer is usually the best answer. That is in looking at whether it was added or removed, being added is the easier answer because we have to come up with reasons why later editors would have taken this passage out. Now, there are some good arguments about why it could have been removed, such as later Christians not wanting to have a passage that would seem to give forgiveness to Jewish leaders. Additionally, this certainly seems to match what else occurs in Luke, as Luke talks more about forgiveness and in particular about God’s forgiveness, than any other gospel, and so the literary evidence clearly matches it as being original, but the manuscript evidence is unclear.

Mark: The Gospel Without An Ending

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 16:1-8:

Have you ever been watching a movie and you get to the end, and then it just ends, there is not any conclusion, or there are loose strings left hanging out, and you’re like, wait, what? It can’t end like that. I need more, tell me what happens. That’s how some people have felt about the ending of the Gospel of Mark, because the gospel ends just as we heard it here. There is no resurrection appearance, there are no further stories as there are in Matthew, Luke and John. Our earliest and best manuscripts of Mark have the story ending with the line “and they ran away and told no one because they were scared.” That is the reason I have called Mark the gospel without a beginning, because it doesn’t give us a birth narrative of any form, and the gospel without an end, because it doesn’t end the way we think it should. Now, that led other later editors to add post-resurrection stories to Mark, as if it was incomplete, and it certainly seemed that way after the other gospels had been written. And so, if you are reading the Bible, at the end of verse 8 you will first come to a selection which is sub headed “the shorter ending of Mark” which is then followed immediately passages sub headed “The Longer ending of Mark.”

Those passages should also be found in brackets, with an accompanying footnote, which indicates that they are not considered original to the text, but that the translators are not removing them, simply letting us know of scriptural integrity issues. And in fact, we know from the writings of the church fathers back to the second century, that this was an issue, and some of our manuscripts even indicate that these passages originality are doubtful. But, the reason that they were added was because, in my opinion, they didn’t understand, the very nature of Mark’s gospel and so they thought it was lacking something. But when we understand what Mark is doing, and understand the story he tells, his ending is as brilliant as the rest of his gospel. But before we jump into that, we again need to take a step back to the other gospel passage we heard for today, which is the story of the transfiguration which is the traditional reading for this Sunday, which is the last Sunday before Lent. But more importantly for our purposes, it matches perfectly with the story I have been telling about Mark’s call to discipleship which concludes so well with Mark’s ending.

Mark: Little Apocalypse

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 13:1-10, 12-13, 24-26, 32, 35-37:

If you are to email NASA with a scientific question, it is likely to be answered by Dr. David Morrison, who holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard, and that’s only important because I don’t think that Harvard gets enough attention for being a good school. But, according to Dr. Morrison, he spends a minimum of one hour every day answering people’s questions about the end of times, or at least the end of the world as we know it. We seem to be obsessed with this idea, but it’s not really anything new. We find similar things in the Hebrew scriptures, and the New Testament is full of discussion, as well as speculation within writings about when such things were going to happen. Clement, an early bishop of Rome, said the end would happen in the year 90. Hilary of Potiers said it would be in 365. His more famous student Martin of Tours said the year 400. The German emperor Otis III thought that an eclipse in 968 would be the harbinger, and Pope Innocent III said 1284. The Shakers said 1792, and Charles Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism preferred 1794, although he was already dead 6 years by that time. For Jehovah’s witnesses it was 1914, also1918, 1941 and 1975, to name just a few and for Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson the end was coming in 1980, or 1982, 1985, 1988 and then 2007, and of course there have been many more failed predictions since then. And what do they all have in common? First, they were wrong, and second, according to Jesus, they never should have been making predictions at all, and in doing so were only serving as false prophet’s intent on leading people astray, and so we need to stop listening to such end of time mongers telling us they have insider knowledge, because Jesus says they are all wrong, and we’ll get back to that.

The selection of passages we heard from Mark today come from the 13^th chapter which is known as Mark’s Little Apocalypse. Now typically, when we hear the word apocalypse, we think it means talk about the end of the world, and so we talk about apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic movies, like Mad Max as an example. But the word itself has nothing to do with the end of times. instead it simply means an unveiling or revealing, so that some divine knowledge is being revealed. The apocalypse with which most of us are familiar, is of course the apocalypse of John, which is also known as Revelation, and is the only full-blown apocalypse we have in scripture. But we have other types of apocalyptic pieces found in the book of Daniel, which is the other best scriptural example, but also to be found in Joel and Isaiah and Amos and Zephaniah, who all talk about the end of time.