MK 8: 31-38 (or to 9:1) 

Marginally Mark…Lent 2…Revised 2018 

(For the Transfiguration see MK 9:2-9)

To extend the reading to take in 9:1 as some versions do may be useful. Is what Jesus says there a threat or a promise in the light of what comes before?

Being ‘Son of Humanity’ may be a sin-cure for us, but it’s no sinecure for Jesus; or us, if we throw in our lot with Him! Eugene Peterson¹ comments: ‘…with the death announcement… Jesus heads straight for Jerusalem… The direction changes, the pace changes, the mood changes.’ Letting God into our lives as far as Jesus does, letting God rule in our lives, has consequences. Does the ‘direction’ of our congregation need to change? Do we need to change our ‘pace’? How’s the ‘mood’ of our flock? Are there implications for our personal ‘direction’, pace, & ‘mood’?

‘Testing’, our Lenten theme, doesn’t stop with Jesus passing His testing out in the wilderness. (‘Testing’ is more positive than ‘being tempted’!) Now it’s our turn. God, & God’s Rule as Jesus exhibits it, is a test to discern if we too need a change of direction, a change of pace, or a change of mood. Do we discern some dimension missing from our lives? A Jesus dimension? As we journey through Lent let’s not wallow in being sinners, but celebrate being forgiven ones! 

Jesus cuts to the chase with Peter: he's not seeing things God's way. Been there? Done that? Still going there, doing that? Seeing things God's way doesn't come through committees, structures, & the like, even sermons! Is there a touch of Peter - at this stage of his discipleship, at least - in our own stories? Who knows best - God, or you & I? When we pray, are we often praying for a relationship with God, or from within a right relationship with God?

If I'd been a disciple when Jesus says what He says in 31-38, would I have continued with Him? I doubt it. Would any of us? So why do I follow Him now? Is it at least partly because no-one’s going to nail me, literally, to a cross these days? Because there’s no such risk any more? (As there is, still, for some disciples in some places!) If being a disciple of Jesus still meant a one-way ticket to death row, why not settle for the + on top of a Hot Cross Bun as many do? 

I may not be ashamed of Jesus, but am I embarrassed by Him & what He stands for? Does the latter play as big a role in our failure to share Him with others as being ashamed would? Jesus can turn any & all such negative possibilities into positives. Starting with His confidence (v.31) in being raised, & in 9:1 where God rules, OK! In us, with Jesus!

¹ Christ Plays in Ten Thousand places, H & S, London, 2005 p. 187

MK 1: 9-15 

Marginally Mark…The First Sunday in Lent…Revised 2018

Jesus has been out in the margins, unknown, for 30 years or thereabouts. Now He comes to the Baptiser - himself marginalised, as genuine prophets usually are. Immediately - a very Mark-like emphasis - Jesus finds himself emerging into the Divine Limelight. Throughout His ministry, not seeking the limelight is always an issue with Jesus, as MK reports it. Jesus doesn't ever strut the stage as would-be Messiahs do. (How many of them can we list? Selective Bible-bashers, Tele- ‘evangelists’, presidents, …?) In Jesus’ day, only a few faithful, discerning, souls recognise Him as the human face of God. Sometimes, some of them, even, waver. Faith in Jesus the Christ has never been a ‘numbers game’.

There’s a Godly vigour bordering on the violent out there. Steering us away from any idea of Jesus as ‘gentle, meek, or mild’; a later travesty which all too easily flows on into being a travesty of YHWH God. Skies open, God’s Spirit descends, a Voice from heaven speaks, followed immediately - very Marcan - by the Spirit literally driving Jesus out further into the wilderness to be tested. Is this testing so much by Satan, however we understand that term,  so much as by Jesus testing Himself as to His fitness for what YHWH God is calling Him to be & to do? I vote for the latter!

In Jesus’ Baptism & His testing that follows (MK doesn’t go into details as others do) Jesus proves His heart is directed completely towards God & the task in hand. In the Theophany, YHWH God, Source of all Being, calls & endorses Jesus in the Role. In His Testing, Jesus takes up that challenge of being the true Messiah. He can, He will, live out that connected-ness with that Source of all Being, not least our own. Providing we, like Jesus make & keep the connection! 

I suggest choosing ‘testing’ for Jesus’ experience in the wilderness, over ‘being tempted’ will help us celebrate a more positive Lent. Giving a positive emphasis, rather than a negative one. 

Come back with me to those heavenly Boom! Boom! Boom! Booms! Jesus experiences, & some others witness, & maybe we will hear God attracting our attention & equipping us for ministry by asking questions like:

(1) Whether or not we were baptised as hapless infants, or adults, have we grown into that baptism? Let it really happen to us? 

(2) Do we hear, do we recognise, God calling you & me ‘His beloved son or daughter’ now? 

(3)Are we facing up to any ‘satan' in ourself, including our own demons & choosing instead God & God’s way in life? 

(4) Is God ruling in me, now? God’s Kingdom coming in power & glory in me, now? As it does in Jesus back then?

A positive answer to all these - our own personal testing, in today’s wildernesses - may give us a more positive Lent than many we’ve experienced before!

MK 9: 2-9 

Marginally Mark…The Transfiguration (Last S after Epiphany)… Revised 2018  

[For Epiphany 6 see MK 1: 40-45]

Ched Myers speaks of what happens on the mountain top as 'a kind of salvation-history summit conference’ ¹.  An interesting way of looking at things. Worth exploring for better spiritual outcomes than many of the conferences we have to attend? Discussing an icon of the Transfiguration, + Rowan Williams talks of the disciples as ‘sprawling in disorder’ ². There’s a God-energy in there for the disciples to struggle with. Perhaps, even, a renewing of energy for those past giants of Faith - Moses & Elijah? As there is in Jesus Himself as He’s transfigured up there. God, the Source of our being, is Energy itself, as well as Being itself.

Why isn’t Andrew up there? Busy at work fishing, or just not invited? How do we handle being left out of, or missing situations? Not seeing Jesus glow with light when others do?  

What does it mean that Moses represents the Law? What does it mean that Elijah represents the Prophets? What does it mean that in LK's account - 9:31- he adds that Moses & Elijah are talking with Jesus about His 'exodus' which is to happen in Jerusalem? Jesus' Exodus will be to resurrected life in a Promised Land embracing, but not limited to, this world. It is God's wisdom that M & E both die in unusual circumstances; but for God's Son to die on a cross surely defies belief!

Jesus is the new & greater M & E in terms of human time, though, in His own Person, God from before time as we know it, begins. Jesus doesn’t simply ‘represent’ God; Jesus is the God of Now come among us in human form! M & E are forever important, but no longer central, figures in our human spiritual journey. What’s really important now is our being transfigured in our service of God. Let God shine through! 

The disciples are, as often, puzzled at what's going on. Is Peter's wanting to build shelters a 'type', a foreshadowing, of the way we construct churchy comfort zones by trying to pin God down? Which is exactly what Jesus eschews (I can't find a better word than that old one) on the mountain top. If there's a case for anyone to stay up there, it's Jesus! But he has an Exodus to accomplish in Jerusalem. So down He comes. To explain to the disciples as best He can what this is all about; &, reading on a little further, to run slap bang into a hoard of people begging to be brought in from their margins.

Coming down the mountain, Jesus tells the disciples (as often in MK) to keep to themselves what they've seen, 'until the Son of Man (etc.) should rise from the dead'. Perhaps we’ve become too secretive about this Jesus business? Time to head up our mountain, then come resolutely down transfigured by God & for God? 

¹  Binding the Strong Man, Orbis, NY, U.S.A.,’97, p. 250  ² The Dwelling of the Light, John Garratt, Mulgrave, Australia, 2003, p. 3

MK 1: 40-45 

Marginally Mark…Epiphany 6… Revised 2018

 (for The Transfiguration see MK 9:2-9)

Reuven - let’s give him a name & a face - is more likely, we believe today, to be suffering from psoriasis or similar. Enough, though, to push him beyond the margins of society. It makes no difference to Reuven whether he has leprosy or psoriasis; under the law he's one of the living dead! In even approaching Jesus, Reuven puts himself still further out, & pulls Jesus out there with him! Jesus is no stranger to our margins! Out there in a sense Himself, now, through being approached by Reuven, He is nevertheless filled with compassion for him & heals him.  Note, though, that Reuven’s ‘If…’ is a statement of faith. Are the big ‘Ifs’ in our lives statements of faith, or hints of doubt about God & what God is capable of? 

How do we feel about ‘outsiders’ whoever they are? Compassionate enough to do what we can for them? On the spot? Or are we among those who want to keep them at bay? Shut them out behind bigger & better walls, turn back their boats, & the like?

That Jesus' response is to snort with anger rather than compassion was probably the earlier - harder - textual reading. Jesus' anger or indignation is His on the spot reaction to the state Reuven’s in. No-one should be consigned to live like that! Not Reuven, not any human being should have exclusion imposed upon affliction! Jesus’ anger then expresses itself in compassion. I don't have any problem with a truly & fully human Jesus losing his cool in compassion. If He can do it, so can I! If we're truly Jesus' friends, maybe we ought to be madder about a lot of things happening to people ‘out there’. If  healing is to take place for some people, that may mean getting our reputations as well as our hands dirtied as happens in Jesus’ case here. 

In telling of Jesus sending Reuven off healed, MK uses the same expression as he does of Jesus being 'thrown out' into the wilderness for His testing ([1:12]. Are we, as today’s disciples driven - in the Biblical sense used here of that word - to either go out into some wilderness, or maybe to come in from one? Jesus knows what a test Reuven’s return into society's going to be for him. As He was tested & then had to return back into society to minister among us.

I’m tempted to hang more loosely today than in a previous existence from a church become too institutionalised; too much organisation, too little organism. Jesus' instruction to Reuven to comply with the Levitical law, though, warns me not to undo the tie that binds me to the behemoth too completely! Perhaps the issue is whether that tie brings freedom as it will do in Reuben's case, or simply binds us still tighter to a law that brings more bondage than the freedom Christ brings?  Ironically, in a sense we end, here, with Reuven & Jesus swapping places in so far s who’s in & who’s out!

MK captures Reuben's sheer excitement at his cleansing. Are we living out, celebrating, telling about the healing freedom of Christ, who resolves all our ‘Big Ifs’? Or is spiritual psoriasis binding us instead of freeing us?