Down the Straightway

Mark isn’t one to waste time in his telling of the story of Jesus. In fact, his favorite word is “straightway” (in the KJV). Newer translations use different words that mean the same thing- “just as” or “immediately” or “at once” or “just then” or “as soon as.” All of those are used in the NIV in once chapter (Mark 1) to translate the Greek phrase kai euthus. Mark uses that phrase (by my very quick count) 42 times in his 16 chapters (it only appears 18 other times in the NT). Mark is plowing through the story of Jesus at breakneck speed- Jesus did this and immediately He did that and as soon as that was over, He did this other thing. Mark doesn't have long teaching sections; Jesus is too busy on the straightway!

But Mark can’t bring this story to an end without a final confrontation between Jesus and his enemies, the Jewish leaders (scribes, Pharisees and priests). He is headed down the straightway to the cross but there are some spiritual swords that have to be crossed first. Mark has been showing conflict all through the book (for examples, go back and skim over Mark 2:1-3:5 and Mark 7:1-3). The confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders is constant. They have already decided to kill Him (Mark 3:6)...and Jesus knows that they are going to kill Him (Mark 8:31, 10:33).

As Mark races down his straightway toward his conclusion, he sets up one final conflict in Mark 11:27-33. While Jesus is teaching in the Temple courts following his triumphant entry in Jerusalem, the Jewish leaders come to him and demand to know, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you authority to do this?” OK, they had seen Jesus' miracles, and none of them had denied the power those  miracles demonstrated. But they were so sure they were right that they didn't stop to think about that. But when you are hot-headed and dead-certain you are right, you miss the obvious.

Tony Campolo tells about cutting his grass on a Saturday. His neighbor was a Seventh Day Adventist and believed it was wrong to cut grass on the Sabbath. Campolo said, “Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.” Without thinking about what he was saying, the neighbor shot back, “Oh Yeah? Well, two wrongs don't make right!” Two wrongs? When you are hot-headed and dead-certain, you aren't open to seeing the truth. Is there a lesson here?

The Jewish leaders are hot-headed and dead certain and they aren't really open to truth. They have already decided (again) that Jesus has to die (11:18). They aren't here really looking for authority; they are looking for an excuse! Jesus clearing the Temple (11:15-17) was the last straw. He has to go, and they start looking for a way to trump up a charge against Him. So Mark 12 is a series of trick questions that try “to catch him in his words” (12:13) so they can charge him and move this story toward a conclusion (but not the conclusion they imagine).

But that’s tomorrow's reading.

So Who Wants to Fiddle on the Roof?

Our reading today from Mark 7 ends with people being blown away by Jesus healing a man, and they exclaim, “He has done everything well” (Mark 7:37). That was a ringing endorsement from the common folk, but the chapter begins with a little less enthusiasm from the Jewish leaders who had opposed Jesus from the very beginning. In fact, Mark starts his “Jesus vs. the Pharisees” theme back in Mark 2 with three different opposition stories, all having to do with Jesus’ lack of attention their religious traditions. And as it turns out, the Jewish leaders weren't a very patient bunch; they decide to kill Jesus by Mark 3:6!

The debate over tradition continues in Mark 7 where the subject now is hand-washing. Mark explains this tradition for us a bit, and that is a good thing because it would be confusing if we went to the Old Testament for background—it isn't there! The priests washed their hands before serving at the Tabernacle (Exo 30:19). And one who touched anything ceremonially unclean was required to wash their hands as part of the purification ritual (Lev 15:11). But that is about it on the subject—the Jews were never required to wash before meals. That was just a tradition. But for the Jewish leaders, violating that tradition was the same as breaking the Law of God. And Jesus responds to their charge in two very different and important ways

• First, he condemns their tradition as hypocrisy (Mark 7:6-7). This quotation from Isaiah draws a distinction from their outward religious profession and hearts that were far from God. Their religion had become vain (“a farce” NLT) because it was based on the rules of man and not the heart of God. They were good at washing the cup on the outside but not the inside (Matt 23:25). In fact, their focus on tradition caused them to nullify the Law (Mark 7:8), and Jesus illustrates that with their tradition of Coban (Mark 7:9-13).
  
• Second, Jesus says that holiness arises from within, not from without (Mk 7:14-16). Ritual and tradition are by their very nature external and symbolic; they are helpful only when they are a means to a spiritual end. But what tradition cannot be is an end in itself! Jesus neither defends the non-hand washing of his disciples nor attacks the practice of washing itself. But what Jesus does condemn the use of tradition as a way to judge faithfulness— either yours or that of someone else.

This was pretty heady stuff, and the disciples were  confused. And it is easy to see why-- they had been taught that ritual was the center of religion and the most religious people were those who were best at cataloging and keeping tradition. Jesus swept all that aside; he put the focus of true holiness and genuine response to God in our hearts and in the actions that result.

Between me you and the fence post, this teaching of Jesus is as radical and uncomfortable for the church today as it was for the Jews of Jesus’ day. We are still comfortable judging faithfulness based on external doctrinal formulas and received religious practices. We are still likely to give a lot of weight to "We've never done it that way before."  Traditions are inevitable; any time we do the same thing in the same way twice, we have a tradition.  But Jesus reminds us here of something else about traditions--  they are also dangerous!

Well, I Never!

“Well, I never!” That’s an old phrase you don’t hear much anymore… except in old movies. It is a dated exclamation of surprise, usually at something shocking. You know the scenes from the old Three Stooges movies where Curly flirts with an attraction woman, and she turns and harrumphs, “Well, I never!” The British variant is “Well, I never did” as in, “I never did hear of such a thing!” It’s more than just an expression of surprise; it is an expression of disgust and perhaps even anger. And maybe it’s an expression of Jesus in our reading today from Mark 1. Maybe.

In Mark 1:40, a leper comes to Jesus with the simple expression of faith, “If you will, you can make me clean” (ESV). Of course, Jesus was willing. The story probably would not have been recorded if Jesus would have said, “Not today; I’m on vacation.” OK, maybe that WOULD have been recorded because that would have been a VERY unusual story! But here is what really happens (again from ESV), “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” The leper says, “If you will…” and Jesus says, “I will.” And he does.  Because he was “moved with pity” (ESV). In the NET, he is “moved with compassion.” In the Message, he is just “Deeply moved.” But in the NIV (2011) from which I read, the story takes on a different flavor—

Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

Jesus was indignant? Really?  Jesus looks at the leper and says, “Well I never!” Well, I never! How does that make sense? Why does the NIV here translate this so differently? Well, there is a textual variant here that is a bit confusing. There are so many different Greek texts and they do sometimes have slight variations caused by scribal slips.  But because there are so many texts, scholars can usually determine quite easily how the variants happened and what the original text said. In this text, some older manuscripts and Latin versions have “moved with anger” while others have “moved with pity.” So which is the most likely reading? Well,  it could have been either. Most scholars choose the “pity” reading because it makes the most sense; others choose the “anger” reading because it is harder to explain how “pity” would be changed to “anger” rather than the other way around. But BOTH readings make sense and neither change the meaning of the story (usually the case in textual variants)

• Jesus is moved with pity or compassion, and that is His motivation for healing the leper. You can read similar stories in Matt 9:36, Mark 6:34 and others where this is the case. Jesus doesn't heal just to make a big splash publicly; sometimes he heals in private just because he is compassionate.
  
• Jesus would have also been moved with anger or indignation because sickness and suffering was not the way things were supposed to be. Jesus heals a deaf man in Mark 7:34 only after heaving a deep sigh. The world was not supposed to be broken; that’s why Jesus came. (See also Mark 3:5, 10:14)

OK, if you've waded through all this with me this far, then you’re probably wondering if there’s a point. Here it is. When we are confronted by the brokenness of the world we live in—sin, suffering, sickness—there are two appropriate reactions that we can have both emulating Jesus

• We can respond with compassion and pity for the person caught up in the sin, sickness and suffering… and be moved to help as we can.
  
• We can respond with anger at the brokenness of a world that allows such sin, sickness and suffering… and be moved to help as we can.

What we are not to do is to become angry at the person caught up in sin, sickness and suffering and turn away from them and refuse to help as we can. That was the reaction that we will see in Mark from the Pharisees to the sin, sickness and suffering of the world. And their response to the compassionate and healing Christ was also an emphatic, “Well, I never.” We need to make sure we respond like Jesus and not like the Pharisees.

Taxes and the Second Coming

I received a little postcard from the IRS a couple of days ago informing me that they once again expect me to pay my taxes this year. I was hoping that with all the hoopla in Washington over the past election, the fiscal cliff, and the gun-control debate that they would be distracted and  forget all about sending me my tax bill. I’m sure that happens all the time! So I guess I’m going to do my taxes again this year, and I assume my timetable will be the same. At some point in March, I’ll go to Sam’s and buy a copy of TurboTax. On April 14, I’ll finally get around to tearing the shrink wrap off of TurboTax and install it on the computer. On April 15, I poke around in the software long enough to figure out how to print an extension from.  Then I'll put off doing my taxes until August 15.

My natural tendency to procrastinate when it comes to doing taxes is actually a matter of theology. On the one hand, there is a Biblical example of catching a fish and looking in its mouth for the money to pay taxes (see Matt 17:27). So God wants us to go fishing rather than pay taxes, right?  Also, the Bible clearly says that Jesus could come back unexpectedly at any money, and who wants to go to heaven paying taxes that they could have put off?  Actually, the real reason that I put off doing my taxes is because I am by nature a procrastinator… but I put off admitting that!

This human tendency to procrastination is likely one of the reasons why God did not share with us the time of Jesus' return. We know when tax returns are due, and we put them off until the last minute. So if we could read the tea leaves and figure out the exact time of Jesus’ return, what would we do? You know what we would do-- we would put off doing what we need to do in order to get ready for his return.

In our reading today from Matthew 24, Jesus makes an almost offhand comment to the disciples about the coming destruction of the Temple (Matt 24:2). They asked, "When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (Matt 24:3). Jesus gave them some signs that clue them in on the coming fall of the Temple (and Jerusalem). Most of what is said in this chapter applies to the destruction of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus in AD 70. In fact, Jesus assures his audience that many of them would still be hanging around when all of those things took place (Matt 24:34).

But then Jesus makes a transition, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt 24:35). And then he discusses the time when heaven and earth would indeed pass away, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt 24:36). He goes on to say that the end time will come upon us just like the flood came in the days of Noah. There will be no sign to clue us in on the return of Jesus; it will come suddenly and without any warning. There will be no reading the newspaper or the tea leaves that will give a clue as to the fact that Jesus is about to come back to end things. So then how can we be ready? That is precisely Jesus’ point—

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:42-44)

Well, this is bad news for us last minute procrastinators, right? There will be no putting off getting ready for Jesus’ coming until the last minute because we have no idea when that last minute will be. Jesus might return in a million years, but then He might return before I can hit the send button on this blog. We don’t know, except that He will come at the time when we least expect Him. So the only way for us to be ready for the coming of our Lord is to live ready every day.  And that's the point-- we have to be ready all the time because he might come at any time.

So... are you ready?

Whoa or Woe

Matthew 23 is at the same time a very familiar and a very strange text where Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” on the toxic religion of the Pharisees. We know the Pharisees as the “heavies” in the story of Jesus who opposed His ministry at every turn. But our view of the Pharisees has been tainted through these condemnations to the point where we don’t fully appreciate how radical these condemnations by Jesus really were.  The Pharisees were the most respected religious teachers of the Jews. They took the Old Testament very seriously and they followed the traditions of the elders passed down to them religiously. Jesus begins this section by acknowledging that then people should listen to the Pharisees as the interpret and explain Moses—“the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.” They problems was in their exegesis; their problem was in their application and in their life. Notice the kinds of things Jesus says in this text as he gets wound up warning against the influence of the very teachers who knew Moses best—

• Their traditions make it harder for people to see God, and they do nothing to help people serve God. They are more interested in their status as seen by others than in their service of others (23:5-7)

• This services to slam heaven door in the faces of the very people who most desire to God, The Pharisees will circumnavigate the globe to make a single convert to their party, but when they do, they make that convert theirs and not God’s (23:13-15)

• They are so locked into their legalistic interpretations and when it’s OK to swear and not keep an oath and when an oath is totally binding that they don’t realize that this entire system is one of their own making and has nothing to do with God and truth. (23:16-22)

• They are so focused on getting the letter of the law correct in all of its excruciating detail (making sure every little herb in their garden gets tithed) that they leave undone the :more important matters of the law” like justice, mercy and faithfulness, those things which are at the very heart of God. (23:23-24)

• They are so concerned about their religious image that commands the respect of others, that they aren’t aware that their hearts are quite far from God and that before the One who sees hearts, they are whitewashed tombs and unwashed cups (23:25-28).

• They take such pride in their heritage as follows of the prophets that they don’t realize that their hard hearts and haughty pride is exactly what led their ancestors to murder the very prophets they now venerate… and would lead them to kill the very Messiah who stood before them (23:33-36)

If you do more than just give Matthew 23 a cursory reading, this becomes a very scary text. When you take the time to really look at it and make all the requisite historical and cultural updates in order to apply this to the church today, one thing is clear. Jesus is talking to us. We tend to trust in the very same things in which the Pharisees trusted—our use of the Bible, our traditional church practices, our insistence on traditional morality and ethics, our success in projecting a holy image. The Pharisees would point and say, “Yeah, had all of that and more.” Jesus says, “That’s not what I’m looking for; in fact, all that just gets in the way and confuses people who are diligently seeking me.” And Jesus says “Whoa!” If we don’t listen to that “Whoa” then we just might get a “Woe!”

The One Thing

We had a neighbor who came from a Methodist background who liked to tell the story of a Methodist and Baptist arguing over the mode of baptism. The Baptist argued that you had to immerse someone all the way under the water for baptism to be right; the Methodist was arguing for pouring water on someone’s head.

The Methodist asked, “Are you going to tell me that if a man being baptized was in water so that everything except the top of his head was covered, that's not enough? 

The Baptist said, “Right! That part counts! The top of the head has to be baptized.”

The Methodist replied, “Great! That's the one thing that we baptize!”

OK, that's likely not a true story; no one ever argues over something like the exact procedure for baptism! Right? But the story does illustrate how often we look for the “one thing” we need to get right in order to be right with God. The rich young ruler that we ran into last week wanted to know “what good thing must I do.” He had already gotten the law down pat; he wanted to know the one thing that he had left undone.

Most religious denominations, movements, groups or tribes got started because someone discovered “the one thing” in the Bible that wasn't being done correctly by other believers. Usually, the discoverers of this “one thing” start their own church or movement that does that one thing right. And it is a rather natural step from believing that you do that one thing right to believing that you are the one who are right. Right?

In our reading for today from Matthew 22, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment of the Law?” Sure this was a trick question asked within a context of other trick questions. But Jesus answered it, and thus in essence he is telling us the one thing (actually the two things) that we have to get right--

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37-40, NLT)

The greatest commandment of the law flows directly from the Shema in Deut. 6:4-5, the statement that God is one. While Matthew omits this first part of the quotation, Mark includes it (see Mk 12:29). Because God is the one true God and created us out of love, then our greatest command for us to follow is to love God in return. Everything flows from that! And Jesus throws in a second great commandment that also flows from the first—to love others as we love ourselves. The two greatest commands are the greatest command because they sum up the rest of the law.

The one thing we have to do in order to please God—love God and love others. There is no one doctrine or practice or ritual that if we get right ensures that we are favored by God. At the same time, there is no one doctrine or practice or ritual that if we get wrong will automatically invalidate our relationship with God. The one great command of scripture is to pursue the love of God and to show that love by loving all those people that are loved by God (which is everyone). We can never get finished doing that. It turns out that "the one thing" is pretty much everything.