BiND:  Day 72

 

Mark, Act 2.

 

One of the things I noticed while reading Act 2 (from 8.27 to the end) of Mark today is the focus Mark places on the changing of power relationships and dynamics.  Did you notice?  There were multiple instances of children—who are not only powerless, but vulnerable and weak as well—being welcomed and even leaders in the kingdom, of “the last shall be first,” and of the disciples wrangling over who’s best (remember James and John, asking if they can sit at Jesus’ right and left hand?  Remember who’s actually at Jesus’ right and left at the “end” of the story?  two criminals.  Interesting…), there’s the story of the rich man who keeps all the commandments but still is missing something—Jesus suggests that those who maintain the status quo, who willingly participate in a system of inequity (like the one prevalent in both Jesus’ day and ours), will have a tough time participating in God’s kingdom of equity and justice.

 

One of the things I find fascinating about Mark is that there are several endings—it’s practically a “choose-your-own adventure” story!  The oldest (and shortest) ending stops at 16.8.  The women, again, have come to the tomb and are the first to witness the resurrection, the first to see the kingdom of God in glory, the ones who meet and converse with angels.  And then, for the first time in the whole book of Mark someone is TOLD to go tell people what happened (before now, Jesus has been saying “don’t tell” over and over again!)—but the women flee interror and amazement and say nothing because of their fear.  Now, obviously, they told someone because otherwise we’d have no story today, but I just love that honesty (typical of Mark)—the women had witnessed something so incredible that they were literally speechless.  Then, of course, we get the later additions to the ending, that make it seem tidier and nicely wrapped up, ending on a positive rather than fear/awe-struck—the “shorter ending” (added sometime after the 200s) says they told and then everyone told the whole world “the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”  Does that sound like the rest of Mark?  It doesn’t to me, instead it makes me laugh.  J  The longer ending was added in the late 200s or early 300s, and even in the earliest manuscripts is marked as “secondary status”—it seems to be composed of elements from the other three gospels and even the beginning of Acts, perhaps as a way to wrap up the story in a way similar to what other communities were hearing.  It’s interesting to think about the communities that would have received these writings and heard them proclaimed in their worship gatherings—what did they remember?  What was most important?  What did they do after hearing the word? 

 

What did you notice as you read Mark, act 2?

photos are of kids who live in 1st century bc ruins (now in Jordan) and of the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, the way Jesus is thought to have walked from his sentencing, through Jerusalem, to his crucifixion out the other side.  both photos by TCP.

BiND:  Day 71

 

The gospel according to Mark is my favorite gospel.  I love its breathless pace, its never-ending “and immediately”s, its drama, its shocking detail.  I also love its relatively simple structure—in basically two acts, Mark (probably not the author’s name—this name as, as with Matthew, attached later to a text that was primarily intended for reading aloud…hence the great story!) tells us what Jesus said and did, what makes him so special compared to those other healers, those other teachers, those other messiahs who were always wandering around.  In the first act, Jesus teaches and heals in Galilee.  In the second act he heads for Jerusalem, toward conflict and crucifixion.  The turning point between the two acts?  Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Son of God.  Mark knows how to tell a story!

 

In light of the fact that we spend only two days on my favorite New Testament book, I’ve decided to blog it in the two acts rather than in the division laid out in the reading schedule.  I hope you don’t mind.

 

In Act 1 (up to chapter 8:27), we have Jesus calling disciples, teaching people, feeding thousands with only a little bread (and remember, these aren’t loaves of bread like we think of a loaf of bread—re-imagine bread as pita and you’ll be closer to the real deal), healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, breaking the Sabbath…it’s an exciting section!  Mark constantly says “and immediately…” leaving you gasping for air at the end of each chapter as you run all around Galilee.  Mark also uses a surprising amount of detail—when there’s a storm on the lake, everyone is panicking except Jesus, who is asleep on a cushion.  He’s using a pillow, and THAT’S the relevant detail in a near-death experience?  When there are 5,000 hungry men hanging on Jesus’ every word (we don’t know if there were women and children there or not) and the disciples are, again, panicking about how to feed them, Jesus says to sit everyone down in groups on the green grass.  What?  I mean, sure, there is green grass, especially on the hills near the Sea of Galilee and elsewhere along the river, but for the most part Palestine is brown brown brown.  When Jesus meets a deaf/mute man, he touches him, spits, and sighs.  Sighs?  That’s what we’ve got for a healing story?  Can you see why I love Mark so much?

 

Mark Act 1 is broken into a few basic sections of teaching and healing, each begun by the calling and teaching of the disciples.  Interestingly, each also involves a story of Jesus giving sight to a blind person, even as the disciples become more and more dense and lacking in insight.  I often wonder if the juxtaposition is intended to remind us that sight is more than what we do with our eyes. 

 

Act 1 ends with Jesus asking what people are saying about him, and then very pointedly asking “and who do YOU say that I am?”  Peter responds with his one big moment, the one time he gets it right, his flash of insight:  “you are the Messiah.”  And from that moment, the moment when a human being, not just a demon possessing a person, when a disciple! finally gets it, Jesus enters Act 2 begins to teach them the hard stuff.

 

What did you notice as you read Mark, Act 1?

photos are from Galilee–ruins of first century Capernaum, ruins of a church built on Peter’s house (marked as a holy site by an octagonal church around the time Mark was written–the site of the friends who lowered the paralyzed man through the roof to reach Jesus!), the pasture/hill/tomb area of Gerasa/Gadara, where Jesus met the demon legion and put him into a herd of pigs who rushed into the lake and drowned, and the view of Capernaum from a boat on the Sea of Galilee.  All photos taken by TCP.

BiND:  The New Testament!  (Day 68-70)

 

Well friends, we’ve made it into the New Testament.  For some of us, this may be more familiar territory, and for some of us we may think it’s more familiar territory and end up surprised.  I encourage you to keep your eyes, ears, and heart open as you read, even if this looks like stuff you know.  Sometimes we can be surprised by what we thought it said!

 

Since we’ve started on the gospels, first a few things about these first four books.  A “Gospel” as a genre is a subset of the biography genre.  In ancient times, biographies were written with the intent of encouraging people to follow the example of the person being written about.  Thus the four gospels as we have them now are not biographies the way we think of biographies, and are not history or storybooks either, nor are they entirely hagiography (saint’s biographies designed to prove saintliness).  They are a combination of all these things, written to encourage particular communities in a particular way of life exemplified by Jesus.  The first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the “synoptic” gospels and they have much in common.  Mark was written first, right around 70AD, and is the main source of material for Matthew and Luke.  All three write both from and to their particular context.  John is, well, different.  We’ll get to him later (umm, in about a week!)

 

Matthew’s gospel was likely written sometime around 80-ish, about 50 years after Jesus’ death/resurrection.  It’s unlikely that it was written by Matthew the tax-collector mentioned in chapter 9.  The name wasn’t even attached to the gospel until 100 years after it was written!  Scholars speculate that Matthew was the leader community of Jewish Christians, probably in the northern part of Israel, maybe even as far north as Antioch (which is now in Turkey, though many in Syria still claim it as theirs).  It seems likely that Matthew’s community is one that had tried to share the good news of Jesus with their synagogue, but it had gone badly and they’d had to withdraw and form their own community.  Thus Matthew is interested in showing that Jesus is a fulfillment of Jewish hopes, dreams, and prophecy, and also in showing that the Jewish/synagogue establishment is hostile to the message.  Matthew, just like any other author, writes both from and to his own context.

 

So…a few things I noticed on this read-through of Matthew’s Gospel…

–You may have noticed that Matthew’s Christmas story isn’t quite the one we’re used to.  Often on Christmas Eve we read a combination of Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the story.  Matthew’s is a little sparser and focuses on Joseph—not unusual since he would be the one “in charge” in the patriarchal system.

–Matthew is pretty thoroughly Jewish and also pretty thoroughly interested in showing that Jesus has brought God’s empire to earth, to directly compete with the Roman empire AND with the religious establishment.

–I always love the the Sermon on the Mount.  There’s a lot of really good stuff in there.  It’s 3 chapters (chapters 5-7) of teaching, from the beatitudes to “you are the light of the world” to “love your enemies” to the Lord’s Prayer.

–Matthew often explains things Jesus said or did in a way that makes me wonder if Jesus really would have explained it that way?  For example, when parables get explained, they sound so simplistic and literalistic, so unlike the parables themselves.  Particularly given that Jesus crosses boundaries all over the place in this gospel, the way the parables (like the parable of the weeds and wheat) are explained seem, as Richard once put it, “flat footed.”  What do you think?

–I love Matthew’s resurrection story:  the women are first to see and to tell (to give testimony), but also the guards are so afraid that they “become like dead men”—but when they snap out of it, they run to the priests (the religious establishment) who devise a plan to buy the soldiers’ silence and tell a silly story about grave robbing.  And then Matthew says (remember his context!):  “And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.”  wow.

 

What did you notice as you read Matthew?

photos are:  from the top of the Mt. of Beatitudes, looking through the garden of the convent located there and toward the Sea of Galilee at the bottom; and a 1st century tomb in Palestine (not the tomb of Jesus, though there are a couple sites that claim to be that they don’t have the stone still in front).  Both photos taken by TCP.

BiND:  Reflections on the Old Testament

 

Reading the OT with you all has been really interesting and wonderful.  I’ve loved our conversations.  One of the things we talked about over and over is the importance of context—when I was in seminary we heard “context, context, context!” so many times that for part of our senior prank we covered the seminary campus in the word (in sidewalk chalk, of course).  The importance of context simply cannot be overlooked—both the context in which the books were written, the context in which they were originally heard or read, and how they apply to our own context.  That third is particularly difficult, because the worldview of ancient near-eastern people is so different from ours, especially in the area of causality.  We recognize a number of causes behind events, but they only knew one:  God.  Anything that happened happened because God made it happen—no exceptions.  We sometimes still do this (it might be human nature)—when something bad happens, especially, we say things like “why did God do this?” and occasionally when good things happen we acknowledge “we’ve been so blessed.”  Having said that, in our current worldview we often recognize secondary and even tertiary causality and that changes our view of God and our views of covenant, community, and religion.  Even the prophets, whose view of the world and of God is so much wider than the average persons (hence their difficult lives and often unpleasant ends), still recognize only one cause.  If we are going to say (as I often do) that Scripture is a record of God’s people and their interactions with God, their reactions to God, and the ways they have attempted to live as covenant people, then we have to recognize that there is a limitation to Scripture.  It’s words, and though God can inspire the writing, God still can’t be contained in words.  God is beyond human language, and the Bible is one attempt to explain something of that mystery. 

 

I love the prophets because they give us a glimpse of how God might see the world—they have a vision to share, and that vision includes justice and peace and compassion, it includes those on the margin, it includes, period.  God’s vision for covenant community may be wider than we can imagine, and I love that.  And then it’s over, and we turn the page and find ourselves reading about a time 250 years or so after the last book of prophecy was written down, and as many as 400 after the times that have been written about.  The world changes significantly during this time—the Temple becomes more functional, the synagogue system becomes entrenched, a new Empire comes into town, new systems of religion and economics come into play.  With Rome will come new taxes and also new infrastructure, new amenities and also new oppression.  And that means new ways of figuring out how to be God’s people in hostile territory.  And new ways of sharing of God’s vision!

Scotland is awesome.

So are the prophets.  I hope y’all are still reading!  If you have things you want to note about the readings, the comments here would be a good place to do it.

See you in another week….  :-)

~TCP

Rick’s team spent today at an urban garden called Open Lands.  The garden was recognized by President Clinton in 1993.  They spent the day weeding—according to Rick, “we weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded.”  Mr. and Mrs. Earls are the developers of the garden, and are really involved in their community. 

 

Scott’s team spent today at St. Vincent’s unloading two and a half truckloads of clothes and toys and then sorted them onto carts.  According to Kayleigh, they tossed big bags of stuff around all day.  Fun!

 

Cecily’s team spent today at the Cornerstone Community Center, a family shelter in the Uptown neighborhood.  The Center is preparing their kitchen for an inspection soon and needed the kitchen deep cleaned, so the team spent the day scrubbing walls, the stove hood, the stove, the cabinets, etc.  They degreased the whole place—the yellow walls were white when they were done!

 

 

 

 

Tonight we are headed for Promontory Point for a picnic, and on the way the youth will each be given $1 and asked to figure out how to eat dinner for that $1.  What a great way to experience what a lot of the world does!  I’ll try to finish another update, including photos, tomorrow while I’m at the airport.  In the meantime, check the flickr page (link in yesterday’s post) for today’s and last night’s pictures!

Hi friends,

I have uploaded all the photos I’ve taken so far this week to my flickr account–you can see them here!  Enjoy!

BiND:  Day 45 (II) – 47

 

Well, we’ve reached Proverbs!  We’re halfway through, friends!  I hope you’re enjoying this Scripture adventure—I know I am.

 

Proverbs is one of three wisdom books in the Bible (the others being Job and Ecclesiastes).  Some of the psalms also are considered wisdom literature, but these three books are the big ones.  Wisdom literature is designed to teach and to reflect on how we experience and interpret life and how we are to act in light of what we learn from God and from the world.

 

Proverbs is an interesting book in that a large chunk of it is said to be written by Solomon, to whom God gave the gift of great wisdom.  There are over 3,000 pithy proverbs attributed to Solomon.  Have you ever tried to write a proverb?  It’s hard!

 

One of the most common phrases in Proverbs (and one we’ve heard before, in Job) is “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  We don’t like to talk about “fear” of the Lord—we’re not into fear that much and many of us have enough baggage from being afraid of God in our faith journey.  We know that all through scripture we have God and God’s messengers saying “Do not be afraid”—which implies that “afraid of God” and “fear of the Lord are not the same thing.  So what is the “fear of the Lord”????

 

Well, I suspect it something more like awe and humility, and less like being afraid.  Knowing that God is great and good, and knowing that often we fall short of that, being in awe…in contrast to pride and arrogance in ourselves.  When we think about this kind of “fear” then I think we begin to get at what Proverbs is talking about.  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (perhaps because they think they don’t need it?).  It’s interesting to think about what we mean by “wisdom” and “knowledge”—what does it mean to be wise?  There’s worldly wisdom and there’s wisdom in God’s ways—can they be the same?  Proverbs suggests that the more attached we are to worldly things, the harder it will be to attain God’s wisdom.  Proverbs also says throughout that practicing the ways of wisdom is one of the only ways to attain it.  We don’t just “get” it, we have to live it and eventually we live into it.  And that is wisdom.

Our speaker last night, Bill Curry from Breakthrough, was really interesting.  The program has a number of components, from mentoring youth to working with women in crisis (whether those involved in drugs, prostitution, abusive relationships, or other crises) to working with men who are currently homeless.  Bill and his family decided to live in the neighborhood where they work—right here in East Garfield Park.  They’ve been building community with a really diverse group of people for several years now, and they love it.  It was interesting and inspiring to hear him talk about his life and work here.

 

Today two of our groups went places where other teams had been before:  Club Learn and the Gads Hill preschool.  At Club Learn we played jumprope and tag and super heroes, we helped kids learn their alphabet and practice reading, made an octopus craft out of coffee filters and tissue paper, and watched the Little Rascals.  It was quite a day—and it was hot, too!  I haven’t heard yet from the group at Gads Hill preschool, but I suspect they spent time playing with kids!

 

 

 

 

 

Our third group (Scott’s team) spent the morning exploring Chinatown and trying new foods—bubble tea smoothies and squid!  In the afternoon, they went to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where they beat the record for the amount of Cheerios repackaged (they come in huge boxes and the volunteers scoop them into 1-pound boxes/bags to be given away to hungry people).  They worked hard and fast!

 

Tonight we have some free time so we are headed to Millennium Park, where we will hear the Grant Park Orchestra perform Beethoven’s 7^th symphony while we eat a picnic from Cosi, and then we’ll watch the fireworks from Navy Pier before coming back to the church for another night of sleeping on the floor!  Tomorrow we have groups scheduled at St. Vincent’s (the big warehouse for the thrift stores), Cornerstone (a family shelter), and Open Lands (an urban garden).  Should be a great day!  

Today has been an interesting day.  The homeless shelter Rick’s group was scheduled to work at said they couldn’t handle all the volunteers this week, so that group spent the day doing some painting and repairs/cleaning at the church where we’re staying.  This church has a lot going on—three congregations worship here, DOOR is here every week in the summer and every weekend in spring and fall, there are midweek programs, AA, other addiction groups, and several teen and young adult programs.  The building is literally in use 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It gets a lot of wear and tear.  So today this group taped, sanded, painted, and cleaned.  They worked really hard and fast, and it looks great!  After lunch, they went to the Garfield Park Conservatory (about a 15 minute walk north of here) and explored various plants from different climates.  It was a good time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cecily’s group worked at a mixed-income preschool, where children of doctors mingle with homeless and low-income children and where all the kids are bilingual.  Carl and Charlie said the kids kept asking for underdog pushes on the swings—and they got them!  Eventually they taught the kids how to swing by themselves too.  Sounds like they had a great day!

 

Scott’s group was at a daycamp for mixed-income elementary age kids.  They played tag, they did crafts with the older elementary kids (the boys apparently spent lots of time cutting up tissue paper, and there were some finger painting experiences too!), and helped tutor kids in math and reading.  As Scott says, “that was fun!”  They also spent some time in the computer lab with the kids.  Scott also read part of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to some 5th graders.  

 

Last night’s program, the Men of Destiny, was very interesting.  There were 4 men, though usually they are 5.  They sing beautifully—they were a real joy to listen to.  We also got to hear some of their stories of homelessness and addiction and how they got out of those situations through the help of various ministries around the city.  We also got to hear some of their personal faith, and though their theology is very different from ours it was great to hear their conviction and about their relationship with Christ and the difference God has made in their lives.  Tonight we have a speaker from Breakthrough Ministries coming to talk with us, so more on that tomorrow!

 

The church where we are staying is where Martin Luther King, Jr. had an office during his work in Chicago.  In fact, the location of his office is now a lounge, and that’s where I’m sitting to type this!  In the sanctuary is a stained glass window, installed a few years ago, and in the bottom corner is a profile of King, testament and witness to his work in this neighborhood, organizing and working for justice.