We appreciate your readership for Join the Feast in the past year. After November 15, 2009, we will cease publication for a while. However, please check back in the future. Look for us to resume publication and hope you will join the feast.
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
November 15, 2009 - Mark 13:1-8 - Charlie Summers
Gleanings from the Text
Mark 13:1-8
When it comes to apocalyptic Scriptures, there seem to be two kinds of people. There are those who love to dig around in the symbols in order to find the “secret messages,” and those who skip over these texts as quickly as possible. But surely there is something useful here, some word we need to hear other than “hidden secrets.”
You know the setting. Jesus and his disciples (who are mostly small town guys) come into Jerusalem. The disciples are very impressed with the temple, its grand architecture and its seeming permanence. (Though this is the second temple, it has already been destroyed once in its history. This one was rebuilt by Herod the Great in 19 BC. Matthew says this same Herod killed the children of Bethlehem.) Mark routinely shows that the disciples do not quite get the point of this Jesus. They are still impressed with the “big things” – temples, crowds, and important people. While Jesus talks to them about an upside down kingdom of mustards seeds, children, and crosses. The theology of the cross is presented in this chapter in a different key.
In this apocalyptic passage in Mark, Jesus offers two warnings to his easily impressed disciples. “Take heed that no one lead you astray.” “Take heed…when they bring you to trial.” There is suffering ahead for the community and for the disciples. They are warned not to let the suffering be an excuse to chase off after phony solutions and false messiahs (we might say quick fixes).
They are warned not to lose heart. There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be stacked courtrooms, rigged trials, persecution for the church as there will be for the Messiah. The reader is warned that trouble comes to the world, and to those who follow the Way of Jesus.
But there is also a promise. “Do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say (when you are before the rulers), but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” This rare promise of the Spirit in Mark’s gospel is given to those who suffer for their faith; who testify to their Lord. “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” There is a promise of help in our time of distress.
Food for Thought
What happens when our “great buildings” come tumbling down? There is an opportunity in this passage to think about our catastrophes: Hurricane Katrina; September 9/11; the collapse of the stock market; the collapse of a marriage. When we enter into an apocalyptic time, what do we hear God saying to us? How do we trust in the Holy Spirit when things are falling apart all around us?
There is also the opportunity to ask when is it that we are willing to suffer for the sake of this Jesus. What do we know about a witness to the faith that leads to our persecution? What do we learn from the voices of the persecuted church in other parts of the world or in other ages?
I usually connect Mark 13 with the first Sunday of Advent. What difference does it make when we read it during the “Thanksgiving Season” in November? Or during our Stewardship season in the congregation? Where are we placing our trust? What rock are we building upon? What cost of discipleship are we willing to bear?
Sink Your Teeth into This
Elie Wiesel in his book Memoirs: All Rivers Lead to the Sea talks about his childhood in Eastern Europe and the suffering of the Jews even before the Nazis came. His rabbi used to say, “Abraham, the first of the patriarchs, was a better Jew than you. He was a thousand times better than all of us, but the Midrash tells us that he was cast into a burning furnace. So how do you expect to breeze through life without a scratch? Daniel was wiser than you and more pious, yet he was condemned to die in a lion’s den. And you dream of living your life without suffering?” (p.19)
Biographical Information
Charlie Summers is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia.
Read more!
Mark 13:1-8
When it comes to apocalyptic Scriptures, there seem to be two kinds of people. There are those who love to dig around in the symbols in order to find the “secret messages,” and those who skip over these texts as quickly as possible. But surely there is something useful here, some word we need to hear other than “hidden secrets.”
You know the setting. Jesus and his disciples (who are mostly small town guys) come into Jerusalem. The disciples are very impressed with the temple, its grand architecture and its seeming permanence. (Though this is the second temple, it has already been destroyed once in its history. This one was rebuilt by Herod the Great in 19 BC. Matthew says this same Herod killed the children of Bethlehem.) Mark routinely shows that the disciples do not quite get the point of this Jesus. They are still impressed with the “big things” – temples, crowds, and important people. While Jesus talks to them about an upside down kingdom of mustards seeds, children, and crosses. The theology of the cross is presented in this chapter in a different key.
In this apocalyptic passage in Mark, Jesus offers two warnings to his easily impressed disciples. “Take heed that no one lead you astray.” “Take heed…when they bring you to trial.” There is suffering ahead for the community and for the disciples. They are warned not to let the suffering be an excuse to chase off after phony solutions and false messiahs (we might say quick fixes).
They are warned not to lose heart. There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be stacked courtrooms, rigged trials, persecution for the church as there will be for the Messiah. The reader is warned that trouble comes to the world, and to those who follow the Way of Jesus.
But there is also a promise. “Do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say (when you are before the rulers), but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” This rare promise of the Spirit in Mark’s gospel is given to those who suffer for their faith; who testify to their Lord. “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” There is a promise of help in our time of distress.
Food for Thought
What happens when our “great buildings” come tumbling down? There is an opportunity in this passage to think about our catastrophes: Hurricane Katrina; September 9/11; the collapse of the stock market; the collapse of a marriage. When we enter into an apocalyptic time, what do we hear God saying to us? How do we trust in the Holy Spirit when things are falling apart all around us?
There is also the opportunity to ask when is it that we are willing to suffer for the sake of this Jesus. What do we know about a witness to the faith that leads to our persecution? What do we learn from the voices of the persecuted church in other parts of the world or in other ages?
I usually connect Mark 13 with the first Sunday of Advent. What difference does it make when we read it during the “Thanksgiving Season” in November? Or during our Stewardship season in the congregation? Where are we placing our trust? What rock are we building upon? What cost of discipleship are we willing to bear?
Sink Your Teeth into This
Elie Wiesel in his book Memoirs: All Rivers Lead to the Sea talks about his childhood in Eastern Europe and the suffering of the Jews even before the Nazis came. His rabbi used to say, “Abraham, the first of the patriarchs, was a better Jew than you. He was a thousand times better than all of us, but the Midrash tells us that he was cast into a burning furnace. So how do you expect to breeze through life without a scratch? Daniel was wiser than you and more pious, yet he was condemned to die in a lion’s den. And you dream of living your life without suffering?” (p.19)
Biographical Information
Charlie Summers is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia.
Read more!
October 25, 2009 – Mark 10:46-52 - J. Richard Short
Gleanings from the Text
Mark 10:46-52
Blind beggar. By the side of the road. Scolded by crowd for asking Jesus for mercy.
Jesus stops. “What do you want me to do for you?”
Interesting question. Bartimaus has already told Jesus what he wants. Twice. He wants Jesus to have mercy on him. To show him some pity.
But Jesus senses that there is more that Bartimaus wants. Or needs. So Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Can you be more specific?
Food for Thought
One way to do church renewal is to ask the community, as the body of Christ, ”What do you want us to do for you?” It’s called identifying the community’s felt needs.
The critics of this approach say that if your congregational strategy stops at meeting felt needs, you end up with self centered Christians who are in church only for what the church can do for them, rather than what they can do for Christ. Maybe identifying and meeting felt needs is only the first step of a multiple step process.
The text suggests that the second step is following Jesus. That’s what Bartimaus did. He went from being by the side of the road, to being on the road, following Jesus. If we stop here, this is a story about making a new disciple. Identifying and meeting felt needs, and the person, having his or her needs met, decides to follow Jesus.
Let me tell you about Steve, an Episcopal priest in a small county seat town in Louisiana. Steve was all about having his church met felt needs in the 1980’s and 90’s. They started with a LOGOS ministry on Wednesday afternoons, and that grew so much that they decided to start an elementary school, and that grew so much they decided to start a high school.
But something happened to Steve in the midst of his “success” as a minister. One day, in his prayers, he heard Jesus say to him, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?” The question startled him. He was not ready for it. So he responded, “Lord, I don’t need anything from you. I just want to something for you.” But Jesus ignored his protestations, and replied, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?”
Since that encounter, Steve turned his ministry around. The outward success of that parish continued, but not because of what Steve was doing. He shifted to working on people’s spiritual growth, on their relationship with the living Lord.
So maybe there is a third step in this process. The first step is to meet people where they are and to help them with their presenting issues. To meet their felt needs.
The second step is to help them see the joy of being a disciple and in following Jesus.
The third step is a revisiting of the first step but at a deeper level, when the fully devoted disciples of Christ get into giving so much that they lose sight of the source of the giving.
Sink Your Teeth Into This
A pastor went to his mentor crestfallen. After two rough pastorates, he had just been asked to leave his third church. In tears he blurted out, “All I ever wanted was to be used by God.” His mentor replied, “My friend, don’t you understand that Jesus doesn’t want to use you. Jesus just wants to love you.”
Jesus says to Bartimaus, and to my friend Steve, and to the recently fired pastor, and I suggest, to us, “What do you want me to do for you?”
What really, deep down, do you want Jesus to do for you? Get you a Cadillac? Help you in my marriage or child raising or money management? Is that what you really want? Or do you want a closer walk with the living Lord? Think about it.
Biographical Information
J. Richard Short is General Presbyter of The Presbytery of Eastern Virginia.
Read more!
Mark 10:46-52
Blind beggar. By the side of the road. Scolded by crowd for asking Jesus for mercy.
Jesus stops. “What do you want me to do for you?”
Interesting question. Bartimaus has already told Jesus what he wants. Twice. He wants Jesus to have mercy on him. To show him some pity.
But Jesus senses that there is more that Bartimaus wants. Or needs. So Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Can you be more specific?
Food for Thought
One way to do church renewal is to ask the community, as the body of Christ, ”What do you want us to do for you?” It’s called identifying the community’s felt needs.
The critics of this approach say that if your congregational strategy stops at meeting felt needs, you end up with self centered Christians who are in church only for what the church can do for them, rather than what they can do for Christ. Maybe identifying and meeting felt needs is only the first step of a multiple step process.
The text suggests that the second step is following Jesus. That’s what Bartimaus did. He went from being by the side of the road, to being on the road, following Jesus. If we stop here, this is a story about making a new disciple. Identifying and meeting felt needs, and the person, having his or her needs met, decides to follow Jesus.
Let me tell you about Steve, an Episcopal priest in a small county seat town in Louisiana. Steve was all about having his church met felt needs in the 1980’s and 90’s. They started with a LOGOS ministry on Wednesday afternoons, and that grew so much that they decided to start an elementary school, and that grew so much they decided to start a high school.
But something happened to Steve in the midst of his “success” as a minister. One day, in his prayers, he heard Jesus say to him, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?” The question startled him. He was not ready for it. So he responded, “Lord, I don’t need anything from you. I just want to something for you.” But Jesus ignored his protestations, and replied, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?”
Since that encounter, Steve turned his ministry around. The outward success of that parish continued, but not because of what Steve was doing. He shifted to working on people’s spiritual growth, on their relationship with the living Lord.
So maybe there is a third step in this process. The first step is to meet people where they are and to help them with their presenting issues. To meet their felt needs.
The second step is to help them see the joy of being a disciple and in following Jesus.
The third step is a revisiting of the first step but at a deeper level, when the fully devoted disciples of Christ get into giving so much that they lose sight of the source of the giving.
Sink Your Teeth Into This
A pastor went to his mentor crestfallen. After two rough pastorates, he had just been asked to leave his third church. In tears he blurted out, “All I ever wanted was to be used by God.” His mentor replied, “My friend, don’t you understand that Jesus doesn’t want to use you. Jesus just wants to love you.”
Jesus says to Bartimaus, and to my friend Steve, and to the recently fired pastor, and I suggest, to us, “What do you want me to do for you?”
What really, deep down, do you want Jesus to do for you? Get you a Cadillac? Help you in my marriage or child raising or money management? Is that what you really want? Or do you want a closer walk with the living Lord? Think about it.
Biographical Information
J. Richard Short is General Presbyter of The Presbytery of Eastern Virginia.
Read more!
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