40 Days of Lent: Day 9

1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

3In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

4″How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

5Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

What was it, I must ask, that caused Nicodemus to take a chance with his reputation and status by daring to go by himself to visit with the itinerant rabbi, Jesus? What did Jesus have that Nicodemus wanted?

There was an authenticity about Jesus- Nicodemus said it was obvious that he was from God, with God. When Jesus said that this came from being born again, Nicodemus (as would anyone) misunderstood. Nicodemus knew of only one way of being born, while Jesus was telling him about another.

Many of us think we know what born again means, but I know how traditions and unexamined “truths” can get in the way of real understanding, so I wonder, too, if we don’t sometimes misunderstand that phrase as badly as Nicodemus did upon first hearing it?

In some churches it means saying a prayer, in others it comes from walking down the aisle in response to an emotional message by the preacher. In still others it means performing ancient rituals- baptism, cathecism, confirmation. The commonality of all those methods is that a person publicly declares Jesus to be “the way, the truth, and the life,” repent of his/her sin and, thus, become a child of God, and not only a child of human parentage.

That has always seemed too superficial to me..sorry. Birth is a traumatic process and I think really becoming a child of God- becoming real, becoming authentic- is a process. It’s a process of enlightenment- step by step, little steps, big steps, a journey that never ends. I often say that I have been born again and again and again; I am not the same follower of Jesus as I was that first day I believed. In fact, it is more like I am continually being born- I am always moving from belief to faith, from knowledge to understanding, from moments of happiness to longer periods of serenity.

And I do that by getting better- more sensitive- to that blowing wind Jesus referred to: the ruach of God. Ruach is God’s spirit, God’s breath, God’s wind. And we don’t know where we will be moved by it. It may be toward a sunset, or a lifetime of sacrificial work on behalf of others. It may be toward a special sermon (it’s possible!).  More likely, it will be toward the eyes, the presence of one in whom we can see God’s presence already, or in deeper ways than we have so far perceived God’s presence in ourselves. It might even be in the love of a dog, the breath taking of a wildflower field, or the singing of children.

The point is we don’t know how that wind will blow or where it will come from, which makes every moment the most important one we have ever lived. Because this might be the moment when we become authentic, real, whole, complete, and born again, like Jesus.

40 Days of Lent: Day 7

Mark 1: 12, 13- “At once, this same Spirit pushed Jesus out into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by Satan. Wild animals were his companions, and angels took care of him.”

Just after the baptism of Jesus by John, this is what happened, according to Mark. We fill in the story with what Matthew and Luke would later write, but- as a gospel standing alone- what are we to make of Mark’s comments here?

It is theorized that the gospel of Mark is collection of spoken stories- maybe spoken by Peter, maybe not- that were collected and written down. The gospel has the feel of an urgent, spoken message. (Try it out loud sometime in a loud stage whisper, as if you were speaking it to a small group and didn’t want to be overheard by others- you’ll what I mean) The sentences are short, and to the point, and written originally in the most basic Greek.

It must be assumed, therefore, that the audience of either Mark or the original speaker, had some shared knowledge of this Satan.  In the book of Job, a character named Sa-tan, is an accuser, a prosecutor and provocateur, given reign by God to prove Job’s righteousness. The Satan of Mark’s gospel was probably being referred to in a similar role. The wilderness was a test for Jesus, in other words, which he had to pass.

Other scriptures seem to link Satan and the devil. Traditions within the church have cemented the relationship. In many churches, Satan (or the devil) will have equal billing with God in terms of words expended. I can only conclude that the reasons for that is that, for some, fear is a stronger motivator than love.

But Mark’s gospel doesn’t afford us much wiggle room for surmising or guessing. We only know that Satan forced Jesus to the wilderness, where he was tested, and taken care of by angels. That leaves a lot of room for the reader to fill in the white spaces with their own imagination.

Thus, the cults of Satan-fear and of angel-worship within the church are able to emerge, particularly as the original meanings and understandings of those words are lost in the mists of ancient memory. We have the ability to project our own personalities or emotional baggage onto either concept, and twist both ideas into whatever modern definitions we want them to be. It is easy for many to even compare themselves to Jesus by claiming to be harassed and tested themselves by Satan, or protected by a personal set of angels.

Oh, my.

I don’t claim to know all of what Mark meant when he was using those power-packed words. But I do know that when I make them into words for my own personal use, I can absolve myself of many responsibilities, or claim a special status in the eyes (do they have them?) of angels. If Jesus was human, and he was- that’s the point, then what he would have experienced in the wilderness would have been no less or more than any other human would have experienced there. He would have experienced hunger, loneliness, fear, and doubt. Like I would have, like anyone would have. If he didn’t- if he experienced anything in a supernatural way of any sort- then he wouldn’t have been relating to the experience as a human. He couldn’t have been followed, heard, or been a real brother to other humans.

But he was able to move through all of those difficult experiences, as a human. And prove, by doing so, that any of us can do the same.

40 Days of Lent: Day 6

Mark 1: 9-11 (from The Message): At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”

The gospel writers, Mark among them, are not reporters. They were not there- on the scene- during every event that they go on to write about. They were compilers, arrangers, transmitters of the stories of Jesus to particular audiences.

Mark is relating here some things that apparently only Jesus experienced at his baptism: a  vision (the sky splitting open and something “like a dove” descending on him) and a voice. This testimony of Jesus is the beginning of Mark’s gospel of Jesus. This is, for Mark, the beginning of Jesus’ “Sonship.” It was- it seems- a bestowal of status on Jesus by God.

Matthew and Luke would claim that Sonship to be biological- with the impregnation of Mary through God’s Holy Spirit. I have to wonder why such a significant event was not even mentioned by Mark, while the personal testimony of Jesus was. Had Mark not heard the story of Jesus’ in utero origins? Or had he heard it and rejected as a legend connected to other ancient stories of virgin births?

I don’t know the answer. But I see Mark’s editorial role here as making Sonship itself accessible to anyone who would, as Jesus had, accept the message of John the Baptist to “Repent!” Here’s the Baptist’s message, told by Mark (Mark 1: 4, New International Version): And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

The arrival of Jesus at the Jordan River had been being anticipated by John. Something about his third cousin had impressed John, maybe for much of his life (he was six months older than Jesus). John claimed that Jesus was greater than himself and would baptize others not with water, but with the Holy Spirit.  If Jesus believed this of himself as well, then he would have had need of that Holy Spirit to baptize others with, and would have been highly sensitive and receptive to the receiving of it.

I think this is the supremely important part of the story of which Mark wrote: Jesus was ready for this status; he was willing and wanting to receive it. As he would go on in his life and ministry to prove, it was not a matter of satisfying a ravenous ego that he sought this status; rather, it was a genuine calling- a desire that others would know the real nature of God. Jesus wanted, it seems to me, for others to know that they, too, were loved by God, and that God had pride in them, too!

That’s a pretty radical desire to have within a faith community that was rife with judgement on the part of the priestly leaders. It’s a revolutionary role to want to assume in a culture where the “poor in spirits” were left out of everything.

But, after his baptism by John, Jesus left the Jordan River community, went into the wilderness for 40 days, emerged at one with God, and went on to demonstrate that others could indeed live in the love and pride of God, free of the burdens of guilt, and also at one with God.

That was impressive to Mark.

It’s impressive to me, too.

A Genealogy

Matthew 1: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac,
         Isaac the father of Jacob,
         Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
         Perez the father of Hezron,
         Hezron the father of Ram,
4Ram the father of Amminadab,
         Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
         Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
         Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
         Obed the father of Jesse,
6and Jesse the father of King David.
      David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife,
7Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
         Rehoboam the father of Abijah….

Blah blah blah blah blah…

It is not wrong, I don’t think, to maybe expect the story the story of Jesus Christ, son of God, savior of the world, to start off with just a little bit more of a bang, is it? These are the first words of the New Testament, and as dull as they may at first glance be, they are important. Because they are about a journey through time that will, 28 generations after Solomon, begin to converge in a whole series of journeys across time and geography- journeys that include the chapters of our own lives right here, right now.

The genealogy I just read covered 14 generations, from Abraham through Solomon- about 700 years. Another 14 generations would take the genealogy of Jesus into the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. And then another 14 generations later, a total now of almost 2500 years from the time of Abraham, the birth of Jesus would happen. It was 2500 years of Jewish history in the making, and it’s been 2000 years of world history in the remembering.

But first, buried within that seemingly dull list of names, there were four surprises, planted there by Matthew like warning flags to tell his readers that what they would be reading was going to be a very unusual story. Normally, a Jewish genealogy was about one thing- the line of patriarchs- the honorable and pious men who passed on their legacy- I guess- in spite of all the women in the way.

Now, the surprises placed in this family tree, however, were exactly that- women! Something had happened in the mind of some very Jewish, culturally patriarchical men like Matthew, that had caused them to open their eyes wider than they had ever been before. Something had caused Matthew to acknowledge the personhood, the importance of women at a time when that just wasn’t done. There was no reason to, after all! Women weren’t men, and in the thinking of the time, men were what mattered. Men, and the number of donkeys they owned.

So when Matthew sneaks the names of Tamar and Rahab, prostitutes, and Ruth, a conniver, and Bathsheba, a woman who took baths on her roof in full view of King David..when Matthew makes sure the reader knows that Jesus has these women’s blood pulsing through his veins, Matthew is saying, without shouting it, that everything, as it has been known, was being turned upside down.

The doors to a relationship with God, being a co-creator with God in the Kingdom of God, had just been opened a whole lot wider than they had ever been before.

Joseph

Matthew 1: 18-24 (NLT):

18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
      She will give birth to a son,
   and they will call him Immanuel,
      which means ‘God is with us.’”

24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

In these opening verses of the gospel, as written by Matthew, Joseph is named five times, and Mary, three times. There is purpose and precision in the writing of the gospels, and this emphasis on Joseph by Matthew is not coincidence. The first seventeen verses of Matthew, in fact, trace the genealogy of Jesus, not through Mary, his biological parent, but through Joseph, his step-father! The genealogy establishes Joseph’s relationship to Abraham, the founder of Judaism, and to King David,the star of Judaism. So, what’s up with that?

It’s called patriarchy and Judaism was a patriarchal religion. Jews were the intended audience of Matthew, so from the genealogy to the picking and choosing of quotes from various prophets, Matthew was nailing down the Jewishness of Jesus.  It was important from the start to do that, both for his intended audience, and for the flavor of the story he was about to tell them.

It’s not hard to imagine Matthew sitting with the scrolls of the prophets, a copy of Mark’s gospel, and the other various quotes and vignettes concerning Jesus collectively called the “Q” source. Let’s face it,he was picking and choosing: the first prophetic quote above- highlighted in green- is a compilation of pieces of verses from Isaiah 7:14; 8:8, and 10. And some of Matthew’s later prophetic quotes will be even more complicatedly constructed than that.

Which leads to the point that Matthew, like the other gospel writers, was telling a story, not reporting. A story about an event is a collection of facts with soul, spiced by the storyteller’s  own personality and intentions. Think of Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, or Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Both are stories, in different genres, about cold, straight-forward facts arranged and presented in such a way that the events they describe can be understood in larger contexts.

Joseph- good man- carries the first part of Matthew’s story of Jesus. Just as a man would have led Shabbat, worship at the temple, and leadership in all family and civic affairs. The story, to have any credibility with Matthew’s readers, had to be begun that way. That Mary was named, and that other women were named within his gospel’s later chapters, is a portent of the status of women that was already beginning to change because of the way Jesus regarded and treated them.

Something stirring and revolutionary was in the air! And Matthew wanted to share the excitement with the people he most loved. Naturally, he told the story in the colors and shapes they would most easily understand.

 

The Nativity- according to Mark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nope, he doesn’t say a thing about it. Nor does John. For them, the story of Jesus’ birth, as told by Matthew and Luke (in different ways), was not a part of the story which needed to be told.

Now, given the big deal we make over Christmas, doesn’t that seem odd? It might be argued that each gospel was a part of a whole, since that’s how we read and apply the four New Testament books. If that was truly the case, though, wouldn’t the Matthew and Luke stories about the birth, or about numerous other episodes in Jesus’ life, be a bit more congruous? Wouldn’t you think that all the facts they wrote about would line up in perfect agreement?

In fact, each gospel was a stand alone project. There is no reason to assume- none!- that gospel writing was a group endeavor. Each was written by a different person, for a different audience, with differing motivations. Obviously, Luke and Matthew shared some source material for their gospels- the book of Mark and a collection of stories and sayings about Jesus known as the ‘Q’ source- but even those sources were specifically reshaped for the particular messages Matthew and Luke were writing.

For Mark and John, the Messiahship of Jesus began at his baptism; thus, no ‘away in the manger’ stories. That is not a minor point to be passed over on our way to Luke 2:1 or Matthew 1:18. For Mark and John, “becoming” the son of God was the important part of the story, not being “born” the son of God.

Personally, I like that viewpoint because it gives me a shot at the same status.