Touchpoints on Mark (Page 3)
Please Answer the Question. And Show Your Work.
“We have to let the actions of Jesus, the actions of the Christ, define the Christ. We can’t let our theologies and belief systems determine who God is. God is much bigger than that. It isn’t Law/Gospel. It’s Gospel/Law/Gospel.”
The Great Divide
Grace and Peace to you from the mystery in whom we live and move, and have our being. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” Mark 7: 24-37 Let’s get one thing perfectly clear before we begin this Touchpoint… I am not a theologian. I am not Jim Hanson, Sheri Brown, Conrad Braaten, Henry Rojas, or any of the many educated and…
Breaking Point
“Like [the Pharisees], we might be a little disappointed to learn, at this late stage in life and after this long trek, that some of the biblical formulas we’ve clung to are wearing thin.”
Are We Participants or Observers?
Jesus knows the trap that comes with having many followers. Because of the wilderness, he knows the danger and allure of popularity and power. He knows the importance of taking moments in a deserted place to be reminded of our true identity.
Saving Face
I am, just like Herod, deeply invested and complicitly enmeshed in saving face.
Shake It Off
To shake off the dust you’ve picked up following Jesus is to leave something holy behind. Dare we hope – as we leave a place where we are not welcome – to leave behind a little peace, a little joy, to leave a tinge of compassion hanging in the air?
The Many Sides of Jesus
Think of how much of American Christianity has focused on staying pure, maintaining righteousness, showing oneself as blameless? HAH! What a joke. The only way I can stay pure, maintain righteousness and appear blameless is by the constant touching and being touched by the Mystery who came to call the sinners, the unrighteous.
The Other Side of the Storm
And perhaps that can give us a different perspective on the disciple’s cry, “Do you not care that we are about to perish?” The disciple’s cry speaks to more than a storm on a lake. It is the cry of all who go with Jesus, who follow Jesus to the other side. And while Jesus does calm the storm, perhaps their perishing is exactly what needs to happen.
The Kingdom of God is a Seedy Place
The seeding is ongoing. Driven by the wind, the Spirit… and carried by those who may not even be aware they are carrying it. And our task, is not to figure it out, but to live in it, nest in it, and grow in it. The Mystery it seems, just won’t stop planting the seed of the kingdom inside us and around us.
Crazy Jesus
You see, for Jesus, the Holy Spirit is not something you can name and claim. It is so far beyond you and me that no family or religious system can contain it. It is free to blow wherever it will and it catches up all kinds of people in its presence.
A Defining Moment
Grace and peace from Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. But Peter grabbed him in protest.” Mark 8:31-38 It’s a question of definitions. What is the essence of the Christ? What is the end game of the Divine? What does it mean to be ‘saved’? Or what is ‘salvation’? This is what is getting worked out in this passage. And it’s not something we can gloss over. In the previous verses, Jesus asks the disciples,…
When God Became Unhinged
Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make a dwelling for you and Moses and Elijah.” Mark 9:2-6 In reading all the commentaries on this passage, there seems to be one point of agreement… The Transfiguration story is a hinge story. It is a transition story. It stands as a mid-point hinge in the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus now…