May you see the face of Jesus in everyone you meet. And may everyone you meet see the face of Jesus in you.
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I made my Easter weight target. Which wasn’t that much of a, er, stretch. Which means that Stephen Harper will have to look elsewhere to fund his anti-Ignatieff attack ads.
So, I’ve given myself another target: 20 pounds by June 30 @ 12: 00 pm. I’m not giving myself an incentive or disincentive. Just the target to shoot for.
If you’re looking for a clean, happy, ending to this Jesus story, don’t bother looking to Mark. It’s like he finished his gospel in mid-sentence, as if the pen was ripped from his hands right before he got the his main point. The story feels stilted, stunted, smaller than it should be.
It looks like something’s missing. It doesn’t make sense to finish the gospel by saying,
”Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”
You can almost hear the dot-dot-dot after the word “afraid.” There’s no resolution. The story sounds incomplete. This ending leaves us wanting more.
But this is where the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end the story. This is Mark’s final sentence. His conclusion. All that other stuff you find in your bibles after this verse wasn’t in the earliest known versions of this story.
"My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you answer me!
I led you out of Egypt from slavery to freedom, but you have led your Savior, and nailed Him to a cross.
Hagios OTheos, Hagios ichyros, Hagios athanatos eleison himas. Holy is God, Holy and Strong, Holy Immortal One , have mercy on us.
For forty years in safety, I led you through the desert, I fed you with my manna, I gave you your own land, but you have led your Savior, and nailed Him to a Cross.
Hagios O Theos, Hagios ichyros, Hagios athanatos eleison himas. Holy is God, Holy and Strong, Holy Immortal One , have mercy on us.
O what more would you ask from me? I planted you, my vineyard, but sour grapes you gave me, and vinegar to drink, and you have pierced your Savior and pierced Him with a spear.
Hagios OTheos, Hagios ichyros, Hagios athanatos eleison himas. Holy is God, Holy and Strong, Holy Immortal One , have mercy on us.
For you scourged your captors, their first born sons were taken, but you have taken scourges and brought them down on Me.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me!
From slavery to freedom I led you, drowned your captors. But I am taken captive and handed to your priests.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me !
Your path lay through the waters, I opened them before you, my side you have laid open and bared it with a spear.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me !
I led you, held securely, My fire and cloud before you, but you have led your Savior, hands bound to Pilate's court.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me!
I bore you up with manna, you bore me down and scourged me. I gave you saving water, but you gave me soured wine.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me !
The kings who reigned in Canaan, I struck way before you. But you have struck my crowned head, and struck it with a reed.
My people, My people what have I done to you, how have I offended you? Answer me !
I gave you a royal scepter but you gave me a thorn crown. I raised you up in power, but you raised me on the Cross.
Hagios OTheos, Hagios ichyros, Hagios athanatos eleison himas. Holy is God, Holy and Strong, Holy Immortal One , have mercy on us.
Have you ever seen someone die? I have. It doesn’t look like it does on TV. I read somewhere that the line between life and death is very fluid. That the only distinguishing feature is that the heart has stopped breathing.
I don’t know if that’s true, you’d have to ask a doctor or nurse about that.
In my job, I’m occasionally called upon to sit with a family as they turn off the respirator in the ICU. Or to say prayers as a loved one breathes so slowly that their slip into death is almost unnoticed.
Jesus’ death wasn’t like that. It was horrible. Painful. Lonely. Being in eyesight of his mother he probably felt for her grief, which would have added to his agony. Jesus’ death was violent and unjust.
Someone said that every death is a violent death. I think there’s something to that. Death, no matter how quick or quiet, is a emptying of a life. A presence. A relationship.
I think that’s why Jesus’ died so willingly. Not to satisfy the wrath of an angry god who can only be appeased by the death of an innocent. But because the only way to defeat the violence of death was to conquer it from within.
So, Jesus’ death wasn’t just the execution of social and religious radical. But the death that defeated Death. When his head dropped and his spirit left him, Jesus won a victory for the whole world.
Reading this story at the beginning of Spring creates a small conflict in me. So much suffering amidst so much beauty. Life and death, beginnings and endings. Splendor and pain. It’s as if the relentless march of life is indifferent to death. When people suffer, shouldn’t the backdrop shade what’s happening around us? To me, flowers at funerals and cemeteries in the spring mock our suffering and bereavement
I’m wondering of that’s what Jesus’ disciples thought as they watched their friend hang from a cross as the sweet sent of lilacs wafted passed their sorrowing noses. I wonder if that’s how Jesus felt as his life slipped away from him.
Maybe that’s why he cried out in frustration, My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? Why do you mock me? Why don’t you answer me!?
I don’t know why Jesus doesn’t say anything when Pilate interrogates him. If Jesus’ intention was to announce the kingdom of God then proclaiming its arrival in the presence of regional head of the Roman Empire would have made a tremendous impact. It would have shown his followers that this whole Messiah thing was true. With a word, he could have conquered the principalities and powers that dominated God’s people.
But Jesus just stood there. His lips sown shut.
It could be that Jesus knew that Pilate wouldn’t have heard him. Pilate wouldn’t have understood what Jesus was talking about.
It could be that Jesus knew who had the real power. He knew that the cross was stronger than Pilate’s imperial might.
I think the lesson for us here is to trust that the cross does mean power. The power of self-giving love over domination.
Too often, Christians mistake worldly power for God’s power. At a local Christian bookstore, a sign stands over the theology section that commands, “Defend Biblical Truth" against, who, exactly?
I don’t think “Biblical Truth” (whatever that is) needs to be defended. The demand for one's "Truth" to dominate looks like a power grab. Jesus never said, "Go out into the world, defend the bible, demand the world adopt a 'Christian worldview." If that was his agenda, then he would have stood up to Pilate. Instead, he simply stood silent.
Perhaps the best way to witness to the “truth” of the bible against an sort-of-believing world is not to get into arguments or debates, but to point to the cross. Just like Jesus did.
In his book Silence, the Japanese writer Shusako Endo tells the story of a 17th century Portuguese missionary named Rodrigues, who goes to Japan to save souls. Preparing himself for this mission, he spends a great deal of time contemplating the face of Christ, in which he sees every quality he himself wishes to possess: courage, serenity, wisdom, faith. It is an altogether noble image, only it remains just that for Rodrigues – a silent image that does not offer him guidance or consolation. When he arrives in Japan he is quickly in need of both.
Walking right into a national uprising against Christians, he soon finds himself in prison where his captors order him to renounce his faith. Sustained by the brave faith of Christ, he refuses, hoping to be martyred on the spot. Instead, he is returned to his cell, where he listens for some word from the Lord. All he hears are the cries of his fellow prisoners – and a strange, snuffling sound he assumes is the snoring of the guards.
When he is yanked from his cell again the next morning and refuses once again to renounce his faith, he learns that the strange snuffling sound he heard in the dark is the laboured breathing of Japanese Christians.
They have been crucified upside down, their heads half buried in pits of excrement. They will hang there like that, the guards tell him, until he renounces his faith.
Rodrigues is paralyzed. Shall he betray Christ or the Christians? That is his choice. If he chooses Christ, he leaves his fellow Christians in unimaginable suffering. If he chooses the Christians, he turns his back on Christ and just may lose his soul.
While he agonizes over the decision, the guards bring a metal image of Christ into the room and place it a Rodrigues’ feet. They tell him to trample, to put his foot in the middle of the Christ image and grind it with his toe. Looking down at it, Rodrigues sees that it is already crushed and soiled by the feet of those who have gone before him. It bears no resemblance to the face he has adored all his life, the silent face to whom he has prayed his desperate prayers.
Torn between his loyalty to Christ and his loyalty to those snuffling in the dark, he is hung between the two when he hears the voice of Christ, coming to him from the image at his feet. “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain at your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on…that I was born into this world.”
The silence of God is broken. Christ speaks, not from some safe place outside of human suffering, but from the very heart of it. He is the trampled one, soiled and crushed, whose loyalty to us leads him to endure all that we endure – right up to and including the silence of God. (based on Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent)
Leah was living under house arrest for stealing a car when I met her.
I visited with her each week for about six months. We talked about her life, and how God fit into it.
One day, as I was leaving one of our visits, she hesitated, and then asked, “Next time you come, can you bring Communion?”
I could have smacked myself for not thinking of it sooner. After all, that’s part of my job, isn’t it? To bring communion to those who can’t come to it?
The next week, I brought my communion kit and laid it out on her kitchen table. I apologized in advance for the stale wafers and cold red wine that had been left in my car over night.
Then, I look the bread in my hand and reminded her that:
In the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took break, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying ‘Take and eat, this is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’
And after supper he took the cup, gave thanks and gave it to all to drink saying, ‘This cup is the New Covenant which is shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.”
I handed her the bread and gave her God’s promise: This is the body of Christ, given for you.
Leah burst out crying. She grabbed a Kleenex and dabbed her eyes. “For ME?” she asked.
“For you,” I said.
She received the bread in her hand and put it in her mouth.
I took the cup and said, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”
Leah brushed the hair from her face, dabbed her eyes again, took the cup, and put it to her mouth.
I was surprised that she, then took a wafer from the jar, and said, “The body of Christ, given for you, pastor.”
And handed me the bread.
Then she took the cup and placed it to my lips saying, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”
I took her hand and said, “May the body of blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen us and keep us in his grace. Amen.”
“Amen,” she said.
To the casual observer, this encounter looked like just another pastoral visit, two people doing what church folks are supposed to do.
But to God, to me, and to Leah, this was the biblical story jumping out from the pages.
Even though the bread was stale and the wine too cold, we shared communion not because of fancy church words or because one of us was wearing a dog collar, or even because we ate bread and drank wine, but because God was present, .
We shared communion because God made it so. God turned our eating and drinking into a feast of shared humanity; broken, frail, and in need of healing and forgiveness. That day, in her little apartment, I had the opportunity and privilege to see her as God sees her – as a beloved child.
Or I like how internet sage, Real Live Preacher puts it, “If the wafers are going stale for you, be the bread yourself. Break yourself open and nourish the world.
“If the communion table seems cheap and tacky, become a table yourself. Be a resting place for the weary.
“If you feel there are no more angels, pick up the phone and spread your own [glad] tidings.
“Gather your bread. Set your table. Shout your good news.
“Do these things in remembrance of him.” Or maybe, in remembrance of her.
Jesus paints a picture of the end of the world, and it isn’t pretty. This section is referred to as Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.”
The word “apocalypse” tends to conjure images of fires, bombs, horrible deaths, mass atrocity, etc. Many TV preacher spend their whole ministries trying to connect news events with bible prophecies, such as this one, often with the hope that God is, in fact, destroying the earth and will come back and rescue righteous believers, lifting them to a heavenly realm.
That is NOT what this passage is about. In fact, “apocalypse” is actually a literary genre well known to people in New Testament times.
“As a literary genre, ‘apocalyptic’ is a way of investing space-time events with their theological significance; it is actually a way of affirming, not denying, the vital importance of the present continuing space-time order, by denying that evil has the last word in it. It is only when such literature is read without a fully historical understanding that it is in danger of being mistaken for the Stoic philosophy, which unlike early Judaism, really did envisage the space-time universe being dissolved at a later date” (NT Wright, The New Testament and the People of God p. 392).
So, these passages, the foretelling of the Temple’s destruction, the coming persecution, the false messiahs, and the coming of the Son of Man, are really stories about God ultimately triumphing over evil. And Jesus was using common images and familar bible stories to make his point.
You may remember last year when our front tire almost came off when my wife and kids were driving on the Deerfoot in Calgary. Well, it’s happened again. Yesterday, the car started making an awful noise. So, when we pulled over we saw that there were only two bolts holding our front passenger side tire on.
I called the dealership and had them take a look at it.
“Looks like someone’s been messing with your car,” the service guy said when I picked it up.
The blood drained from my face.
“You mean the bolts wouldn’t have shaken loose on their own?”
“Nope. We use machines to put them on.”
“Maybe there’s a problem with the threads,” I said.
“No, we didn’t have any trouble putting the new bolts on. The only way to get these off is with a wrench. Someone’s been loosening your tires.”
So, if looks like either my family has an enemy. Or someone’s been trying to steal the tires. Either way, a phone call to the police is in order.
