Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We are officially half way done our Gospel challenge after having read both Matthew and Mark. We begin Luke today, and it is a super long first chapter. It contains the only details that we have of the birth of John the Baptist which includes his mother and his father. We also find here the encounter between Mary and the angel, as opposed to Joseph and the angel in Matthew. We have the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth and the ensuing magnificat where Mary uses the phrase: my soul magnifies the Lord. What a beautiful chapter, and what a chapter filled with details that none of the other Gospels might contain. It ends not with the birth of Jesus, but with the birth of John. Zecharia also finds his voice after he is filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a Scripture that is rarely used for a sermon, I should do that once.

We come to the end of Mark, and it ends in a multiplicity of ways, unfortunately. We have what are called the shorter and the longer endings. What is that all about? Well, you do know that we do not have the actual original Gospel that Mark wrote down, like the one that he put pen to ink. These Gospels are a passing down of these writing for over 2,000 years. It should not be threatening to us that in that passing down over the years that some renditions say one thing, and another rendition says another. That is exactly what we have here. Mark has two different endings according to sources that documented the Gospel hundreds of years ago. For some it is a scandal, for me, it is proof once again that God is at work both in the writing and the readinf of these materials.

And so the life of Jesus ends. Last chapter was filled with court appearances and accusations and false witnesses and attempted purjury. This chapter is filled with opportunities of the people of God, who had been chosen from God through Abraham and all the coveanants that had been fulfilled by the hand of God, to see who Jesus really was. We know that Joseph of Arimathea knew who he was, since as this chapter describes him, he was someone who was: “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.” What a great description for each of us. We should be people who are waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. We leave this chapter on Good Friday, the Christ, the Messiah is dead. There is no getting around that, and the women were witnesses to it since all the men had abandoned Jesus.

The intensity of the Gospel has wratched up quite a bit. We have in this one chapter the last supper, the prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest of Jesus, and him being condemned to death. All of this takes place in less than 24 hours, which tends to be lost as we read through the chapter. It feels like so much more time has passed, but remember, Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, marks the fact that Jesus had less than a week to live and that in a week he would be resurrected. The Gospels tends to spend much more time in the last week of Jesus’ life than on any other time in his life, including his birth. Mark doesn’t even mention his birth, and here we find ourselves in multiple chapter describing how the last week of his life an his resurrection take place. This might be important for us to recognize that the importance of the incarnation and the importance of the resurrection is not necessarily measured by the amount of type it gets.

It is appropriate that when we find ourselves in the last week of Jesus’ life that he would tell his disciples some news about when all of this will come to an end and when he will come back again. This last chapter is replete with hints at the second coming and when the end times will be. We have descriptions of stars falling and the desolating sacrilege taking up shop in the temple. That latter event happened in the 1st century right before the temple was destroyed. Jesus also says something quixotical when he mentions that this generation will not pass away before these things take place. But the generation did pass away, and the end times did not come, so maybe he was talking about his death.

But the best insight into the timing of all of this is heard at the end of his chapter when Jesus says that he does not know when this will all happen. This is so important for us to understand as we have had people from the time that Jesus ascended into heaven thinkin that they were able to predict or tell when the end times actually were coming. If Jesus himself doesn’t know the timing of it then the hubris that any of us could have thinking we would know is extraordinary.

Remember we find ourselves travelling no longer. Jesus is in the temple and he is teaching and there are rabbis and their disciples all around the temple, so it was very, very crowded. Remember, it was right around Passover, so things would have been loaded with people. He teaches his disciples, and anyone who would listen, and it sounds like he had quite a crowd. In this context he gives the greatest commandment, which is twofold: love God and love neighbor. There is really nothing controversial about this commandment, just that it does sum up everything that we ought to be doing.

Today we find ourselves in the day of Palm Sunday, but it is different from the other Gospels. In Matthew and Luke Jesus clears out the temple of the money changers right after his ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In John, it happens at the very beginning of his ministry in chapter 2 of John. But here in Mark, it happens on the Monday of Holy Week, where we read that Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, looks around the temple to check on things, notices that it is getting late and then returns to the next day to clean it out. Different, but each Gospel has it at a time when it is most needed and important for that Gospel.

We find another chapter of teachings. I say this not to diminish the significance of these teachings, on the contrary, they are teachings of which we should be very, very familiar. The teaching on divorce is a hard one to hear in the 21st century, but it also underlines the importance of marriage. Jesus is very clear that marriage is between a man and a woman, he states it clearly also addressing the way in which our creator made us, each and every one of us as either male or female. I never imagined that Jesus’ saying here in Mark would carry any controversy except in the context of marriage and divorce, but in this day and age stating that marriage is between a man or a woman, and declaring that we are all made either male or female by our creator, has become a very, very hot button issue. But I stand by the words of Jesus on this one for sure.

Similarly we find the teaching on wealth that is equally disturbing for some, but most people have the luxury, I used that term on purpose, of not paying attention to it. The rich young man goes away saddened because he realizes that Jesus’ words were a condemnation of his way of life which was one of ease and not every having to worry about how he was going to get resources in order to eat or have a roof over his head. He always had what he needed. If anyone reading this has not had to worry about where to stay this evening or what to eat for lunch today, then we are in the same camp of the rich young ruler and we would probably walk away from Jesus saddened and feeling like we were called out. It is a very, very sobering chapter which some truths and teachings that we have chosen to ignore in this 21st century.

The transfiguration leads, like in Matthew, to the healing of a son who could not be healed by the disciples, which then leads to Jesus walking through Galilee with his disciples and teaching them about his death and resurrection, which they simply did not understand. This whole section is a neat insight into Jesus and his disciples and the way in which he taught. He takes a child as an object lesson and tells them that whoever welcomes this child welcomes the presence of God in their lives, but his is all within the context of what it means to be the greatest. The child seems to get that moniker as the greatest, or at least as representing that which Jesus considers to be great. I’ll go with that.

We see a repeat miracle of the feeding of the crowds with very, very few loaves of bread. But the importance of that miracle is overshadowed, in some ways, by the disciples who complain about not having enough food for themselves as they get to where they were hoping to go. This is the first instance of where we find the word hangry come into play. The disciples thought Jesus was angry at them because they forgot food for the journey, while in fact he was warning them about teachings of the pharisees and the religious leaders that was like leaven that could make all thing rise and ruin. As a tide lifts all sails, this can be in both good and bad. The religious leaders were teaching things that would make people more fit for hell than righteousness.

Peter finds himself as both the protagonist and the antagonist here. He proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, well done Peter. He scolds Jesus for talking about his eventual inevitable death that was going to happen very soon, get behind me Peter aka Satan. Yeah, we have to be careful what side we are on.