My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 15:33-39:

have to admit that today’s last word from the cross is one of my favorite passages of scripture. That might sound strange to some of you, but I love it because I can puzzle and struggle with it, but it also brings me a great deal of comfort and solace. Of the 7 last sayings of Christ, it is also the only one in which it is contained in more than one gospel. All of the other sayings are unique to the gospel in which they are found, but Jesus’ cry of despair is found in both Mark and in Matthew, and this is the only thing that either of them have Jesus say from the cross. In fact, their crucifixion stories are remarkably similar, with a few more details being added by Matthew over the sparsity of Mark. But, what 50% of the gospels say is that while hanging on the cross that Jesus cries out, he doesn’t mutter, he doesn’t mumble, he doesn’t say it under his breath, he cries out in a loud voice, to make it very clear, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” That is a phrase that could never comes from the lips of the Jesus in the Gospel of John, a thought we’ll return to next week, and while Luke has him cry out in a loud voice, what he cries is something entirely different.

Now in some ways, just like Jesus giving forgiveness on the cross in Luke, having Jesus’ cry of despair, or his lament, matches perfectly with what we say about the major themes of Mark, which Matthew continues over in part into his own gospel. Additionally, it matches with the story of Jesus in the garden the night before. Just before he is arrested, he is in the garden of gethsemane with Peter, James and John and he tells the disciples to remain and to pray and to stay awake while he goes off to be by himself. And what do the disciples then do? They fall asleep, again a sign that they don’t truly understand the call to discipleship. But Jesus goes off to pray to God and he says “Abba, Father, for you, all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” Now, last week I said that there is no punctuation in ancient Greek and so when translators are putting the manuscripts into English they have to guess where the punctuation should be. And there has been an argument made that in Jesus’ prayer here that it should actually include an ellipses here so that there is a long pause between Jesus asking God to remove the cup from him and then saying, not what I want, but what God wants. I think there is a lot to be said for that argument, first because this prayer has to be longer to allow the disciples to fall asleep, and second because it seems that Jesus needs to give some time for an answer to be given, of which he doesn’t seem to receive an answer. But to key points that also go along with this prayer.

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.

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.<