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Week 37 Mark

The Lord was asked a lot of questions.
One of them was: of all the commandments, which is the most important?
Out of that jumbled mass of hundreds-&-hundreds of regulations that Moses gave, the questioner was asking, can you highlight one of them?
And the Lord’s answer was that yes there is a hierarchy of laws, some are more important than others, and the premier law is this: the Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
When you think about, this almost isn’t even a law. I’m not saying it isn’t a law since the Lord said it was. But it’s different from other doing-and-action-type-laws (like, for example mixing oil with a grain offering). This is a heavyweight law. It says that with all the constituent parts that make up me I have to love the Lord. It’s a kind of Total Personal Affection and Endorsement program. A Being Law. It means I’m on the Lord’s side. I’m devoted to him, trust him, revere him, defer to him, think he’s the greatest, back him up, agree with him, imitate him. I’m all in.
On a side-note, Law Number One also leaves me with the sense of its fearsome-awesomeness. Not panic. Not dread. But definite personal concern with being face-to-face with Law One.

Note: quotes from Mark 12:28 and 29-30 (quoted from Deuteronomy 6:4-5) (NLT)

Week 36 Mark

A group of legal specialists came to the Lord and asked about Moses’ divorce law – which basically ok-ed divorce.
The Lord told them that Moses’ law was a kind of Plan B law that was legislated because people have hard hearts. A Law-For-the-Hard-Hearted.
But there was an earlier law, a Plan A that was in place long before Moses was born: from the beginning of creation. It was the original soft-and-malleable-heart rule that said a man and woman come together and have sexual intercourse. At that point things have changed: they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
So what I take from this is:
The OT divorce law was an inferior add-on necessitated by a lot of people having granite-hearts.
The original pre-Moses plan was: when I get married I stay married.
The original pre-Moses plan had in mind that sexual intercourse has a kind of transformative stickiness that changes two people into one – physically in the moment, permanently in some extra-physical way.
The original pre-Moses plan included two things: the obvious guy-inside-the-girl part, and the not-so-obvious part that involved a divine permanentizing.
I know the Lord didn’t actually say this part – I’m saying it – but one of my take-aways – since I think he’s implying it – is that if I think sexual intercourse is just sexual intercourse then I need to think again.

Note: quote from Mark 10:6, 8-9 (NASB). See also Deuteronomy 24:1-3.

Week 36 Mark

The story of the Lord walking on water is pretty spectacular and incredible.
The disciples are out on the stormy lake and the Lord comes to meet them, walking across the water.
Since the disciples were first-century guys they were a lot more ignorant than 21st-century Albertans. But one thing they did know was that it was impossible to walk on water. They didn’t have to know about surface tension and water molecules. You can’t walk on water.
When the Lord got right into the boat Mark says that the disciples were still really cranked up. No surprise, I guess. But Mark also says they shouldn’t have been. He says the reason they were flabbergasted was because: they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the multiplied loaves, for their hearts were hard and they did not believe. Being jacked-up was being unbelieving.
Mark says they should have gotten some insight from when the Lord fed 5000 people earlier that day.
Before that there was Jairus’ daughter.
Before that the haemorrhaging woman.
Before that the exorcism.
There’s a kind of progressive curriculum being taught, and the disciples should have been putting together a composite picture of the Lord. But they weren’t. They didn’t believe.
When the disciples saw a miracle their response was something like an hysterical: wow, did you see that? Unbelievable!
It should have been something more like: hmmmmm…who exactly is this guy?

Note: quote from Mark 6:52 (NLT). The story is in Mark 6:45-52

Week 36 Mark

One of the things the Lord was doing in the gospels was teaching people.
One of his story-telling methods was parables.
I think a pretty simple way to start understanding parables is to admit they’re not that simple to understand. Take the parable of the planter. He plants seed. Some of it’s lost, but some is productive and grows a crop. I read that parable today and my reaction is the same reaction almost anyone would have: what does it mean? What do I do with it?
The Lord knew people would ask that, and so he ended by saying: anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand.
When it comes to teaching and learning the basic idea is that the teacher teaches and the learner listens and learns. When the learner can’t dope out what the teacher is teaching then he can ask. And it looks like that’s what happened here because: later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him, “What do your stories mean?”
The Lord had started out with a large crowd in verse 1 but that big group is shaved down to a small group of learners asking the teacher: what do your stories mean?

Note: quotes from Mark 4:9 & 10 (NLT). The parable of the planter and its explanation is in Mark 4:1-20.

Week 36 Mark

Mark starts his NT gospel with two quotes straight out of the OT: look, I am sending my messenger before you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness: prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming! Mark says Isaiah’s unnamed messenger is John the Baptist.
I flip back to the John story I read last week. John started preaching in the Judean wilderness and Matthew says that: Isaiah had spoken of John when he said ‘he is a voice shouting in the wilderness: prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!’
I go back even farther, about 350-pages farther and read what Isaiah himself said: listen! I hear a voice of someone shouting, ‘Make a highway for the Lord…’
So hundreds of years before Mark and Matthew were born Isaiah said that some unidentified person would appear to prepare for the Lord. And now Matthew and Mark are saying that Isaiah’s Unknown Voice is John the Baptist.
The world I’m moving through as I read the bible is a world where time doesn’t necessarily close the door on knowing.
It’s not like in the material world where I peer into the future and hope, believe, guess, forecast or predict – but I can’t know. In the material world the Time-to-come Door is locked.
The rules of the material world lay out definite limits for me.
Being a bible-reader extends my range.

Note: quotes from Mark 1:2-4, Matthew 3:3, Isaiah 40:3 (NLT)

Week 36 Matthew

The last big teaching section in Matthew is in chapters 23, 24 and 25. In my bible it’s written almost totally in red-letters – the Lord talks to his disciples for about 136-verses.
The bible is an impression-making book. As I read the bible impressions are made on me. Impression-making isn’t always the same. Some things in the bible don’t make too much of an impression. Or they might not make much of an impression one time, but then another time they do. And I think that some things make more of an impression on some people than others.
Anyway, reading through this time the parable of the talents made an impression on me. The master in the parable says to his servant: well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount…
The master says he’s interested in three things:
Whether the guy did well.
Whether the guy was good and faithful in doing what he did.
Whether he was a faithful handler of what he had.
The one thing the master wasn’t too concerned about was the amount the guy had.
The master seems to be saying that the amount I gave you is irrelevant. Even if I gave you virtually nothing, the real question is: what did you do with it?

Note: quote from Matthew 25:21 & 23 (NLT). Reading report: Total read = 1385 pages. Total to read = 1866 pages. 74% read in 66.6% of 2020.

Week 36 Matthew

The Lord’s parable in Matthew 20 begins: the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers.
I’ve read it before, and I totally understand the laborers’ complaint about pay inequity: if we work ten hours in the hot sun and get paid 1 denarius, then a guy who works only 1 hour should only get 1/10th of a denarius.
The complainers – who I think make good sense – are the exact people that the Lord says don’t.
The landowner offers the unhappies a couple of common sense explanations: I haven’t done anything wrong; I gave you what we agreed to; if I decide to give someone a more generous contract I can do that; etc. But then he adds a final not-so-common sense reason. In the kingdom: the last shall be first and the first last.
The normal outside-the-kingdom rule is that the first shall be first and the last shall be last. But inside the kingdom the first shall be last.
Values inside the kingdom shift by 180-degrees.
Outside the kingdom doesn’t mix very well with inside the kingdom; the rules that worked outside lack authority once you get inside.
Outside the kingdom you earn what you get; inside you get what you didn’t really earn.

Note: quotes from Matthew 20:1 & 16 (NASB)

Week 35 Matthew

One of the stories in Matthew is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
In this story Matthew is making the point that the Lord is the Supreme Master of Meteorological Events. So while I put together my Composite Sketch of the Lord’s Spheres of Influence this story checks off one big box.
But I also notice something right in the middle of this demonstration. Just before calming the waves the Lord says to the disciples: why are you afraid? You have so little faith.
I just read that exact phrase and so I page back to Matthew 6:30. Little faith.
I get out a word book and look up little faith. Matthew uses the expression four times.
Little is a quantitative word. Let’s say I draw a vertical scale – something like one of those old mercury thermometers – and I call it my Faith Scale. The bottom registers a basically zero amount of faith. No faith at all. The top is a maximum amount of faith.
Where is little on this scale? Somewhere close to the bottom. I wish little was not so inexact. I’d prefer a scale of one-to-ten where the disciples’ little-faith is – let’s say – a #2 on the scale.
But let’s face it: my personal concern is that if faith is actually measurable then where am I on the scale?
The fact that the disciples were low on the scale is only a small consolation.

Note: quote from Matthew 8:26 (NLT)

Week 35 Matthew

Not all bible passages are equal for a bible reader.
For example 1 Chronicles 1-9 was a high-speed read for me. But when I get to Matthew 5-7 I pretty much have to gear-down.
So…mental conflict reading the gospels. How much do I plough through to save time; how much do I ease off to absorb content? The answer is probably: somewhere in the middle.
Anyway I had a case of slow-down-to-think in chapter six: Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, because then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven.
I remembered back awhile, driving into a fast food restaurant. There was a woman coming through the front door – I knew her; she went to the church. She had a cardboard sandwich container in one hand and a tall coffee cup in the other and she walked over to a guy sitting in the sun on the concrete, handed them to him and turned and left. The guy was wearing a parka and he set the cup on the ground in front of him and started eating.
I can’t be absolutely sure but I think that action was a Matthew 6:1 example of someone not acting so she’d be admired in the moment (it was a very quick and discrete exchange).
I’m also not sure about this but I think that at a future reckoning this woman will be rewarded for her hidden action.

Note: quote from Matthew 6:1 (NLT)

Week 35 Matthew

Just before the start of his public life the Lord spent forty days in the desert being tempted by Satan.
The first temptation was a food-related one, a hunger-temptation. Food was part of Adam and Eve’s test. Same with Daniel and his friends. But the Lord’s was a near-starvation-temptation.
I thought back to the Esau story. He was famished and traded off his inheritance to his wily brother for a plate of food (which has to be one of the most stupendously idiotic exchanges in the bible).
The Lord was hungry too. Way hungrier than Esau.
Satan said to him: if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.
The Lord didn’t say anything to him about being the Son of God. Didn’t say anything about his miracle-working capacities. He just bypassed Satan’s comments like so many monotonous acoustic vibrations thrumming in the desert heat. He got to the real point. People shouldn’t: live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The main thing the Lord was getting at is that there’s a material dimension to life that’s in the need-to-eat-bread-to-stay-alive domain and there’s a non-material dimension to life that’s in the need-to-take-in-every-word-that-comes-from-God-to-stay-alive domain.
Two parts: Life A and Life B. Bread for Life A; words of God for Life B.

Note: quotes from Matthew 4:3 & 4 (NASB)