The End

Revelation 22

by Daniel Harrell

The end of Revelation has been a long time coming, both in terms of this sermon series (I’ve been going at it for 3 years) and in terms of Jesus’ return (2009 years and counting). The latter wouldn’t be a problem had Jesus not said “I am coming soon.” He said soon three times in this chapter alone. Some translate Jesus as saying, “I am coming quickly,” to square with his frequent analogy of coming “a thief in the night,” emphasizing the how rather than the when. Others, more troubled by Jesus’ delay, interpret “coming soon” as Jesus’ showing up in the crises of life or at the point of each individual’s death. The problem is that such an interpretation adds more difficulty to Revelation than it reduces, and interpreting Revelation is difficult already. For me the best solution to the problem comes from the apostle Peter who wrote, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” I like that God waits in order that all might believe. The only problem here is that not all for whom God waits do believe. While those in verse 14 who “wash their robes” in the blood of the Lamb gain access to the tree of life, even at the end there remain dogs outside the gates; “people who love and live lies.”

Patience does have its limits. When the day of the Lord does come, Peter writes, it will come “like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare… but in keeping with God’s promise we look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, a world filled with God’s righteousness.” This new heaven and new earth came in Revelation 21. With it came an end to death and mourning and crying and pain. I use the past tense because John does, emphasizing the surety of God’s promises; so sure that they can be spoken of as having already happened. In the new world there is no more problem of evil because there is no more evil. In the new world God allows no more suffering because there is no more suffering to allow. For Revelation’s first readers, faithful Christians tortured by the Romans with unimaginable cruelty, these assurances of divine deliverance and divine retribution were like fresh water on parched ground. In time, the God who rules in sublime majesty would triumph in perfect justice. And in the meantime, as the crucified Lamb, the sovereign God would patiently endure injustice alongside his people. They would wait together.

One of the interesting things I hope you’ve noted about Revelation is the way it repeats itself, going over and over the same information again and again even as its imagery varies. Seven times in fact (seven being a good apocalyptic number) Revelation cycles its warnings and blessings. In chapters 1-3, Jesus called upon existing churches with forecasts of woe and weal, readying them for the apocalypse proper which commenced in chapter 4. Chapters 4-7 described seven seals of God’s judgment, which effectively rewound and repeated as seven trumpets in chapters 8-11. After that, in chapters 12-14, came a woman giving birth to a son whom a dragon awaited to devour. The dragon turned out to be Satan who introduced two beasts to the drama for an unholy trinity, one from the sea (the 666 antichrist) and another from the earth (also known as the false prophet). Next came seven bowls of wrath in chapters 15-16, which rid the world of its evil, epitomized this time by the wicked witch of Babylon. She falls again in chapters 17-19, along with the two beastly escorts and the rest of the world’s perniciousness. All that remains of evil is Satan, who meets his doom in chapter 20, which along with chapters 21 and 22 comprise the last of the seven cycles.

Chapters 20 through 22 portray the end as a glorious wedding between Jesus the Lamb and the New Jerusalem—representative of God’s redeemed people. It’s the Big Day not just for Revelation, but for the entire Bible. In Revelation 21, John writes, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God”――just like the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost. The Holy City descends as a beautiful bride—an odd juxtaposition that we explored last time. The bride picks up on that ancient language of marriage between God and his people while the city imagery stresses his people as his dwelling place. There is no Temple in the New Jerusalem because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple, living among God’s people.

Chapter 21 provided most of the standard specs of the New Jerusalem: streets of gold and pearly gates; symbols of purity and worth. Here in chapter 22, the final details turn out to be the most significant. A river of life flows down Main Street, with the tree of life spanning the river and bursting with abundant fruit. The picture is intentionally Edenic; the Genesis curse has been reversed. In the New Jerusalem, God’s creatures no longer hide their faces in shame and seek refuge in the shadows. Instead, having had their sins washed clean by the blood of the Lamb, they freely step into the light to gaze upon God. The Old Testament had warned that nobody could see the face of God and live, a danger that mandated the high priest to identify himself with God’s name on his forehead and shield himself with smoke from burning incense when he annually stepped into the Temple’s inner sanctum. However in the New Jerusalem there is no more temple, no more smoke, no more shame and no more fear. Everyone wears the name of God on their foreheads here.

The river of life is a throwback to Eden too, but it’s an image picked up and expanded upon in Ezekiel, an Old Testament book that reads a lot like Revelation. Water is a prevalent image throughout Scripture—springs, streams and rivers of living water emitting God’s mercy find mention in the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel and Zechariah too. In the thanksgiving-like Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, prayers were offered for water as part of an elaborate water liturgy designed to solicit God’s provision of both agricultural hydration and spiritual healing. In the original tabernacle desert years, God miraculously slaked Israel’s thirst with water from a rock. The prophet Joel foresaw a miraculous provision of God’s Spirit to be “poured out” on His people, a prophesy fulfilled by Pentecost. For Zechariah, living water signaled the final triumph of God over evil: “On that day, living water will flow out from Jerusalem…The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD, and his name the only name. …All nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up … to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.” And in Ezekiel’s vision, what began as a trickle miraculously expanded into a river gushing out from Jerusalem into the Dead Sea transforming both uninhabitable desert and languid sea into a lush garden. With living water, God redeems all creation. “Where this river flows,” Ezekiel foretold, “everything will live.”

In John’s gospel—amidst all the fervor generated by the Tabernacles liturgy, a fervor enhanced by Roman oppression and the hope of God’s deliverance— a homeless, working-class carpenter audaciously stepped forward to announce: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within.” Jesus shockingly proclaimed himself to be Ezekiel’s river of living water bringing life wherever he flows. He is the Exodus Rock from which water gushed, saving rebellious wanderers from withering away forever. He is Zechariah’s Jerusalem in whom God fully resides and from whom living water drowns evil while drawing all nations to himself. Jesus embodied all of God’s great deeds past as well as God’s great promises for the future. He is the Alpha and the Omega, verse 13, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. He is the both the Root and Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star. To whomever is thirsty he will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.

The invitation to drink came originally from Isaiah, was offered by Jesus on earth, and gets reissued twice in Revelation. First in chapter 21, and then again here in verse 17. It’s an invitation to faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. “Come and take the free gift of the water of life.” What happens when you do? Jesus says that streams of living water will flow out of you. Just like that old camp song: “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me!” But what does this mean? John explains in the gospel how this river of life from within is the Holy Spirit; a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The Spirit, like the New Jerusalem, descended from heaven and filled the first Christians and fills every Christian since. But like any flowing course of water, it cannot remain stagnant. And thus the water that flows from Christ flows through Christians, a river of life from which others can drink as Christians speak words of truth and grace, as we love our neighbors and our enemies, as we serve those in need, and suffer for what we believe.

This is not always easy. In the King James Bible, Jesus is quoted in John’s gospel as saying, “whoever believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” The NIV omits the word belly (feeling perhaps that talk about anything flowing out of the belly may sound a bit too intestinal), but I like what belly implies. It takes guts to follow Jesus. It takes guts to be honest about your faith, guts to endure ostracism and skepticism, guts to speak against injustice and cruelty when you’d rather keep quiet and not draw attention; it takes guts to renounce materialism and free up your resources for the poor, guts to bypass lucrative, personal fame in order to serve others, guts to forgive those who’ve wronged you, guts to confess your sin to those you’ve wronged. It takes guts in our culture to save sex for your wife, guts to work on your marriage, guts to hold your tongue from gossip, guts to press on when hardship makes God seem so far away.

If the book of Revelation is about anything, it’s about having the guts to follow Christ. Interestingly in America, our paragons of faith generally remain paragons of success: the Christian who is also the accomplished scholar, the profitable businessman, the prize-winning athlete, the award-winning author, the soul-winning missionary, the popular preacher, the recovered addict, the patient restored to health, the parent of behaving children. Not that these sorts of people aren’t faithful, mind you; but imagine if they were the only portraits of faith John’s original audience got to see and hear. For these early Christians, doomed to suffer under the brutal persecution of Rome, their faithfulness looked more like failure and foolishness; more like suicide than anything approaching success. To believe got them singled out, insulted, abused, tortured and crucified. Their accomplishments were the horrors they endured. The God who saved them did not save them from suffering. The God who saved them, saved them through suffering. Their loss was their gain. To lose required courage.

One of the things that’s made it hard to preach Revelation is that there are so few illustrations of people who have to suffer for their faith in America. For the earliest Christians, “taking up a cross” meant being strung up on one. But for Christians in America, as I mentioned a few months back, in America, taking up a cross is more like taking up cross-country skiing. In theory it can kill you, I guess, but you’d have to be a real doofus. Mostly, nobody cares. Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I’m relieved most days that being a Christian in America (even a Christian minister) means that I’m generally considered irrelevant and harmless. I mean I could live in Pakistan where police recently opened fire on a Christian gathering. Or in Sri Lanka, where six pastors are currently being held prisoner. Or in Yemen, where three of nine people abducted with ties to missionary organizations were recently murdered. Or in Laos where thirteen Christians have been arrested without for believing in Jesus. Or in Saudi Arabia, where two Indian Christian workers remain imprisoned on charges of sharing the gospel.

The worse that ever happens to me is getting laughed at now and then. Each Thursday a group of us go out onto the Common where we feed the homeless, share our faith and conduct a little worship service. A couple of weeks back we stood and sang as it poured down rain. We sang “I’ve got a river of live flowing out of me.” The passersby, as they often do, stared at us like we were crazy. Some shook their heads, others rolled their eyes in disbelief. Every now and then we get to explain ourselves, thankfully. We’ve had to explain ourselves to the police a few times too. It takes some guts to stand on the Common and publicly worship God. Especially when you do it by singing badly. We can’t help but look like fools for Jesus some nights. And by the way, we could use a few more members if you’d like to join us.

Of course what ridicule we endure on the Common is a pittance compared to that endured by so many brothers and sisters around the world. Is it worth it? To read Revelation is to respond absolutely! Revelation paints a reward bursting with lavish abundance. A beautiful, bright city in which there is no more sorrow or trouble. No more night to fear, no more curse to dread. A limitless, gushing supply of water that ensures a cornucopia of plenty. The joy is endless and the company perfect. But can Revelation’s picture stir us as it stirred those earliest Christians? That depends. We live in a land where abundance is the status quo. We can get fresh fruit in the middle of winter and plenty of water at the turn of a spigot. Such abundance is not the global status quo. Many political scientists assert that coming world wars won’t be fought over who controls the oil, but over who controls the water. I’m reminded of a short term mission trip to West Africa many years ago where our water came from a Peace Corps well located a good truck’s ride away from our village. Once we pumped it and drove it back, it still required 24 hours of filtering before it was drinkable. One day, due to construction-induced dehydration amidst sub-Saharan temperatures as well as plain bad planning, we ran out of water a day before the water truck was due. Thirsty and afraid, our prayers took on a new urgency. Nothing amps up prayer like a crisis. As God would have it, the truck unexpectedly (and thankfully) arrived that afternoon, a day early.

The subsequent enormity of our gratitude reflected our prior desperation. Yet our desperation had been but day’s worth. Such desperation is every day life for the Africans who populate that desiccated countryside—just as is for those who live in so many other parts of the world. Ironically, getting back to the States rarely makes you grateful for the ample provisions we so enjoy in America. Instead, you tend to feel shame and disgust. I always feel it most fiercely in the supermarket. Many, upon returning stateside after stints in developing countries, break down crying when confronted by the endless aisles of groceries. It’s not the vast availability of food that’s the problem, but rather the blatant injustice of it’s all being here.

Verse 2 promises a tree of life whose leaves provide healing for the nations. On the one hand, as people through whom God’s river of life flows, the responsibility for this healing lies with us. Through ministries of relief and development along with evangelism and mission, the church is called to heal the nations. But Revelation’s vision stretches past our calling to Christ’s accomplishment. Ultimately, He will set all things to right. Amen, but when? We read about Pakistan, where the military’s battle with the Taliban is creating the country’s worst refugee crisis in 60 years. We read about Iraq, where at least seven bombs exploded Thursday amid an uptick in violence. We read about the developing world where the lives of 1.4 billion souls living in extreme poverty worsen with the recession. Is this why Revelation finds it necessary to reiterate its promises over and over again? In chapter 22, three times, Jesus insists that yes, he is coming soon, soon, soon.

In verse 7, “Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book.” Throughout Revelation, prophecy is known by what it does: true prophecy moves people to serve the true God and false prophecy draws people away from God. That people remain drawn away from God is evident in verse 11. “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile.” What reads like resignation to the state of things, or even like permission to go on doing what you’re doing, is better read, I think, as an acknowledgement of good and evil’s continued existence in the face of Revelation’s hope. This acknowledgement can be enough to make you lose hope, which is why Jesus speaks up again in verse 12. “I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what they have done.” This is bad news for the evildoer, good news for the one whom verse 11 describes as holy and doing right. While this is not about a salvation earned by good works, it is about a faith confirmed by good works. While you can do nothing to earn God’s grace, you still must do something to show you’ve received it. Living water that flows into you must flow through you too.

Jesus says, “I am coming soon, I am coming soon.” The Spirit and the bride respond by saying “Come on then,” to which Jesus assures one last time in verse 20: “Yes, I am coming soon.” John utters his own final “Amen” of trust. But then for good measure, he adds his own: “Come on Lord Jesus.” The final answer to life’s struggles and its evils do not lie in our ability to make a better world, but in God’s power to make a new one. Therefore, we pray it too, “Come Lord Jesus.”

Caesar Salad

Mark 12:13-27
by Daniel Harrell

One of my guilty internet pleasures is scanning entries at the FML website (some of you know what I’m talking about). On it, one father wrote, “Today, after the church service was over, my two-year-old daughter started to sing into the microphone. She said, ‘Here Dad, you sing.” I picked up the microphone and proceeded to sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ She took the microphone back and said, ‘No he doesn’t.’” Happy Father’s Day. I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said that the kingdom of God belongs to little children? Something about belonging to God brings out the exclusiveness in all of us. There is a nagging tendency among believers to treat God’s favor as favoritism and as license to snub those you’re certain Jesus could never love. In a conversation recently with a Christian political lobbyist, I was struck by the ease with which he vilified his opponents. I couldn’t help but wonder whether a bit more grace might win him a few more votes, and Jesus a few more converts. Perhaps such is just the contentious nature of politics. Privilege is power, and for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, their power was threatened by this rogue carpenter who taught that God’s grace was for those who least deserved it―for the outcast and the sinner who needed it most. For the religious establishment, such unfettered accessibility to God’s favor threatened their hard-earned righteousness. If righteousness could be had for free, what good is a Pharisee?

Tonight’s the last, for now, in this series of Jesus’ red-lettered sayings from Mark’s gospel. We’ve been going at it for over a year, and will pick back up with a few more in the fall as we wrap up the church bicentennial year. Coming up for the rest of the summer is a chance to hear from several other members of our able church ministry staff, as well as the pleasure to hear Joni Eareckson Tada on July 12. As for me, I have a couple of Sundays I’ll devote to my annual church fathers’ series, this year starting with the letter J. I’m actually planning to tackle one father and one mother this year: Justin Martyr and Julian of Norwich.

As far as we know, Justin Martyr, the 2^nd century church apologist, was the first Christian author outside the gospels to quote tonight’s first set of red letters: “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” According to Justin, Jesus meant that Christians were to be model citizens in Roman society, refusing the emperor only one thing: their worship. Of course it was Justin’s refusal to worship the emperor that made Justin into Justin Martyr.

In Mark 12, the context is not emperor worship per se, but rather how to trap Jesus. The religious establishment has been gunning for him since chapter 3, but because of his rock star popularity, they couldn’t just gun him down. They either had to discredit him in the eyes of his fans, or goad him into breaking Roman law. Ergo the trick question in verse 14: “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Answer yes, and Jesus offends the occupied Jewish masses for whom Roman taxes were both economically and blasphemously burdensome. Answer no, and Jesus incurs the wrath of Rome. Either way, the religious establishment strikes a major blow. What’s interesting is that you have the Pharisees and the Herodians working together. The Pharisees chafed under Roman rule and were offended by an Emperor with delusions of divinity. The Herodians, on the other hand, were Jews who’d hopped into bed with their Roman oppressors, setting aside convictions the Pharisees were so adamant about protecting for the sake of personal benefit.

Ironically, Jesus and the Pharisees actually shared a common faith. Both were of chosen stock, both traced their ancestry to Abraham, both worshipped at the Temple and regarded the Law as God’s sacred word, and both looked toward God’s deliverance from Roman oppression. And both remembered the Sabbath day and kept it holy. Yet their politics diverged deeply—evidenced most starkly in regard to the Sabbath. As much as sexual conduct headlines contemporary political news cycles, Sabbath conduct did so in Jesus’ day. Sabbath was a core aspect of Israel’s identity. It was the tangible thing that set them apart from their pagan oppressors. As with Christians who refuse to work on Sundays, Pharisaic Jews kept Sabbath as a way of drawing their line in the cultural sand. Yet since the Romans were apparently fine with letting their Jewish subjects keep their Sabbath for the most part, it wasn’t much of a line. For the Pharisees, however, strict Sabbath observance succeeded as a political ploy. By sticking to the Sabbath the Pharisees could look like they were sticking it to Rome. By keeping the Sabbath better than everybody else they could project an image that they were better than everybody else. They cornered the market on both prominence and piety―since to keep Sabbath kept you in God’s graces.

And they pretty much got away with it until Jesus showed up and started messing with their Sabbath setup. Of course the Pharisees, like any party in power, could not allow for this. And because politics makes strange bedfellows, they conspired with the Herodians about how to take Jesus out. For the Herodians, Jesus’ kingdom talk threatened Roman hegemony and thus their own security and status that was tied to it.

Together they suck up to Jesus in an attempt to throw him off guard and mask their scheme, calling him a man of obvious integrity and godliness. This is all true of course, but the Pharisees and Herodians don’t believe it for a minute. Mark notes that Jesus “knew of their hypocrisy.” He could smell a rat. Jesus says as much himself, asking in verse 15 why they are trying to trap him. He then gives his answer, using a Roman denarius as a prop. He asked them to identify the image on it. The coin bore the image of the current Emperor Tiberius Caesar. That Jesus uses words like image and likeness hearkens back to Genesis 1 where men and women are spoken of being made in God’s image. And thus “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” means that Caesar can have the money and all that goes with it, but God gets your very soul. This is how Tertullian, another early church father, understood it. As did Augustine. Jesus’ beef was not with the Romans. As he said to Pontius Pilate, “his kingdom was not from this world.”

Many have cited this passage as precedent for the American separation of church and state. However, that God’s kingdom is not from the world does not mean God’s kingdom has nothing to do with the world. Our faith should not be compartmentalized from other aspects of our life, political and otherwise. In the back of this sanctuary hangs a bronze plaque in honor of Arcturus Z. Conrad, pastor of Park Street for 33 years. He was quite the flamboyant figure, arriving at church Sunday mornings in his horse drawn limousine, dressed in white tie and tails underneath his preaching robe. His sermon topics typically engaged the social and political issues of his day: the necessity of prohibition, whether bank deposits should be guaranteed, the cost of coal, playing sports on Sunday, municipal corruption and graft, and the depraved presidency of FDR. Word has it that whenever Conrad caught wind of wanton legislation being debated up at the State House, he’d bolt out of the church and charge up Park St. to confront the governor and legislators head on. I guess that’s how Conrad understood “giving it to Caesar.”

Times have changed. Expectations that state government will heel to the demands of a local congregation are generally quite low—and perhaps even unwarranted. Entrusting Christian morality to secular implementation is always a dubious enterprise. Whenever Christian faith relies too strongly on governmental power to uphold its ethics, it’s life-changing power can easily dilute into a civil religion not worth its salt. And yet, there are times when God’s people are compelled toward more confrontational postures even if the expectation is failure. In Conrad’s words, we must at times “breathe that flame designed to consume us.” Such passion—albeit always infused with compassion—has been exhibited from many corners of the church as we’ve historically marshaled righteous opposition against slavery, hunger, poverty, racism, illiteracy, abortion, penal injustices, health care disparity, war and violence.

Not that this is what Jesus intends here. Here, the intention is to elude the trap. Which he does, thereby allowing the Sadducees to take their shot. Like the Pharisees, the Sadducees were members of the religious ruling council, known as the Sanhedrin. The Sadducees are mentioned only here in Mark, and unlike the Pharisees, are described as those “who say there is no resurrection” which is what made the Sadducees so sad, you see (sorry). The Sadducees rejection of the resurrection was not because the Sadducees were theological liberals. On the contrary, the Sadducees were extremely strict when it came to the law, adhering to a “Torah only” approach to Biblical authority because the Torah came straight from the mouth of God (through Moses—the Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament). For the Sadducees, if it wasn’t in the Torah, it wasn’t true. This is why Jesus answers their question from Exodus, the second book of the Torah.

The Sadducees’ question wasn’t so much to get an answer as it was to mock the idea of anybody rising from the dead―including Jesus. By this point Jesus had announced his own plans to come back to life. The Sadducees give him this silly song and dance about a childless wife with seven deceased husbands, attempting to show that once you bring in resurrection, Torah teaching on marriage no longer makes any sense. According to the Torah, a single man whose brother died without a son had an obligation to marry his brother’s widow. This provided for the widow in a society where no children and no husband meant no social security. It also guaranteed the continuance of the family line. However here, there is no line to continue because there were no children. So at the resurrection of the dead, which brother gets the wife?

Jesus replied that clearly the Sadducees understood neither the word nor the power of God―the very word and power, by the way, that paved the way for Jesus own resurrection. Jesus first teaches that there is no marriage in heaven—which explains why people say “until death do us part” in their marriage vows. Instead, as far as marriage is concerned, resurrected people will “be like the angels,” verse 25. This does not mean that we all get halos and harps and flit around eternally from cloud to cloud (as if that’s what angels do). Rather, like angels, we will enjoy eternal communion with God, the very thing that human marriage has always been intended to approximate. In Revelation 21, the New Jerusalem―representing the redeemed people of God―comes down to earth like a beautiful bride with Jesus as the husband. There’s no more marriage in heaven because everybody’s married to Jesus. As angels, they do not share in the marital bliss we humans do. But they are there cheering us on, which no doubt displeased the Sadducees since they didn’t believe in angels either.

But they did believe in the Torah, so when Jesus asks whether they’ve read the part about the burning bush (where an angel happens to appear), that had to make the Sadducees hot. Of course they’d read the part about the burning bush. OK, but had they understood it? In Exodus 3, God spoke to Moses out of that bush, identifying himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The context is Moses’ commissioning to go rescue God’s people out of Egypt, a mission Moses felt completely unqualified to do. God’s assurance of Moses’ success is based on God being the God of Abraham, et. al., the idea being that if God protected the patriarchs—who were the recipients of God’s promise to save a people for himself—then surely God will keep that promise and protect Moses too. And not just in this life, but forever. This is how it was that God could speak of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the present tense (and how Moses could show up at Jesus’ Transfiguration). If death got the last word, as the Sadducees believed, then God had broken his covenant promises. But since “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (verse 27), then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must somehow still be alive.

But how can the patriarchs be raised from the dead if Jesus himself has yet to blaze the trail? If belief in Jesus gets you eternal life, how do you get it if there’s no Jesus yet to believe in? For the Old Testament saints, it was their hope in God’s salvation to come that comprised their saving faith. As the apostle Paul wrote regarding Abraham’s faith, “he believed God’s promise and it was credited to him as righteousness.” But how can they be raised from the dead if there had yet to be any resurrection?

In the book of Colossians, the apostle Paul describes the Colossians as “already raised with Christ” even as they still lived and breathed on earth. In doing so, like Jesus, Paul hints at a dual reality, an already-not-yet existence, an eternity that occurs even while earthly clocks still tick. According to some interpretations of Einstein’s theory of relativity, our experience of time as the constant tick-tock move toward the future is for the most part just an illusion anyway. What truly exists is a greater reality beyond the speed of light where no time passes and everything occurs in the conceptual present—whether past, present or future. God abides in this dimension unbound by time, interacting with all events of history simultaneously (sort of like a comic strip reader reading the comics). In the tick-tock of temporal time, our bodies and our selves return to the dust from whence they came, awaiting new creation. Yet in the dimension of eternity, we are seated with Christ in heaven already, just like Paul said. The day of resurrection has already happened on God’s clock; we merely await for our experience of it to catch up with it on that day when, as Revelation describes, the New Jerusalem finally comes down from heaven, and eternity and time compress together and God’s will is finally done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Sadducees were badly mistaken, Jesus said. And like the Pharisees and the Herodians, they fail to trap Jesus. That they eventually succeed at getting him killed is not a testimony to their own eventual cleverness. Instead, their eventual success at destroying Jesus only further demonstrates his authority. Not only does he teach that in God’s kingdom the only currency is sacrificial love, Jesus proves it so loving the world that he dies a sacrificial death. And not only does he teach the resurrection of the dead, Jesus proves it by doing it.

The Rejected Son

Mark 12:1-12
by Daniel Harrell

Throughout this survey of the red-letters of Mark’s gospel, the chief theme of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God was that by any earthly estimation, it wouldn’t be much of an earthly kingdom. Two weeks ago, in chapter 10, Jesus informed his followers for the third time how, as king, his coronation would look more like an execution. He would be betrayed, condemned, mocked, flogged and crucified. But then three days later, he would rise from the dead. And not only would he rise, but all who likewise took up crosses to follow him would rise from their own deaths too. I’ve told before how many years ago in this room, during a morning service sermon, an usher scurried up to the pulpit and slipped the preacher an urgent note. Turned out that one of our long-time members had just keeled over dead in his pew. The minister preaching that morning, our previous Senior Minister David Fisher, read the note and looked over and observed that sure enough, the pew spot which this longtime member occupied every Sunday—and had been sitting in when the sermon started—was now vacant.

David stopped his sermon and led the congregation in prayer for this man and his family. At the amen, we all looked over toward the empty pew where the longtime member who was dead, bless his soul, suddenly sat up. While we preach the resurrection of the dead in this church, none of us had actually ever seen one happen! (OK, the man had merely fainted, but it still looked like a resurrection.) The usher was embarrassed, but David Fisher went home feeling pretty good about his sermon that day.

Not too long after David’s miraculous sermon, it was my turn to preach and while in the middle of what I’m sure was an inspiring point, the back doors suddenly swung open and a stranger frenetically burst into the sanctuary and ran down the aisle shouting that he had a word from God for the church. The ushers tackled him and escorted him out. I ducked behind the big pulpit. The man yelled all the way out that he was a messenger sent by God. We never did get to hear what he had to say. Not that anyone remembered what I said that morning either (including myself). But I do remember this thought crossing my mind: “I sure hope he really wasn’t a messenger from God.” Having read enough of Mark’s gospel, I knew better than to write off the crazy-sounding man simply for sounding crazy.

I’ve skipped chapter 11 since we looked at those red-letters during Lent. You might remember my describing the episode of Jesus cursing a poor fig tree and clearing out the Temple in terms of a Mark Sandwich. Throughout his gospel, Mark often sandwiches one story of Jesus inside another in order to amplify the meaning of each. Jesus’ cursing a fig tree provided the bread for the Temple clearing meat. A hungry Jesus wanting some breakfast stumbled upon a fig tree that had no fruit. Like any of us might do when we’re hungry, Jesus got irritated and cursed the fig tree to death. Why didn’t he simply command the tree to pop out some breakfast? Instead, Jesus comes off as petty and petulant, picking off a helpless plant just because it had nothing to pick. But that was the point. Remember, the fig tree was figurative.

Throughout the Bible, God’s people are compared to fruit trees, expected to flower and bloom and produce fruitful deeds in accordance with their redeemed nature. Yet in accordance with their human nature, the chosen people resisted his grace, treating his favor as favoritism and as permission to do as they please. The prophet Jeremiah stood in the Temple centuries prior and conveyed God’s displeasure. “When I would gather you, declares the LORD, there would be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave you has passed away from you.” Their sin ran deep―but the topper was the way they used the Temple system to cover their rear. Jeremiah (sounding like a crazy man himself) yelled, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to idols, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are saved!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” Jesus quoted this last line in his own Temple tirade, intentionally reenacting Jeremiah. If you read “den of robbers” as “hideout for evil,” then you understand how the people regarded the Temple as a safe-house for their sin. No wonder Jesus got so furious.

However he finished the sandwich not with promises of retribution, but with prayers for grace. “When you pray, forgive, if you have anything against anyone,” Jesus told his disciples, “so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive your sins too.” For a Messiah in such a bad mood, this was a remarkable concession. He angrily killed a tree to predict the end of relationship between God and sinners, then prayed to throw the whole mountain of mess into the sea, only to turn around and forgive. Remember that whenever Jesus spoke of the Temple he also spoke of himself. Both were the dwelling places for God. And both would be destroyed. The curse Jesus put on the fig tree and the Temple was the curse Jesus put on himself. And yet the curse Jesus put on himself was one intended for you and me. And if you can accept that, then the grace of God will not only save your soul, but make you fruitful and raise your body once its dead.

Unfortunately for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, accepting that from Jesus was out of the question. They viewed him as a flagrant blasphemer who was always interrupting their sermons claiming to have a message from God. It’s easy when you’re a religious professional, a master of divinity, having devoted all those years to training and study, having kept company with scholars of impeccable wisdom, having lived week in and week out with your head in the Bible, musing on the Greek and the Hebrew, acquainted with the nuances, the lingo and the theological terms—it’s easy to presume that you’d know a genuine messenger from God if you saw one. The religious types in Jesus’ day, presuming to know God inside and out, insisted that as far as Messiahs went, God would never send one with Jesus’ pedigree. The clincher came after he cleared the money changers from the Temple courts. The chief priests, teachers of the law and the elders stormed over to him demanding to know who told him he could behave as he’d behaved in God’s sanctuary. It obviously hadn’t been God. As usual, Jesus answered their question with a question they couldn’t answer―this one about John the Baptist and baptism―and then commenced to tell them the parable read from tonight’s passage.

It’s a story they would have already known. It came straight from Isaiah chapter 5: “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard… he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” The priests and elders would have known the vineyard to be a metaphor for Israel, bad fruit a metaphor for Israel’s disobedience and the vineyard owner a metaphor for God. However Jesus, taking a few liberties with Isaiah’s imagery (which Jesus being Jesus was at liberty to do) shifted the focus off the bad fruit and onto the ones who grew it: a group of tenant farmers whom Jesus introduced into the story.

It was customary for prosperous absentee landowners to lease out land to tenants who would manage the vineyards, farm the land, turn a profit and then pay rent with a percentage of those profits. The absentee owner in this story happened to be very absent—off in some far country—so he sent a servant around at harvest time to collect the rent. The tenant farmers, for some inexplicable reason, decided they weren’t going to pay. So they grabbed the servant, beat him up and sent him away empty-handed. The owner sent another servant whom the tenants insulted then pelted with rocks. The owner sent still another servant and this one the tenant farmers murdered! It was ludicrous. Still, the vineyard owner kept sending servant after servant and the tenants kept beating and killing them all. The vineyard owner was either a sucker for sedition or unbelievably long-suffering.

Finally, all out of servants, the owner decided to send his only beloved son. (An obvious tip-off to those who’d been at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration and heard God refer to Jesus that way.) “Surely they’ll respect my son,” the owner reasoned. But the tenant farmers had already gotten away with murder, why change their ways now? Instead the tenant farmers said to each other, “This is the heir to the vineyard! Come on, let’s kill him too and the inheritance will be ours!” So when the son arrived, they killed him and tossed his body out of the vineyard without even the decency of a proper burial. What sort of idiots were these farmers? Their lease arrangement was customary and profitable. Why did they brutalize the vineyard owner’s servants? Did they think the owner was that far away? Or were they trying to cover up the bad fruit their work had produced? And how did they figure they would inherit anything by killing the son anyway? They were tenants not kin! Moreover, the vineyard owner, the murdered son’s father, was still alive and well and soon to be breathing down their necks! What did they think that the vineyard owner was going to do to them once he finally returned? Jesus answers this one: “The vineyard owner will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Mark adds in verse 12 how the religious rulers “knew Jesus had spoken this parable against them.” I’m sure they did.

Jesus rubbed it in. “Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Of course they had. Having devoted all those years to training and study, they had their Bibles down pat. They would have been able to recite Psalm 118:22 by heart: “The stone the builders tossed out has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous, astonishing really.” No doubt the religious leaders and chosen people had always considered this verse to be speaking about them. But Jesus rejects that application and applies the verse to himself. He declares himself to be the rejected cornerstone―rejected by the chosen people themselves. The rejected become the rejecters. And yet the stone tossed out by the builders, like the beloved son the tenants tossed out of the vineyard, ironically ends up being the cornerstone of God’s redemptive plan.

The religious leaders committed a double sin: they not only rejected God’s beloved Son—along with all the servant-prophets who had previewed his arrival—but they outrageously ventured to usurp what belonged to God for themselves. Our tendency is to write off them off as corrupt, greedy, power-hungry malcontents whose illusions of entitlement blinded them into seeing themselves as immune from reaping what they’d sown. You feel no sympathy for them. Certainly no affinity with them. But still, the thought does cross your mind, would I have been so righteous and blind to Jesus too? While the gospels tend to group the religious leaders together as one insidious lot and label them Pharisees, there were surely those whose faith in God was genuine. Surely there were those who devoutly studied their Torahs, who worshipped sincerely, who cared for people, aided the sick, thoughtfully preached, who abided by the law while they eagerly and fervently awaited the coming Messiah. Yet surprisingly the gospels make no distinction between the faithful and the deceitful when it came to recognizing Jesus. The faithful priests and elders missed the Messiah too.

Yet if all the priests and elders weren’t in fact as deceitful as Jesus paints them in this parable, why does he use such a broad brush stroke? Understand that Jesus often employed hyperbole in his parables in order to elicit exaggerated responses which would then be turned back on the hearer’s head as either indictment or grace. In this parable, the tenant farmers’ over-the-line behavior elicits outrage. They deserved the punishment they got. The hyperbole, however, stresses not how all were equally evil, but rather, that all were equally ignorant.

And not only them. Just as surprising, if not more, was the fact that even some of Jesus’ own followers failed to recognize him even after he had risen from the dead. As startling as it was for us to see that longtime member sit up in his pew, it must have been terrifying for the disciples to see Jesus following his crucifixion. Luke reports that when Jesus showed up that Easter Sunday night, his disciples mistook him for a ghost. In John’s gospel, as I mentioned last Sunday morning, after the resurrection the disciples hilariously went back to their boats to fish, as if all they had been through with Jesus was nothing more than extended time off (“Wow, that was some trip. OK, now back to work.”). The resurrected Jesus showed up again, this time on shore to wave them in, basically saying “Hey guys, we’re not done!” Though I still think he should have walked out to get them.

The stranger who burst in on my sermon those many years ago probably wasn’t a messenger from God, but he made me wonder. He made me wonder about the times I do refuse to recognize the hand of God, the times I’m reticent to listen and quick to judge. I may not be as twisted and deceitful as Jesus’ parabolic tenants, but I can be just as ignorant. I can claim to see and still not get it. Rather than taking up my cross, I whine about my inconveniences and sufferings as though I deserve something better. I get bitter because life hasn’t turned out like I thought it should. I selfishly want what I want and disregard people in need. I forget that all I have is gift from God and how that should elicit from me gratitude, humility, generosity, and service. And I rationalize all of this based on perceptions of a Jesus who loves me just as I am—even though he was clear I can never follow him and stay just as I am.

And thus I return to the communion table, this fruit of the vineyard, to have my perceptions fixed; and I do so without presuming upon God’s grace, but confessing my genuine need for it. Join me.

The Big Day

Revelation 21

by Daniel Harrell

Happy Pentecost! I know. It doesn’t quite carry the same ring as Merry Christmas or He is Risen. Perhaps Happy Birthday would be more appropriate. After all, Pentecost is the official birthday of the church. Sadly, Pentecost doesn’t get all the attention that Christmas and Easter do. I doubt that many of you are exchanging Pentecost presents or heading out after church for a tasty Pentecost brunch. Part of the problem there could be that the Pentecost image of fiery tongues descending on people’s heads doesn’t really inspire many appetizing food options. It is a weird picture―though not necessarily any weirder than a virgin birth or a man rising from the dead. And it’s certainly no weirder than anything we’ve encountered so far in the book of Revelation. For three years I’ve been walking us through Revelation during my morning preaching turns, and we’re almost done. Chapter 21, while not a traditional Pentecost text, does supply its own dramatic descent. Only rather than flaming tongues coming down, John writes in verse 2: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”

For me the best part about weddings in when the bride comes down the aisle. Everyone is poised on the edge of their pews, phones and cameras ready. The mother of the bride dabs away happy tears. The organ swells and the back doors swing open to unveil the bride’s glorious presence. There’s always an audible gasp of delight, always a giddy gleam that crosses the groom’s face as he realizes “this gorgeous woman coming down that aisle is mine!” I’ve seen many a bride come down that aisle—but I’ve yet to see one single bride swing down from the balcony. That would be weird—though that’s sort of how she does it in Revelation 21.

Granted, the bride who descends in Revelation is not a woman but a city as big as nearly half of the United States. Weird again: envisioning a large city clad in a wedding dress stretches the imagination. Nevertheless, Jerusalem always held a special spot in God’s heart. From the time of King David, Jerusalem represented God’s people Israel, the Lord’s beloved bride. Jerusalem was the home address of God’s House; the place where he lived in his holy Temple. Interestingly here, the New Jerusalem has no Temple. It’s been replaced, or better, rendered obsolete. Verse 22: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” Jerusalem’s Temple was God’s House, but it was not necessarily home sweet home. The Temple functioned more like self-imposed house arrest. Due to God’s righteous hostility toward infidelity and sin, God knew that if he ever left his house, his often unfaithful people were done for.

That the Temple curtains ripped in two at Jesus’ crucifixion was not an invitation to an open house, but represented open season on sin. The curtains tore as the righteous anger of God against evil finally escaped and tore into Jesus—the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world by taking sin onto himself. The Temple was now obsolete. The crucified Lamb made it possible for God to dwell among his people and not kill them. From the earliest chapters of Scripture, God promised that one day he would live and walk among his people again―just as he had done at creation. With new creation, it finally happens. In verse 3, a loud voice announces from the throne that the dwelling of God is now with his people. The wedding is on.

Chapters 20 and 21 portray the big day not just as the big day for Revelation, but the big day for the entire Bible. Revelation is not so much Biblical prophecy as it is the fulfillment of prophecy. Way back in Isaiah, the Lord declared, “Behold, I will create (future tense) new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.” In Revelation 21, John writes, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth (past tense), for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. I saw the Holy City (past tense), the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God… He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” The past tense indicates the surety of God’s promises, so sure that their fulfillment can be envisioned as having already happened. Verse 6 confirms this: God says, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.’” This too fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy; already rehearsed by Jesus with the woman at the well. “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters,” Isaiah said. “Whoever drinks the water I give him never thirst,” Jesus echoed, “The water I give will become a spring of water within (read the Holy Spirit here) welling up to eternal life.”

On the one hand then, Revelation is nothing new. Yet on the other hand, God is making everything new. “New” is this buzzword here, so much so that we probably should call the end times the new times, or even better, the good times, given what finally transpires. There’s no more death or mourning or crying or pain, all these things are gone. No more terminal illnesses, no more incurable diseases, no more fatal accidents or funeral services. There’s no more problem of evil because there is no more evil. God allows no more suffering because there is no more suffering to allow. There’s no more struggle between faith and science and reason because we “see face to face.” There’s no more doubt because “the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (to cite Isaiah one more time). There’s no need for sun and moon anymore because the glory of God provides all the light―a light that so shines in the darkness that darkness becomes as day.

It’s literally heaven on earth. Note that unlike popular depictions, heaven comes down to us, we don’t fly away to it. That John sees a “new heaven and a new earth” means that he sees them together as one. The sea―that satanic abode of chaos, disorder and darkness that kept them separate―is all dried up. Heaven and earth wed as the New Jerusalem, a city enormous enough to encompass all of new creation. “New creation” does not imply “brand new” as if the very good of God’s original work somehow went bad. The earth is not a throwaway planet any more than our bodies are mere jars of clay to be discarded when we die. Christians hold to the resurrection of the body, modeled after Jesus’ own resurrected body, by which we mean the ultimate healing and restoration of our actual selves. Paul describes it as a glorified body, freed from the fallout of finiteness. What is true for the creature is true for creation. The dust of creation to which all living things return when they die is the same dust out of which resurrection and new creation rise. There is a fundamental solidarity between creatures made in God’s image and the creation in which God’s image dwells. There is a fundamental continuity between creation and new creation. In the New Jerusalem, the Lord’s prayer gets answered: God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven because earth and heaven are one.

As with Ezekiel in the Old Testament preview, John gets an architectural tour of the New Jerusalem. Its 12,000 stadia dimensions make the New Jerusalem a thousand times larger than what Ezekiel saw―demonstrating that God doesn’t just keep his promises―he surpasses them. The 12,000 stadia city has twelve angels at twelve gates on which were written the names of Israel’s twelve tribes atop twelve foundations inscribed with the twelve apostles. (Twelve is clearly a very important Biblical number). The city sparkles with every sort of precious jewel: jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, topaz, amethyst and the rest (12 in all, of course). There are plenty of pearls too, which make for the Pearly Gates. Unfortunately, once you add the streets of gold you soon start visualizing that stereotype of heaven where everybody wears white robes and wings, plays the harp and flits around from cloud to cloud. Why anybody would want to spend eternity like that is hard to say. Cartoonists depict long lines of people eager to get in with St. Peter at the reception desk doing his best imitation of St. Nick ―checking his list twice to find out who was naughty or nice.

My own recent survey of New Yorker cartoons on this theme found people saying to Peter things like, “You’re kidding! You count S.A.T.s?” or “Wait, those weren’t lies. That was spin!” However, the best lines come out of Peter’s own mouth: “No, no, that’s not a sin, either, silly. My goodness, you must have worried yourself to death.” or “You had more money than God. That’s a big no-no.” or “Yes, but you were the defender of the wrong faith.” or “You’re a theologian? You guys are always fun.” Or “Bad timing. He’s in one of his Old Testament moods today.”

Of course there is no Peter at the gate in Revelation, though there does seem to be a list. Verse 27 mentions “the Lamb’s Book of Life” which presumably does not contain those people listed in verse 8: namely “the cowardly, the faithless, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters and all liars.” If you’re like me, you read verse 8 and get a little worried. Maybe I never killed anybody, but I have been a chicken when it comes to my faith. I’ve told a lie or two as well. And then there’s my flat screen TV that could get construed as an idol. In chapter 20 a great white throne split earth and sky and all of the dead, great and small, stand before the throne as these books were opened. The dead were judged according to what they had done. This reminded me of being taught how on Judgment Day, God would replay my life as a movie for everybody to watch. It would not be a pretty picture. Which is why the Psalmist asks, “If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, who could stand?” Except that here in Revelation, God pulls out his record book. It appears that we’re doomed.

And we would be―if not for Jesus. In Jeremiah, God promised a new covenant, one that Jesus sealed with his own blood, shed for you. This new covenant (not brand new but renewed) made it possible for God to promise in Jeremiah, “I will forgive your wickedness and remember your sins no more.” Thus the Psalmist could answer his own question: “With you, O Lord, there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” The Lamb’s Book of Life is not the book of good behavior, but the book of undeserved grace. The record books of chapter 20 provide corroborating evidence. As Jesus often said, “you can only know a tree by its fruit.” The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” This pronouncement of final Christian judgment tacitly indicts that ancient tendency to take God’s grace for granted and treat salvation as a free pass to do as you please. While it is true that you can do nothing to earn God’s grace, you still must do something to show you’ve received it. Salvation may have no requirements (aside from a desperate need for it), but it does carry ethical obligations. Revelation labels the faithful as those “who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom,” Jesus warned, “but only those who do the will of my Father.” You can tell a tree by its fruit.

And yet the Bible also speaks of such fruit as fruit of the Spirit. The God who promised in Jeremiah to forgive and forget also promised to write his law on your heart. And since that might not be enough, God promised through Ezekiel to provide you with a new heart too. What salvation demands, God provides. God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and carefully keep my laws.” We see this at Pentecost as a band of timid disciples turn into inspired apostles. Between the resurrection and Pentecost, the disciples had hilariously gone back to their boats to fish, as if all they had been through with Jesus was nothing more than extended time off (“Wow, that was some trip. OK, now back to work.”). The resurrected Jesus showed up on shore to wave them in, basically saying “Hey guys, we’re not done!” Jesus then had to take off for heaven, but promised to send help: help that comes at Pentecost. Overcome by the Spirit, the disciples become the ones in verse 7 who overcome by the Spirit and thus inherit everything God has to offer.

To overcome is to live for Jesus like Jesus lived―to turn the other cheek, to do good to those who hate you, to pray for those who mistreat you and even lose your life (or at least your lifestyle) for the gospel―things that in this life tend to get you little more than two bloody cheeks, a doormat for a backbone, more mistreatment, less money and an early grave. To overcome, to conquer, is ironic victory. Still, in Revelation, these victories make up the fabric of your bridal gown. Chapter 19 described how “‘Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous deeds of the saints.)” This same fabric is also the foundation for the New Jerusalem. Back in chapter 3, Jesus said, “I will make the ones who overcome pillars in the city of God… the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from God.”

What seems like such an odd juxtaposition of metaphors now makes more sense. In verse 9 an angel invites John to come see the bride but shows him the holy city. Those who overcome are both a people and a place, or more specifically, the redeemed people of God are the place where God dwells. Rather than us dying and going to heaven, Christ died and comes to us by his spirit so that when we do die, we will abide with him forever, an eternity that has already started. John writes, “I saw the Holy City (past tense), coming down out of heaven from God――just like the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost. We’re in the final descent――all that awaits is a safe landing and the joyous reunion.

Dawn, Violet and I fly south to visit family tomorrow to celebrate my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. We’ll go through that familiar drill as the cabin is prepared for arrival. Seatbelts fastened. Seatbacks and tray tables in their upright and locked positions. Land. Listen for the ding so you can leap from your seat like a runner out of a starting block. Knock people in the head with your carry-on luggage. Oh, and call somebody on your cell phone as soon as possible (if only to pretend that you actually have friends in town).It used to be that you couldn’t fake that. Not only were there no cell phones (as hard as that may be for some of you to believe), but they also used to let people through security without a boarding pass. That meant that friends and family would be waiting to welcome you as you came through the jet-way. I used to love the way you’d see all those smiling faces―and scan the crowd to find the ones looking for you, get all happy and hug when you found them. I loved it so much that it made me sad for people who had nobody waiting and looking for them.

So sad, in fact, that as a teenager (living as we did in a rather boring town), a bunch of us kids, for fun, would go out to the airport to greet lonely people as they came off their flights. We’d stand there with wide grins on our faces, waving and looking until we spotted someone who had nobody there to welcome them home. We’d walk up to these perfect strangers, our arms outstretched, and give them a big hello and a hug, telling them how happy we were that they had arrived safely, and how was their trip, and have a nice day in our boring little town or wherever your final destination may be. They’d look at us all confused―“do I know you?”—and no doubt think we were crazy, and yet nobody refused the hug, overcome as they were by our spirited welcome. After their initial confusion, they’d usually hug back, say thank you and then leave the terminal with a shake of the head and smile on their faces―smiles that I like to think they passed on to others.

OK, it was a weird thing for a bunch of kids to do (like I said, our town was boring), but really no weirder than a city in a wedding dress or flaming tongues falling down out of the sky. Overcome by the spirit, the disciples surely had smiles on their faces as they ran out into the streets of Jerusalem to overwhelm everyone else with the gospel (in their own languages no less). The new covenant expanded the original boundaries of God’s people to welcome all nations―strangers and aliens with no one to welcome them home. Everybody thought the disciples were crazy―and drunk. And yet few rejected God’s embrace that day. The good news of God’s grace not only put smiles on their faces but salvation in their hearts. The prophets had predicted this too. In Isaiah we read of the new Jerusalem, “In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it…. I will build you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires. I will make your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. In righteousness you will be established … you will have nothing to fear.” This has Revelation written all over it. The light of God’s city, the light of God’s spirit within his people beckons all to enter its gates―gates that are always open with lights that never go out.

What Do You Want?

Mark 10:32-52
by Daniel Harrell

Tonight marks Ascension Sunday on the Christian liturgical calendar—the seventh and last Sunday of Easter. Jesus’ ascension into heaven is not something we think about too much. Among the Gospel writers, only Luke records the event―twice—once in his Gospel and once in the book of Acts. Mark mentions it, but only in the tacked on verses at the end of chapter 16 which Mark himself didn’t write. After appearing to his disciples and others post-resurrection, Jesus “was taken up onto heaven” before their eyes, sort of like the prophet Elijah got carried away from earth, only Jesus didn’t require a chariot of fire. His going up on Ascension Day readies us for the Holy Spirit coming down (with tongues of fire) at Pentecost next Sunday. Though we don’t think about it too much, the Ascension provides a core source of our hope and confidence as Christians. Not only did God raise Christ and seat him at his right hand in heaven, but as Paul wrote to the Ephesians (while they still were on earth, mind you), “God has raised us up and seated us with Christ in the heavenly places.” The implications are significant. By faith in Jesus, not only is your seat in heaven is already saved, but as far as God is concerned, you’re already sitting in it!

“You have been raised with Christ” already, Paul reiterated to the Colossians, “therefore set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God”—and where you’ll be seated someday too. In the meantime, since your future is already set, you might as well go ahead and live like it now. As for what this looks like, Paul presents both positive and the negative aspects. As for the positives, Paul lists compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness and above all love, “which binds them all together in perfect unity.” As for the negatives, he lists sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed. It is interesting that this mostly sexual list ends with the economic sin of greed, which Paul calls idolatry (Biblical code for serious commandment breaking). Both economic and sexual sin are fundamentally matters of covetousness—which was what kept the rich young ruler out of the kingdom last Sunday. Covetousness turns love on its head, perverting self-sacrifice into self-gratification. Similarly with anger, revenge, malice, slander, abusive language and lying which are also parts of Paul’s negative list. We covet and do not get, so we get angry and get even, and we lie to make ourselves appear better than we are.

As the global economy continues to sputter and people struggle with losses of every kind, I’ve been intrigued in reading the various opinions behind the causes. Last week I mentioned Bernie Madoff, whose diabolical Ponzi scheme embodies many of the meltdown’s traits: “the illusion of expertise, the belief in getting something for nothing, the mirage and subsequent evaporation of wealth.” But as Nick Paumgarten observes in his most recent New Yorker article on the economy, Madoff is in some ways a distraction, a cover for the more systemic and serious flaws that reach down to the very core of human nature itself. The most insidious root of all human failure―economic and otherwise―remains what it has always been―base covetousness. Wanting more. As one financial analyst turned philosopher put it, “There are two things about human nature that we know for sure. One is that every person wants to be the center of the universe. And the other is that we all want to see what we own go up in value all the time.”

This desire for personal greatness and value—this covetousness—lies at the center of tonight’s red letters from Mark’s gospel. For the third time, Jesus informs his followers what following him entails—giving them, perhaps, once last chance to change their minds. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God alright, but he would not be the kind of Christ that the crowds wanted—no superstar, no superhero, no political leader or war general. Instead (or as a result), Jesus Christ would be betrayed, condemned, handed over, mocked, flogged and crucified. And then three days later, he would rise. James and John, eyewitnesses to the Transfiguration back in chapter 9, decide that rising from the dead is no longer outside the realm of possibility. They overlook Jesus’ gruesome descriptions of his demise and go straight to the punch line. If the seats in heaven are already set, James and John want to ride shotgun. Mark makes no attempt to soften their audacity, though he does report the remaining disciples indignation. However I don’t imagine that they’re angry about James and John’s request as they are at themselves for not thinking of it first. To envy is to covet too.

Jesus can’t believe what they’re asking. Had they not been listening to anything he said? “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” While wine and water may seem harmless enough, especially for those of us who’ve been baptized and taken communion a million times, for Jesus the implications were dire. Recall that throughout the Old Testament, the metaphor of the cup symbolizes the apportionment of God’s blessing, as in “my cup runneth over,” but also his curse. Jeremiah, Revelation and elsewhere describe this cursed cup as one “filled with the wine of God’s fury” to be poured out on all evil. In Gethsemane, the cup Jesus sought to eschew was the one brimming with God’s wrath against sin. For Jesus to drink this cup was to take on the full freight of God’s judgment. Likewise with water. The two Old Testament water episodes referred to in the New Testament as baptisms—Noah’s Ark and the Red Sea Crossing—are both judgment events. Like wine, baptism is the watermark of God’s wrath. Apropos to Jesus, the cup and the baptism are symbols for the cross.

Had James and John appreciated the dark side of wine and water, perhaps they would not have answered Jesus with such enthusiasm. After all, when the wine and water do eventually flow, James and John scatter and hide along with just about everybody else in Mark. Nevertheless, Jesus affirms that in time they will suffer for his sake. However, to reserve the best seats on either side in glory was not up to him. Jesus said, “These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.” As far as we know, the only ones who ever actually got placed beside Jesus were two criminals crucified on either side.

Jesus takes the opportunity to calm everybody down by reminding them again about the distinction between the greatness to which James and John aspired and that which they would actually achieve. Jesus said, “You know that those who are regarded as great ones among the Romans throw their weight around and exercise authority.” (Yeah, they knew―the Romans treated them like their slaves.) So Jesus said, “whoever wants to become great must be a servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” And before they could object and complain about being treated like doormats, Jesus reminded them that “even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Most Christians have heard this stuff so many times that it hardly even registers anymore. We nod, resolve to do better, but don’t change too much because deep down we still want to be the center of the universe. Sure, we admire those who’ve managed to take Jesus seriously, people like Mother Theresa or, well, like Mother Theresa (and she’s been dead twelve years). Or like Henri Nouwen. The late Henri Nouwen was a very popular and powerfully inspirational writer who made his name writing about Jesus’ name. In one of his best-known works entitled In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen wrote that, “The way of the Christian is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on a cross. This might sound morbid and masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of Christ and said yes to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world. To follow Christ is to follow in weakness and humility wherein the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. I am not speaking about a psychological weakness in which Christians are simply the passive victims of the manipulations of their milieu. No, I am speaking of a weakness whereby human power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. True followers of Christ are people so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever, always trusting that with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.”

Nouwen practiced (and experienced) what he wrote in the latter days of his life, shunning whatever literary fame he had achieved in order to serve the severely disabled in a community outside Toronto. I remember taking a class on Christian Spirituality with Henri Nouwen years prior to that. I was recounting recently how on one occasion, just before a spring break in what turned out to be an unforgettable object lesson, he asked us as a class who among us didn’t have any plans for the ensuing vacation week. A few people timidly raised their hands (basically admitting they had no plans and no friends) and Nouwen asked whether they’d be up for flying to Haiti to spend a week working among the desperately poor at a Catholic mission there. Oh, and you’ll be leaving to tomorrow. Nonplussed, the ones who raised their hands said OK (you couldn’t say no to Henri Nouwen). The rest of us, relieved that our spring breaks were left intact, were then asked by Nouwen to get out our wallets. He pulled out a big bucket and passed it around and told us to empty our wallets in Jesus’ name. He used the money (our spring money money) to buy the plane tickets for the others along with supplies and sent them to Haiti the next day.

Several years ago I heard a talk by the late Mike Yaconelli, another writer and minister who was deeply influenced by Nouwen’s writing, especially this book, In the Name of Jesus. Yaconelli had this nutty practice of tracking down living authors whose work had an impact on him, and then traveling to wherever the author lived in order to thank him or her personally. So Yaconelli located Nouwen in Toronto and made an appointment to visit. Unfortunately, his flight got delayed and he was unable to let Nouwen know he’d be late―something to do with misplacing a phone number. He finally arrived in Toronto, but over three hours late.

Having read many of Nouwen’s other books, Yaconelli was fairly familiar with what to expect as he finally made it to Nouwen’s door. Henri Nouwen’s grace and compassion were legendary. Yaconelli knocked. He heard a melodramatic stomping followed by a violent ripping open of the door revealing not the love of God but the wrath of Henri Nouwen. Irate, Nouwen lit into Yaconelli: “Where the hockey puck have you been!? Why didn’t you call?! Do you know you’re three hours late?! I have a schedule to keep! Do you think that you’re the most important person in the universe?” Yaconelli was for a second dumbfounded, but mostly just offended. A lifetime youthworker, he knew how to react in the face of temper tantrums. He barked back to Henri: “HEY, IN THE NAME OF JESUS, DUDE! REMEMBER?”

For you Nouwen fans, you’ll be relieved to know that he apologized and went on to have an enjoyable visit with Mike Yaconelli. But for Yaconelli, it was that initial, stressful encounter that proved most instructive. Not because it tarnished Nouwen’s reputation, but because it reinforced how hard following Christ truly is—even when you’re doing it. Jesus agreed. It is hard―as hard as threading a camel with a needle. As hard as hanging on a cross.

Tonight’s passage concludes with Jesus, his disciples and the crowd coming upon a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. Having heard the rumors that this may be the long awaited Messiah of God, Bartimaeus gives him a shout out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Using the title “Son of David” was Bartimaeus’ way of saying he believed the rumors were true. He’s the only person in the entire gospel who ever uses it. Many in the crowd berate Bartimaeus, they tell him to shut up and get lost. But what more does he have to lose? So he yells all the louder: “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus, not refuting the title, calls him over and asks him in verse 51, “What do you want me to do for you?” which if you’re paying close attention, is the exact same question he asked James and John back in verse 36. The contrast is intentional. Throughout Scripture, sight and blindness are metaphors for genuine faith and the lack of it. James and John wanted to be great in the eyes of others. Bartimaeus wanted eyes to see true greatness. Jesus obliged. “Your faith has healed you,” he said. Or as it literally reads, your faith has saved you. In other words, blind Bartimaeus could already see—even before he got his sight back.

The contrast between the request of James and John and that of blind Bartimaeus is intentionally stark. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Mark intends more than merely contrast. If it is true that we each want to be the center of the universe and have our values rise even as Christians, then Jesus’ invitation to servitude and slavery is useless. We’re just not going to do it. Sure, we’re happy for Mother Theresa and Henri Nouwen, but their servitude made them famous. Most of our good deeds just go unnoticed. I was amused by the story about one church’s noble attempt to get its congregation to serve more. The pastor challenged each member to “outserve” the other for a year with the “winner” (the one who served the most people) getting a cash prize at the end. Reportedly the church never helped so many needy people as it did that year. And no one considered this the least bit ironic. I read about it in a column devoted to “good ideas for pastors to use.” Greed as motivation for love. I don’t know, didn’t Jesus himself caution against any kind of recognition or reward when it came to obedience? Something about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing?

But what good is doing good if nobody sees it? I want to be noticed. And thanked. And appreciated. And applauded. Maybe this is why Mark puts Bartimaeus right behind James and John. Not so much as a contrast, but as a corrective. When it’s greatness we crave, what we need to do is ask for is mercy.

The Ponzi Gospel

Mark 10:13-31
by Daniel Harrell

One of the recurrent problems for modern-day Christians in America is figuring out what losing your life for Jesus’ sake looks like. Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ reddest letters have to do with his announcing his own demise and then inviting us to come along and do likewise. For the earliest disciples, taking up a cross for Jesus left little to the imagination. In a time when Roman rule demanded worship of the emperor, losing your life for Jesus meant losing your life. Going to church was hazardous to your health. However these days, with actual martyrdom being fairly uncommon, losing your life is easy since you know it ain’t going to kill you. But what if by losing your life Jesus also meant losing your lifestyle?

Tonight’s passage is a chronically discomfiting one. A man runs up to Jesus and falls to his knees. “Good teacher,” he asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Many presume the man to be seeking some prescribed formula for salvation, an accomplishable to-do-list for getting into heaven. Perhaps. However, by asking in terms of inheritance, he seems to get that eternal life was not something he could earn or purchase. Jesus characteristically responds by changing the subject. “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” This may have been Jesus’ indirect admission of his own secret identity, but it also seems to emphasize that “goodness” is very hard to reach. Jesus asks about the Ten Commandments, which the man insists he had kept since his youth. Loving the guy for his enthusiasm, Jesus nevertheless lets the air out of his self-delusion. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell however much you have and give it to the poor. Then come, follow me and you will have treasure in heaven.”

At this point in the story, everything the man had could have been a small amount. It’s not until afterwards we learn that the man was wealthy, and apparently it was his wealth that he worshipped (so much for his keeping Commandments One and Ten). The man went away sad, leading Jesus to remark how hard it is for rich people to get into heaven―harder than it is to thread a needle with a camel. The disciples were shocked by this since for them wealth was a sign of God’s favor. If this purportedly pious rich guy couldn’t squeeze through, what chance did poor sinners have? Who the heck could be saved? Jesus assured them that God could do anything, but whether that meant saving this particular rich man is anyone’s guess. We never hear from him again.

Jesus had said back in verse 14 that the Kingdom of God belonged to little children—which is why the Bible always refers to believers as children of God rather than adults of God. Interpreters traditionally highlight childlike qualities of simplicity, innocence and trust as those intended by Jesus, but these characteristics were likely foreign to most first century people. Simplicity, innocence and trust, while admirable, ran a distant second to a whole set of other childlike characteristics such as ignorance, frailty, immaturity, puerility and foolishness. It was customary to view children as insignificant little weaklings who, if anything, needed their inherent weaknesses beat out of them so that they could become contributing members of society. If it was status you were after, better to cultivate relationships with people whose power, money, influence and connections could raise you up a rung or two. Becoming like a little child would be like, well, like selling all of your possessions, giving the money to the poor and running after Jesus.

Now it’s not that prosperity is a Biblical vice. Diligence at work, good stewardship, education and faithful relationships—these are all Christian virtues that can result in financial gain. Yet with gain always comes the expectation of generosity. “From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required,” Jesus said. The issue is never that God’s people sometimes prosper, but that in their prosperity they adopt the attitudes of their newly acquired socio-economic status and afterward ignore or even despise those still clinging to the ladder’s lower rungs. Instead, Jesus insists that we receive the children, do unto the least and love the loser in his name―but not because the child and the least and the loser are weak, least and lost. To love is not to look down and have pity on those less fortunate but to recognize your own true identity among the weak and the lost. The best way to love the needy is to recognize yourself as needy too—receiving a child requires becoming like one.

It might help to understand what the Bible often means by prosperity. The Proverbs speak of prosperity as the “reward of the righteous,” which is why, like the disciples, many tend to equate financial gain with divine favor. But the word actually denotes a kind of contentedness independent of one’s bank balance—good news given the state of most people’s bank balances these days. Biblical prosperity typically manifests itself ironically. The most prosperous people in the Bible are often the most monetarily impoverished. As the apostle Paul expressed it to the Philippians, “I have learned the secret of being content whatever the circumstances, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man to sell whatever he had was not a call to poverty, but a call to genuine faith and trust in him.

Worried, perhaps, that his own salvation was at stake (if not his reputation), Peter pipes up in verse 28 to remind Jesus, “Lord, you know we have left everything to follow you!” Jesus assures Peter that “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age―along with persecutions―and in the age to come, eternal life.” What puzzles most people about Jesus’ promise here is not that persecutions get included as a return on our investment (we all know we would suffer more for our faith if ever we really behaved what we believe). No, what puzzles most people is the hundredfold return Jesus promises “in this present age?” “Eternal life in the age to come” we get, but what’s with multiple homes and family and fields here and now? Who’s ever got that? Is this some kind of Ponzi scheme?

I don’t know if you happened to watch the PBS piece on Bernie Madoff this past week. He’s the swindler who somehow managed to dupe hundreds of otherwise responsible charities, pensions, foundations and friends to the tune of 50 billion dollars. In a classic Ponzi scheme, Madoff paid returns to investors from money paid by subsequent investors rather than from any actual profit earned. As soon as the economy tanked and everybody needed to cash out, Madoff’s jig was up. People bothered by Jesus’ insinuations about rich people and hell have no trouble sending Madoff there. Some accuse Christian health and wealth preachers of pulling off the same stunt. They promise believers that God will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they give generously and just believe they will receive back a hundred times over, citing Jesus’ own words as guarantee. At least when Bernie Madoff promised big returns he actually delivered (if only for a moment). Health and wealth preachers don’t even do that.

Now it may be that the reason you haven’t personally reaped the kind of return Jesus promised is because you really haven’t given up anything to follow Jesus. On the other hand, Peter and the rest of the disciples gave up everything, and nowhere do we ever see them raking it in. Biblical prosperity is not about the money. There is a contentedness and confidence that comes with Christ that money cannot buy. Moreover, there is a community too. Jesus promises not only a hundredfold return in homes and land (code words for contentment—think “a house and a yard”), but brothers and sisters and mothers as well. Who are these people? If you remember back to chapter 3, you’ll recall Jesus was preaching to a packed house when his family rolled into town. Unable to squeeze through the door, his mother and brothers got a message to Jesus saying that they were looking for him. Jesus responded by asking, “Who is my mother?” ―which must have made Mary faint right on the spot. And if that wasn’t enough, Jesus then turned to the motley crew packed around him―poor fishermen and prostitutes, despised tax-collecting losers and outcast sinners―and said “Behold my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, that’s my brother and sister and mother.”

What’s Jesus saying? Look around. We are each other’s hundredfold return. We are each other’s reward. (Let me give you a minute to process that one.) … I can imagine the disciples thinking the same thing. They took a look at each other and thought, “I left all I had for this?” It must have been a little disappointing―and that’s before tacking on the persecutions. Ask almost anybody to describe a Christian and the adjectives typically include words like hypocritical, self-righteous, judgmental, selfish and downright spiteful sometimes. There’s the running joke that churches would be great places if it weren’t for the people. If only we could have Christ without Christians.

Turns out that maybe you can. A bunch of us from the ministerial staff traveled to a seminar a couple weeks back where a sales rep was brought in to promote a product called Monvee (from the Latin meaning one life, or something like that). Monvee is a web-based spiritual assessment tool that allows you to customize your own personal walk with Jesus. You answer a few questions, click a few buttons, and boom, Monvee will do the rest, designing a personal walk with Jesus based on the way God has wired you to walk. Persecutions not your thing? No problem, Monvee will map out a less painful path. Prefer to keep your possessions for yourself? OK, Monvee will steer you clear from those guilt-inducing commands in the Bible. Monvee’s designer described it as “the eHarmony for your spiritual life, but instead of finding a mate, monvee helps you know how you’re wired and how you best connect with God.” The best part is that monvee lets you find G-Harmony all by yourself! No more hypocritical Christians. No more boring church services. No more messy small groups. No more needy people. Just a few clicks and you’re on your way to righteousness. (I should mention that Park Street Church declined the opportunity to become a Beta site for the Monvee launch.)

OK, so maybe I am just a cynical old man who wouldn’t know a life-transforming technological advance if it hit him in his Blackberry. Maybe a programmed relationship with God is better than having to wait and pray and trust and accept all the ambiguity. Just like Facebook, Twitter and other social networks can beat awkward or time-consuming face-to-face conversations with friends that could end up, you know, with having to help them move or drive them to the airport or listen to them go on and on about all of their problems.

This month’s Atlantic ran a cover article on the famous Grant Study, a 72-year longitudinal study of a group of men at Harvard, along with another group from inner-city Boston and a group of women from California. Typical psychology studies look at a single moment in life and can be terribly misleading―a man at 20 who appears impossibly wounded may in fact be gestating toward amazing maturity. Longitudinal studies take in the entire life span and see how everything fits (however they’re very expensive and obviously time-consuming). The goal of the Grant Study was to determine the key to “a successful life.” You can read the article online for all the details, but suffice to say, when asked this past March what he learned from watching the lives of over 300 people across seven decades, the project’s chief researcher, George Vaillant reposnded: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” Look around. We are each other’s reward.

And yet, Professor Vaillant tells the story of one “prize” subject, a doctor and well-loved husband. “On his 70th birthday,” Vaillant said, “when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his wife got hold of his patient list and secretly wrote to many of his longest-running patients, ‘Would you write a letter of appreciation?’ And back came one hundred single-spaced, desperately loving letters—often with pictures attached. His wife put them in a lovely presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to him.” Eight years later, Vaillant interviewed the man, who proudly pulled the box down from his shelf. “George, I don’t know what you’re going to make of this,” the man said, as he began to cry, “but I’ve never read it.” “It’s very hard,” Vaillant said, “for most of us to tolerate being loved.”

Maybe this helps explain our addiction to Facebook kinds of friends. They require little more than coming up with clever status updates. The problem with actual love is not only what it demands you give to people in need, but also that it exposes you as needy too. But that’s not a bad thing. Again, the best way to love the needy is to recognize yourself as needy.

One of the people in my Thursday night small group (that hangs out with homeless folks on the Common) was complaining about having to listen to one of the guys go on and on about this same problem he’s been having for months. An older member of our church heard the complaint and replied how that is the tough thing about friendship: being there to listen to a friend when he’s in a crisis. And it can be frustrating. But the great thing about friendship is that there will be times in your life when things aren’t going so well for you either. And then you’ll have someone there to listen to you.

“No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields―and with them, persecutions.” What if Jesus’ words are not merely some idealistic declaration, but an actual invitation, or even a provocation to us to become each other’s hundredfold return. What if we are each other’s reward, each other’s brother and sister and mother and child? You would have hundreds. What if his mention of persecution is a further invitation, or even a provocation, to step into the harder, more difficult aspects of these relationships, sharing one another’s troubles in ways that cost us something—if not a loss of life, at least a loss of lifestyle or some loss of time? I think if we consistently made that kind of investment, it’d be hard for anybody to use adjectives like hypocritical or selfish to describe Christians anymore. The only adjective that would fit would be rich.

For Better or Worse

Mark 10:1-12
by Daniel Harrell

For more than a year now we’ve been walking through the red-letters of Mark’s gospel; those places where Jesus has something to say. I skipped ahead for Easter to the end, trusting that didn’t spoil the story for most of you. I’m circling back now, wanting to work through chapters 10 through 13 before we call it a sermon series. If I don’t finish by Church Fathers time in July (this year starting with the letter J), we’ll pick it up in the fall and definitely be done before the leaves change. If you’re tired of Mark (which I trust you’re not since you come to church to hear about Jesus), the bad news is that next week’s bicentennial guest preacher, Mark Dever, will be speaking from Mark chapter 9, a passage on which you’ve already heard from me some months back. Had I known that Mark was going to preach from Mark I might have skipped that chapter, but since you come to church to hear about Jesus, why skip anything? That goes for tonight’s passage too. It’s a troubling one for people in troubled marriages. Jesus draws a very hard line. “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

You may recall Gordon Hugenberger preaching about divorce when he walked us through the book of Malachi a couple of years ago. That sermon is still available for download. In it you’ll hear the statistics: The majority of marriages in America will not make it to their 25^th anniversary. The currently divorced population is the fastest growing marital status in America. 1 out of 5 people in America are divorced. One half of all children of married parents have watched their parents split. For many children and spouses, death is easier to deal with than divorce. At least when your spouse dies you can leave up the photos. Christians do tend to hang on to bad marriages longer than others do, but according to the statistics, the same percentage of Christians end up getting divorced anyway.

Among the reasons I hope that you attend or belong to Park Street Church is because of its deep devotion to Jesus, to Scripture, to grace and to the gospel. Which brings us back to our text for tonight. If Park Street Church is so devoted to Scripture, what’s can divorce ever be allowed? The obvious answer is that grace is sufficient for all sin, but there’s more to it when it comes to divorce. It is the case that in Scripture, God sometimes allows what He does not condone. Polygamy is another example, as is slavery. Polygamy, slavery and divorce all occur among the righteous in the Bible, even though none are ever said to reflect God’s will or design. In Deuteronomy 24, Moses allows a husband to issue a certificate of divorce to his wife (and vice versa) on grounds of indecency (a Hebrew word related to nakedness and shame). This same law also allowed remarriage. What was not allowed was divorce on other grounds. In Malachi 2:16, where many Bibles have God saying, “I hate divorce” (which is no doubt the case), the better translation of the Hebrew (as Gordon pointed out in his sermon) should have God saying that “the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, covers (or wears) a garment of violence (or injustice).” In other words, you are not allowed to divorce just because you don’t love your husband or wife anymore.

Throughout the Old Testament, God’s relationship to his people is described as a marriage, with God portrayed as the husband who unabashedly adores his wife. Israel, on the other hand, gets portrayed over and over as the unfaithful spouse. And thus regretfully, in both Isaiah and Jeremiah, God issues Israel a certificate of divorce on account of their indecency. In Jeremiah 3, the Lord says, “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries.” By the time we get to Jesus’ day, this certificate of divorce was clearly being abused. Not unlike no-fault divorces easily available in America today, some Pharisees held that a husband could divorce his wife over anything he didn’t like about her, right down to the way that she cooked his dinner. In Matthew, Jesus reiterates both Deuteronomy and Malachi, stating that “everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman so divorced commits adultery too.” As with God himself, infidelity was the only permissible grounds for divorce. But even in the case of infidelity, divorce is never commanded. In Matthew’s Christmas story, a righteous Joseph sought to divorce Mary upon discovering her to be pregnant with someone else’s baby. The Bible tacitly commends Joseph for intending to divorce Mary quietly so as not to drag her name through the mud. But then God sends an angel to straighten everything out. Divorce was not the solution.

Here in Mark’s gospel, the issue is not so much divorce in general as it is a specific divorce. Jesus has entered the region of Judea where Herod Antipas is still the tetrarch or governor. Herod Antipas had wrongly married Herodias, the wife of his half-brother, also named Herod. John the Baptist had denounced the marriage as adulterous. Herodias divorced her first Herod only so that she might marry his more powerful half-brother. Hers was not a lawful divorce nor theirs a lawful marriage. To silence John the Baptist, Herod had him arrested. Later Herodias (via her daughter) seduced Herod into having John the Baptist beheaded to shut him up for good. The Pharisees saunter up to Jesus and innocuously ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” But theirs was a loaded question. If Jesus agreed with John the Baptist, then maybe he would lose his head too. It was no secret that the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead.

Jesus smelled their trap. So in classic Jesus fashion, he turned their tables by asking them “what did Moses command?” The Pharisees answer by restating the concession regarding divorce (but you’ll note they never mention the only permissible grounds for divorce since they had no intention of losing their own heads). Jesus responds with the reason behind every concession: “It was because you are so hard-hearted that Moses wrote you this law.” Jesus’ forceful retort is yet another censured slap against human sinfulness stretching back to the last chapter―another millstone necklace, another appendage to amputate. But rather than continuing down the hellfire and brimstone trail, he quickly shifts from what Moses conceded to what Moses commanded. He moves the discussion from divorce to marriage. From Deuteronomy back to Genesis. He says, “At the beginning of creation, God ‘made humans male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ It follows that they are no longer two, but one. Therefore don’t let anyone separate what God has joined together.” God may allow divorce on the grounds of sexual offense because human hearts are so hard (and then only to protect the offended party), but he never condones it.

Unable to trap Jesus, the Pharisees slink away. But the disciples remain curious. What did Jesus think about the royal divorce and remarriage? To his disciples, Jesus lays it out straight: “If a husband divorces his wife to marry another woman, he commits adultery against his first wife. If a wife divorces her husband to marry another man, she commits adultery too.” You can’t divorce your husband just because you want to marry someone else. This was not permissible grounds. Like John the Baptist, Jesus denounced the marriage as adulterous. And like John the Baptist, Jesus would eventually get executed with Herod’s consent too.

This helps explain the odd placement of this passage here in chapter 10. Back in chapter 8, on the heels of Peter declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, Jesus announced that as Son of God he must suffer and die on a cross. Peter didn’t like that part, so Jesus called him Satan, which Peter didn’t like either. In chapter 9, the disciples asked about the long-expected return of Elijah the prophet who would blaze the trail for the coming Messiah. Jesus told them that Elijah had already returned in the person of John the Baptist. A suffering Elijah had blazed the way for a suffering Messiah.

And that wasn’t all. Jesus added that if anybody would follow him, you would have to deny yourself and take up a cross to do it. But denying yourself to follow a suffering Messiah has never been for suffering’s sake. You deny yourself and take up a cross for the sake of love. Jesus said there is no greater love than the love that lays down its life for another. This also helps explain the odd placement of this passage here in chapter 10. Jesus changed the subject from divorce to marriage because as much as anything on earth, marriage provides a crash course in denying yourself for the sake of great love. Husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her. Wives are called to love their husbands and give themselves up too. And yet because this is so impossible for hard-hearted people (the only kind of people who ever go for marriage), husbands and wives are also called to rely on God. God is love. And what love demands, God provides. This is why I like to say that love is not the cause of marriage as much as its outcome. When troubles threaten to rip your marriage apart, it is God who gives the strength to die again to yourself again for the sake of love. And once you die to yourself for the sake of love, the only outcome can be resurrection.

Granted, Jesus died and rose to save sinners, but that doesn’t mean that all sinners are saved. You can refuse the love. You can decide to try and save yourself, even though that never works. Likewise in marriage. It takes two people (and Jesus) to make a marriage, and both people (and Jesus) to save a marriage. You can’t stay married by yourself. I don’t say this to justify what happened to me, there is much for which I was to blame. But because divorce did happen to me, I work that it might not happen to others. I try to help couples see that divorce is not a solution to their marital problems. Fixing your marriage is the solution to your marital problems. And as long as both want to do that, with God’s help, any marriage is fixable.

Salt and Pepper

Mark 9:33-50

by Daniel Harrell

Having fast-forwarded to the end of Mark for Holy Week and Easter, it may feel odd to now go back and pick up on some of the red letters we missed during our year long tour of Mark’s gospel. But since you probably already knew the end of the story anyway, I trust that circling back for a few Sundays won’t be too anticlimactic. As we have discovered, among the persistent themes throughout Mark’s gospel has been the persistent difficulty people have had with Jesus being the Son of God. Even on Easter morning, the women who came upon the empty tomb turned and fled with fear. One of the main problems people had with believing Jesus to be the Son of God was his insistence on being a suffering Son of God. It’s a problem we’ve always had with Jesus—and why, I think, last Sunday’s preacher, John Piper, is so popular. (Last Sunday Piper drew more people here to church than the resurrected Jesus did on Easter.) Having never heard Rev. Piper preach before, I liked how his reframing of suffering in terms of joy succeeded in taking out much of the sting. The problem for me is that any actual suffering I endure never feels joyful―at least not while I’m going through it. Afterwards, maybe. Crosses are easier to bear on Easter.

But here in chapter 9, Easter is furthest thing from anyone’s mind and from anyone’s imagination. Real Son’s of God don’t rise from the dead because they don’t suffer and die in the first place. Nevertheless, this theme of suffering Savior is so crucial to Mark that he hammers at it repeatedly. Verse 31: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise.” Mark then adds, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” This is the third time Jesus told this to his disciples, and it won’t be the last. This is also the third time they have no idea what he’s talking about, and it won’t be their last. But they had learned enough to know not to ask him about it. The first time they brought it up Jesus called Peter Satan. The last time they brought it up in reference to a returning Elijah who was supposed to blaze the path for the Messiah. Jesus told them how Elijah had returned as John the Baptist only to lose his head. A suffering Elijah makes the way for a suffering Messiah.

However Jesus does add one twist here: “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.” We know from chapter 3 that the betrayer is Judas Iscariot, but at this point, nobody else but Jesus knows it (not even Judas himself). However, everybody does know what betrayal means. It means disloyalty and treason. Only those who are loyal can be disloyal. Only those who have pledged to take up a cross can double cross. And since Jesus is speaking only to his disciples, they also know that he’s got to be talking about one of them. But how could this be? How could one of Jesus’ closest companions actually turn coat and turn Jesus over to be killed? Jesus’ redefinition of Messiah as a sufferer was disturbing enough. Having one of them be the source of that suffering was worse.

Maybe this is another reason “they did not understand what he meant.” How could they possibly betray the one on whom they had staked their lives and for whom they had given up everything? Then again, they’d had enough experience with Jesus to know that he knew things about them that they didn’t even know about themselves. Maybe this is also another reason they were each afraid to ask him about it. What if you did and the betrayer turned out to be you?

They didn’t ask Jesus, but they did start debating the whole thing pretty fiercely among themselves. Mark says they were arguing about which one of them was the greatest. How did they get from the topic of betrayal to who is the greatest? Easy. Philip says to Andrew: “Something stinks here, guys. Is someone amongst us a traitor?” “I’ll bet it’s Thaddeus!” inserts Matthew, “He never says a word worth writing down in any of the Gospels!” “I doubt it,” said Thomas, “I think it’s Peter.” “Yeah, Peter,” James and John thundered, “he did call you Satan!” “No way it’s me,” insisted Peter; “I walked on water—for a minute! I recognized him as the Messiah in the first place! That makes me most important! The greatest cannot be the worst.” “You’re not the greatest, Peter, I am.” “No, I am!”

This goes on for miles, until verse 33 when Jesus apparently grew tired of their squabbling. He wants to know, “What were you arguing about on the road?” Naturally (or I should say, supernaturally), Jesus already knew the answer. The disciples’ collective shame shut them up. So Jesus took the opportunity to teach them a lesson, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and he must be the servant of all.” One the one hand, Jesus makes another allusion to himself. He is the servant of all who takes all sin on his shoulders― God thereby exalts him to first place and gives him the name that is above every name. On the other hand, Jesus calls his disciples to emulate his servitude. And then illustrates the lesson by picking up a child. While you might have expected Jesus’ appeal to act like children (that comes later), such an appeal wouldn’t make sense here since children exist not to serve but to be served―especially when they get sick and puke everywhere for five days last week (you know, for example).

In Jesus’ day, children were counted as things of scant value. Serving children offered no elevation of status. It’d be like telling people you teach elementary school, or are a daycare worker, or a stay-at-home mom or, heaven forbid, a stay-at-home dad. If you want to be first and great, it is important to cultivate relationships with people who have something to offer; whose influence and connections can prove useful to you. It’s equally important to avoid those whose needs inconvenience you. If you want to be great, you don’t clean up vomit. Don’t do unto others who can do nothing for you.

This makes Jesus’ lesson all the more stark. “Whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me; and by receiving me, you receive the one who sent me.” To serve a child is the same as serving God. Children represent all whose needs are greatest and who need Christ most—those most willing to accept him—the lowly and the least, the insignificant and powerless, those you’re likely to miss unless you’re willing to serve. Jesus said, “Whatever you do unto the least you have done unto me.” And even though cleaning up vomit is disgusting, to help a little one in such need does provide surprising joy. It’s as John Piper intimated last week, serving God pleases God, and pleasing God is the greatest pleasure.

So great that it appears the disciples wanted all the pleasure for themselves. In verse 38, John (who will later make an impudent call to ride shotgun beside Jesus in glory), whines, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” If you remember from a few Sundays back, it was the disciples who were unable to help a child who had a demon. Ironic. Now this unauthorized exorcist was making the disciples look really bad.

I sometimes think this watching street preachers scream at passers-by on the Common to repent and believe in Jesus or die in the flames of hell. I think to myself, “somebody should make these guys stop because they make the rest of us preachers look bad.” “Don’t stop him,” Jesus said (verse 39). “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Throughout Scripture, threats of hellfire are designed to scare you back toward God’s mercy, if that’s what it takes. However, observing the way most passersby give fiery messengers wide berth testifies to their general ineffectiveness. Ironically, in our day, the threat of hell ranks up there as a chief reason for not believing in God. It’s why you don’t hear many preachers preach hellfire and brimstone anymore, not even here at Brimstone Corner.

And yet scroll down a few more verses and Jesus gets pretty fiery himself. Speaking of those represented by children again in verse 42, he says “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, you’d be better off tossed into the sea with a huge millstone tied to your neck.” Better off? Society may not reserve the premier seats of status for children, but it categorically condemns to its inner rings of hell abusers of children. In prisons, the unwritten code is that those condemned for child abuse get abused by everyone else.

We all feel contempt for child abusers. But Jesus goes on to command you apply that contempt to yourself. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to live forever with one hand than to burn forever with two.” Same with your foot and your eye and by extension your tongue, ears and every other part.” Jesus sounds like those guys out on the Common! Cut it out or cut it off! Turn or burn. Try or fry. “It’s better to enter life lame than to have two feet in hell―‘where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

Jesus borrows from Isaiah here, using a popular Old Testament metaphor for hell. And like Isaiah―unlike hellfire preachers on the Common―Jesus does not rail at unbelievers. He warns his own followers. Verse 49, “Everyone will be salted with fire.” It wasn’t unheard of for the magistrates of ancient peoples, and some modern ones, to cut off hands or feet as an alternative sentence for capital crimes. While barbaric, amputation beat the death penalty. Naturally these wounds required cauterization in order to prevent gangrene. Salt served as a primitive treatment for wounds. True, it stung like hell, but at least it wasn’t hell. Getting salted meant that you were getting another chance at life.

This isn’t what Jesus is talking about. The theme is this passage is not hellfire, but service. Anyway, as perhaps you’ve heard Gordon mention in his recent morning sermons on hell, there’s actually more fire in heaven. As to Jesus’ meaning on “being salted fire,” our trusty friend Leviticus rides to the rescue. In Leviticus 2 we read “You shall not omit from your offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” Covenant is just another word for relationship, and for some reason, salt symbolized that relationship. To have a relationship in Leviticus you had to sacrifice, and to sacrifice you had to have salt and fire. To make an offering in Leviticus was to burn it, the fire symbolic of God’s receiving the gift, the aroma the sign of God’s pleasure (most sacrifices in Leviticus, remember, were cooked as meals, not completely burned, so they smelled good and tasted good too—maybe that’s where the salt comes in). “Salt is good,” Jesus concludes, “but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? So keep the salt.” Serve God by serving others. Verse 39: “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me.” But what if you can’t do miracles? Verse 41: “Anyone who gives a measly cup of water will not go unrewarded.” In serving others, it doesn’t matter what you do, just do something! For God’s sake. Serving God pleases God, and pleasing God is the greatest pleasure.

Keep it Quiet

Easter/Mark 16:1-8

by Daniel Harrell

Easter comes at a scary time this year. People are getting laid off and losing their homes. Jobs are scarce. Credit has loosened up a bit and the markets are up some, but there’s a long way to go out of the hole. Senseless gun violence of late has taken so many innocent lives. Earthquakes. War. Global warming has melted an ancient ice bridge in Antarctica, and yet cold weather here seems like it will never end. To top it off, taxes are due on Wednesday. Perhaps you’ve come to church this Easter seeking hope for your fear. You need to be reassured with some good news. You want some comfort to soothe your anxiety and worry. Unfortunately, this year’s Easter story comes from Mark’s gospel. Yes, Jesus still rises from the dead to be sure, but the outcomes dramatically differ from Matthew, Luke and John. Whereas the other gospels have the risen Jesus appearing to the women to cheer them up, in Mark, the women run away. The good news is bad news. Mark’s moral of the resurrection is this: Be afraid, be very afraid.

So much for easing your anxiety. You’re thinking, “I knew I should have come to church this morning!” True, the brightly dressed young man sitting by the empty tomb (most likely an angel) told the women “don’t be alarmed,” but angels are always saying that. The women tremulously back away from the empty tomb, their eyes and mouths wide with panic. Clearly this was not what they were expecting. Although Jesus had told them on several occasions how he would be killed and rise from the dead, nobody really believed it. The women came to the graveyard with burial spices with which to lessen the stink of Jesus’ decomposing body.

The angel said, “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He is not here. You just missed him. He has risen! See the place where they laid him. Go, tell his disciples and Peter.” But too bewildered to talk, the women fled and said nothing to anyone. That’s it. End of gospel. No after-resurrection appearances. No reconciliation with Peter who denied Jesus three times. No go into the world and make more disciples. No breathing out the Holy Spirit. No conversations along the road to Emmaus. No breakfasts on the beach. None of the stuff that you get from the other Gospels. Just fear. The end.

Last summer while on vacation with my family, we decided to take advantage of a beautiful evening and grill outside. The house where we stayed has this huge gas grill, but I forgot to check propane tank before cooking. Turns out that the tank was low. There was enough to get the grill lit, just not enough to keep it lit. Anyway, thinking that the grill was heating up, I got the burgers prepped, popped a cold one, set the table outside. My mom and sister joined me on the patio to watch the sun set. Meanwhile, the flame had gone out on the grill, but fumes from the tank still gathered inside. I looked at the cold thermostat and concluded that nothing was happening. Not thinking, I pushed the automatic igniter a few more times to see if I could get it going and again and… BOOM!! The cover blew off, followed by flying iron grates that whizzed past my sister’s head. My mom sat in shock. The rest of the family came running from the house, including a neighbor from down the street who had heard the explosion. Dawn stayed inside, bracing herself for the inevitable news of my demise. I was not dead, but my eyebrows were singed, my hair on end and black soot and grease splattered on my face. We were all pretty scared. But we were still pretty hungry too. So we ordered pizza. That’s it. Just fear, then dinner. The end.

Naturally the early church couldn’t tolerate such an non-ending, so somebody decided to cobble together from the other Gospels and elsewhere a more fitting conclusion. That’s why most of your Bibles have a line drawn after verse 8 noting something like, “The most reliable early manuscripts and ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.” These tacked-on verses describe Mary Magdalene as has having been possessed by seven demons. They have nobody believing the women’s testimony. The resurrected Jesus eventually shows up and scolds the disciples for their lack of faith, but then tells them how if they will believe, they’ll be able to “Pick up snakes with their hands and drink deadly poison and not be hurt,” which to me only enhances the fear factor. But Mark didn’t write these verses. His part ends without snakes. Some modern scholars assert that verse 8 is the introduction to an authentic conclusion of Mark that has simply disappeared, and they may be right. But if they are right I Though I have to wonder, if the concluding climax is missing, are there other important parts left out too? Maybe a piece where Jesus says he was only kidding, you can worship both God and money? Or at least something about Jesus teaching his disciples proper propane technique.

It is possible that there’s more to Mark than what we have; but since what we have is all we do have, we must make do. Maybe Mark did mean to stop here. After all, people in Mark are constantly being told by Jesus to keep quiet. Here the women do just that. Instead of some cheap, feel good ending, Mark leaves us with something better and darker. A strange, frightening puzzle which leaves every reader to figure out for him or herself what it all means. Still, panic and bewilderment are odd emotions to attach to Easter. Christ’s resurrection is cause for celebration not trepidation. This explains why few churches ever choose Mark as their Easter scripture. When it comes to the risen Jesus, what’s to fear? Where’s the danger?

The answer depends on how you look at it, I guess. Had Jesus stayed buried in that cemetery, people could have come by, brought their spices and paid their respects. Jesus would have been memorialized as a wise sage by some, an admirable albeit failed revolutionary by others. His words would have been studied and pondered, published and programmed as screensavers and iPhone apps. The amenable lines would have been printed onto T-shirts and embossed on greeting cards; leaving the radical and dangerous lines to be tossed aside as anomalies, eccentric utterances of a man out of touch with the times. Seriously, who loves their enemies or prays for their persecutors? Who forgives without limit? Selling your possessions and giving all the proceeds to the poor is hardly practical. And why can’t you serve God and money both? We do it all the time. Becoming least in order to be great doesn’t make any sense either. And who’s ever heard of losing your life to find it or plucking out your eye if it causes you to sin? Had Jesus stayed buried in the ground, we could have left these words buried with him.

But Jesus did not stay buried. The angel says to the women, “He’s not here. He has risen!” You’d think this to be unbelievably great news, yet when the angel tells the women to go and take the good news to the disciples, and particularly to Peter who had to be feeling horrible for being such a weenie, they don’t. They keep quiet. Mark says it was because the women were afraid. I get that. I’m afraid sometimes to tell people about Jesus. I’m afraid that people will think I’m a freak, or demented, or right winged and judgmental, or intolerant. Especially once they hear that I follow Jesus for a living. As I’ve mentioned before, coming out of the ministerial closet can be a real conversation-stopper. Tell most people you’re a minister and the first thing you get is silence. Then comes the smirk (“No, seriously, what do you do?”); followed by the shock, (“Man, you seem so normal”); then the pity (“Job market’s pretty tight, huh?”) and finally the condescension (“Well, I’m sure it’s very rewarding.”).

For my birthday, Dawn treated me to a haircut and shave at this old-timey barber shop in the South End. I got into classic shaving a few years ago after one too many Cary Grant movies. I loved the idea of spending an hour or so under scented hot towels, followed by hot lather and the clean swipe of a straight edge across my cheek. The barber shop was just as I expected it to be: lots of wood and leather, the smell of witch hazel and lime, a barber pole whirring outside. The place reeked of testosterone. There were Sports Illustrated and Maxim magazines on the table and complimentary beer. This was place for real men, and as any real man knows, the only that matters to real men after who won the NCAA basketball championship is what you do for a living. I got scared. What if my barber was one those men who thought faith was for wussies? Or worse, what if he packed a truckload of religious resentment due to some horrible experience he’d had with church in the past? He was going to have a straight razor at my neck. Maybe like the women in Mark, I should keep my mouth shut too.

The only problem is that while Jesus did tell folks to keep quiet, that was only while he walked on earth. The reason was that Jesus didn’t want his fans to get in the way of his life-saving mission. Unlike comic book Messiahs, Jesus didn’t swoop down to destroy evil and sin by brute force. He did it by getting nailed to a cross. He won by losing. He took onto himself the best that evil could dish out and killed it in himself so that it wouldn’t be able to kill us. Sure, we all still die; but the difference is that people who believe Jesus don’t stay dead. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he said, “whoever believes in me will live, even if they die.” And then he proved it by getting up from the grave. Back in chapter 9, where Jesus briefly flashed a preview of his resurrection power for three of his disciples to see. He told them to keep it quiet, but only until he had risen from the dead. In other words, they weren’t supposed to keep it quiet forever. In fact, in chapter 8 he told them, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Dang. I took this to mean I couldn’t keep quiet in a barber shop even if I was afraid.

Had Jesus stayed buried in that cemetery, people could have come by, brought their spices and paid their respects. He would have been memorialized as a wise sage by some, an admirable albeit failed revolutionary by others. His words would have been studied and pondered, published and programmed as screensavers and iPhone apps. But nobody would have had to do what they say. However, Jesus did not stay buried. The angel said to the women, “He has risen!” Jesus resurrection was his validation, proof that all his talk was true. Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus got hammered by the religious establishment for talking blasphemy. He got hammered by the crowds for talking austerity. He got hammered by his family for talking crazy. He got hammered by his own disciples for talking about becoming a casualty. And he got literally hammered by the Romans onto a criminal’s cross. What kind of Messiah does that? What kind of Messiah just up and dies? The kind of Messiah who knows he’s going to get up after he dies. Jesus’ resurrection was his validation, proof that he was talking truth. And if you believe Jesus’ talk is true, then you have to do something about it. Dang.

The barber honed his razor’s edge sharp on his strop. The whetted blade glistened. Dabbing the hot lather across my now exposed and defenseless neck, he predictably asked, “so what do you do?” A bead of perspiration sprouted out on my forehead. My mouth went dry. My heart picked up its beat. (I could say that I “work downtown,” that’s not a total lie. I could say that I’m an author, but then he’d want to know what I’ve written. A psychologist? I do have a degree in that. No, that could be bad too.) The bead of sweat trickled downward as the words of Jesus rang in my ears, “If anyone is ashamed of me in this adulterous and sinful barber shop…” “OK, OK, I’m a minister!” I said, “I preach in a church! I talk about Jesus! I believe he rose from the dead! I pray and read the Bible! Please don’t cut me!” The barber stopped sharpening his razor. He said, “Really? Me too. I pray and read the Bible. I go to this little church up in Revere. We have an awesome sunrise service on the beach Easter morning. You should come. Our pastor plays the accordion. You might even know him.” (I do.)

I was all afraid… for nothing. Which is the good news of Easter, isn’t it? The angel was right, “don’t be alarmed.” Jesus rose from the dead, you have nothing to fear. Jesus rose from the dead; death has no sting. You don’t have to be afraid of dying anymore. Take the fear of death off the table, every other fear comes off the table with it—layoffs, foreclosures, violence, global warming and war, even taxes. Because Jesus rose from the dead, this life is not all there is. As the apostle Paul put it, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pathetic of all people.” But Christ has been raised; so you have nothing to fear even if other people think you’re pathetic anyway. Resurrection changes everything. Because Jesus rose from the dead, you don’t have to be afraid of your enemies. What are they going to do, kill you? You might as well love them and forgive them and pray for them too, just like Jesus said. And why not sell some of your possessions and give the money to the poor? Jesus says you’re getting up from the dead. What more do you need? Becoming least in order to be great? No problem. The same with losing your life to find it. OK, so plucking out your eye remains a dicey proposition, but with the resurrection, sin loses a lot of its allure. And ashamed of Jesus? Not me. Not even in barber shops. At least not anymore.

Jesus in a Bad Mood

Palm Sunday / Mark 11

by Daniel Harrell

Anybody who objects to the idea of God ever being in a bad mood has clearly never read the Bible. Slate magazine editor David Plotz read through the Bible and recorded his impressions in a book he ironically entitled The Good Book. Reviewer Rich Cohen summed up Plotz’s take on the Bible like this: “What’s the deal with Yahweh? Is the guy crazy or what? First he’s schmoozing, walking in the garden and whatnot, then he’s so angry he turns into a column of smoke, and here comes the scary voice, and here come the waterworks, the smiting and rivers of blood, and don’t get me started on his weird obsession with the firstborn. This is a God who loves the camper but hates the counselor — see all the little brothers who prosper (David, Joseph, et al.), and all the big brothers who get smoked. And yes, I know, I was supposed to put lamb’s blood on the doorjamb so the angel of death would pass over, but I am human, I was tired, I forgot. Does that mean the kid had to die? And what the heck does Yahweh even mean, anyway? Forty years to cross 120 miles of desert? They shouldn’t call him Yahweh, they should call him Wrong Way.”

Many might come to the same conclusion about Jesus in tonight’s red-lettered chapter in Mark’s gospel. “What’s the deal with Jesus? Is the guy crazy or what? First he’s all smiles, riding in all Messiah-like on a donkey, waving to the adoring crowds who throw off their coats and cheer him with palm-palms. But then he goes and gets so grumpy that he yells at a helpless fig tree, after which throws a tantrum in the Temple, overturning tables and benches of the people who work there. Talk about a bad mood. And don’t get me started on his weird ideas about prayer. “Have faith in God and you can tell this mountain to throw itself into the sea.” Are you kidding me? Yes, I know, “if I just have faith and believe then it will be mine.” But we all know how well that works out in real life. He’s just messing with my head. What the heck does Jesus even mean, anyway? Get hailed as a king only to go off on your elders and tell them you don’t have to talk to them even if they are in charge? They shouldn’t call him Jesus, they should call him Gee Whiz.

Since it’s Palm Sunday, I’m moving ahead in our red-letter series to Mark’s account of Jesus’ grand entrance into Jerusalem. For the entire gospel Jesus’ fans have been trying to get him to let them treat him like a king, and here he seems to finally give in. However, the same fans must have become severely disillusioned once their king goes kong in the Temple courts, making a huge fracas as he chased out those who bought and sold there. We usually interpret this as Jesus condemning the commercialization of faith, as an indictment against Christian investment schemes or health and wealth preaching. But in fact, buying and selling were necessary parts of proper Temple business. The Temple was where animal sacrifices to God occurred. These sacrifices happened over and over hundreds of times a day for various purposes, the Temple system was all about having a right relationship with the holy God. In accordance with Torah, sacrificial animals had to be perfect. Relating to God cost you the best of your herds, flocks and crops—animals without any spot or blemish. But if you lived any distance from Jerusalem, getting your bull or goat to the Temple without dinging it up was pretty difficult. Therefore as a service to the faithful, the religious authorities arranged it so you could buy a blemish-free bull or bird at the door. You’d bring your cash, change it into Temple currency, buy your bird and give it to a priest to sacrifice. It was all very convenient and very kosher. So what’s the problem?

Mark explains by using one of his favorite literary devices: the Mark Sandwich. Throughout this gospel, Mark sandwiches one story of Jesus inside another in order to amplify the meaning of each. Here, Jesus’ cursing a fig tree provides bread for the Temple clearing meat. In verse 12, a hungry Jesus is looking for some breakfast. Finding a fig tree in leaf, he also found that it had no fruit, sort of like getting to a Dunkin Donuts only to find they’ve run out of coffee. Like any of us do whenever we’re hungry, Jesus gets irritated and curses the fig tree (a pretty pointless thing for most people to do). However being Jesus, you’d think he could have just told the tree to pop out a few Newtons and be done with it. But instead he just tells the tree to die. Jesus comes off as petty and petulant, picking off a helpless plant just because it had nothing to pick. Not that it could have had any fruit. Verse 13 says it wasn’t even fig season. Jesus was clearly barking at the wrong tree. Except that what Jesus does is not about the tree but what the tree represents. That’s right, the fig tree is figurative. Jesus is telling another parable, only this time he’s acting it out for the disciples to see (since they never seemed to understand the parables Jesus simply told).

That the fig tree is fruitless is the parable’s point. Throughout the Bible, God’s people are compared to fruit trees, expected to flower and bloom and produce fruitful deeds in accordance with their redeemed nature. Yet in accordance with their human nature, God’s people persist in resisting God’s grace, treating his favor as favoritism and as permission to do as they please. The prophet Jeremiah had stood in Temple centuries prior and conveyed God’s displeasure. “You have no shame,” he howled, “you do not even know how to blush. When I would gather you, declares the LORD, there would be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave you has passed away from you.” Their sin ran deep―violating every law on the stone tablets. They cheated and stole, they murdered and committed adultery, they lied, swore falsely and chased after shiny idols made of metal and stone. But the topper was the way they used the Temple system to cover their rear: sin and sacrifice only to go out and sin again. Jeremiah yells, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to idols, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are saved!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”

Jesus quotes this last line in his own Temple tirade, intentionally reenacting Jeremiah. If you read “den of robbers” as “hideout for evil,” then you understand how the people treated the Temple as a safe-house for their sin. No wonder Jesus got so furious. By turning the tables and blocking traffic, Jesus effectively brought a halt to the sacrificial charade. He blocks their access to God and throws a wrench in the whole relationship. Jesus also quotes Isaiah, saying that the Temple was supposed to be a “house of prayer for all nations.” The idea from the beginning was that outsiders would always be welcome inside. The Lord is the Lord of all people. God did choose Israel alright, but they were to be an example of his grace, not sole beneficiaries. Somehow they let it all go to their heads, so that by the time we get to Jeremiah, the Temple had become like some exclusive country club. God’s people, rather than putting out the welcome mat for their unbelieving neighbors, treated the Temple as a sanctuary from their unbelieving neighbors. Refusing to let his house be so mistreated, God ironically let it be leveled by the very pagan neighbors that God’s people tried to keep out. In time the Temple was rebuilt, but the people’s behavior never changed. So Jesus brings down Jeremiah’s curse again.

Inasmuch as Israel’s story is our story too, we should presume the same sort of divine disdain whenever we treat church as a sanctuary for the faithful; as a safe-haven to protect us from the secular world. We should presume the same sort of divine disdain whenever we take our relationship with God for granted, treating grace as insurance against our own bad behavior and bad choices. While God’s grace is his free gift and there’s nothing you can do to earn it, you still must do something to show you’ve received it. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth, “therefore we make it our practice to please Christ.” If pleasing Christ is not your practice, the implication is that your insurance may be like something from AIG. Grace is about more than being declared “not guilty” before God, grace makes you into a whole different person. If God’s forgiving your sins hasn’t changed you, it may be that you’ve not yet been forgiven. “You can tell a tree by its fruit,” Jesus said, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

The next day they came upon that figless tree again, and Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” Here’s the other slice of bread for the Mark sandwich. It tastes a lot like Jeremiah too. “While you were doing your sinful deeds,” declared the Lord, “I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen. I called you, but you did not answer. Therefore I will now do to the house that bears my Name, to this temple you trust in, to this place I gave to you and your ancestors, I will [destroy it and] thrust you from my presence.” God let the Temple be leveled once. He would do so again. This is the lesson of the fig tree—except that Jesus’ response to Peter seems off track. “Have faith in God,” he says, “and you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea’ and it will be done for him.” In other words, shriveling a tree is nothing. Believe without doubting and you can transform entire landscapes. Of course if you’ve ever tried that you know that’s not right. I can pray all I want and I still can’t even get a houseplant to wilt (unless I stop watering it too).

This leads us to that seeming disconnect between faith and prayer that we explored a couple weeks back. While Jesus does say here in verse 24, “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” common experience teaches that this is rarely the case, which obviously means that nobody has enough faith. Most mountains remain where they’ve always been, diseases go uncured, marriages unrepaired and jobs unfound. But even if we had the faith to move mountains, that’s no guarantee that they’d move. There is a strong link between prayer and faith, but not always the way we like to link it. It’s not the amount of faith that matters as much as the direction in which it is pointed. And once you start pointing at Christ, your faith and your prayers start to change too. Faith in Christ results in prayer like Christ—prayer that first and foremost says to God: “Not my will, but Thy will be done,” as hard as that may sometimes be.

But why the digression on prayer anyway? I thought Jesus was talking about the destruction of the Temple. It is important to note that Jesus does not say faith in God can move any mountain, but specifically this mountain, which for the disciples hearing Jesus say it in the shadow of the withered fig tree would have been the Temple mountain. Jesus is still on his jeremiad. “Anyone who says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.” Because it’s going to happen anyway. About 40 years after Jesus said it, Rome would sack the Temple as flat as the Babylonians leveled it some 600 years before. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Taking for granted that the disciples were able to put tree and Temple together (which I know may be a reach given Mark’s portrayal of the disciples), it may be that their takeaway was not that they too could wilt plants and move mountains, but that they could sock it to their own enemies. Why take out a tree when you can take down your obnoxious neighbor, your conniving ex-wife or the boss who just laid you off? Knowing how human hurts crave vengeance, Jesus quickly adds a caveat in verse 25: “When you pray, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive your sins too.” For a guy in such a bad mood, this is a remarkable concession. He angrily kills a tree to predict the end of relationship between God and sinners, then prays to throw the whole mountain of mess into the sea, only to turn around and say forgive? It does sound so strange until you remember that whenever Jesus spoke of the Temple he also spoke of himself. Both were the dwelling places for God. And both would be destroyed. The curse Jesus puts on the fig tree and the Temple is the curse he puts on himself. As it says in Deuteronomy, “cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” But Jesus hangs on a tree not to end the relationship between God and sinners, Jesus hangs on a tree to restore the relationship. He becomes the perfect sacrifice for all time and for all people. Remember, prayer is not about getting God to do what you want as much as it is getting you to do what God wants, as hard as that may sometimes be. And what does God want? He wants to forgive sins and draw all people to himself. Even though it kills him to do it.

Yes We Can

Mark 9:14-32

by Daniel Harrell

Coming down off of mountaintops can be hard――whether it’s the first day back at work after a long-awaited vacation, or a return to America after an inspiring mission trip overseas, or literally leaving a spectacular vista for the hike back to reality. If you’ve ever had a mountaintop experience, you never want it to end. Perhaps this is why Peter tried to set up three tents on top of that mountain last Sunday. He wanted to prolong the experience. Along with James and John, Peter got a glimpse of Jesus transfigured, unveiled and resplendent with the light of God’s glory. Moses and Elijah, two Old Testament superheroes, showed up as witnesses to the fact, as God himself God thundered his loving affirmation of his Son. The experience left no doubt that the long-expected Christ, or Messiah, had arrived in Jesus. The only problem was that Jesus hadn’t arrived as expected. He didn’t come as a Moses-like Messiah, brandishing plagues with which to smite his enemies. He didn’t come as an Elijah-like Messiah brandishing fire to chastise his foes. True, Jesus did do some very cool stuff—from walking on water to telling a storm to calm down. But Jesus still came as a suffering Messiah, doomed to die at the hands of his enemies and foes, after which he would somehow rise from the dead, something that the disciples found very confusing. Messiahs don’t rise from the dead because Messiahs don’t die in the first place.

The confusion may have been another reason Peter wanted to stay on the summit. The flashes of glory, clouds of witnesses and thunderous approval were more like what he had in mind for Jesus. But in a flash the flash was over and Jesus was back to being that poor and scandalized carpenter from Nazareth, standing all by himself. Heading down the mountain, Jesus told the dazed disciples to forget about what they had seen until they saw him risen from the dead, which got the whole debate going again amongst themselves about what “rising from the dead” meant. Once at the bottom, their private debate gave way to a more furious public one in which the rest of their motley crew was embroiled. Seems the other disciples had been trying to drive a demon out of a sick little boy, something they should have been able to do since they’d done it already before. Back in chapter 6, Jesus gave them demon-busting power which they deployed with some success. But when they tried to do it this time, they flailed. The religious authorities, who hounded Jesus and his disciples everywhere they went, took the opportunity to jump all over the disciples’ failure as evidence they were posers. A crowd joined in on the fray, loving it when people who think they know what they’re doing are made to look like fools.

I feel their shame. As a hoops junkie during every March Madness, I love getting in on bracket pools. We got one going here amongst the ministers and I got one going at home too. I do all the hoops homework necessary to generate the winning bracket, confident in my astute basketball acumen and leaving nothing to chance. I can get a little obsessed. Dawn, on the other hand, designed this method whereby Violet, our 17-month-old daughter, could fill out her NCAA bracket by repeating back the names of the team she wanted after Dawn recited each match up. It was cute. Cute, that is, until today when Violet’s bracket started beating mine. I’m not too worried though. Violet’s got Siena picked to win it all. She is so going down. Still, I feel pretty stupid.

I’m guessing that the disciples felt pretty stupid too. Granted, you read the sick boy’s symptoms in verse 18 and you realize his was one tough demon: it robbed the boy of speech, threw him to the ground, made him foam at the mouth, gnash his teeth and go rigid. Many recognize the symptoms as an epileptic seizure for which there remains no cure. Jesus said that “this kind can come out only by prayer,” implying that the disciples had forgotten to say theirs. Had they taken their previous successes for granted? Did they think their ability to heal was attributable to them? Had they neglected to pray? I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that even if they had prayed, there’s no guarantee that the boy would have been OK. How many prayers get prayed for healing only to have nothing happen? A recent study of 1,800 coronary patients from six hospitals (including Beth Israel Deaconness in Boston) concluded that prayer for cardiac patients has no significant effect on reducing their complications. Worse, patients who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse. Such findings are always disappointing. Jesus says “ask and you shall receive” which I know doesn’t mean ask for whatever I want, but for proper things like curing disease, repairing a marriage or finding a job. I’ve asked for all these things, for myself and for others, but have not always received them. Mark offers little by way of explaining why aside from reminding us how Jesus himself didn’t heal everybody. Jesus never got married or held down a steady job.

Jesus didn’t get everything he prayed for either. On the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus prayed for God to let him off the hook. He asked to bypass God’s cup of wrath against human evil and sin. He wanted the Father to find some other way to save the world. Yet rather than express disappointment with God’s answer, Jesus responded with submissive obedience, praying what he taught us all to pray: “Thy will be done.” In the end, prayer is not about getting God to do what you want as much as it is about getting yourself to do what God wants, as hard as that may sometimes be. Does this mean that God wants disease and divorce and unemployment and unjust suffering? No, but clearly these are all things God allows for reasons we cannot always comprehend as we endure them. But once we’ve gone through them, there is, looking back, oftentimes evidence of God’s presence in our lives in ways we would not have otherwise experienced it. A world where disease and disaster and suffering never occur is a world Jesus would never have had to die for. A perfect world is a world he would never have come to in the first place.

Such a world is not our world. In our world, Jesus confronts not only a lack of prayer but a lack of faith too. Surveying the ruckus as he comes down the mountain, Jesus throws up his arms in exasperation. Verse 19: “O unbelieving generation! How much longer do I have to stay here with you? How much longer do I have to put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” So they brought the possessed boy over and when the demon saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into another convulsion. The desperate father, willing to try anything, pleaded with Jesus: “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus seemingly takes offense at the inference. He responds “If I can? Everything is possible for him who believes” which sounds a lot like “Ask and you shall receive.” There is a strong link between prayer and faith, but not always like we link it. I don’t think the point is to have enough faith to get your prayers answered. It’s never the amount of faith that matters as much as the direction in which it is pointed. Even weak faith is strong as long as it is faith in Christ. The point is not to have enough faith to get your prayers answered; but to pray enough for faith to accept whatever answer God gives. In the end, prayer is not about getting God to do what you want as much as it is about getting yourself to do what God wants, as hard as that may sometimes be. “Not my will, but Thy will be done.”

Oftentimes when praying for others, I’ll tack on that caveat “Lord, if it be your will,” which makes some Christians mad. They’ll insist such an addendum only exhibits doubt; it’s like I’m managing my disappointment on the front end by giving God an out, which sometimes may be true. They’ll say if I want God to act, I have to ask boldly and believe without doubt, which ironically ends up putting most of my faith in me and my own ability to believe. It is interesting to note how the faith of the sick boy is never at issue here. Commentator Lamar Williamson observes how in Mark, no exorcism is ever contingent on the faith of the demon-possessed person. Indeed, the absence of faith (which he defines essentially as trust ) is the very nature of the possession. Demons do believe who Jesus is, but they cannot trust him.

I was recently counseling yet another casualty of our reckless economy in whom demons of despair had come home to roost. Fearful and despondent, this man believed in Jesus, but wasn’t sure how to trust Jesus, the job possibilities look so bleak. With my mind on this passage, I quoted Jesus’ own words as encouragement, “Everything is possible for the one who believes,” which unfortunately came off sounding somewhat glib. He shook his head sadly, such possibility felt too impossible to him, his faith was so wobbly. Like the desperate father, he believed, but he needed help for his unbelief. So before we prayed for a job, we prayed for his faith. We prayed for faith to trust Jesus knows what he’s doing, even when he’s not telling. Such faith is not some optimistic pipe dream that looks on the bright side and hopes for the best. If anything, Christian faith is essentially pessimistic. It refuses to naively minimize life’s tragedies and troubles with dismissive assurances along the lines of “don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” Instead, Biblical faith instills hope that sees the effects of evil and sin for what they are, but then translates them into what they really are by the power of the cross. Thus suffering, rather than meaningless pain or just desserts, translates through the cross into meaningful redemption and reinforced character. And evil, rather than the perpetual source of inhumanity and injustice, becomes the already vanquished foe, its energy exhausted at Easter. Our own fallible selves, doubtful and devious at times, by faith are nevertheless becoming who we already are in Christ: new creations raised with Christ from the dead.

Coming down from their mountaintop experience of Jesus, the disciples struggled to understand how this could be possible. What does “rising from the dead” mean? How is that possible? In verse 31, Jesus again teaches them how “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” Mark then adds, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” This is the third time Jesus taught them this, and it won’t be the last. This is also the third time they have no idea what he’s talking about, and it won’t be their last. But they had learned enough to know not to ask him about it. The first time they brought it up Jesus called Peter Satan. The last time they brought it up in reference to a returning Elijah who was supposed to blaze the path for the Messiah. Jesus told them how Elijah had returned as John the Baptist only to lose his head. A suffering Elijah makes the way for a suffering Messiah who comes not as a conquering hero but as a crucified criminal who after three days would rise again. But how is that possible? People don’t rise from the dead. If “everything is possible for the one who believes,” does that include coming back to life?

The desperate father prays for help to believe. Jesus dramatically answers by commanding the demon to flee from the boy. Demons believe but do not trust Jesus. Except that’s not exactly true. Demons trust Jesus to do them in. So this demon obeys and departs, but not without convulsing the boy one last time so violently that he went limp like a dead man. The stunned crowd now gathered around concluded just that. A fearful murmur ran through the people. They said, “He’s dead.” But since “everything is possible for the one who believes,” Jesus reached out and took the boy by the hand and lifted him up, or better, Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up, the verb being the same as the verb resurrect. Throughout Scripture, healing and resurrection are always analogous. Healing is an image of the resurrection, it’s a picture in part of what new creation and our new bodies will be when we’re whole. Healing operates as a signpost pointing out the trail, it is not the final summit. Jesus didn’t heal everybody on earth because this life is not it. Even those whom Jesus did heal all got sick again and eventually died.

But those who eventually died will eventually rise. “Everything is possible for the one who believes” means “resurrection is possible for the one who believes.” “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said, “The one who believes in me will live, even though he dies; whoever lives and believes in me will never die” everyone who believes resurrects. Even Peter would eventually get it, and experience it too. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” he writes, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade…. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer. This suffering comes come so that your faith――of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire――may prove itself to be genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed again.” Even weak faith is strong as long as it is faith in Christ who died and rose from the dead. Let us pray for the faith to believe in Him, that we may want what God wants, on earth as it is in heaven, no matter how hard as that may sometimes be.