Month: September 2021

Week 38 Luke

There’s a short paragraph in chapter nine where king Herod sits thinking: so who is this man about whom I hear such strange stories? It’s not like Herod had absolutely no idea who the Lord was. He’d heard rumours: when report of Jesus’ miracles reached Herod Antipas, he was worried and puzzled because some were saying, “This is John the Baptist come back to life again.” Others were saying, “It is Elijah or some other ancient prophet risen from the dead.”
Personally I’m not super-interested in what Herod was thinking but I did pick up a kind of reverb just nine verses later. The Lord is alone with his disciples and he asks them: Who do people say I am? “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”
So what’s the line on the Lord?
Is he John the Baptist?
Elijah?
Another prophet?
Herod’s wondering. People are wondering. The disciples are wondering. But when the Lord asks the twelve the light suddenly goes on for Peter as he realizes: you are the Messiah sent from God.
Popular guesswork had elevated the Lord to a Very Special Status. But it turns out that the VSS designation was selling him short. John or Elijah or Isaiah-or-Jeremiah-or-Ezekiel-or-Daniel were all special but not special enough. Not even close.

Note: quotes from Luke 9:9, 7-8, 18-19, 20 (NLT)

Week 38 Luke

Matthew Mark & Luke all mention the Temptation of Christ.
In that story the Devil says something that’s pretty interesting. It’s during the second temptation when that weird almost semi-visionary & anti-gravity event occurs: the Devil took (Jesus) up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. It seems fantastical – an extraordinary display of brute power. Then the Devil says that if the Lord will worship him he – the Devil – will turn over the kingdoms of the world to him – the Lord. What caught my attention was what the Devil said next: I will give you the glory of the kingdoms and authority over them – because they are mine to give to anyone I please.
That’s a dramatic claim: they are mine to give to anyone I please!
I know the Devil isn’t hand-cuffed by having to tell the truth so the claim might be a lie. But the Lord doesn’t challenge him on it (I know that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a lie but I’m surprised the Lord totally disregards the kingdoms-are-mine claim).
Anyway what concerns me most is that if it actually is true – that the Devil really does have authority and a kind of ownership over the nations of the world – then what?
Well…for starters it complicates things for everyone living on earth. And personally & specifically it complicates things for me living here in Medicine Hat Alberta.

Note: quotes from Luke 4:5, 6 (NLT)

Week 38 Luke

Right away you notice the difference between them.
Mark starts like this: here begins the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. Then he devotes seven verses to John the Baptist. A total of five to Jesus’ baptism and temptation. And six verses on disciple-selection. By verse 21 the Lord’s ministry has begun.
Luke is more patient. He tells the long back-story of John’s miraculous conception and the long back-story of Jesus’ even more miraculous conception. Then the birth of John and the birth of Jesus.
Luke’s also interested in John’s early life: John grew up and became strong in spirit. Then he lived out in the wilderness until he began his public ministry. And he’s interested in Jesus’ early life too: so Jesus grew both in height and in wisdom, and he was loved by God and by all who knew him. It takes Luke 183 verses to do what Mark does in 21.
Mark’s account has drive and energy and action and it blasts-right-through from one thing to the next – a kind of Life of Jesus in bullet-points. Luke is different. Thoughtful deliberate careful; an orderly narration of events.
I don’t think Mark wrote his gospel in a bus on the way to work. And I don’t think Luke sat in a library researching his material. But if I found out they did I wouldn’t be surprised.

Note: quotes from Mark 1:1, Luke 1:80, 2:52 (NLT)

Week 38 Mark

The Lord predicted the demolition of the biggest building in Jerusalem. It was hard to believe and Peter James John & Andrew asked the Lord when it would happen. Jesus’ answer turned into a forecast of his own return to earth at the end of days.
I got a sheet of paper to make a list of the clues. I found a dozen of them and that many hints gave me a feeling of being in the driver’s seat for forecasting the end of times. But some of the clues are a bit fuzzy. For example a lot of wars are going to precede the end of days – it’s an ok clue but not a decisive one. I wondered what would be decisive? Well, something like The Year 2048AD would be. But Mark doesn’t get anywhere near that degree of specificity.
One definitive clue Mark gives is that stars will fall. Mark says when that happens: everyone will see the Son of man arrive on the clouds. The only downside is that a forecast like that isn’t really a before-cast. It sounds like an actual part of the Lord’s reappearance.
The most decisive things I see in the chapter aren’t forecasts. They’re personal notifications:
Don’t be misled
Watch out
Endure
Pay attention
Don’t be fooled
Stay alert
Keep a sharp lookout
In the end the chapter sounds more like a Personal Preparedness Inventory and less like a Future-Events Checklist.

Note: quotes from Mark 13:26 & 5, 9, 13, 14, 21, 33, 35 (NLT)

Week 38 Mark

Mark says that a man asked Jesus: of all the commandments, which is the most important?
I read this story a couple of weeks ago in Matthew. The man was an expert in religious law and Matthew said that he: tried to trap (Jesus) with this question. Mark doesn’t say it was an entrapment question. He says the expert had been listening to the public Q&A and: he realized that Jesus had answered well. That doesn’t mean the guy wouldn’t have liked to trip-up Jesus. But at least he admitted that the Lord was pretty smart.
Anyway after the Lord answered the question Matthew’s story ended. But Mark added an extra note. He said the legal expert agreed with the Lord and added that loving God and loving others was very important…in fact more important than anything else. It sounds sincere and Mark says: realizing this man’s understanding, Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God”.
I tend to have a simple binary view of the kingdom of God. It’s an intangible destination and you’re either in or out – kind of like a light switch with On-Off settings. But the Lord adds this extra idea of proximity. You’re either nearer the kingdom or farther away. Closing the distance or increasing it.
Where the legal expert eventually ended up is anyone’s guess. But for a while he was getting pretty near.

Note: quotes from Matthew 22:35 Mark 12:28, 32, 34 (NLT)

Week 37 Mark

A couple of days ago I was thinking about the parables of the Lord. Simple homespun anecdotes disguising not-so-simple and not-so-homespun ideas. They come with a Reader Beware label.
So anyway then I read a couple of chapters later where the Lord was privately talking with his disciples. Mark says: then Jesus began to tell them that he…would suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the leaders…He would be killed, and three days later he would rise again.
Nothing about farmers or mustard seeds or like that. No crafty parabolic curveballs. Mark says Jesus: talked about this openly with his disciples. Plain talk. Plain enough that Peter a) definitely understood it, b) definitely disliked what he heard, and c) definitely – and idiotically – reprimanded the Lord for saying it.
Six days later Jesus told the disciples not to publicize seeing Moses & Elijah until…: he had risen from the dead. They were puzzled and left wondering: what he meant by “rising from the dead”.
The Lord mentioned it in Galilee: but they didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him.
He spelled it out on the road to Jerusalem. The disciples’ response? Nothing.
So while the disciples were curious about the parables with their tricky metaphors and hidden meanings when it came to the plain talk of the Lord dying and coming back to life it seems like they didn’t know and maybe just didn’t want to know.

Note: quotes from Mark 8:31, 32, 9:10, 32, 10:33-34 (NLT)

Week 37 Mark

His daughter was dying so Jairus went to Jesus to plead with him to come and heal his girl.
But they arrived too late. People at the house told them the girl had died. Jesus disregarded them: the child isn’t dead; she is only asleep (the crowd hooted – they knew dead).
It made me wonder what the Lord thought about being-dead. Lots of modern people figure dead is dead. Talking about death-as-sleep is just softening the vocabulary. Death sleep is never-waking-up sleep. No emerging from unconscious rest to drowsy wakefulness. Just a non-stop forever incessant enduring permanency that stretches into the unending future. Sleep is a deceptive word because normal sleep ends when I wake up. Sleep without wake isn’t really sleep.
So I wonder if the Lord is using the word in a way that makes a different sense to him – an insider’s view of death. Maybe he’s saying that death really is like sleep. It’s the full cycle including: Step One) when I die and leave my current state of being – let’s say from consciousness-to-unconsciousness, and then Step Two) where I pass right on into a new state – let’s say unconsciousness-to-consciousness. Maybe that’s the norm: moving on from the sleep of death into a post-mortem state of wakeful awareness.
The miracle was miraculous because it halted the normal process. The girls’ sleep of death was interrupted & reversed when the Lord redirected her back into natural life in the material world.

Note: quote from Mark 5:39 (NLT)

Week 37 Mark

One of the Lord’s public teaching methods was to tell parables. He would tell a story about something that was pretty familiar and unmistakable. In chapter four he talks about a farmer planting seed and some of that seed grew and some didn’t. A simple story on the surface but also a two-level story. Mark says that: later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples…they asked him, “What do your stories mean?” They knew that the simple farmer and his simple seed was a cover for a more complex farmer with his more complex bag of seed. They knew enough to know they didn’t really know.
Anyway the Lord goes on to spell out what the different elements of the parable meant (reading the explanation I know I wouldn’t be able to dope out the correct meaning in a hundred years).
Trying to understand what the Lord was teaching is a big job. Which means that reading-through is both a) simple, and b) difficult. Simple because anybody can read the words; difficult because not everyone will discover meanings.
Mark ends the paragraph with this tip from the Lord: anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand! And be sure to pay attention to what you hear. The more you do this, the more you will understand…To those who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given.
Willingness. Attentiveness. Openness. They’re all part of the understanding mix.

Note: quotes from Mark 4:10, 23-25 (NLT)

Week 37 Mark

The four gospel stories of the life of Jesus are told by four men who either knew the Lord personally or else knew people who did.
The Four Gospellers each came at the Lord from a different angle and I was reminded of that when I read Mark’s story of John the Baptist. John is the first person Mark talks about. About his preaching & baptizing. About baptizing Jesus. About being jailed by Herod – all in the first fourteen verses.
I flipped back to Matthew – he spent chapter three talking about John but waited ’til the next chapter to mention his arrest.
When I’m reading-through I almost never jump ahead but I did this time and looked at Luke’s story of John. Luke takes a big chunk of chapter three telling John’s story including his imprisonment (I saw that even though he talks about Jesus baptism he doesn’t say definitely that John baptized him).
John talks about John in chapter one – sixteen verses – and chapter three – fifteen verses.
Anyway based on my (ten minute) search it looks like Mark has the least to say about John.
But everyone seemed to agree John was a key player at the front-end of the Lord’s public work.
And I was reminded that the Four Gospellers all a) thought highly of John, but b) fitted him into their gospels in different ways. A kind of John the Baptist in four-part harmony. One person spotlighted in different ways. Which is about what you’d expect.

Week 37 Matthew

The Lord ran into quite a bit of opposition during his short life on earth and one of the groups that disagreed with him was the Sadducees. Matthew says that one day: some Sadducees stepped forward – a group of Jews who say there is no resurrection after death. They posed this question…
Matthew helps bible readers by telling us that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife. Their question was a rambling one about a woman who married seven different men. All seven died. The question was who – in the afterlife – would be her husband? It seems weird for a group that didn’t believe in post-mortem existence to ask for details about it.
Anyway what caught my attention was the Lord’s reply: your problem is that you don’t know the Scriptures (another bible version said you don’t understand the scriptures). The Sadducees were religious guys who did read the OT. But the Lord distinguished reading and accurate knowledge. The Sadducees read. And they thought they understood. But – according to the Lord – didn’t.
My project this year is to read through the bible. But I get a reminder today that reading is the ground-level part of the exercise. Understanding is the next floor up.
So my quick refresher…
a) it’s probably better to read than not read the bible
b) it’s potentially better to read without understanding than not read at all
c) it’s definitely better to read with understanding than without.

Note: quotes from Matthew 22:23 & 29 (NLT & NASB)