“Rabbi, I want to see.”
– Mark 10:51

Over these last few months, I have really come to appreciate the way in which The Gospel of Mark has been bringing the story of Jesus to life in a new and fresh way. He has been opening my eyes to the universal call of Jesus, the call to follow Him on the Way into the forgiven and forgiving life, and there have certainly been more than a few moments where this has given me pause and pushed me to consider where I am on this journey.

The story of blind Bartimaeus, the passage I have been reflecting on over the course of this past week in preparation of the Triumphal Entry, is no exception. As Mark continues to lead us on the road towards Jerusalem, he offers us a final picture to help us consider what lies ahead- a contrasting picture of sight and blindness, of material poverty set against the riches of faith, And it is through these two pictures that Mark ultimately uses this story to set our sights on the universal call to follow Jesus to the foot of the cross.

 

Two parts of a single story
Whenever I hear the story of Bartimaeus, there are two things that typically come to mind- the healing and the faith that led to the healing. However, this week has managed to uncover another aspect to this story that I had, up to this point, failed to consider, and that is “the call”.  As Catholic theologian Maarten J J Menken argues, it is actually the call that turns out to the be most significant part of this passage:

“This literary form (the call narrative) appears three times in Mark’s Gospel: first in the story of the calling of Simon and his brother Andrew (1:16-18), immediately afterwards in the story of the calling of James and his brother John (1:19-20), and then in the story of the calling of Levi (2:14).”
– M. J. Menken

Menken establishes in this article that the story of Bartimaeus is formed around the phrases, “get up, he is calling you” and “(he) followed him on the way”, both of which reflect familiar characteristics of the call narrative. Also noted is the fact that the beggar “throws off his cloak” and leaves everything behind to follow Jesus, another dominant characteristic of the call narrative.

So why is this important to note? It is in the call to “follow” Jesus (on the Gospel Way) that the healing of Bartimaeus is actually given a greater (and arguably proper) context, and it is from within this context that the themes of faith and healing emerge as a symbol of:

a) the Way in which Jesus is heading (towards Jerusalem, towards the cross), and
b) the life (of faith) that we are now called to embrace as we follow Jesus and participate in the ministry of the cross.

The Healing Symbol- Understanding The Way in Which Jesus is Heading
I think one of the reasons the healing in this story remains so predominant for me is that it would seem that Mark has strategically positioned it alongside a second “healing of a blind man” story. In both cases, the (physical) healing appears to sit at the forefront.

In terms of its literary function, I believe this is most likely intentional. Mark is essentially bookmarking the three foretelling passages that define chapters 8-10 with these two healing stories (the other being the story of the man at Bethsaida in 8:22-26), and by setting these stories both in front and behind these three foretelling passages Mark is able to do two things. First, he opens our eyes (as readers) to the importance of considering the importance of where Jesus is heading (See, we are going up to the Jerusalem… to suffering, death and resurrection 10:33). For his original audience, Mark is slowly supplanting their expectations (of a Royal ascent to the throne) with the unexpectedness of the cross as the way in which this ascent will take place.

Secondly, Mark uses these healing narratives to help paint a picture of our response to this new reality, this unexpected paradigm, by positioning the disciple’s initial resistance against the faith of these two men who regain their sight. By doing this Mark uses the physical healing to uncover a larger spiritual truth- when we take up the call to follow Jesus, we are also embracing the nature of the cross.

The Healing Symbol- Following Jesus into a life of Faith
The final verse of Bartimaeus’ story points us to the subject of faith as the driving force behind Bartimaeus’ healing and response. It says it is his faith that made him well, but this also leaves us as readers potentially asking, what is this faith really all about?

As N.T. Wright suggests in his book The Day The Revolution Began, the Jesus of history must first be understood from within the Jewish context that He emerges from, a part of a Messianic expectation, a King who would overthrow the pagan oppressors. It is from within this expectation that we gain context for the hopeful idea of a Royal Ascent, the reestablishing of David’s throne. In the story of Bartimaeus, we find Mark including reference to the title “son of David” (vs. 47), a title that conjures up thoughts of this Jewish expectation, a part of this waiting and looking for a new Kingdom to be established by God’s hand and through an anointed ruler. This would be a kingdom that could then look forward to the resurrection of all God’s people and the re-establishment of God’s created order in the end of days.  It is important to recognize as well that this expectation is being born out of prevailing oppression and repression- these were a broken people looking for healing, a divided kingdom looking for unity, the presence of God being once again established in their midst through the rebuilding of a city and a temple.

But here we arrive at the conundrum that the Gospel signified for this broken people. The cross upends these expectations. As N.T. Wright fleshes out, they had a paradigm through which to understand the notion of a King. They would even have had context for the idea of sacrifice (the sacrificial system). However, the idea that the King himself would suffer and die and raise again, in a single resurrection “in the middle of history” rather than a collective resurrection at the end of time as Wright puts it, would have arrived without paradigm, without prior context.

And so, as Jesus says look, the Son of Man will be delivered over and condemned to death and after three days he will rise, His words would have arrived well out of view of their sight lines, well out of line of the direction in which they were looking. Yet this is the direction that Jesus is now asking them to follow, and it is a direction that, most certainly, would have felt uncertain and unclear and confused.

The cross is an idea that requires faith, faith in what Jesus is doing, faith even in the truth of our own blindness. Recognizing that God’s ways are not our own is where faith begins, and it is this kind of faith that empowers Bartimaeus to not only seek out Jesus (it would seem with fear and trembling… have mercy on me is his request), but to throw off his cloak and embrace Jesus’ outpouring of mercy in the midst and his own oppressive circumstance.

Here is the truth- this kind of faith is a risky business. It demands sacrifice, and it even demands response far before the full healing occurs. As Christians today, we are likewise called to believe in what God is doing in our midst before we see the fulfillment of His promise for a New Jerusalem completed.

But for as risky as it is, faith is also where we find healing in the here and now. This is where the healing image finds its power, and this is where we can begin to see that the healing of the blind man is about much more than simply physical healing. This is a healing that imagines a new kingdom being established at the foot of the cross, in the muddle and the mess of a broken world. This is a healing that imagines the universal reach of God’s love in the midst of this brokenness and resistance. It is a healing that gains us a vision of God’s restoration purposes, even as we remain under bondage to the effects of sin- which is the death and decay of God’s great created order, the blinding of God’s intended vision. It is a healing that now finds life in death, hope in hopelessness.

 
Even further, and this is the great image of the Bartimaeus’ reponse, is that this is a healing that strips us bear and clothes us anew with the call to participate now in the forgiven and forgiving life that the cross strives to imagine on our behalf. And the more we participate in this, the greater our vision can grow for what God is doing now and in the age to come.

 
The Healing Symbol- The Forgiven and Forgiving Life
When I consider Bartimaeus as a call narrative, two things happen. First, I am able to recognize in the life of the outcast beggar (defined by the rebuke of the many) the truth that the Gospel of Jesus has a universal reach. This man would have been the last in line to receive the kingdom of God, and Jesus offers him the freedom to “take heart and get up” and join them on the Way. The great truth here is that at the cross I not only align myself with Jesus, I also align myself with the beggar. And far from leaving me an outcast, struggling on the sidelines as a spectator, this is where I find and am able to share in the invitation to “take heart and get up” along with Bartimaeus. This is where Jesus heals my own blindness and leads me towards a new way of seeing, a truth that, if I look back to Mark chapter 1, leads me all the way to the very definition of repentance- a turning to “see” in a new direction, an opportunity to live into a different kind of life than the one I am leaving behind- the forgiven and forgiving life.

It is interesting to me that when Bartimaeus recovers his sight, Jesus tells him go “your” way. And it says that Bartimaeus then follows him on “the” way. I find this significant, because when we encounter and follow Jesus, we are effectively embracing the Way of Jesus as our own. The cross now becomes our shared reality, and the company that we travel with becomes our shared community, our family.

 

Menken goes on to argue in his article that the crowd serves a purpose in this narrative. Words originally spoken by Jesus are now set in the mouths of the crowd, something that is juxtaposed against other narratives where the one saying “Take heart. Get up” is the healer himself. This becomes a powerful picture in Mark of the way in which we come to share in the Way of Jesus, to become participants in the life that Jesus models on the cross for us, a life that is built on the idea of the forgiven and forgiving life as the only means by which we can build a shared faith, faith in what Jesus has done and is doing in our midst through the reality of the cross.

Faith, Forgiveness and the Prayer of the Rabbi

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
– Mark 11:22-26

If faith is the kind of confidence that Bartimaeus exhibits in his response to Jesus, the kind that can command mountains to move at will, what is clear from this passage in Mark 11 is that it is actually Bartimaeus cry (prayer) that remains the most significant part of this picture of faith.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

As I said earlier, faith is a risky business, and here in chapter 11, these further words of Jesus go on to explain why faith is so risky.

It is on the cross that Jesus sheds light on the most difficult part of living as a family, in community with God and others- the forgiven and the forgiving life. It would seem that moving mountains might be the most difficult part of this passage, but where Jesus ultimately lands is on forgiveness. And not simply in terms of moral restitution- as N.T. Wright would point out, that would be thinking in far too narrow of terms- but forgiveness as a way of a life, forgiveness as a way of embracing a Gospel that has universal reach. Faith by nature sets us in the midst of a shared community. It reminds us that this life of faith is not only internal, it is external, not simply personal but social. In other words, faith is a family affair, and we all know family can be incredibly messy.

As I said earlier, when Bartimaeus declares Jesus to be the “son of David”, he is speaking in terms of community, a community that reaches all the way back through the history of God’s chosen people. It is a community that God raised up to be His witness for the sake of the world, and it is out of this tradition that Jesus arrives to call all of us to become a witness for the sake of the world. When Bartimaeus speaks as an outcast, he is speaking to the hope that Jesus will be able to provide him the means to enter back into this community. And this is the true concern of all the healing stories in Mark, not the physical restoration, but rather the need to belong, the ability to re-enter the family of God.

Interestingly, this phrase by Bartimaeus is the only place where this title for Jesus appears in the Gospel of Mark, something that Jesus goes on to address in 12:35-37:
“While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:

 “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”

 The large crowd listened to him with delight.”

Here Jesus uses this designation- Son of David, to set our sights even higher, towards the Son of God. The true delight of this statement is that this becomes the means by which Bartimaeus is able to not just see, but belong once again. This is the authority by which Jesus builds His kingdom through the lives of the last and the least, the means by which He enacts God’s intention of  this expected Royal Ascent. Jesus is indeed taking the throne, but when our eyes are opened, we are able to see that the New Jerusalem is being built on a hill, on a cross, and through the notion of the family of God, the raising up of a community for the sake of the world.

In the healing of our sight we are given the means for understanding the cross that awaits Jesus in Jerusalem. In the healing of our sight we are given the means for understanding what it means to take up this cross ourselves and to live into the coming Kingdom of God that the Resurrection of Jesus now upholds. And it is in the healing of our sight that we are able to consider that the suffering, the death and the resurrection all point us in a single direction- a shared community with God and others, a community that can only function through the forgiven and forgiving life that Jesus is modelling for us on the Way to Jerusalem.

This is why the final prayer of the blind man is so powerful.

“Rabbi, let me recover my sight.”

It is a prayer that all of us, I think, would do well to adapt into our daily life and routine. How often do I resist the cross along with the disciples? Every day if I am being honest.

So Lord, let me recover my sight this Easter season for what the Cross means for my own life. Let me recover my sight for what this Resurrection faith means for the world. And let me recover my sight for how I can participate in this risky business of faith, and become a greater witness of the forgiven and forgiving life.

Sources Referenced:

https://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/article/viewFile/442/341

The Day The Revolution Began by N.T. Wright

“You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; and come, follow me.”
– Mark 10:21

I have a confession- I struggle with the idea of being counted as a part of God’s family, and verses like this often expose this struggle with this idea that I am not good enough, that I haven’t done enough to actually make a difference in this world, and, as a result, I often find myself tending towards the disciple’s response in verse 26, who proclaim with an apparent sense of exasperation over Jesus’ words to go, sell, and give more, “who then can be saved?”

This feeling that I have has much to do with past failure to live up to my own expectations of myself. I know this. I also know this feeling of failure over finding my place in this world, a place in which I can actually make a difference, that actually needs what I have to offer, has more to do with my own needs than the needs of others. I get it.  But knowing this has never seemed to change the feeling itself, the feeling that I desperately want to go, to sell, and to give more, but no matter how much I do this, not matter how much I try to serve, it never seems to be significant enough. This is especially true on the days when I end up measuring myself against or competing for a spot with others around me, which happens quite a bit. It doesn’t help matters that I belong to a family that is entrenched, in some form or another, in significant social service, missions and community care. The truth is, there is always something to remind me that I consistently measure downwards when it comes to the going, selling, giving portions of this passage, and that there is always someone around me that is doing it so much better.

And so, I don’t do well with passages like this one. They typically draw me in, spark that longing to serve and to give more, but then they usually just leave me feeling discouraged and helpless. And when I partner this with the idea of my relationship with God, it also tends to leave me worried and exasperated about the state of my own faith. So, given that this is the passage I have been focusing on over the last 7 days, it should go without saying that this past week has proven to be a rather long one.

And yet if I am to embrace the words of the Gospel of Mark, the words of Jesus, I also can’t choose to simply avoid them, and thankfully, in my willingness to dwell on this passage this week, I have also gained a new found sense of freedom this week. As I find myself sharing in the exasperation of the disciple’s initial response, I have also come to share in the comfort of the words of Jesus that follow, words that I have managed to miss in all these years of reading this passage from the perspective of my personal struggle. And so, my hope for this week’s reflection is that it can help illuminate some of my misunderstandings of this passage over the years, while also communicating this new found sense of comfort and freedom.

 

Uncovering The Motivating Question
What must I do to be saved? To inherit eternal life (vs. 17)? This is the question that drives the rich man in this passage to seek out Jesus, and it is to this question that we find Jesus directing his familiar response:

 “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; and come, follow me.”
– Mark 9:21

It is this same question that plagues the disciples later on the passage, and so it is important to keep this “salvation” concern close at hand as I navigate the nature of Jesus’ response to this question.

 

The Puzzling Nature of Jesus’ Response
“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
– Mark 9:18

If verse 21 feels familiar and hard to miss, it is Jesus’ opening words in verse 18 that feel foreign and easy to miss, at least for me. They seem odd, almost like a brief, stray line that was added along the way, an interruption to be navigated as I forge my way to the more recognizable and relevant passage that I have heard preached many times over in my lifetime. When it comes to the words of vs. 21 (above), I find it is easy for me to relate to the rich man’s concern, mostly because I struggle with it myself. The challenge of Jesus in telling us to go, to sell, to give, and to follow, feel practical and simple, even if I don’t like it and even if I fail at it. At least I know where I stand. The words of verse 18, however, feel much more ambiguous, much more complicated, and these are the words that managed to stop me in my tracks this week as I tried to give more thought as to why Jesus included them.

“No one is good except God alone.”

No one is good but God, and yet the rich man wants to know that he is good enough. This presents the rich man, and us as readers, with a bit of conundrum. That Jesus seems okay with letting us sit in this conundrum is made clear by the fact that he persists in enabling this further in the ensuing verses:

In verse 19, Jesus goes on to ask the man if he knows the commandments. As a good Jewish believer, he has kept all of these commandments from his “youth” (vs. 20). But, as a good Jewish man, Jesus goes on to reveal that he is still not quite good enough. Which is what sets up the words of verse 21, which again reads,

“You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
– Mark 9:21

The passage tells us that after hearing this, the rich man went away “disheartened” (vs. 22)

This is how I feel on my best days, because, in actuality, I tend to isolate this passage to these words instead of reading further. I come to Jesus, I try to do more, but that more is never enough. And so I find myself sitting with this similar feeling of “sorrow” and defeat. It drives me, like the disciples, to question whether I am actually a part of God’s kingdom, which in turn drives me to want to know what more I need to do to in order to know that I am a part of this Kingdom.

It’s enough to drive a man to drink, but since I don’t drink I normally just wallow in my anxiety… or write blogs like this one. It can be therapeutic.

Thankfully, though, there is more to this passage. It does go on, and in the remainder of the passage, Jesus now turns his attention back to the disciples in an effort to explain what they had just witnessed in the rich man’s struggle, to help explain the ambiguity of setting together the call to be better and the declaration that no one is good.

Turning a Conundrum into an even more Impossible Conundrum
But at first glance, Jesus doesn’t make things much better. At least not on the surface. In turning to the disciples, Jesus proceeds to explain his response to the rich man and the rich man’s response to Jesus. First, He notes how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. He follows this up with an analogy, an analogy that would have made perfect sense to his first-century audience- it is easier to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (gee, thanks Jesus).

It says that the disciples were amazed when he says these first words, and “exceedingly amazed” (I read flummoxed) when he follows up which such an intense analogy as a camel and a needle, and this is what causes them to respond (in exasperation), “Then who can be saved!!!!!!!” (exclamation points added by me).

It seems rather easy at this point, if you are like me, to continue feeling even more discouraged, disheartened, sorrowful. Jesus has definitely not lightened the load of the struggle. But here is where that little line at the beginning of this passage begins to creep back in, the one that I have consistently glossed over in the past but is now suddenly becoming more and more important.

 “No one is good except God alone”

If Jesus left the rich man with a conundrum, here he leaves the disciples with an even greater, more impossible conundrum. And this might be the most important thing to recognize, as readers, when making sense of this passage: It would be impossible, of course, to fit a camel through the eye of a needle. Less obvious though would be the message that it is equally impossible for the rich man to do enough to earn his way into eternal life. And this, I believe, is the point. Jesus leaves us with a conundrum so that He can disable our need for control. When we no longer feel in control of how or when or where we are able to “do enough”, perhaps then we can turn our ears and eyes to what Jesus is trying to say here.

The rich man knows the law. He has even kept the law. But it is the call of Jesus to relinquish his grip on his “possessions” that causes him to leave feeling disheartened, that causes him to feel he can never measure up in the eyes of Jesus. But what he misses by allowing this feeling to get in the way of the call of Jesus in his life, is the truth that this obscure, inconspicuous line- “no one is good…” are actually the words that were intended to free him from this sense of condemnation, to lead him towards hope rather than hopelessness.

Reimaging the Possible amidst the Impossible
The disciples are amazed (and exceedingly amazed) at what Jesus says because they feel, and perhaps share in the rich man’s despair. They point backward to their own willingness to leave everything behind (in the second chapter of Mark) in order to follow Jesus. But if this was not enough, if no one is good even when they leave family, home and possessions for the sake of following Jesus, then what more could they have left to give? What more could they possibly do to enter the Kingdom of God?

It is here that Jesus’ words cut through the tension of the impossible conundrum that they find themselves in. Who then can be saved?

“With man it is impossible, but not with God.”

And it is here, I think, that we arrive at the larger concern of this passage, the “freeing” concern of this passage. When the disciples point out that they had left everything to follow Jesus, Jesus affirms this as a positive action of faith (whoever leaves… will receive). But then he leaves them with a pretty big “but”- BUT, “many who are first will be last, and the last first (vs. 31).” In other words, certainly, strive to live into the Kingdom, seek after the right kind of treasure- this is what it looks like to be a follower of Christ after all- but as you do this, guard yourself against any thoughts and assumptions that suggest you have earned the right to front-of-the-line access to the Kingdom of God. The minute you begin to think this way is the minute you will find yourself feeling condemned, which is exactly where we find the rich man in all of this, carrying the hopelessness, disheartenment, and despair that causes him to turn away from Jesus rather than towards Him.

When we consider it in this light, we can begin to see that this passage is not simply about what the rich man does or does not do. It is not that the rich man is not good enough or hasn’t done enough to enter the kingdom. If this were true, Jesus’ own words in this passage would leave all of us condemned and without hope. In truth, even without Jesus’ word, the rich man has already condemned himself. He cannot do enough to gain eternal life because he expects he must do everything in order to gain it.

The rich man misunderstands the way of Jesus, the way of the Gospel, believing that the treasure he is seeking (in his question about eternal life) is something that he must earn by doing. But, as the passage right before this one reminds us, our place in the Kingdom is actually something we receive, not earn, and it is something we are called to receive with a childlike faith.

 

Receiving the Kingdom With a Childlike Faith
It is interesting that Jesus calls the disciples “children” in the middle of this passage, as in the preceding one we find Jesus declaring that the kingdom of God belongs to the children, saying “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it (vs. 15).”

 

If we go back even further to 9:37, we find this passage: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. If anyone would be first they must be last.” I argued in my reflection on this passage (see my previous blog) that the picture Jesus is giving us here is a picture of what it means to live into the Kingdom of God (Jesus, Heaven, The Gospel). The image of a child suggests that they have not earned their right to the kingdom, and thus we receive them without question of merit or earthly accomplishment. The sin that this passage  (in the larger context of 9:37) alludes to then, as I argued, is a sin of exclusion. Whoever hides from someone the truth that they are a child of God is the one that stands condemned, for (again) the first will be last and the last will be first. Who comes in first and who comes in last is not ours to judge.

 

On the flip side, Mark now completes the analogy of this childlike faith by turning the question inwards in the story of the rich man. Not only are we called to receive others as “children” of God, but this same truth must then direct us to receive the promise of God’s redeeming work in our own life “like a child”. It is not a mistake that Mark includes the line, “(and) Jesus looked at him and loved him” (vs. 21). This is God’s heart, His primary concern, is the love of His children. This is easy to miss, to forget when we find ourselves caught up in trying to earn this love rather than living into it.

 

 

Every act of faithfulness and trust in God is a good “work”. There is an element of this passage that certainly does call the rich man to a greater way of living, and there is also a moment in this passage in which the rich man chooses to live in a different direction.  Finding freedom here does not mean doing away with these parts. Seeking the greater treasure, the treasure that comes with living the kind of sacrificial life that Jesus embodied on the Cross, is what Jesus calls us towards after all, and it is to this kind of life that the Gospel calls us to strive for, to desire. BUT, what I learned this week is that the way we understand and approach this truth matters a lot. Behind this call Jesus is reminding us, don’t ever get caught up in thinking that you can earn your way into the kingdom. This way of thinking is idolatry, and it only leads us to condemnation, both of ourselves (for not measuring up to the impossible) and the condemnation of others, of withholding the truth from others that they are loved by God, children of God intended for so much more than simply earthly treasures.

 

 

Now in This Time and In the Age to Come
There is a curious moment in this passage when Jesus talks about having treasure in Heaven (vs. 21). When he goes on to speak to the disciples, he tells them that “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel ³⁰ will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age… (vs. 30)”. Jesus then goes on to suggest that these same treasure have an eternal context in the “age to come”.

 

The treasures that Jesus calls us to seek after have both an earthly and eternal character. What is more, Jesus suggests that what the disciples have given up (family, work, home) they will find a hundred fold “now in this time”.

 

Here is what I think this means. When we understand the truth of this childlike faith, it can grow our perspective of what Jesus has come to do. In this picture of a child, Jesus expands our vision of just how far His kingdom is intended to reach. What they will receive a hundred fold is a greater picture of God’s family, a greater vocational purpose, and a newly found picture of our true home in the Kingdom of God.

 

But as we wait for the promise to be fulfilled, Jesus also provides us with a caveat. What they will receive in this time will come with struggle (persecution). But this struggle will always point us towards a greater hope- the promise that we find in the age to come, the promise of eternal fellowship with the Father both here and in the eternal, the restoration of our world, and the right to be called his children and to belong in the larger family of God. What the rich man failed to see was that he was looking in the wrong direction, towards the way of the world instead of the way of Jesus. Rather than walk away condemned, he simply needed to walk towards Jesus. Freedom was waiting for him here, all he needed to do was receive it like a child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
– Mark 9:29

As I continue to anticipate the “Triumphal Entry” in Mark 11, I find myself reflecting on the call to prepare, to keep my eyes open for what Jesus says is coming on this road to Jerusalem (Mark 10:33)- the predicted suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.

“See, we are going up to Jerusalem…”

As He prepares to approach the Cross (and as we do likewise in this season of Lent), Jesus calls the disciples to consider the place of prayer in helping them to make sense of the Way that is to come.
So why Prayer?
When we find Jesus facing the reality of his own death in the garden (14:32-42), his first position is towards prayer. In this same spirit, his call to the disciples is to also pray. The closer we get to the Cross, the more necessary prayer seems to become.

The indication in Mark 9 is that prayer exposes our limitations. Prayer picks up where we have nothing left to give. As Jesus says, there are certain things that can only be “driven out” by prayer, and when we come to the end of ourselves, prayer accomplishes what we cannot.

So the first question I had in reading this passage was, what does Jesus mean when he says “this kind”? What are the limitations He is referring to?

The immediate answer seems to be the spiritual forces that are clearly present in the passage. Here we find a boy who has been possessed by demons since “childhood” (or birth), demons that prove to be more powerful than the disciple’s ability to counter them in Jesus’ absence.

We could also recognise these “kinds” in a more general sense, as a metaphor for our ability to face the impossible struggles in this life, and the power of Jesus to help us face the impossible.

However, as I considered this passage in the light of the larger Gospel message, another possibility jumped out for me:

A Precursor to Jesus’ Death and Resurrection?
In this passage, the boy suffers (for years), they believe the boy is dead, but then it says he “arose”. What is of interest is the passage that immediately follows this story. Here the healing of the little boy is set in the light of Jesus’ second prediction of His own suffering, death, and resurrection.

I could be wrong, but it is possible that Mark was looking to represent this passage, which interestingly is the longest rendering of this story in all of the Gospels (and as a Pastor at my Church pointed out, possibly the longest narrative in the Gospel of Mark itself), as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own experience on the cross. If this is true, what should come to light in the story of the healing of the boy is the suffering and the restored life, not the possession. But there even more still to this passage that causes me to think this is the right interpretation:

 

Keep Watch and Pray so that you do not fall into temptation
Actually, before Jesus calls them to pray, the first thing he asks them to do is to watch. This reminds me of the call to look and “see” the path that lies ahead, the road to Jerusalem. It is in their failure to keep watch that he then calls them to watch “and” pray “so that (they) may not enter into temptation”.

First, this call to watch (or to see) is a prominent theme in Mark. On the road to the Cross, Jesus continues to encourage the disciples to see the Way in which He is headed. In the story of the Gospel, Mark continues to emphasize the call to see Jesus for who He is. And the disciples continue to resist it. Here in the garden they are once again called to watch, to look and see (and anticipate) what is coming- the suffering,

Here in the garden they (the disciples) are once again called to watch, to look and see (and anticipate) what is coming- the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus that He has been foretelling. And here is the thing. Jesus does not call them to keep watch so as to conquer or stand in the way of the coming enemy. This would be against the message that the Cross is the way, through the suffering and death that it entails, that Jesus has chosen to travel. Rather, the disciples are called to watch so as to become aware of what Jesus is doing on the road to the Cross, and what He is doing Mark has made rather clear for his readers. He is bringing God’s Kingdom, His kingdom to the world, for the sake of the world. He is opening up the doors of the Gospel, God’s promised restoration, the restoration they have been waiting for so that God’s saving power can be embraced by the world without limitations

 

This is what the disciples are called to keep watch for. They are called to see the Way of Jesus as He declares His Lordship, His Kingship, on His terms, not ours.

When I recognize this, I can now begin to understand the temptation in the garden to be speaking to:

1. our tendency to either miss what Jesus is doing (being found asleep with our eyes closed) or;
2. our tendency to resist what He is doing (to see what Jesus is doing and insist that His way through suffering and death on the Cross is not the way they expected the Messiah to establish this new Kingdom).

 

It is against these two tendencies that Jesus calls us back to the power of prayer that this story about the healing of a little boy brings to light. Jesus is able to embrace the suffering and death that is coming His way because of the power that prayer entails, and He extends this same power to us.

 

The Temptation, the Transfiguration, and the Power to Transform
As I wrote in my previous reflection on the marriage of salt and fire in Mark 9:42-50, the temptation is the tendency to allow our own unbelief (in the power of God to save on His terms, not ours) to hide the message of the Cross from those who need to hear it. When it speaks of causing these little ones to stumble, it is ultimately a message of inclusion versus exclusion. It is about the sin of hiding from someone the Gospel truth that they are a child of God.

“I believe, help my unbelief”
– Mark 8:23

Matthew reads this same story (of the healing of the little boy) as a problem of “little faith”, faith in what Jesus is actually doing on the Cross. In Mark 9, we find Jesus coming down the mountain after the account of the Transfiguration to rejoin the disciples. This is when we encounter the demon possessed little boy. By connecting these stories together, Mark is presenting us with a contrast. The unbelief of the disciples that leaves them unable to the heal this little boy in Jesus’ absence leads to a lack of power, while the power that the Transfiguration affords to Jesus on the mountain (in declaring Him the Son of God) declares Him to be all the power that we need. It is at this moment that the truth that we as readers have been made privy to in the opening line of Marks Gospel seems to become unleashed on the world- Jesus is the son of God, God Himself taken on flesh. He is the hope for the world, the power of God to transform the world. But what this also does is open up the tension for what this means for us in our own limitations, and it is in the story of a little boy’s healing that we are confronted with the reality of this tension.

And here is the thing. When we insist on our own way, we miss Jesus. When we raise our eyes up to the Mountain, when we lift our sights upwards and outwards, this is where we learn to see Jesus.

And here we arrive at the true power of prayer. Prayer is the means by which we re-center our perspective on the source. It is the way in which we move our eyes from our own need to control our circumstance, our own desperate need to control outcomes, to the one who then moves our sights from the mountain to the Cross, to the will of the Father rather than our own. “This kind”, our struggle to accept the will of the Father, to resist the road that we find in the Way of Jesus, can only be driven out by prayer.

 

All through the Gospel of Mark, the disciples resist Jesus’ predictions to where He is heading. And all through the Gospel Jesus continues to point them back in this direction. He points our sights upwards and outwards, to the throne on the mountaintop to the work at the foot of the Cross. This Way seemed impossible to the disciples. This is not how the Messianic promise was to come to fruition. Death is not an answer to suffering, nor was the Resurrection of their King, a single individual, the way to the restoration of their people. And yet, here we find the story of a father approaching Jesus saying, “if you can… have compassion on us and help us. (Mark 9:22)” To which Jesus answers, “All things are possible for one who believes.” This is what prayer does. As the father cries, “I believe, help my unbelief”, this becomes his prayer. And it is in this prayer that Jesus affords this belief, the kind of belief that comes not from ourselves, but from the Spirit of God, power. Power enough to find God’s compassionate care, His desire for restoration and healing in the face of this little boy’s suffering and death.

 

Power enough to raise Jesus from the Cross in order to bring His Kingdom to the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memory can be a funny thing. At 40 it gets even funnier.

Like when you find yourself planning a trip with the hope of forging new ground, exploring a new part of the world and establishing a new tradition for your family, only to realize when you get there that you have, in fact, been in this place before. The place in question? Duluth, Minnesota.

To be fair, I was much younger when I last visited Duluth. This was long before I managed to stumble over the other side of the hill. Not only that, but my experience of Duluth had, up to this point, been confined to a view from the floor of our van. This is where I would sleep through some insanely early starts to our yearly treks to visit extended family in Toronto. Little wonder I still don’t consider it a true road trip unless we leave before 5 a.m.

At this point, you might be saying, ‘Wait a minute now. Did you just say Duluth? Does Duluth really qualify as seeing the world?’ Well, it is technically a place. And the interesting thing about forgetting is you get to experience the place anew. So there is that.

Okay, so it might not be the far reaches of the world (for us anyways), nor would it be considered near the top of most lists of places to see before we die. I get it. But could it be a decent alternative to the Twin Cities? This was the hope anyways when I sat down to plan the trip.

You see, my wife (Jen) and I have long made a tradition out of heading to Grand Forks/Fargo on a semi-annual basis. And if we were feeling really adventurous, we would continue all the way to the aforementioned bustling Metropolis of Minneapolis/St. Paul. And yes, I admit, it’s not much of a unique tradition when you happen to be born and raised in Manitoba. And it most definitely is a tradition that transplanted Ontarioans… Ontarians… Ontarioians?… at least Manitobans has an easy ring to it… enjoy mocking at nauseum. But it is a tradition none the less. And it’s our tradition… that we just happen to share with every other hapless Manitoban helping to create a traffic jam at the Emerson border.

Here’s the thing. When you make this trek as many times as we have, you become very familiar with the way of the old (very straight and well paved) I29/I94 that connects us to the border. I once knew someone who made it all the way to Sioux City before realizing they neglected to make the necessary interchange on the South side of Fargo. Fools I said. And then I remembered that time I was so captivated (read zoned out) by the prairie landscape that I had inadvertently exited the Interstate and entered an old Country road. Which of course led me to nowhere-in-particular.

Yep, the interstate is so straight that I failed to notice I had made the exchange until I was far too up-close and personal with a few unexpected cows.

Also, it happened to be in the dead of night, so I guess I can’t really blame the landscape or lack thereof. But it does go to show that sometimes being too familiar with your surroundings isn’t always the best thing. Every once in a while it’s nice to shake things up and experience something new.

Needless to say, taking that exit onto the #2 Highway at Grand Forks a few weeks ago felt somewhat like taking that old Country road. This was not the way of the well-trodden road I was familiar with. The minute we left the I29 I could feel our surroundings beginning to change, and it was not long before the prairies themselves began to fade into the background.

You could smell the dust of the open prairies beginning to dissipate, and the scent of the lake water that once helped earned Duluth the moniker “zenith of the unsalted seas” begins to drift over the horizon. The speed limit slows, the pace grows a little less hectic, and you gain a picture of the smaller cities and towns that the interstate tends to hide in its wake:

Places like the commuter railroad town of Crookston, MN, home to the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the United States (Grand Theatre) and, in what should be familiar to Winnipeggers, the New Flyer bus manufacturing plant. I also noted a made-for-me coffee shop-bookstore fusion called the Novel Cup in passing.

We did stop there on the way back, but it turned out to be anything but novel. The grumpy old lady that ran the place seemed more interested in eyeing us up than serving us a quality cup of joe with a side of a good book.

Or there was the quaint town of Erskine, an old Scottish settlement equipped with a Russian Bakery (of course). There was also something we passed in the town called “Oof-da Tacos” that apparently sells Elephant Ears, but they are only open in the summer. I was, however, able to sneak a look at the world’s largest Pike, so that made up for it.

How about the old woods-town of Bemidji? The birthplace of Paul Bunyan and Babe, which, believe it or not, “are recognized as the second most photographed icon in the nation” according to the town’s website. I made sure to get in a shot of the classic pose (see attached picture).

When I was younger (and immature), standing beneath his legs was something that made me laugh. At 40 I guess it just makes me immature. Probably why my wife (Jen) chose to stay in the car. For the record, they both chose to stay in the car during a stop at Judy Garland’s Birthplace (Grand Rapids), but I think they were hoping I would come back with a heart and a brain. I digress.
And by the way, I’ve heard that the homemade chocolates at Chocolate Plus in downtown Bemidji are well worth it. You could even buy some, set it on the top of your head and go back for another pose underneath Paul Bunyan. But I’m sure you are more mature than that.

I do have to say, there is something therapeutic about the gentle hills that mark this part of the mid-west, and even though this wasn’t the other side of the world, this small change in scenery seemed a welcome breath of fresh air. It was enough to cause Jen to lean over and comment, “this is really pretty.” Understanding that she wasn’t referring to me, I was inclined to agree.

Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas
So why is Duluth called the “zenith city of the unsalted seas”?

Definition of “zenith”:
The zenith is an imaginary point directly “above” a particular location, on the imaginary celestial sphere. “Above” means in the vertical direction opposite to the apparent gravitational force at that location. The opposite direction, i.e. the direction in which gravity pulls, is toward the nadir.

Maybe a simpler definition that doesn’t require gravity or words like “nadir”:
“A highest point or state”.

Actually, this was one is my favorites:
“The highest point reached in the heavens”

A city for the Gods. The image of heaven itself. At first glance, it sounds like Duluth might have had something of a superiority complex back in the day, however, perhaps some further context might help put this into a bit more perspective:

The Fourth Coast
As the world’s largest inland waterway, Duluth’s shoreline was once considered to be the nation’s fourth coast. And this is really the most important factor in considering the Duluth in its hey-day (and even now in its modern incarnation)- the gradual development and growth of its port.

Being the only port with access to both oceans (Atlantic and Pacific), it was Dr. Thomas Preston Foster who first adopted the moniker “zenith” in an effort to capture the spirit of Duluth’s growing influence on trade as it pushed to prove itself a significant player in the Nation’s economic landscape. The simple truth was, Duluth had what everyone else wanted- an abundance of natural resources.

Duluth: A Place of Booms and Busts and Booms
Any history of Duluth- which was officially named after Frenchman Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, who arrived to make peace with the Ojibway and Sioux in hopes of securing trading and trapping rights- reveals a story of many ups and downs, booms and busts. Some of this mirrored the similar struggles of the Nation’s past (such as the Great Depression), while others were a reflection of Duluth’s unique position as a trading hub. Just as Winnipeg once strived to become the Chicago of the north, Duluth also competed against Chicago to become the fastest growing city in the Nation. The waterway, the port, and the railroad all made it seem like the opportunity was endless for this port side community. The modest population of today might hide this past, but one can still see signs of its potential underneath the exterior, such as the mansions and castles that showcase the fact that Duluth was once home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in the nation, and one article says possibly even the world.

As with the rest of the nation, the decline of the railroad and changing economic trends took its toll, and eventually, the city was forced to give up its spot in the race for civic dominance. However, in the face of such hardship- and at a few points things seemed incredibly bleak for Duluth’s future- it also learned how to persevere. The way it survived, and, one might argue, learned to thrive, was by shifting its attention towards investing in its greatest strength- its continued relationship with the natural world that surrounds it. It was by investing in these resources that it was able to grow into a healthy, vibrant small-scale city. In this same spirit, a few years ago the city began an initiative to generate 18 million dollars over 15 years to invest back in its outdoor infrastructure. As of 2017 it now boasts “one of the largest urban mountain biking systems in the world” (the Duluth Traverse).

So while the Castle Glensheen Museum, built between 1905 and 1908 for Chester A. Congdon, might serve as an example of the cities potential past, a city that once sat on the cusp of greatness and which desired to become a beacon of opportunity for the rest of the nation to heed and to follow, the real allure of Duluth today, this “zenith city of the unsalted seas”, is now its modesty and its sense of escape. The famous Split Rock lighthouse that dots the North Shore Drive now shines a light on a different kind of rat race, a different way of life; and it appears to be paying dividends as it is attracting more and more young people to call it home. Just 3 years ago it earned the nod as the #1 spot to live on Outdoors annual Best Places to Live in the U.S. list.

“I do believe Duluth is making a comeback… We want to be part of this economic upturn.”
– Duluth Mayor

The city has done a few other things over the years to reinvent itself for the modern age. First, and this is not unlike Winnipeg, slower growth combined with intentional efforts to protect the historical heritage of its downtown buildings has allowed the old character (1872-1929 era) to be retained and restored into downtown storefronts/living. Second is the efforts by the city to reclaim the lakefront and port by integrating into an integral part of the city life and fabric. The third is by encouraging young entrepreneurs to move in and set up shop downtown with (regulated and deregulated) incentives. You can see the effects of this in the presence of a growing number of independent storefronts. As one article puts, they expected a resurgence and now the data is showing it.

Duluth: Culture, Spirit… and Food
The first thing you will notice on the drive into Duluth is the iconic lift bridge (the Aerial Lift Bridge) that spans the Duluth/Superior Harbour. The second thing you notice is the massive boat (William A. Irvin, an old ore boat) that hugs the shoreline of what is now called Canal Park. If the port defines the city’s past and character, Canal Park affords it culture and a future. This is where you find the nightlife, a social hub of activity. The opportunity to stroll up and down these streets to visit shops, restaurants, and coffeehouses (the local roaster Duluth Coffee Company is recommended), is now a favorite city past time. It is here where culture and nature meet, which is an essential part of the Duluth experience.

Now, while it might be a modest city these days, but it is worth nothing that Duluth does also have some claims to fame. It is the home of Bob Dylan. It boasts the United States’ only all-freshwater aquarium (the Great Lakes Aquarium). It is the birthplace of the American mall.

Most notably perhaps, it is the inventor of pie a la mode.

For our purposes, on both of the occasions, we found ourselves strolling the streets of Downtown Duluth and Canal Park, our main interest was food. And while pie a la mode would have certainly been welcome, we needed something more substantial.

On both of these occasions, we were also looking to try out a place called Pizza Luce, a restaurant that I had seen in Minneapolis but had yet to visit. When I saw it in Duluth I suggested we finally take the plunge.

The first time was a fail, as they were entertaining some local music that night and happened to be full to capacity. This turned out alright though as not only did we manage to make it on our second try the next night, but it also ended up pointing us in the direction of another local recommendation called The Duluth Grill.

An inconspicuous location and a simple exterior felt insignificant, but on the inside, we were greeted by an environment that feels nostalgic and colorful. And not only was this local institution featured on the Food Network, but it had some fantastic food to back it up.

The attention is on fresh and local, and it gives honest attention to those with allergies and preferences (I have celiac and was able to enjoy a fantastic mac and cheese dish which was otherworldly). A popular cookbook called the “Duluth Cookbook” is actually a product of this restaurant and it’s owner, and it is well worth the price. It showcases the city history and food trends quite well. I am kicking myself for leaving it behind, but budget trips dictate priorities I suppose.

But back to Luce… Oh that Luce. Creative pizza concoctions, nice environment, and tons of flavor give it two thumbs up.

Beyond Downtown Duluth
We stayed at a hotel just outside the city limits (Duluth Spirit Mountain Inn), steps away from Spirit Mountain Ski Hill, as we had planned to do some snowboarding while we were there. Given that we were there on a Sunday, I was also intrigued by their option of Sunday Fat Bike rentals (where they open the hill for these bikes to flip and slide and tumble their way down the hill), but the weather made this activity inaccessible, unfortunately.

The hotel, while fairly modest, was the perfect location between the heart of downtown and the hill, and serves as a nice entry point onto Duluth’s North Point Scenic Drive. And to be honest, it is likely there are few places you could stay in Duluth that wouldn’t be able to open your eyes to what the greater area of Duluth had to offer. Its relationship with the outdoors is just that prominent, and one of the most respected excursions is the North Shore Drive, a scenic byway that opens up from the skyline drive and the Duluth lake walk in the heart of Canal Park and takes you through the communities that dot the waterway.

Also worth mentioning, to the other side of Duluth you find the Apostle Islands, a series of summer islands that turns into ice caves in the winter, along with the many bike trails available to enthusiasts.

There is plenty that we missed on our brief visit. We (of course) barely broke the surface of things to do in the few days we were there, such as the vintage train that celebrates the arrival of the rail back in the cities heyday (the North Shore and the Mississippi railroad).There is the famous Grannies in Canal Park, and the famed shipwrecks that color the lakes lore (it was known as one of the most violent seas on which to set sail, and excursions to sea wrecks are available). And I really want to get back there around Halloween when they turn the boat on the harbor into a massive haunted house that is for mature audiences only.

But we got enough of a taste to begin to fall in love with the place’s majestic sense of beauty and culture and nature.

Duluth: Looking Back and Looking Forward
As I mentioned, I don’t remember much about the place from when I was younger, but the places en-route that I do recall (the town of Christmas, Michigan- surprise, surprise; the Mackinac Bridge) have helped play a role in bringing back to life this picture of my childhood. These memories allowed visiting Duluth to become a sort of looking back on my past, a meaningful exercise of self-reflection on days long gone. However, what I haven’t mentioned yet is that this trip also had another similar motivation for our son Sasha.

He came into our lives two years ago via international adoption, and a part of what inspired this trip was the opportunity to reconnect with an old friend who had shared a room with him during his time at the orphanage. That he now lived so close to us was an exciting revelation, and so this special young man that we now have the privilege of calling our son was also given an opportunity on this trip to reconnect with a piece of his past.

I have only ever been able to imagine what this journey has been like for him, being transplanted to a foreign Country and being asked to say yes to this new family that he had just met; and so it was here on the #2 highway, in the confines of a modest portside city in the mid-west, that we hoped to find a chance to celebrate this journey with him- not only in how far he has come, but also in helping him to remember and cherish the childhood experiences (good and bad) that helped to bring him to where he is today.

So there we were, forging new experiences together, remembering days gone by together, and strengthening our family together. As it is with any journey, veering off that old familiar interstate is when we choose to invite and welcome the unexpected. It is learning to anticipate this discovery, the expectation of what lies ahead, that brings with it the opportunity to breathe a little bit of joy into our lives. And however little or however much this joy happens to be, we know it is always needed and welcome, even on our best days.

Duluth might not be the other side of the world, but it did end up being a little piece of special.

“It’s where the St. Louis River, after plunging through pine-lined cliffs of Jay Cooke State Park, fans out to create a huge natural harbour, sheltered from Lake Superior by a narrow, sandy peninsula of land that stretches nine miles from Duluth, Minnesota into Superior, Wisconsin. The harbour rim weaves in and out of 49 miles of shoreline, containing 19 square miles of fresh water.”

Look Deep into nature, and then you understand everything better.
– Albert Einstein

Resources

https://www.downtownduluth.com/about/history.php

http://www.duluthport.com/port-history.php

http://www.visitduluth.com/attractions/history-culture/

http://zenithcity.com/zenith-city-history-archives/duluths-development/3126-2/4/

http://www.lakesuperior.com/lifestyle/food/creating-the-duluth-grill-cookbook/

This is long overdue by now, but the recent and unexpected passing of Bill Paxton has found me reflecting on the on-screen legacy he left behind. The film industry as a whole certainly benefited greatly from his continued presence over the years, and his loss was felt immediately.

What strikes me about Paxton is that, even with such a long list of films and small screen projects attached to his name, he was an actor that seemed to still be finding his voice. In all respects, it felt like he was just getting started, with a long career still in front of him, and this was remains a testament to his commitment to giving everything he had to his art. His performances were incredibly diverse, ranging from the humorous to the dark, from the loveable to the jerk, and he often seemed to thrive in the position of supporting (or complementary) role, even shunning the spotlight for an opportunity to hone his skill for the benefit of the larger cast and vision.

Perhaps most fitting though, is the joy that he seemed to carry into each of his roles. It didn’t matter what it was or how significant the role was, he always seemed to be having a blast with making the most of his opportunity, and it really felt like he took nothing for granted. This is true for some of his most significant turns on the big screen (Apollo 13), but maybe even more so when it came to his small screen. Nowhere does his sheer joy for character acting jump off the screen than it did as agent John Garrett in Agents of Shield, and we were just beginning to get a taste for his take on the compelling Training Day premise.
Now, I will admit that this proved to be quite the task, but after much consideration, I managed to narrow this down to my top 5 favorite Bill Paxton performances, each a testament to an actor taken from us far too soon:

 

5. Aliens
   Nothing quite captures Paxton’s diversity or character as an actor as his role in what I consider to be the best film in this franchise. It helped to define what he was able to bring to the supporting role, and he makes the most of every moment on-screen by moving from quirky to comedic to serious, from over the top bad-ass to humility. The fact that he is able to fuse this into the picture of a selfless hero, in the end, is a testament to his skill, his attention to character and his ability to compliment a film’s larger vision. He never steals the show, but I also can’t get enough of him.

4. Edge of Tomorrow
   This might actually be my favorite of Paxton’s films. Word on the street has it that this role was apparently written with Paxton in mind. Good thing he said yes to it because it captures all of his best points. Interestingly, the film taps into his penchant for characters a bit more rough around the edges that emerge in the years to follow, but more importantly, Paxton (once again) manages to measure up against Cruise without demanding the spotlight.

3. Nightcrawler
   If Edge of Tomorrow was my favorite film of Paxton’s, this one might be one of his most admirable. It’s a decidedly dark film (and a very good dark film) that tackles some rather cynical and timely themes. But while Nightcrawler just might be the performance of Gyllenhaal’s career, what helps make him who he is in the film certainly has much to do with Paxton’s presence and chemistry as both his friend and foe. It might seem simply a supporting performance on paper, but Paxton’s ability to embody this complex relationship remains largely understated as the presence which helps to frame the questions that plague Gyllenhaal’s own social commentary.

2. Mean Dreams
   As one of his final films, this also might be Paxton’s most powerfully rendered performance. In Mean Dreams, he exudes passion, and in the leading role, he uses this passion for bringing life to a man harboring an incredible amount of hostility. He almost makes you forget how likable he actually is as an actor.

1. Twister
   I know, it was really tough not to put the iconic Apollo 13 in this number one spot. But I just could not avoid Twister no matter how hard I tried. I can still remember the thrill of seeing it on the big screen. And sure, in looking back on it today, it might seem like just your everyday, average summer blockbuster, but for me, when I think of Paxton I think of the guy who helped bring the profession of storm chasing to the world. It is no secret that he inspired a tribute from those whom he actually helped inspire to enter this profession (and hobby) in real life. And I think this is a testament to just how relatable and accessible Paxton was, no matter what kind of character he happened to be playing.

Even in a big-budget blockbuster, I got the sense that Paxton refused to see anything as a dialed in or throw away performance. He was simply out there doing what he loved to do, and getting great joy from doing so. And for that he remains an inspiration, even in his passing.

“For everyone will be salted with fire.” 
– Mark 9:49

Biblical scholar Albert Barnes once suggested, “perhaps no passage in the New Testament has given more perplexity to commentators than this, and it may be impossible now to fix its precise meaning.”

If there is one thing I have found in my own journey through The Gospel of Mark thus far, it is that Mark’s Gospel is very good at challenging my expectations of Jesus’ ministry. If there is a second certainty, it is that the upending of my expectations leaves me feeling uncomfortable more often than not. And when I encounter words like ”fire”, especially when set in light of other words (like “hell” and “unquenchable”) that precede it, I definitely find myself feeling uncomfortable.
This sounds like a negative thing on the surface, but I am actually finding this feeling of discomfort to be the place where the Gospel power comes most alive. So, rather than close off my mind and my heart to what the Gospel of Mark wants to say to me here, my prayer this week has been for the Spirit of Jesus’ baptism to do its work- to teach me and show me what I need to hear.

Approaching the Fire with Humility
It is worth noting that this passage falls within a narrative section which binds the transforming event of the Transfiguration to the revolutionary picture of the coming Triumphal Entry. We are on the road to Jerusalem, and it is on this road that Jesus continues to foretell the way of the Cross. And so, above all else, the placement of this passage in Mark in chapter 9 appears to be intended to prepare us for approaching the Cross in a spirit of humility.

It is difficult to know whether Mark is translating this passage from its original Hebrew, or if he is recording a central teaching of Jesus that he has encountered in his familiar Greek. In truth, this has been a part of the difficulty of navigating this passage. But one does not need to look far to find a pre-existing tradition in which to understand Mark’s use of “fire”, and a good way to recognize this tradition is by taking a closer look at The Gospel of Matthew’s declaration that Jesus’ baptism came not only in Spirit, but also in fire:

“But when he (John) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing for is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”-
– Matthew 3:7-12

The use of “fire” in Matthew confronts us with two sides of a single picture. By calling up the picture of the “unquenchable fire”, Matthew sets the idea of “wrath” (judgment) against the call to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (forming/purifying). In context, Matthew is warning the Pharisees and Sadducees (in view) about getting too comfortable with their idea of what it means to gain reward in the Kingdom of God. Matthew’s narrative, as it becomes increasingly clear, is equally interested in up-ending our expectation of the Gospel of Jesus, and Matthew’s call to those in view is not to simply “assume Abraham as our father”, but to live in repentance (turn in the direction of Jesus) and to actually live like a child of God. A strong statement like this was sure to grab their attention.

From Wrath to Temptation
Returning to the Gospel of Mark, he doesn’t use the word wrath here, but he does talk in a similar (dualistic) way about how “temptation” requires a response, and that our response can shape an outcome in one way or another as it also reorients our perspective in one direction or another. This idea of contrasting outcomes, or the dualistic force that shapes his amalgamation of both “salt” (hopeful) and “fire” (judgment) into a single passage, might feel incredibly uncomfortable and confusing for us as readers (as I imagine it would have been for Mark’s original audience), but I think in order to make sense of this obscure marriage of salt and fire, it is important for us to keep the two sides of the picture firmly in our sights. What has become increasingly clear to me in my own study over this past week, is that we cannot understand the one side of the picture without the other.

 

Recognizing the Bigger Picture
So, with this in mind, here is what I would like to suggest. When Matthew asks the Pharisees and Sadducees “who warned you about the coming wrath”, He is speaking from the position of their Jewish expectation. He is guiding them back to the words of their own prophetic tradition and the sacred scripture that would have informed their understanding of the wrath He is talking about, and it is through understanding the story of the Israelites own history that the word wrath (and fire) gain a bit more clarity for us as readers.

When Jeremiah 17:27 declares that God “will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and shall not be quenched”, he is speaking of two things- the very real struggle of the exile itself, and the judgment of a people who failed to listen to what God was saying. All throughout the Israelite history, we find this same story being played out in the midst of a people being who are being formed out of the fire of their persisting struggle with faith and circumstance. In his new book, “The Day the Revolution Began”, N.T. Wright refers to the Jewish scripture as a story without an ending, exposing this persisting pattern of ups and downs that seemed to shape the trajectory of God’s chosen people out of exile, slavery and, yes, judgment, and then back again. The exile, the struggle of faith, slavery; all present an opportunity for the people of God to be renewed in their faith, to turn and face in a different direction, to look towards the work that God is doing in them and the world around them. As readers we know that God uses the exile to breathe hope into a story full of desperation and failure, but we also know (as readers) that we are never far from another exile, another failure, another setback- this is where the story without an ending feels incomplete, a story that exists in a world where sin seems to reign over the persisting plans to reform and redeem the people.

For Wright, the Israelite history reflects the incomplete expression of the hopefulness that we find in the midst of the struggling people. But he also finds within this “story without an ending” the gradual unveiling of a Messianic expectation that sees the work of God moving from the Israelite nation out to the world at large. It is in this place where we find God’s saving work being formed out of fire of the Cross, a central image in Mark’s Gospel, and important piece of the puzzle for understanding his use of the salt/fire metaphor.

 

Seeing Mark in light of the Israelite Story
More than a few Biblical scholars find a reference from this passage in Mark to Leviticus 2:13. There is an early witness (contemporary to Mark) of a scribal note attributing this passage to Leviticus, and thematically this seems the most pertinent connection available to us for working through a difficult interpretation:

“You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.”-
– Leviticus 2:13

What binds this passage to Mark is the ensuing reference to the process of burning the offerings. In this context, the passage represents allusions to the image of sacrifice that underscore both the Jewish and Gospel narratives. This idea of sacrifice, of allowing the purifying nature of the fire to shape us in a positive direction, is the means by which we are called in scripture to direct our worship outwards to where it belongs, onto God rather than towards the things of this world.

The Sacrifice and the Fire
The section of Mark in which the salt/fire verse is found is titled (in my Bible) Temptations to Sin. We encounter this word “temptation” again in the garden as Jesus approaches the reality of His coming death, his sacrifice. Jesus encourages his disciples in this moment by saying,

“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
Mark 14:38

Jesus goes on in this same passage to say that they must do this because “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. It is the spirit of Jesus’ baptism that has the power to set our sights in the right direction. In contrast, it is the allure of earthly (fleshly) desires, the things that have no power, that resist the power of the Spirit to set our sights in the right direction. This a picture of the power and forces that are constantly competing for our attention, and it is something that brings to light the two sides of the picture that Mark is speaking of when he outlines the nature of temptation- the ability to resist it or to accept in one way or another.

Drinking The Cup 
The words of Jesus’ own prayer that precede this encouragement pushes this thought even further:

“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me.”
Mark 14:36

Following Jesus’ final foretelling of his death and Resurrection, He declares our call and our right (as followers of Jesus) to share not only in his baptism, as the Gospel of Mark sets out in his beginning chapters, but also in the “cup that I drink”. Here we find this cup being set against his suffering and his death- his sacrifice for the sake of the world. It is as Jesus faces the reality of his own cup that he goes on to offer us a precedent for which to do the same:

“Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

When faced with temptation, this is what it means to ensure we “have salt in our self”, the kind of saltiness that can attest to the power to the Spirit rather than the idols that compete for our attention (9:50). This image, this metaphor that Jesus provides of cutting off our hand, our foot, our eye- is about submitting the reality of this coming wrath, the looming sense of this unquenchable fire as a picture of God’s great (and just) judgment, to the forming work that God desires to do within us. It is about allowing the reality of Sodom to awaken our senses to the work that God is also doing in the world around us. As a people of salt and light, scripture calls us to recognize and participate in this work as followers of Jesus who are being formed by the spirit through the fire. This is what it means to share in the cup with Jesus, to allow the road to the Cross, the fires of our own exile, struggles and judgment, to exchange our worship of idols for the Worship of the Creator God; and we do so for the sake of bringing God’s light, God’s voice to the world.

 

Wrestling with Our Own Messianic Expectation
As we look back on the story of Israel and the Jewish people, this story without an ending finds a definitive conclusion in Jesus. It finds ultimate hope in the person of Christ as the answer to the Messianic expectation.

This means that this forming work, the purifying nature of the fire in our own lives, is now purposed towards a greater end than simply judgment. We are no longer left with the ambiguity of Israelite’s past, and it is to this end that we can afford Mark’s marriage of “fire” and “salt” a final piece of clarity.

From One Cup To Another
In Mark 9:41, we encounter another image of the cup, and I can’t help but consider it an intentional connecting point to the “cup” we are called to share in by taking up our Cross.

Talking to the disciples, Jesus says that whoever “gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward”. The reward in this passage appears to be directly connected to the disciples “discussion” in the previous passage, of seeking greatness for being a follower of Christ; and later the reward of being first, or sitting at the right hand of the Kingdom Jesus is building that we find them arguing over in the passage that follows.

Speaking of this reward in the ensuing chapter, Mark 10:30 says,

“there is no one who has left (everything) for my sake the for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time… (with persecutions) and in the age to come eternal life.”

So what is the reward we will receive? When we receive the (figurative) child that Jesus holds up for all of us to see, we receive Jesus. And when we receive Jesus we receive access to the Father (Mark 9:37). And so, it is the Worship of God that is our reward, the fellowship with our Creator.

And what must we do to receive this reward? The answer is found in the giving of the cup. Just as we share in the cup that Jesus drank, we are called to share in the lives of others by giving of ourselves. For Mark this is giving up our right to be first, of being the greatest. Here this theology is given a practical outflow in the action of giving water to the thirsty, an action that anticipates God’s ultimate restoring of the created world.

In a similar fashion, Mark 9:50 closes this section with the call to be at peace with one another. Elsewhere, in Matthew 25:31-46 the fire is directly connected to failing to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and give drink to the thirsty, while in Ezekiel we find the fire that consumed Sodom to be a direct result of failing to attend the needs of those who sat hungry outside of its gates.
Like a Child
So to ask this question again, what must we do to receive this reward? As we approach the revolutionary picture of the Triumphal Entry, a definite moment in which Jesus circumvents our own Messianic expectation and lowers himself to the place of a servant, we are told that we must also learn to become the least of us so that we can also receive the least of us into our midst. We must become a servant of all because Christ came to be a servant to all. To demonstrate this Jesus draws their attention to the image of a child.

What I find most significant about this picture is what it means for those of us who are Christians, who are Christ followers. We are called to receive such a child, not because they have earned a place in the kingdom of God (this is the true power of the image), but simply because they are said to belong to Christ. The nature of a childlike faith is not about what the child has done, but rather about the prevailing nature of God’s unconditional grace and love that He is breathing into the world through Christ. Just as we were given water to drink for the simple reason that we are said to “belong to Christ” (vs 9:41), we are called to extend this same grace to others. In this light, the “Temptations” passage becomes the definitive response to the disciple’s own question of exclusion that precedes it in 9:38.
When considering such fire filled language, we cannot miss this point. This passage is about the the problem of exclusion and the push for inclusion. It is about the way in which the Cross on which Jesus died became the means through which God is accomplishing (and accomplished) His work of restoring our world, of setting things right. For as much as the fire has to do with judgment, the primary concern of this fiery image is to “salt” us into effective imitators of Christ and partakers in God’s great restorative work. For as much as God’s wrath remains a necessary part of this picture,  it is the sin of exclusion, the idolatry of earthly measure, and the withholding of God’s grace in the form of neglecting social concern and reform, that is the temptation. In Mark’s Gospel, it is by withholding this grace that we cause sin to enter the lives “of these little ones who believe”, the sin that brings with it a message that they do not belong in the company of God’s people, that they are products of the world (idolatry) rather than a necessary part of God’s restoring and forming work.

A Living Sacrifice

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
– Romans 12:1

It is this notion of sacrifice, of understanding the purpose of the salt and the fire metaphor in the light of Jesus’ work on the Cross, that motivates Paul to write these words. Sacrifice gains life when it directs our worship, in heart and action, towards God and his vision for the world. It gains life when it understands the nature of servanthood, of submitting our own will to God’s greater purpose.

It is no mistake that Paul’s vision of overcoming evil at the end of Romans 12 recognizes this living sacrifice as being accomplished through living “peaceably with all” and “feeding our enemy and giving drink to the thirsty”. As Paul declares, at the Cross we are called to leave it (discussion of God’s judgment of others) “to the wrath of God”, not for our sake, but for the sake of others and the world. In this two-sided picture, the purpose of the fire is to direct ourselves to examine our own hearts first, and then to shift our worship outwards to what God is doing. By directing our worship towards God, God is made visible to the world. By directing our worship to the idols of this world, we hide God’s hopeful message. Without this hopeful message, people will exchange belief in God’s vision, both of themselves and of the world, for false images of who they are and what this world is- God’s loved and cherished creation.

It is by following in the way of the Cross, on the Way of Jesus, that we become witnesses to the work of Christ, both in judgment (of our own hearts) and in grace (in God’s definitive statement that this world is worth saving and that we play a part in this saving work from the place of our own brokenness and failure in the power of the promised Spirit). Just as the Pharisees were cautioned about getting too comfortable in their faith, we should not assume “Abraham as our father” either. Rather we should choose to live in humility as God’s children, to strive to avoid the temptation of telling someone they are not worthy to be called a child of God, and in-fact to become willing to sacrifice our own rights (entitlement) to the kingdom so that others might come to know that they indeed are a child of God. On the Cross, in the fire of the pain and suffering it embodied, we find this was the greatest work of all.

Palm Sunday (April 9^th) will mark the start of Holy Week. In the Christian calendar, Holy Week follows in Jesus’ footsteps towards Jerusalem, and ultimately to the accomplishment of the Cross and the Resurrection.

Having grown up in a non-liturgical environment, it was an opportunity for employment at a Lutheran Church nearly 10 years ago that opened my eyes to the richness of the Christian liturgy, something I had taken for granted up until that point (and still do, to be honest, even on my best days). I have come to understand that following the Christian calendar can help breathe life into the Christian narrative in personal, practical and theological ways. Stepping into the narrative in (intentional) ways helps to remind me that I am a part of this story, a part of the Christian story.

In the Lutheran tradition (as with the larger Christian tradition), Easter is considered the High Season of the Church, meaning that it is considered the most revered and celebrated part of the narrative. In the scope of the liturgy itself, it begins with the solemn process of Ash Wednesday (from dust to dust we come to embrace the idea that we are in need of a Gospel), continues through the forming work of the season of Lent (emptying ourselves in preparation of the Gospel work), and ends with remembering the death and Resurrection (the celebration of new life in Christ that forms the Gospel message and that fills us up anew)… well, actually it is worth mentioning that Easter Sunday actually begins a journey of learning to live in the midst of this Easter season in the months leading up to Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit (June). Easter is more than simply one weekend folks, it is a way of life, the shaping of a worldview.

 
The great part of engaging the Christian liturgy is that it reminds me of how much of the Christian story there still is for me to discover and rediscover in the changing seasons. There is much to anticipate in the Christian calendar, but what is most rewarding is the forming and learning process of the journey itself. Indeed, having just finished Mark 9, the Transfiguration stands as a great example of a passage that I still have much to learn from after all these years, a passage that seems as foreign to me today as the theological concept of Epiphany did yesterday (a word I had never heard before walking through the doors of the Lutheran Church).

What the liturgy does is help place these important events into a larger context, and in a similar fashion, recognizing Mark’s placement of the Transfiguration within the context of a series of three “foretelling” passages of Jesus’ death and Resurrection has helped shed new light on why it is an important event to consider as we engage the Gospel itself.

What I want to do with the rest of this reflection is the following:
1. Look at how the Transfiguration passage connects to the first foretelling of Jesus’ death.
2. Talk about two common themes that connect the three foretelling passages in Mark 8,9 and 10.
3. Show how these two common themes can help shape the message of the Transfiguration for us as readers.

1. How the Transfiguration connects to the first foretelling of Jesus’ death
Some scholars have recognized the presence of a connecting piece in the narrative that fits between the Transfiguration and the first foretelling of Jesus’ death that precedes it. Their motivation for seeing this connection flows out of the words of Mark 9:1, which seems to indicate that what the Transfiguration is trying to say has much to do with what has just been said in the passage before it.

“And he said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
Mark 9:1

In this passage, “they” would appear to be the crowd of 8:34, and the some (who will not taste death before seeing the Kingdom come with power) would seem to be referring to the disciples in the passage that follows. Therefore, some scholars point to the idea that the moment on the mountain that happens “after six days” is actually the moment in which they see the Kingdom of God come with power.

Whether this is an accurate position to take (or not) remains somewhat subjective, but I do believe these scholars have correctly recognized the importance of the placement of the Transfiguration story in the midst of these “foretelling” passages. Further, I believe looking at the three “fortelling” passages together (8:31-38; 9:30-32; 10:32-34) can help unmask the larger purpose for these declarations in Mark’s Gospel, and it is by understanding the common themes in these three passages that the Transfiguration itself can ultimately gain a bit more clarity.

2. 2 Common Themes That Connect The Three Foretelling Passages
There are two common factors that each of these three passages shares. First, in all three cases, we find resistance and misunderstanding to the Way of God, which in Mark is the Way of Jesus or the Way of the Gospel. Secondly, all three passages invite a similar response from Jesus in declaring the Gospel to be about the least and the last in the Kingdom of God.

• Common Theme Number 1- Resistance to the Way of Jesus
  On the first occasion, Peter does indeed recognize Jesus to be the Christ, but he goes on to resist Jesus’ declaration that the Way of Christ is that He must be rejected, die and rise again.In the second passage, it says that the disciples still don’t understand and continue to resist the way of Jesus, and we find them arguing about who is the greatest disciple in the Kingdom that Jesus has come to build. While it says that they did not understand what Jesus was saying, it also says they were afraid to ask Him what he meant, which is intriguing to me. Why were they afraid? The fact that Jesus’ question (about what they were discussing) causes them to go silent seems to indicate that they knew they were off the mark (9:32-35), and this causes them to fear the words of Jesus’ death and rejection. And so they resist it, ignore it, seemingly shove it under the rug. 

  In the third passage, this resistance and their awareness of this resistance appears to grow even greater. It indicates that Jesus was walking ahead of them, and suddenly they were amazed and they were afraid. Again, this is an intriguing reaction, and it feels like they are gaining a more innate and intimate sense of what is about to happen (10:32). As the passage continues, I have to think that the whole request of James and John for a seat at Jesus’ right hand comes in the midst of a sense of desperation and exasperation. And yet it is out of this desperation that Jesus persists in revealing to them just how His kingdom is intended to work.

• Common Theme Number 2- The Kingdom of the Least and the Last
  All three of these foretelling passages indicate a similar response from Jesus to the resistance and misunderstanding the disciples display in response to Jesus’ explanation that he must die and be rejected before he is raised again:

  Mark 8:31-38– In the first passage, Jesus foretells his death by telling the disciples, “those who lose their life will save it.”
  Mark 9:30-32– In the second passage Jesus foretells his death by telling the disciples, to be first in the Kingdom of God you must be last.
  Mark 10:32-34- In the third passage, Jesus foretells his death by stating that for the disciples to be great in the Kingdom of God, they must become a servant.

In all three of these passages, we find a great reversal, a Way in which we must seek to lose, in which we must seek to be last, in which we must strive to become a servant rather than a boss. This is counterintuitive stuff, especially in the context of the ancient world.

When Jesus asks the disciples in chapter 10 whether they can drink the cup that Jesus drinks and be baptized in the baptism of Jesus, he is actively reorienting their perspective towards the Way of the cross. The cup stands as an image of the Cross, and drinking the cup is participating in the work of the cross- losing our life, choosing to become the least, engaging the role of the servant. This is the road that Christ himself is on, and it is the road he is calling them (and us) to follow, and it is in the baptism of Christ that we find the promise of the Spirit, the spirit that can empower and reveal the Way of the Gospel, the way of the forgiven and forgiving life, in a very real and practical way.

When Jesus goes on to definitively declare that the right to “sit at Jesus’ right hand is not his to grant”, rather it is “for those which it has been prepared”, He is reiterating the themes that we have already found emerging in the Gospel of Mark up to this point. As I have mentioned before, seeing anything other than the forgiven and the forgiving life is to miss seeing Jesus, and in these passages we find the disciples miss what Jesus is saying and doing. Instead, they see a concern for earning, gaining and acquiring their place in the Kingdom of God rather than seeing God’s greater vision of a new Kingdom for the world, a prominent concern in the Gospel of Mark as a whole.

What the disciples resist is the way in which the forgiven and forgiving life calls us to give up our right and need to be in control. The idea of the Cross means that Jesus gave up His rights for the sake of the world, and He calls us to do the same. A part of this picture is giving up our right to decide who is and is not able to enter the Kingdom of God. For Mark, and the Transfiguration narrative, our focus and concern should be on our own hearts, our own lives. At the Cross we find forgiveness, and it is in becoming a servant, in submitting our right to be first in line in this Kingdom and this world, and finally it is by submitting (losing) our lives for the sake of a Gospel for the world, that we enter into the forgiving life. These are the important questions. This is the direction we must be looking if we are to see Jesus and participate in the kingdom He is building.

How these two common themes can help shape the message of the Transfiguration for us as readers.
In the Transfiguration story, we find ourselves being transported back through time in a sort of sweeping panorama of the Israelite history. We are transported back to Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop. We are reminded of the way in which God once revealed himself to both them and in the Israelite people in their own state of desperation. It’s an incredible scene that unfolds at the Transfiguration, one that left its witnesses on the mountaintop terrified and “not knowing what to say”.

If this indeed is the moment where the some (Peter, James, and John) were able to gain a glimpse of the Kingdom of God coming in power, it is a decisive moment where Jesus is declared to be the fulfillment of this Kingdom. As Elijah and Moses eventually fade from view, we are left only with the voice of God and the familiar words God once gave to Moses- “Listen to him”. It is in this intimate moment that God echo’s the words of John and the words of Jesus’ baptism- this is my beloved Son, the one who is to come who is greater than John the Baptist, who is greater than Elijah, who is greater than Moses.

And it leaves them questioning, “what this rising from the dead might mean” (9:10).

And isn’t this what Lent is all about, spending time reflecting on this very question? What does the cross mean for me? What does the cross mean for you? What does the cross mean for the world? In the Transfiguration, we find that it means everything. The point of the Transfiguration was to point to the Cross, and it is at the Cross that we find the means by which God enters the world- the great reversal in which God becomes (hu)man and our Lord becomes a servant. It is at the Cross that we find the means by which God promises to “restore all things” (9:12), and bring hope for a world that is in desperate need of restoration. This is the promise that Christ comes to fulfill, and this is the Way in which we are called to participate in God’s restorative work as Christ followers, by learning to give our lives for the sake of the Gospel, learning to serve rather than achieve, learning to enter into the space with the least of these as we purpose to give up our right to be first in this new Kingdom God is building.

As we move further and further into the period of Lent, we are being called to further reorient our sense of vision, away from ourselves and towards the One in whom we find our hope. Away from worldly ambitions and success, and towards the example of Jesus on the Cross. As the process of Lent continues to shape us, we are reminded that we do not need three tents (whatever those tents symbolize in our lives), we only need one. As when all else fades from view, it is only Jesus who remains.
FInally, in the words of Jesus, look at where we are headed, “see, we are going up to Jerusalem” (10:33). This is the direction we must be looking to see Jesus, towards Jerusalem, towards the cross, and ultimately towards the hope of His Resurrection. And what a beautiful sight it is.

(This reflection contains spoilers, so be aware of that if you have not seen Logan)

First, a quick note on the (should be) obvious- Logan is not your typical superhero film. It definitely earns the 18A rating (something to be aware of if you have personal sensitivities to violence or language). In many respects, the film is also built around a different kind of narrative than the Wolverine films that precede it. It is simple, introspective, and small in scale. It also happens to be very dark. As the character Logan goes on to say at one point in the film, “this is what happens in the real world, people die.”

But Logan also happens to be a beautiful and touching film, a fitting bookend to Jackman’s (now) iconic interpretation of Logan/Wolverine. As it meanders through a sort of Mad Max, neo-Western style landscape, it exposes a narrative that digs deep into the questions of who Logan is and how he has grown and developed over the years. We are given the image of an ailing man, seemingly burdened by the weight of life’s questions and desperate to stay afloat. He struggles to understand the looming importance of his own legacy in light of his own (physically obvious) deterioration, along with the deterioration of the politically charged environment that surrounds him.

There are so many incredible themes that underline the personal journey Logan takes in this film, but there are three that stand out for me:

1. The question of Legacy
2. What it means to Belong
3. The meaning of Sacrifice

The Question of Legacy
Off-screen Legacy
This will be Jackman’s last performance as Wolverine, and he has gone on record (in a number of interviews) about his motivation for getting this last one right, of giving the character the film he believes he deserves. In this sense, Logan is a passion project, and even for fans of the previous films (and I count myself among them), I think it would be hard to deny that this film is something special.

One could fairly argue that when Jackman first put on those claws 17 years ago, he embodied a new approach to developing the idea of the big screen superhero persona, and I think in Logan he puts the final touch on making the character fully his own. The two (the real life and the fictional character) have become synonymous over the years, and I don’t think it is too far out there to consider the character “Logan” will remain a part of Jackman’s legacy as an actor for years to come. Likewise, the legacy of Wolverine (and the many other onscreen superhero characters that the character inspired) will forever owe much to Jackman’s interpretation.

On-Screen Legacy
In the film, set in a near-future setting, we discover that it has been over 20 years since they last encountered a new mutant, and the community that Logan was once a part of is now gone. In a very gripping fashion, this reality has left him silently (and not so silently) grappling with questions of who he is and what this life is about- this becomes the question of his legacy (or a lack thereof) that he will leave behind as he fades away into the darkness from which he came, a fate that he seems to welcome, and even hasten as he continues to carry around the one kind of bullet that can actually kill him in his pocket.

We first met Logan in 200o’s X-Men, a mysterious man wrestling (figuratively and literally) over the immense burden of a forgotten past, with the only certainty a persistent feeling of brokenness and emptiness that haunts him on the inside; emotions that he channels through a penchant for outward aggression, anger, and social neglect on the outside. Now we find the reality of Logan’s self-healing and anti-aging properties clashing with this rather innate sense that, somehow and in someway he is nearing the end of his time on this earth, and that his once forgotten past (in the form of poison) is finally (and slowly) getting the best of him.

On Jackman’s part, he gives everything that he has left to give to this role, and then some. He helps us experience all of these emotions, both in the nuances of his facial expressions and in the way he carries himself on-screen. I felt every moment of this astute introspective process, and his performance invites us in on the experience as it continues to unfold. But it is the characters that come alongside him in midst of this process (two of them, specifically) that help shed light on the real struggle with the question of his legacy and identity.

Professor X
When we first meet Logan, it is eventually the Professor who opens up his arms (and heart) to welcome Wolverine into their community. It was an invitation that broke through the wall of his pain and offered him a place to belong and a family of similarly broken stories to exist alongside. This community was intended to be a safe haven for people like Logan, an opportunity to explore the pain and discover where this pain is born from.

In Logan, we find the situation is now reversed. In the early scenes of the film we encounter someone seemingly content to sink into the trappings his own depression, ready to whittle away in the confines of his substance abuse and apathy by drinking his life away. We very quickly realize that some of the substances he is acquiring is actually for the sake of the ailing professor, who he has been hiding in a building across the Mexican border.

There is immense beauty to be found in this idea, the idea that the stuff that we see on the surface rarely tells the whole story. This is what led the Professor to invest in Logan in the first place, and now it is by caring for the Professor that Logan is able to find the strength to believe he is still who the Professor has always seen him to be- which is more than the mess he has made of his life.
There are so many touching and heart-wrenching moments that surround this relationship. The most memorable for me is when Logan looks to the Professor in a moment of exasperation, reminding him that there are no more mutants left in this God-forsaken world. The community is gone, and he has come to believe that they (he) was simply “God’s great mistake”, a mistake that God is now correcting. That he himself should be left to simply fade into the darkness is seen as a kind of poetic justice, but the truth is, he cannot bring himself to see the Professor in this same light. For Logan, the Professor is absolutely worth saving, which is why he continues, day after day, to risk his own life to bring the Professor the medicine he needs to stay alive.

What it means to Belong
When Logan emerged as a part of the community of X-Men all those years ago, he arrived as an orphan, someone without a family, without a place to belong. We now find these same themes re-emerging in the story of the second character to come alongside Logan in the midst of his hopelessness and despair- a little girl named Laura (played by Dafne Keen with a powerful on-screen presence).

Laura says very little (nothing at all for a good portion of the film), but what she does demonstrate is a quiet, and determined understanding of Logan’s struggle. As it turns out, she is also an orphan- actually, as it turns out, she is Logan’s daughter, someone who shares a piece of his history as the product of a laboratory experiment that the government is now trying to wipe out. Only now she needs Logan’s help to get to a rumored community that is supposedly being built for people like her, a place just like the old community under Professor X where she can find safety and opportunity for a better future.

As Laura enters his life, Logan is forced to grapple with what it means to care for someone else, to invest in a relationship from out of his own brokenness. It is heart wrenching to watch him struggle with this idea on-screen, and there is a rather revealing point where he finally breaks down and tells the girl that he “cannot care for her because bad things happen to everyone he cares about.” And in the course of the film, we watch as he tries to bury this care, avoid it, resist it in every way that he can. And yet, in the story of this little girl, the one thing he cannot escape is the picture of himself that lingers every time he sees her, a picture of someone who desperately needed somewhere to belong, for someone to accept him as he was. That Logan is able to eventually arrive at this realization in the film is a big part of coming to terms with who is- someone who did belong somewhere, someone who was accepted and who is now a father to a girl who needs to know the same.

Sacrifice
Logan tells a tragic story. People die. The Professor dies. And yes, in the end Logan dies. But it is not so much that they die in this narrative, as it is about what this death comes to symbolize.

When the Professor dies, Logan loses the most important person in his life, the single person he cares about, the one who gave him a reason to get up every, single day. And yet through the lens of this tragedy stands a girl, a girl who is now in desperate need of the same thing the Professor once afforded him. In the Professor’s own dying moments, he recognizes Logan as a part of his legacy, and his hope is that this girl can now become a part of Logan’s legacy in the same way. It is in the context of relationship that we find (or gain) our meaning, and even when Logan feels like he has nothing good to give, the Professor sees a man who is able to give everything that this little girl really needs- his presence and his acceptance.

Through all of the resistance, all of the walls, all of the pain, where this story ends is in an amazing statement of what it means to give out of our brokenness, a picture of what it means to truly give our life for the sake of another. As Logan comes to face some of his past in the film, the real battle, the real nemesis of the film begins to emerge- which is the battle he must face within himself.

Or not really within himself, but rather with a clone that the government has created to look like himself- a version of Logan intended to be even more powerful simply because it lacks the conscious that seems to hold the real Logan back.

What these scenes symbolize and personify is the battle that is happening inside of him, the war between the crippling effects of his personal pain and brokenness and his past regret, and his ability and desire to give and to love from out of these broken places. And this war, this internal (and external) battle, leads the film towards a poetic finish, a final moment where Logan finally stops running and faces his demons head on. It is a moment where he comes to understand the value of sacrifice, where he makes the choice to lose his own life for the sake of this little girl. And what is really interesting about this moment is that it is the bullet, the one he initially intended to use to end his own life, that ends up killing the clone, the symbol of his brokenness and past regrets personal demons. This is what allows the real Logan to emerge, and this becomes the person he is finally able to see and accept in his own dying moments. As Logan “dies to himself”, we are left with a clear picture of a man who is both forgiven, accepted and loved in spite of his troubled past and his present struggle. And by accepting this truth for himself, he is also able to offer this same unconditional love to Laura.

The final scene in the film narrows us in on a picture of Laura standing at the foot of Logan’s grave. In the narrative of the film, the journey they are on (in the desert) is one that is built on the promise of a new community (literally called Eden), a place where all of this group of failed laboratory experiments (the group of kids that managed to escape the governments efforts to distinguish them) can find safety and the promise of a better future. But in this scene, rather than continue to run towards this promised land, Laura stays behind to honor the sacrifice Logan made for her. In a fitting statement, a cross is placed at the head of the grave, and as the camera lingers on this symbol of sacrifice and grace, the little girl gently leans down and turns the cross on it’s edge, forming an X. It is the most powerful moment in the film. Far beyond setting the film up as a lead in for the next generation of X-Men, it stands as a statement that Logan was not God’s mistake and that she is not a mistake either. As their stories meet, they find freedom in the truth that they are loved without regard for their past, that they can belong because they found acceptance in each other, in a relationship.

The Power of Lent and the Promise of a New Hope
It is interesting how films can sometimes play into modern politics with an eerie sense of divine appointment. One has to think that this film was already put together years ago, but we cannot miss the fact that this is a film about a group of kids deemed illegals who are now seeking Asylum over what we come to know is the Canadian border (in North Dakota no less). But even with the rather timely nature of this narrative, there is actually an even stronger symbol sitting beneath the surface, one that lives and breathes the essential nature of the Christian hope.
It is interesting that what drives the little girl is not absolute certainty about where she is going, but rather an anticipation for what this promised land means for her life and the life of others. She doesn’t know that this promised new community actually exists (Logan, in-fact, insists that it doesn’t, that it is a lie based on the words of a fairy tale, man made story… otherwise known as a comic book in the film), but she places her hope in the fact that it does. And so she moves forward, forward in faith, a faith built around the idea that in a broken world, the promise of something good, of love and of healing and restoration remains a hopeful reality.

This is such an incredible picture of the faith that we find in the story of Jesus. What is significant is that Laura never believes that the world she inhabits, this broken environment, is simply one that she needs to let go of or do away with. She is angry, to be sure, but her determination is found in the picture of its future restoration, the idea that things can get better. She believes this because of the small glimmer of love and good that she finds underneath the rough exterior of Logan’s own hurt and abuse. She believes that what is broken can be healed, and this healing comes in the new life she finds through the symbol of his ultimate sacrifice (which significantly happens on a tree).

There is a special moment in the film where the three of them (the Professor, Laura and Logan) are taken in by a Christian family as they are running through the desert. This family offers them a reprieve in the desert landscape, and it gives them pause- a chance to recognize what the desert process is all about, which is the power that they find in relationship with each other.

As I write this, it happens to be the beginning of Lent, a period that symbolizes Jesus’ own journey through the desert, and in this scene I was reminded me of what the process of Lent is all about- a time when everything else is stripped away and we are able to narrow in on what is most important, our relationship with God. For me this was a powerful picture of what it means to enter into this desert experience along with Jesus. Lent is about learning to live in-between the broken places and the hopeful promise, of preparing ourselves to encounter and re-center our eyes on the sacrifice that Jesus made in order to attend to and enter into our own brokenness and suffering (and all that this means for our own sense of belonging in the family of God). It is a desert journey that is difficult but also incredibly beautiful for what it ultimately helps to build in us, which is a richer faith and a stronger character. For Logan, this part of the journey allowed him to see beyond his pain, beyond the struggle, and to see himself more clearly, but more importantly it opened his eyes to the story of a little girl who was also drowning in her own brokenness. He finds his own identity in the sacrifice that Professor X first made for him, and by sacrificing his life for this little girl, he is able to help Laura discover who she is as well.
As we prepare to approach the Cross in this period of Lent, I am reminded that we have an amazing hope in the promise of a new life in the midst of a restored creation. And it is in the truth of Jesus’ own sacrifice that I am reminded that I have been given an identity to live into in the midst of this new hope, a new identity that I continue to discover as I learn to put my faith in what Jesus has done and is doing at the foot of the Cross. It is here that I find that I am a child of God, someone who is loved, someone who has been given a place to belong in God’s family regardless of my past. And it is here that Jesus declares me able to give this same acceptance and love into the lives of others.

“And (Jesus) asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ.”
– Mark 8:29-30

There is an interesting dynamic that surfaces for modern readers of Mark’s Gospel, as we encounter his words from the outside looking in. We have, after all, the benefit of this outside perspective, of being made privy to the answer to this question in the opening words of the Gospel- “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God”. Thus it is easy to kind of sit back and simply watch the mystery of this statement unfold through the characters we find in the Gospel. It is riveting stuff actually, sit on the edge of your seat kind of stuff even, where we can watch others wrestle with their faith from the safety of our couches.

But every once in a while I arrive at a verse (like this one) that awakens me to the idea that I am far less removed from these words than I realize; that they are as much for me as they were for Mark’s original audience. I (we) are a part of this story. Suddenly I find myself shifting even closer to the edge of my seat.

From Confession to Rebuke (Mark 8:27-38)
The closing passage in Mark chapter 8 brings us face to face with a glaring contrast- the clear and concise nature of Peter’s confession of Jesus as Son of God, and the rebuke of Peter’s subsequent (and apparent) resistance to what this confession actually means in light of his own journey in following Jesus.

Mark has just finished providing us with a stark reminder of the Gospel Way, the Way in which we have been called to follow as Jesus continues to travel the straight path set before us. In the sending of the disciples, we encounter two complimentary parables (the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000) that outline the nature of how this movement is supposed to work. It begins with God’s provision for His (Jewish) people in the 5,000 (the forgiven life), and then moves outward to God’s vision and provision for the (gentile) world in the 4,000 (the forgiving life).
*See my previous post for more on this thought.

Which brings us to this closing passage, a sort of entry point into the Way of Jesus, the Way of the Gospel, the Way to the cross. It is a Way in which Jesus must,

“suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
– Mark 8:31

It is a Way which leads immediately to resistance (in this passage), a resistance that Jesus goes on to rebuke (Get behind me Satan!), by declaring that Peter is setting his mind on the things of man rather than the things of God (vs. 33).

Two questions arise in me as I read this passage:
1. What is it about the Way of Jesus that Peter was resisting?
There are some culturally relevant answers available to us as readers. According to the prophetic words that we find in the book of Daniel, the Jewish culture would have sensed a contradiction between Jesus’ specific reference to a single resurrection and the teaching of an expected general resurrection of God’s people. As a culture built around certain Messianic expectations, Jesus’ Messianic methods easily could have been met with a certain degree of skepticism.

However, I think these cultural expectations become that much more interesting and applicable when seen in light of Jesus’ immediate and personal response to Peter’s resistance. It is a resistance that Jesus seems to apply to “anyone” (vs. 34), and Jesus’ answer here reveals something incredibly specific, incredibly intimate about the human tendency to resist His call to follow Him. Here is Jesus’ response:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, and the gospel’s, will save it.”
– Mark 8:34

So this is The Way that Peter is resisting:
We follow “after” Jesus, not before– Jesus goes first, and we are called to follow Him on the straight path. In doing so we must give up our need to control the way this path “should” travel.

We must deny ourselves: This is the idea of repentance that we find in Chapter 1, the turning in a new direction. We are called to reorient our line of sight towards the saving work of Jesus and the Gospel, and in doing so we must submit our own idea of what it means to belong in the Kingdom of God (and what it says about us and others) to Jesus and His purposes.

We must take up our cross: In a bit of foretelling (or foreshadowing), Jesus offers us the image of the cross. The cross, here, means letting go of our self-determination and exchanging it for a sense of dependence on the work of Jesus in going before us on the straight path. The cross we take up is both a symbol of what Jesus has done in our lives (the forgiven life), and a picture of what we carry with us as we enter on the Gospel Way (the truth that this forgiveness declares about us and others). As Paul understands it in Galatians 2:20, it is about the process of being “crucified with Christ”, of seeing past our own efforts and towards the Kingdom work that God is already doing.

We must follow Jesus: The call to “follow me” reminds us that faith is not stagnant but active. It is a movement, a movement that brings us out of the truth of the forgiven life and pushes us into the Way of the forgiving life. It is a faith that calls us to get out of the boat and to trust that we have something to offer to the world through the work that Jesus has already done in us.

So what does Peter resist? According to Jesus, he is resisting the Gospel’s call to shift his sights from looking inwards to looking outwards. What he resists has much to do with his ability to see past himself (deny “himself”, take up “his” cross, save “his” life, lose “his” life) and to actively participate in the work that Jesus is doing in the world at large.

Which brings me to my second question:
2. What is it about the Way of Jesus that I resist?
I am currently (for Lent) spending some time working my way through N.T. Wright’s “The Day the Revolution Began”. Wright is one of my personal hero’s of the faith, and his work on the new perspective (of Paul) and in reshaping our understanding of the Cross (away from the problems of penal substitution and towards the more scripturally faithful idea of the Kingdom of God come near) has been transformative for the way I have come to understand God in the midst of my own faith journey.

This latest book is sort of a summary of the ideas he has been formulating elsewhere, and they are ideas that I find myself continuing to wrestle with as I encounter some of Mark’s more difficult passages. Here, the ending of Mark 8 is no exception as the difficult insider/outsider language of Mark 4 resurfaces. This time we are presented with a contrasting picture of the “world” and the “soul”, or the idea that two opposing actions can lead to two differing results between life and death (of being ashamed of Jesus and Jesus being ashamed of us).

Here is the thing. I cannot help but tend to read this passage through the lens of the old penal substitution paradigm that has become so ingrained in me over the years, a perspective which, according to Wright, has been built on this idea that the forgiven life has everything to do with appeasing God’s great anger towards us (and/or our sin) and that requires the punishment of death (which Jesus accepts in our place). It is a view, whether we recognize it or not, that moves from a negative to a negative, and often does so at the expense of the greater (more positive) Gospel vision of the Kingdom. And so, I cannot help but arrive at this passage about shame (and the failure that leads to shame) that closes chapter 8 with a great sense of fear and resistance. I cannot help but resist the helplessness and hopelessness that I feel when I measure the seeming expectation of this Gospel (of Christ’s substitutionary work) with the fruit of my own example (personal failure). And so, I find myself moving back and forth between two lines of thought- if this is what the passage means, that I must be ashamed (condemned to death) because of my lack of fruit, I will either become like the disciples and resist Jesus’ words by trying to control it for my own sake (it cannot work this way, Jesus), or I will reject (resist) the call of the Gospel altogether.

And yet, as I sit down to read over this passage again, as I pray for a fresh set of eyes, I am struck with the idea that it is in the midst of my own resistance that Jesus is speaking directly to me, and it is in the midst of this Gospel message that Jesus is exposing my resistance for what it actually is- an inability to follow Jesus without inhibition.

Discovering My Motivation
I cannot escape the fact that, in this passage, faith is participatory, not stagnant. But the bigger question that I find here is, what is motivating me to enter into this new Way of living. Here is what I know. Faith, as a picture of the forgiven life that Mark has been building up to this point, is not a get out of jail free card. To view it this way is to make little out of the muchness that we find in this new Way of life. At the same time, faith cannot be about proving our worth on the Way of Jesus. This methodology works against the call to deny ourselves, and to view it this way is simply to elevate ourselves above others while also condemning ourselves to the picture of shame that closes chapter 8 at the same time (thus the complex this creates).

And so how do I reconcile these two ideas without simply getting lost in the temptation to resist it? Here I have found the following verse to be helpful:
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul.”
Mark 8:36-37

There is a question that this verse pre-supposes. It is a question of worth, or more specifically, the question of what my life is worth. What is a man’s soul (life) worth? In vs. 36 Jesus declares it is worth more than the world. So what can man give in return for his life? We cannot possibly gain enough to measure up to the price that Jesus declares our life to be worth.

Understanding this economic exchange or parallel helped to reorient my perspective on what it is that I am resisting. When I read this through my old paradigm of penal substitution theology, the Way of Jesus becomes a picture of Jesus paying the price for my sin through the rejection and death that He (willingly and purposefully) suffers. He payed a debt that I owed. The truth of my resistance to this idea of Jesus and the cross is that, in order to follow him in this same Way, I am required to respond to this “debt” by living a “profitable” life in exchange. And yet, as this verse exposes, I cannot possibly earn enough to measure up to what is declared to be priceless. But, in the eyes of Jesus’ substitutionary work, this is the model I am called to follow and to imitate, and so I find myself without hope and feeling stuck in an economic system based on the haves and the have not’s, the divide between the rich and the poor (in faith).

When I read this verse through a different paradigm, however, the paradigm of Jesus’ restorative work in the promise of the Kingdom come near, what I find is a verse that actually begins to reshape my motivation for following Jesus into something far more hopeful. At this point in perspective, the word “loss” takes precedence over “profit” in God’s Kingdom economy. Jesus’ suffering and death become a positive investment in God’s restorative work (the forgiven life), an investment that is not so much about atoning for our sins, but rather about entering into the affects of sin in our world along with us. And we enter into God’s restorative work (the forgiving life) by learning to give out of the muchness that the Way of Jesus declares us to have in a less than perfect world, in the midst of our less than perfect lives.

When I consider this fresh perspective on the new economic order of God’s Kingdom, Jesus’ own path of rejection, suffering and death finds new roots. The cross is not a payment for our sins, or the appeasement of an angry God. This simply does not fit with the picture we find here of God’s new economic order. In the cross we find a positive investment in the work of God’s promised restoration (the Kingdom come near), and for Jesus this investment is us. We, His priceless sons and daughters of God, are the fruits of His Kingdom work.

And so, when we enter into the Way of Jesus, when we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him, what we are doing is accepting the truth that we are seen as priceless in God’s new economic order. And when we follow (as we are called to do as equal participants in this Kingdom work), what we are doing is declaring others to be equally priceless in this Kingdom as well.

Exchanging Shame to the Forgiven and Forgiving Way of Life 
Here is what really stuck out for me when it comes to my own tendency to resist the person and work of Jesus in my own life. When I resist my old idea of the cross, when I see it as simply a debt that I must repay (but can never repay), it inevitably brings me shame. I will also inevitably put this same degree of shame on others as well. Not only will (and do) I find myself consistently looking to compare my own fruit to the fruit of others around me, but I am forever tempted to judge the fruit of others as less in order to keep my own profitability quota up. It’s a nasty circle and one that thankfully Jesus’ helps to call us out of on the way to the cross.

I recently submitted a devotional for the Lenten Reader (2017). It is a set of devotionals made up of submissions from people across the Covenant Church of Canada that is intended to lead us through Lent, a period of reflection and preparation for approaching the cross. My submission happened to fall on today (March 4^th), and I couldn’t help but see some parallels to Mark chapter 8. And so in closing I would like to include this devotional here. It is based on a reflection of Psalm 22, and has much to say about reorienting our perspective on this idea of shame and of embracing the work of Jesus not as a debt, but an investment.

Psalm 22

“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
– Psalm 22:22; Hebrews 2:12

Often the most difficult part about experiencing hardship and failure in life is making sense of that space in-between God’s apparent silence and the promise of His presence.

As the Psalmist writes, God is “enthroned on the praises of Israel” because “In you our fathers trusted… they trusted and were not put to shame (vs. 3-5).” In contrast, the Psalmist’s inability to see God in the midst of his own suffering, his inability to see similar fruit, brings him shame. He finds himself no more than a “worm”, “scorned” and “despised” (vs. 6), far from God’s saving grace (vs1).
And yet, the strength that eventually allows the Psalmist declare, “Yet you (God) are he… ”, comes in the midst of the bulls, the drought, and the preying dogs (vs. 9). It is a strength that he gains not by his own worldly idea of success, but by lifting his eyes upwards and outwards towards a God who has heard his cries in the silence, who is not far from his pain. It is a demonstration of faith that leads the Psalmist to pray, not simply to be delivered from his trials, but for his trials to “tell of God’s name” and to “praise God’s name” in the midst of his family and his community, not on own strength, but on a strength that comes from God (vs25).

Recognizing that Jesus, the founder of our salvation, was “made perfect through suffering”, the author of the letter to the Hebrews reflects that the Psalmist need not be “ashamed”, because just as Jesus tasted suffering on behalf of “all” so does our suffering unite us with the one through whom all things exist (Hebrews 2:5-13). The Psalmist can find freedom in not having to compare the fruitfulness of his ministry to the fruit of his fathers, because in the cross Jesus declares us all to be equally worthy of being called His children. As Jesus shares in the cry of the Psalmist, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”, He demonstrates just how far God is willing to go to meet us in the space in-between, and reminds us that it is okay to sit in these difficult spaces, to wrestle with the silence. We are also reminded that God has “left nothing outside his control”, and it is because of this that we can trust in the promise that God is up to something far greater than our limited perspective can see in these difficult spaces in-between, and join the Psalmist in saying “He has not hidden his face from (the afflicted), but has heard their cries”, Praise be to God.

Sickness managed to sideline me from doing much writing this week, but I did want to take a moment before the hours click away on this weeks end, to offer a brief reflection on my continued journey through Mark. As I made my way through chapters 6-8, there were a few things that stood out for me as I continue to get ready for the Lenten season and the first foretelling of Jesus’ death:

A Second Storm Passage
In the first storm passage (the calming of the storm in 4:35-41), Jesus is in the boat with the disciples and asleep in the stern. The point of this passage was their lack of a faith, a problem that I believe had less to do with their fear or their questioning of Jesus’ care, and more to do with their inability to fully entrust their lives to Jesus’ call, a call that Jesus will be asking them to live out only a few passages later (6:7-13). This is contrasted by the stories of the healed woman and healed man in the passage that follows, two people who demonstrate the necessary faith required to “go” out into the world in the way Jesus calls them to do.
In the second storm passage (6:45-52), we find the disciples in the boat by themselves, with Jesus staying on the land.

Two things to note here- First, sometimes when we have faith enough to go, the going can be a struggle. And sometimes when we face these storms it is easy to mistake Jesus as too far removed from our circumstance to do much at all. And as he demonstrates by walking on the water and joining them back in the boat, we can have faith that Jesus still sees and Jesus still attends to our cries in the midst of the rough waters.

Secondly, this truth (that Jesus never leaves us) finds even more significance in light of the line at the end of this second storm passage, which suggests that they were “astounded” at this truth because “they did not understand about the loaves” (6:52).

Understanding The Two Loaves Passages
Here we find another pair of nearly identical stories in the Gospel of Mark, and while all four Gospels do record the first (the feeding of the 5,000), Matthew and Mark both include the second (the feeding of the 4,000).
It might be easy to simply dismiss these as two varied versions of the same story, but there is worth in considering how and why these stories were included in their traditional context, and the way it can shed further light on the way Jesus promises to never leave us we step out of the boat and enter the world. After all, it is Jesus himself who calls our attention to the danger of misunderstanding the point and purpose of the loaves.

The Numbers Tell The Story
Numbers were important in the ancient culture, and no less important for the Biblical authors themselves, and from my own research, commentators and scholars generally seem to agree that the differences in numbers that distinguish the two stories can help shed light on their intended meaning in the larger picture of Mark’s Gospel.

In the first story, we encounter the number 5 (five loaves, and five thousand). In the ancient Jewish culture this was understood to symbolize the Pentateuch (books of the Mosaic law). And in the stories conclusion, we find 12 baskets (12 Tribes of Israel).

Contrast this with the second story and we find 7 loaves (and baskets). The number 7 usually indicates the 7 days of Creation in which God looked upon all of the created order and saw it as good. 7 can also mean the perfect or whole picture of God or God’s ways.

So what does this tell us? In the story of the Feeding of the 5,000, we find a story that is symbolic of God’s provision for His chosen (Jewish) people. Further, this miracle occurs near Bethsaida, which indicates a Jewish setting.

In the story of the Feeding of the 4,000, we find the location now shifts to the Gentile region, with the number 7 signifying Jesus’ care and provision not just for the Jews, but for all the world.

So how do the loaves connect us back to the story of the storm? For Jesus, the story of the loaves should serve to remind the disciples of two things when it comes to following Jesus. First, they are called to go into all the world. This is how far God’s provision is intended to reach. It is interesting that the story of the 5,000 finds the disciples being removed from the crowd in order to tend to their hunger, only to be pushed by Jesus to share their hunger (and their food) with the crowd. Secondly, no matter how far they go, Jesus is always with them and their care always in His sights. Even as Jesus calls them to out of their own hunger to feed the crowd, we cannot overlook the fact that the story begins with Jesus seeing their own hunger as well.

The Odd Story of John the Baptist as a Further Picture of God’s Provision
When I did a study on The Gospel of Matthew last year, the biggest surprise I found was the intentional way in which Matthew places John the Baptist into his narrative. In Matthew’s Gospel, John is presented as a model for discipleship (with the 3 transitional placements of his story coming at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the beginning of the disciple’s ministry, and finally in the foreshadowing of the passion narrative as the ultimate model of how discipleship is supposed to work in God’s kingdom).

Here in Mark, we find something similar, only John’s arrest arrives at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (in Galilee) while his death arrives at the transition into the greater Gentile world (the sending of the disciples).

The abruptness of John’s death feels somehow, even more bracing as Mark prepares us for the sending of the disciples. All but abandoned, all but forgotten, a sort of footnote in the Gospel narrative. And yet it is hard to miss the placement of this story as a demonstration of faith, a faith that allowed John to give his life for the One who was greater than he. It is a faith that seems to ring loud and clear with the common message Mark has been building through the stories of the storms and the loaves- this message that the compassion of God reaches much farther than we can see on our own, and that even when we feel we are alone, Jesus still sees, still cares, is still present- that Jesus above all is interested in love and compassion.

This is a truth that will now carry us into the next transition in Mark’s Gospel, the movement into Christ’s own walk to the Cross and the foretelling of His death. It is something that John’s death equally prepares us for. It is a reminder that just when we think there are limits to His compassion, there is a grace that pushes even further.