Rule of Life - Unplug

Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

2 Thessalonians 3:16 – “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.” 

Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.”

Romans 8:6 – “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”

1 Peter 5:7 – “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 

Romans 15:13 – “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

This is just a small sampling of scriptures that highlight the call we must abide in Christ and be at peace in a world that’ll do everything it can to destroy your peace or offer an empty peace through commitment to tribalism. We are known by the fruit we produce. We produce fruit based on where our nutrients come from. The world produces a bitter fruit of anxiety, anger, rage, suspicion, selfishness, factions, and the like (Galatians 5:19-21 adapted). The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against these things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other (5:22-26).

We’re finishing up our study on the need for creating a “rule of life,” a structure built to aid in helping us abide in Christ. This structure is essential for connecting you to the vine and producing the fruit God desires. One of the first steps to building this structure is to recognize any structures that get in the way of you abiding in Christ. This is one of the hardest parts about spiritual formation. When Jesus says, “his yoke is easy and his burden is light,” he means it. The part that is hard and heavy is taking the yoke of the world off. When Jesus invites us into life with him he also invites us into death with the world. To take on his yoke we must first take off the yoke of the world. Then we will see that his yoke is easy and burden light.

When developing a Rule of Life, it is important to have a balance of practices that add things to your life and practices that take away things from your life. As we wrap up this series, I want to focus on one final practice that I am heavily reevaluating in my own life: unplugging.

There is a ton of research on how social media has influenced our young people and has altered our view of reality. We’ve become more compulsive with smart phones and smart watches (checking our phones roughly every 6.5 min). Evaluating ourselves against the best (and not even real) versions of our friends on social media creates image issues and shifts a life filled with joy to a life of desire for whatever it is that they have. The internet and social media were intended to create a world of connectivity where ideas could be shared but instead it has fostered siloed thinking where people intrench themselves into their camps and fight ghosts on the internet that have no real implications for them. This leaves people suspicious of others and promotes gossip rather than hard conversations which lead to compassion, understanding, and growth.

If you don’t struggle with social media and your phone the way 84% of the population does, there are other areas where a lot of Christians need to develop practices of unplugging. One major place along with cell phones and social media is unplugging from the news media. I’m not talking about one specific news media, whether liberal, conservative, or neutral. I’m talking about all news media. The entire news media enterprise is focused on keeping your attention and the best way they have figured out how to do that is through sensationalism, anger, rage, and tribalism. Like social media, there are lots of studies on how the 24-hour news cycle has shifted and polarized our culture. If you cannot hear an opinion different from yours without labeling them, name calling, getting angry, or seeking out scripture to prove them wrong, then you probably need to unplug because your mass consumption of news keeps you from hearing others with love, compassion, peace, and joy.

The 24-hour news cycle, news apps, and their social media handles all aim at keeping your attention and inviting you to abide in the destruction and dismay they are promoting. The coined term for the situation we are currently in is called “doom scrolling” where people swipe their phones to see one atrocity after another. This isn’t to say they are making these events up but to say they are keeping your attention on the despair of the world. It’s time to unplug and reconnect with the one who calls us to joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, etc.

Take an evaluation of your life, what you do, what you look at and hear, and sit with God to let the Spirit reveal to you the things that promote the joy of God in your life and the things that remove that joy. Do this with love of neighbor as well. I am not saying you do no need to watch the news at all or look at social media but maybe evaluate how much you do and when you do it. What would it look like to begin your day with an hour of silence and first hearing a word from God before hearing a word from the world? Unplug from the world so that you can first plug fully into God and receive the world with compassion, joy, love, and peace.

Rule of Life - Fasting

Spiritual disciplines take discipline. There’s an obvious statement but it is worth reminding. When I come back to a discipline, and it is difficult to pick back up, I am reminded of the first time I go on a run after taking time off. You can’t just jump back into it. You must begin again and build up to where you want to be. You never begin in the gym with lifting the heavy weights. You have to continually work at it to get to where you need to be. In short, it takes discipline. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, uses the imagery of strict training to run well. He beats his body and makes it his slave (rather than him being a slave to his body) so that he will run well for the prize. What must always be remembered about spiritual disciplines is that they are not for any appearance of piety but must always center on spiritual purposes of drawing closer to God. When Paul talks of the seriousness in which a person should approach their discipline, he is not calling promoting that one might save themselves. Instead, he recognizes that without discipline all will be a slave to something. St. Jerome of the 4thcentury puts it this way, “Be ever engages, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.”  

One discipline both Jews and Christians alike have practiced to draw close to God and not be mastered by their bodies is fasting. There is a collective grown anytime this practice is brought up and we largely have neglected this discipline in the church. When we look to scripture we find teachings of what not to do when fasting but there is essentially no “how to” book for doing it. That is because it was a common practice in Judaism and in the early church. Jesus’s teachings about fasting begin with the expectation that you will fast, “When you fast…” (Matt 6:16).

There is biblical precedent for fasting. Jesus fasted for 40 days before beginning his ministry. We need to not explain this away too quickly as though it were metaphorical or something else. We are told that he ate nothing and that at the end “he was hungry” (Luke 4:2). It is not unheard of for people to engage in a 40 day fast but that is a discipline that one must build up to and I don’t want to spend time talking about that. There are examples of “partial fasts” in the Bible, where a person gives up delicacies. Daniel had a three-week period where he “ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all” (Dan. 10:3). Paul fasted for three days after his encounter with Christ (Acts 9:9). Fasting is usually a private practice between an individual and God but there were times in Israel’s history where there was an annual public fast required by the Mosaic law (day of atonement in Lev 23:27). Other times a fast was called out of public lament or in seeking God’s guidance. The early church also set aside times of fasting to draw close to God together as a community and also to seek direction.

Is fasting a command? No. But there are strong examples for why we should fast and the benefit is has for both the individual to more deeply abide in Christ and for the community to seek God together. There does seem to be an expectation that followers of Christ will fast in expectation of his return (Matt 9:15). So, why should we fast?

We live in a time of easy indulgence where we get what we want when we want it. If we don’t have it, we can get it in a day or two from Amazon. We live in an impulsive culture where we show very little restraint. Denying ourselves our indulgences helps us to be masters of our bodies rather than be mastered by our bodies. In this, we better understand the words of Paul to the church in Philippi, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:12-13). Or as Jesus responds to the disciples when talking to the woman at the well in John 4, “I have food to eat of which you do not know…my food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.”

Fasting helps us keep balance in life, allowing us to reject the nonessential that often take precedence in our lives. We crave all sorts of things that are not God. Fasting helps us direct our basic craving for food and turn it toward craving for God. Paul writes, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything” (1 Cor 6:12). Richard Foster in his chapter on fasting in “Celebration of Discipline” provides this imagery, “Our human cravings and desires are like rivers that tend to overflow their banks; fasting helps keep them in their proper channels.” Fasting is not a way of forcing God’s hand in prayer and it should not be a means of visible piety. At its core, fasting is a discipline that brings greater freedom to rest in God.

Rule of Life - Rhythms of Prayer

“Pray without ceasing,” Paul tells the Thessalonian church (1 Thess 5:17). There is something in this kind of prayer that felt foreign to me for years, and I’m not fully at home with yet. Jesus spent 40 days and night in prayer and fasting before starting his ministry and often spent all night praying before making major decisions in his ministry. The rhythm of Jesus’s prayer life shaped and directed what he did in his ministry and prepared him to be enthroned as King on the cross. The early church prayed for guidance before choosing leaders (Acts 1:24; 6:6), devoted themselves to prayer (2:42), prayed for Peter’s release from prison (12:12), prayed for guidance (22:17), as well as many other times of prayer.

When I read the life of Jesus and the early church, prayer seemed to play a different role than what I was experiencing in my church upbringing. My prayers never felt like the reached higher than the ceiling and often felt more like a mental exercise than a conversation with the creator of life who is our Father and embraces us as his children. We were taught to “read the bible, pray every day, and we will grow, grow, grow.” For the first part of my life, I prayed the same prayers every night. When I went to college, I started noticing different forms of prayer in the Bible and experimented some with fasting. It bothered me more and more that I was going into ministry but didn’t know much about prayer as I was seeing it in the pages of the Bible. In my first year as a minister, I went on a personal retreat to a monastery to learn about prayer from people who dedicate their lives to the ministry of prayer. Rhythms of prayer, communally and individually, shaped life in this community.

To “pray without ceasing” was the real purpose of the Christians who fled society to live in the desert in the 3rdand 4th centuries. What we have discussed the last two weeks, regarding solitude and silence, provides the context within which prayer is practiced. When solitude and silence are separated from the call to unceasing prayer, they only become aesthetic practices of an empty spiritual life. Solitude, without prayer, is merely an escape from a busy work life. Silence, without prayer, an escape from a noisy society. Solitude, for the desert Christians, was being alone with God. Silence, listening to God.

As these Christians fled society to reclaim the ancient ways of following Jesus, the call to “pray without ceasing” became a call to “come to rest.” Solitude with God and listening for his voice created a rhythm of life with God where they found a rest and peace in the midst of the struggles of life. This God-given rest is what flows out of a life formed by prayer.

I have often approached prayer as an activity of the mind where I have a one-sided conversation with God, think through hard concepts about God, or an exercise of working through my day. Talking to God is still prayer but it is a very limited view of prayer. Prayer is first and foremost resting in God’s presence. The hardest journey for many of us to make is the path from the head to the heart. Moving from the head to the heart in prayer is where rest is found. Praying with the heart does not mean “heart felt” prayers or some other kind of emotive expression. Praying with the heart is simply to dwell with God, be in his presence, and find rest. This kind of prayer takes practice. We are people with noisy minds and hearts. When we enter the room of our heart there is a lot of clutter that needs cleaning. This takes practice. But the practice is worth it. When you establish rhythms of prayer in your life, rhythms where your alone time with God in silence shapes the rest of your day, you will discover that the peace and rest Christ offers us dwells inside of us. Paul assures us that Christ dwells inside of us in 2 Corinthians 13:5. Let’s establish rhythms of prayer where we abide in Christ and are transformed into people of peace in a world of chaos.

Where are natural spaces in your day where you could pause for 90 seconds and pray for the next hour of your day? How would your life look different if you approached all of life from a place of prayer, inviting the Holy Spirit to guide how you respond to the world you are entering into?

Rule of Life - Solitude and Silence

When Jesus calls us to follow him, he gives the simple command to abide in him (John 15). If we are to bear fruit in our lives (love, joy, peace, etc.) then it is essential to be connected to Jesus. We are all connected to something that nourishes the fruit we produce but it isn’t always Jesus. Building a structure in your life to help you be connected to Jesus is essential for being a true follower of Jesus. This structure historically is called a “Rule of Life.”

Habitual practices shape who you are and for your heart’s desires. The world goes to great lengths to form your habits and your heart to shape you into the person they want you to be. Therefore, Jesus implores us to abide in him. The structure you build for your life to be connected to Jesus is not what saves you. These habitual practices connect you to the one who saves.

For years I have been captivated by the history of the church in the first few hundred years. Followers of Christ went from being a persecuted marginalized minority to the state religion of the “Christian Nation” of Rome. This transition also meant that it took little effort to be a follower of Christ but great risk to remain a pagan. Many became Christian in name only causing others to fear the loss of the ancient faith. These Christians began fleeing society to find God in the desert. Our gut reaction has often been to look at people removing themselves from society and respond, “What good are they for the world then?”

This early monastic movement to the desert is depicted in this way: The early Desert Fathers and Mothers regarded society as a shipwreck from which everyone had to swim for their lives. For one to simply let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of society, was simply a disaster. The only way to save others from the shipwreck is to find your footing on solid ground. Fleeing the wreckage helped them find their footing to then return and save others.

This fleeing to the desert follows in the footsteps of Jesus who fled to the wilderness for forty days of fasting and prayer before starting his ministry (Mt 4). Throughout his life, he continued this practice of “going to lonely places to pray” (Lk 5:16; 6:12-13). Moses also spent 40 years in the desert before beginning his ministry of liberation (Ex 3:1). Deuteronomy 6 provides a type of “Rule of Life” for remembering dependency on God in the desert when entering the Promised Land. John the Baptizer called Israel to return to the wilderness to find God again. This call to repentance echoes the warnings of Moses in Deuteronomy 6. Paul tells us in Galatians 1:17 that after his encounter with Jesus he retreated to the desert for three years before joining the other Christ followers. The followers of Christ, who saw the changes in society and the church and fled to the desert, followed the example of Christ and others before them. They sought a solid foundation on which to stand so they could then return and save others.

Solitude is a daily habit where we return to the presence of God again and again to find our footing in the shipwreck of the world. What does this look like for you daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly?

This solitude is alone time with God where transformation takes place. To go deeper into this solitude and find our footing, we must also develop practices of silence. To prepare for this Sunday’s lesson, spend time in reflection on the words of James 1:19-27 and 3:1-12.

I talk a lot. I talk too much at times. It is a major part of my job to talk. One thing I’ve noticed over the year is that I have had to apologize a lot more for what I say than for what I don’t say. In a wordy world where everyone gives their opinion at every moment even when no one is listening, we need to reclaim practices of silence so that when we do speak our words have meaning. Silence creates space in our lives for God to shape our words. These words develop in God’s New Creation to speak life into this broken creation.

As we prepare to explore the need for practices of silence, I want to get your reaction to a challenge I tried many years ago. It would not work for most of us to take a vow of silence but what would it look like to set aside 24 hours to speak only what love required us to say?

Cultivating a Rule of Life pt2

We are in a series of lessons over the next month or so focusing on the practices of Jesus and his early followers and how those practices shape us into people of love, joy, and peace. Sometime around the fourth century, these practices started being called a “Rule of Life.” Don’t hear “rules” for life like, “Don’t handle. Don’t taste. Don’t touch.” (Colossians 2:20-23). “Rule of Life” as it was used in the ancient church was the same word and concept of a trellis and the background of establishing a need for a Rule of Life is based out of Jesus’s call to “Abide in him” in John 15. A trellis provides structure for a vine to grow and produce fruit. If you plant a vineyard and do not provide structures for it to grow, you will still have some fruit produced but largely it’ll rot on the ground, be eaten by animals and bugs, and become diseased. If you want to bear fruit in Jesus, you must create a structure in your life that’ll help you grow.

A disclaimer or two is needed. 

There are a lot of practices Jesus spoke against when speaking to the Pharisees. He was not negating the practices but their celebration and worship of the practices. The practices and habits we build in our lives are intended to produce the fruit of the Spirit in us. The Pharisees knew Scripture exceptionally well. They flawlessly kept the Sabbath. They prayed regularly. They kept the purity codes. They fasted regularly. I can go one. These are all life giving and fruit producing practices unless you’re too focused on the structure you’ve built and worship it. They had beautiful structures in place that should be life giving but their soil was terrible, and they were disconnected from God. If you have established spiritually formative practices and you cannot point to changes in your life where you have grown in your love for others, your peace towards the chaos of the world, and your joy that is not dependent on good circumstances, then you need to pause and examine the other habits of your life to see what might be choking out the fruit you’re called to produce.

The structure you create in your life is not you “earning your salvation.” Any focus on the hard work of developing disciplines of spiritual formation has brought about debates of “works based salvation” and “Jesus died so I don’t have to do these things to earn my salvation.” To be very clear, developing disciplines (habits or rhythms) in your life is in no way earning your salvation. You are grafted into the vine of Christ by grace (Romans 11). Christ brings you into him, not because of anything you’ve done to earn a place in his body, but because he wants to give you life and see you live it to the fullest. The work you’re called to do is to “abide in him.” This takes work on your part, but grace is shown in that Christ accepts you as you are and where you are. But you are called to produce love, joy, and peace in your life (just to name a few) through being connected to him. 

Final disclaimer. Establishing a structure in your life is less about what is universally “right and wrong” for a Christian to do or say but more so about being serious about what kind of person you are becoming through the practices you engage in regularly. There are things you engage in that are not “wrong” per se, but who are they shaping you to be? The devil shapes us through the smallest of movements away from God and even uses seemingly righteous actions to shape us for his purposes. 

Jesus began his ministry with forty days of fasting and prayer. He regularly went off to places of solitude for prayer. He readily had scripture available and knew the Jewish story well through the celebration of the festivals. He gave his followers practices to shape their life together around: public reading of scripture, confession, fasting, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, fellowship, etc. These are not simply events in which the early church took part. These were the rhythms which shaped the life of followers of Christ. 

There are a lot more practices in which to look. Over the next month and a half or so we will be looking to scripture for life shaping practices and this summer I will teach a class on establishing a “Rule of Life” for spiritual growth. If you have some particular practices you would like to know more about, please feel free to reach out to me and let me know – ryan@nodachurch.com

Cultivating a Rule of Life pt1

Walking Together on the Journey with Christ to be Transformed into His Image

When you look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels enough, patterns, practices, and developed characteristics begin the emerge from between the lines. He often went off to lonely places to pray. He regularly fasted and expected his followers to fast. He had scripture memorized and ready when needed. He was slow to anger. Compassion was often his first reaction to people. He embodied a deep peace no matter the circumstance. The list could go on. As you’ve come to know Jesus, what have you noticed about his way of life or characteristics that admire you?

Luke 2:52 says that Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature.” 

Hebrews 5:8-10 says that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered.” And he was “Made perfect through what he suffered.”

What does it mean that Jesus grew and learned? It is a lot easier to get our minds around Jesus growing and developing physically but what about emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually? Jesus’s ministry is shaped by times of prayer and fasting where he seeks the Spirit’s guidance in his life. If Jesus needed to learn scripture, develop a robust prayer life, fast, seek solitude and silence, keep sabbath, etc. then we do as well.  

In this series, I want to advocate for developing a “Rule of Life” or “Rhythm of Life.” When you hear “Rule of Life,” don’t think of rules like “don’t taste, don’t touch, etc.” A “Rule of Life” is a structure built in which a person can grow. Think along the lines of what a trellis does for a vine to grow on and produce fruit. This kind of structure provides freedom rather than restriction. These structures help you develop into who God has called you to be. 

Social media companies, news agencies, political commentaries, etc. all spend millions of dollars a year to harvest one of the most precious commodities we have in our society, our attention. Your attention is what is being sold today and marketing agencies are making a fortune helping companies and organization capitalize on where you give your attention. If they are willing to spend this kind of money on holding your attention, why would we not invest on developing practices to make sure our attention is directed to the things that will ultimately shape who we will become? Whether we realize it or not, where you give your attention ultimately shapes who you are becoming. 

Take a moment to think about your day, week, and month. What are the top three things that receive most of your time? What receives your attention? What do you look at the most? What do you read? What do you hear? What does your money go toward? What receives your emotional energy more readily? 

As we learn about spiritual practices in the life of Jesus and the early church, be thinking about what practices you need to adopt to give structure to your spiritual growth as you are shaped more and more into Christ’s image. 

Mark 14-16 - Will You Accept Jesus as King?

Mon - 14.1-11; Tues - 14.12-26; Wed - 14.27-52; Thurs - 14.53-72; Fri - 15.1-41; Sat - 15.42-47; Sun - 16

Throughout this series on the Gospel of Mark, I have tried to articulate the beauty and depth in which Mark writes the Gospel story in order to encourage Roman Christians, persecuted under Nero. It was common in the ancient world for writers of biographies to adapt the story to make larger Truth claims about the person being written about. This isn’t to say the stories are fabricated but that when there are differing details between Gospel accounts, we should look for what point the authors are trying to make rather than finding ways to harmonize the differences. One major example is that John has Jesus clearing the Temple at the beginning of his ministry rather than right before the crucifixion so that the reader sees everything he does through the proclamation that his body is now the temple that will be raised in three days. A smaller difference in the Gospel accounts is the wine that Jesus is offered. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is offered wine mixed with myrrh (15:23) before going to the cross and then offered wine vinegar while on the cross (15:36). The other Gospel accounts only have Jesus being offered wine vinegar while on the cross. Matthew’s account does have Jesus being offered wine before his crucifixion but it is mixed with gall rather than myrrh (27:34). These may seem like little details but there are major differences. Wine mixed with vinegar was a cheap wine, called Posca, mostly consumed by soldiers and the lower class. Wine mixed with myrrh was an expensive wine consumed by elites, especially rulers. Keep this in mind for when we get to chapter 15.

The final third of Mark’s Gospel, starting in chapter 11, all takes place in the last week of Jesus’s life. Jesus arrived in Jerusalem as King and prepared the Temple for his coronation. Now, it is time to prepare Jesus to be glorified and take his throne. When looking at all that will happen to him, it is hard to imagine this as a coronation and glorification. But that’s the point. Jesus’s Kingdom is upside-down in comparison to the world. Or, you might say, Jesus’s Kingdom is right side up in an upside-down world. Mark sets the stage for Jesus’s coronation with the context of the Passover where the Jews celebrate their liberation from slavery in Egypt and look forward to their coming liberation when God returns to them as King. He is anointed by a woman, who seems to be the only person in the room who has paid attention to Jesus speaking plainly about what it looks like for him to take the throne. She is the exemplar of true discipleship and praised by Jesus while rebuked by others.

Jesus then offers his body and blood as symbols of the covenant and invites them to join him in the Kingdom where this meal will take on new meanings of liberation and freedom. This meal points to the coming of the Kingdom in the resurrection, celebrated at Easter. This is the day we look forward to and celebrate weekly. The resurrection is the Kingdom come now and an anticipation of the Kingdom coming fully. Biblical scholar, N. T. Wright articulates this well, “The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven...The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.”

There’s always a lot more to say and I am already going longer than I intended so I’m going to skip to something new to me in my studies that I think is pretty cool. A scholar from Oxford named Thomas E. Schmidt did some incredible work detailing the parallels between Jesus’s crucifixion in Mark’s Gospel with the coronation of Nero. We cannot say with 100% certainty that this was Mark’s intent but it fits within the themes I see in Mark’s Gospel where he seems to draw parallels between Jesus and Nero to show who the true Son of God is. Here’s a link to Schmidt’s work if you want to dig deeper. 

For our purposes, here is a quick rundown of what took place at Nero’s coronation. I’ve placed the corresponding verses of each so you can follow what Mark might be doing with how he writes the events of Jesus’s crucifixion:

1.     The Imperial Guard gathers to hail Caesar as lord and god. (15:16)

2.     On Caesar they place: Royal robes, a wreath crown, and a scepter. (15:17-18)

3.     He is then lead through a procession (lined with incense alters). (15:20)

4.     Following Caesar was the sacrifice (in Nero’s case, a bull), and he carries the instrument of death. (15:21)

5.     They arrive at Capitoline Hill (Named “head hill” where a human head was found buried when Rome was founded); Caesar is offered an expensive wine mixed with myrrh, but he refuses it, pouring it out. (15:22-23)

6.     The bull is sacrificed, and Caesar demonstrates he has the power of life and death by pronouncing death or life on a host of prisoners. (15:24)

7.     The emperor ascends the steps of the temple with the High Priest on his right and his commander on his left. (15:27)

8.     The people sing the praises of Caesar, acclaiming him as “lord and god.” (15:29-32)

9.     The people then wait for a sign from heaven (According to history, there was an eclipse in Nero’s coronation). (15:33)

Mark’s gospel ends abruptly in 16:8, or at least seemingly. You likely have a footnote saying that verses 9-20 were not in the original texts. These seem to be added later to clean up the ending of Mark’s Gospel. It is possible that Mark intended for his Gospel account to end abruptly. We see Luke do this with the end of the book of Acts and many of the parables end abruptly forcing the hearers to wrestle with how they would respond. I want to invite you into struggle with what Mark might be trying to get you to wrestle with. Jesus has announced the Kingdom come near and that he is going to take his rightful place on the throne. How he will accomplish this seems upside-down to the ways of the world. He allows the dark forces of the world to do their worst to him and in an act of non-violent subversion he is crucified. This is the end unless everything he says about being raised on the third day is true. If he really was raised from the dead like he said he would be, you have to accept him as the one true King and let go of all other national identities you hold. This means persecution will come, but you are part of a greater Kingdom. The tomb is empty. How will you respond? 

Mark 11-13 (15:33-16:3) - A New Temple

Mon - 11; Tues - 12.1-17; Wed - 12.18-44; Thurs - 13; Fri - 15:33-16:3

We have followed Jesus “along the way” to Jerusalem. We know that he is God in the flesh arrived as King. Now he is going to parade inro Jerusalem as king. His parade represents his teaching over the last few chapters. He doesn’t look like the king they were expecting. He arrives on a service animal. With his actions over the next handful of chapters the crowds will turn from shouting “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” Jesus’s first action is to go into the temple. The temple provides the context for the next few chapters, and it is worth pausing to establish the importance of the temple in the life of Israel. Understanding its importance for them will help us understand its importance for us.

When you think of the temple, think of it as the location where heaven and earth come together. A thin space between the physical world and the spiritual world. The temple isn’t the temple unless the presence of God is there. God’s presence rests on the tabernacle (Exod 40:34-38) and then on the temple (2 Chron 7:1-3). God’s presence is what makes the temple more than a building. The Jewish understanding of creation is in the form of the temple. God’s presence was fully with Adam and Eve in Eden, and the temple and the Garden reflect one another. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and they were removed from his presence. Israel continually rebelled against God and he removed his presence from the temple (Ezek 10). The expectation for the full return from exile was that God would return to his throne in the temple. 

This basic outline of Ezekiel helps paint a picture of the temple (and should help us understand who we are called to be as the church). In Ezekiel, after he gets a message that the Jerusalem temple has been destroyed (Ezek 33), he has a series of visions about the future restored temple. He gets a virtual tour of the new temple in chapter 40-42, where he checks out the details, the rooms, and the furnishings. And it all ramps up to Ezek 43, where the glory of the Lord fills this new temple. One of my favorite images is in Ezekiel 47 where the river of the water of life flows from the temple and brings life to the dead sea. This is also the image found in the water of life flowing from the throne of God in Revelation 22. The church is the tree that produces fruit every month (Rev 22:2 – hear echoes of Jesus’s curse of the fig tree that didn’t bear fruit out of season). The final image of Revelation is that Jerusalem came down and God’s good creation was restored. There is no temple in the city because God’s presence is the reality now and there is no more need for thin spaces (Rev 21:22). 

Herod rebuilt the temple as a sign to the people that he was their king. Temple restoration was an expectation of the coming messiah, but God’s presence wasn’t there because Herod was not king. Jesus came to reclaim the throne and reestablish the temple, but the temple isn’t going to look like what they expect it to look like. The New Temple is his body, his church, filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus clears the temple and runs people out of it saying, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a den of robbers.” The purpose of entering the presence of God was for the sake of transformation. Sacred spaces are set aside so that we can draw closer to God’s presence. Prayer is where we, first and foremost, enter the presence of God. Entering the presence of God should always change us for the better. Whether God’s presence is in the temple or not, the people should recognize their need for transformation in the temple. Our transformation leads to the transformation of the world around us. This is the imagery of Ezekiel 47 and Revelation 22. In Amos 5:21-27, God says he hates their religious festivals, songs, prayers, and sacrifices because they have left the world unchanged around them. Justice needs to “roll like a river” and righteousness, “like a never-failing stream!” 

Therefore, Jesus curses a fig tree that hadn’t produced fruit while out of season. Just because God’s presence isn’t currently in the temple doesn’t mean that they people shouldn’t be transformed into his rightful image bearers through prayer in the temple. This is the context in which Jesus tells his parables in chapter 12. He’s leaning on the well-known imagery of Isaiah 5:1-7 which ends “he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” Even when God’s presence isn’t with the people, making them “out of season,” they are called to be people of justice and righteousness.

I’ve run out of space, but I need to offer one note of interpretation for chapter 13. This whole passage is about the coming destruction of the temple in 70AD and we should be very hesitant to try and interpret for anything going on today. If this were about the “End Times” where the whole earth will be swept away, then there would be no “fleeing to the mountains” (13:14) and it wouldn’t matter if women were pregnant or nursing (13:17) or if it were winter (13:18). The context of chapter 13 is the looming destruction of the temple by the Romans where Titus will march into the Holy of Holies as the “abomination that causes desolation.” This passage reminds the Roman readers that the true temple in God’s Kingdom is the church unified as a place of prayer and transformation for the world.

Mark 9:30-10:52 - The Mark of True Discipleship

Mon - 9.30-50; Tues - 10.1-16; Wed - 10.17-31; Thurs - 10.32-45; Fri - 10.46-52

The central narrative of Mark’s gospel account begins back in Mark 8:22 with the gradual healing of the blind man. I believe this story is a living parable setting the stage for the struggle of fully following Jesus for who he is and who he calls us to be as his followers. His disciples have seen him do extraordinary things yet do not accept that he must die. Their sight has not yet fully come into focus. The exemplar of true discipleship comes at the end of our reading this week with blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52). He calls out to Jesus with a Kingly title, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” He is hushed and rebuked but he shouts all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Here’s some of the imagery the Mark highlights in the actions of true discipleship:

-       Threw his cloak aside – Bartimaeus is a blind beggar, and his cloak would be draped across his legs to collect money from those passing by. This is his livelihood, and he throws it off to go to Jesus. Who do you see Bartimaeus being paralleled with leading up to this story? Who was unwilling to throw their cloak off? What are you still holding onto that keeps you from fulling responding to Jesus? 

-       Came to Jesus – Bartimaeus is blind, he throws off his hindrances, and goes to Jesus. This simple action reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from a 16th century monk named John of the Cross, “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” Moving toward Jesus while blind is the greatest act of vision because he throws off everything to move toward the one who can show him the way. This is the act of faith that marks true discipleship. Where have you had to close your eyes and trust Jesus to show you the way? What keeps you from fully closing your eyes so that you can truly see? 

-       “What do you want me to do for you?” – Where have you heard this before? Mark draws our attention to the previous story where James and John go to Jesus and say, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask” (10:36). Jesus gives the same response in both stories. This is a heart revealing question that also points to what our response needs to be to Jesus every time we approach him, “I want to see.”

-       “I want to see” – The obvious response for Bartimaeus is that he wants to see. Mark uses this story to take discipleship to another depth. Every time we approach Jesus, we need to approach with the desire to see clearly. Another way to say this is, “Not my will but yours be done.” Jesus’s steps toward the cross should be viewed as one who closes his eyes and is led by the Father. No one would look at the cross and say they see clearly. One must first close their eyes and be led through the cross and into the resurrection. Bartimaeus is set in contrast against the other disciples who have their eyes open but cannot see. 

-       Faith brings sight and he follows Jesus “along the way.” – Bartimaeus is commended for his faith, receives his sight, and then follows Jesus “along the way.” This whole central narrative of Mark has its sights on Jerusalem and has “the way” sprinkled throughout the story. Your translation may say “road” but this is the same word for “way” in the text. The early disciples of Jesus were called “followers of the way” and Mark points to this throughout this section. 

The Gospel of Mark is written to encourage Christians to focus on who their true King is, live as proper citizens of his Kingdom, and follow Jesus along the way of true discipleship. Following Jesus along the way leads us to the cross and through the cross into the resurrection. Are we willing to close our eyes so that we might see? 

Thursday’s reading has James and John seeking positions of power after Jesus gives his third teaching that the King must go to Jerusalem to die. Mark then highlights the Lord’s Supper and our Baptism in Jesus’s response to their request: “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” Our Baptism is where we are washed into the narrative of the death, burial, and resurrection as those who seek to live as Jesus lived. The Lord’s Supper is the regular practice of proclaiming that narrative as our own as a reminder of who we are called to be as followers of Jesus.  

Are we willing to close our eyes and follow Jesus to the cross? The hope of Easter, the resurrection, is on the horizon but the way to the cross is where we must first follow Jesus.