Marginal Christianity

October 31, 2017 The following blog is written by Dr. Branson Parlor. Branson is an ordained elder in the Reformed Church of America and a professor of Theological Studies at Kuyper College in Grand Rapids, MI. When you think of the word “wedding” or “marriage,” what do you think of? Words are tricky. They can mean a variety of things to a variety of people. That variety explains why my kids find Amelia Bedelia hilarious. Maybe you’ve read these stories to your kids or remember reading them as a kid as well. The main storyline usually revolves around Amelia misunderstanding and misapplying a common phrase or idiom. For example, when instructed to “dust the furniture,” she throws dust all over the furniture, an action that does make you stop and think: why do we say “dust,” and not “undust” the furniture? The real point of Amelia Bedelia, though, is that what we do shapes what words mean , and vice versa . So, for Christians, what does “marriage” mean? In the ...

Now in Bethsaida, a blind man is brought to Jesus for healing. A number of links to the healing of the blind man in 7:31-37 tie these stories together. They are unique to Mark, allude to the Jubilee/New Exodus promise in Isa.35:5-6, involve touch and spit, and Jesus removes the person to be healed from those who brought him. [1] A story of blindness needing healing just prior to the great revelation of Jesus’ identity to the disciples can hardly be about anything else than their spiritual blindness. Jesus has harped on this theme incessantly leading up to Peter’s moment of insight. In particular, the two feeding stories, one J   ewish, the other Gentile, correlates with the two touches the blind man in our story requires. I suspect the touch and spit have the same allusion to Jesus’ restoration of the healed person to their original status and vocation as God’s image-bearer as we saw in the 7:31-37. In all these ways this episode draws the major thrust on Jesus’ identity...

8:11-13: A Sign? The Pharisees are dogging Jesus again. Big surprise after what we’ve seen in the last several episodes Mark has narrated? Hardly. They “test” him by requesting/demanding a (miraculous) “sign from heaven.” Surely he can authenticate himself as a genuine prophet (Dt.13:1-5). Israel regularly, incorrigibly, “test” or “tempt” God ( Psa.95:9–10; 78:17–20, 40–43,56; 106:13–14; Num. 14:1–10, 20–25). The Pharisees represent the faithless nation here. The irony, of course, is that Jesus has just provided two of the most evocative and powerful “signs from heaven” imaginable. But the Pharisees cannot/will not “see.” Therefore, Jesus will give them no sign. They have more than enough to discern who he is and what his mission is all about – Israel’s salvation!   Jesus punctuates this rejection by boarding a boat and sailing off to the other side of the sea. 8:14-21: More on Bread This story brings the bread motif to a climax. When Jesus cautions them again...

Well, seems like déjà vu ! Another miraculous feeding story on top of the one just a couple of chapters ago. That first feeding story of the 5000 took place in Jewish territory and presented Jesus as the messiah of the Jews bringing the promised abundance of God’s New Exodus to his people. The 12 baskets of food gathered as leftovers from the 5 loaves and two fish symbolized this. The present story is set in Gentile territory and has a different quantity of leftovers, 7 baskets, and uses a different word than the one used in the first story which had Jewish connections being used to carry kosher food. Further, Mark describes the people as “come from a great distance” of “afar,” a description associated with Gentiles (e.g., Dt. 28:49; 29:22; 1 Kgs. 8:41; Isa. 39:3; 60:4; cf. Eph. 2:13, 17; Acts 2: 39). What about the 7? 7 and its multiples represent the seven Gentile nations of Canaan (Dt.7:1; Acts 13:19). It was often believed that the world consisted of 70 nations (Gen 10). ...

For those with ears to hear! Saul (aka Paul) was a culture warrior before he met the risen Christ on the Damacus Rd. He believed it his religious duty to persecute those Jews who were doing it wrong (those pesky Jews who believed in Jesus). Michael Gorman tells us how and how the Christian Paul was transformed. “He was most likely attempting to secure his justification before God through imitating, at least to some degree, the violent priestly hero Phinehas, who purified Israel and stayed God’s wrath by killing an Israelite and his Midianite consort (Num. 25: 6-13). According to Psalm 106:31 (LXX 105:31), Phinehas was justified by his violent zeal: his act was “reckoned to him as righteousness” (elogisthē autō eis dikaiosynēn); the Greek phrase is exactly the same as the parallel text in Genesis 15:6 and in Romans 4:3, 5, 9, 22-24. When Paul was justified, reconciled to God, his oppressive, violent public behavior changed dramatically, and so did his spirituality, his relatio...

Roman Catholicism is rich and vibrant. But someone has to keep the Church honest. Professor Stanley Hauerwas poses for a portrait in Duke Chapel at Duke University. (Andy McMillan/For The Washington Post) By Stanley Hauerwas By Stanley Hauerwas Outlook October 27 at 12:06 PM Stanley Hauerwas, author of the forthcoming book “The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson,” is the Gilbert T. Rowe emeritus professor at Duke Divinity School. In the 1950s, Pleasant Grove, Tex. (now southeast Dallas), where I grew up, was a white working-class town where Catholics did not exist. For me, the religious “others” were Southern Baptists, whose distinctiveness was summed up in their refusal to dance. Our world was a Protestant world, and I was a Protestant, because what else would I be? For years, this sentiment sufficed. Then I began to learn about Catholicism. I have been thinking about Christianity for my whole life. I’ve spent my career as ...

Here we have the second of two healing stories that interpret Jesus’ critique of ethno-centric Jewish nationalism. “In the region of the Decapolis” (v.31), a league of ten Greco-Roman cities, the people bring a deaf man to Jesus begging him to heal the man. As we move toward the end of the first half of Mark’s gospel, we note that this story contains many elements we have already met in other healing stories. It is as if this is a summary of all the others, a picture of Jesus’ compassionate ministry, which here extends to the Gentiles (Myers, Say to this Mountain , 83). -the Decapolis was the site of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac (5:19) -the purity code is reversed as in the case of the bleeding woman (5:25ff.) -an Aramaic healing word is used as in the healing of Jairus’ daughter (5:41) -Jesus’ commands for silence are ignored (1:41) That Mark tells this story against the backdrop of Old Testament hope shows that he sees Jesus’ controversial dismissal o...

Earlier Mark presented to healing stories in Jewish territory (5:21-43). Now we get two in Gentile territory (7:24-37). Jesus has just authoritatively undone the Jewish purity system that promoted an ethnic pride and exclusivity. Though his ministry is focused on reconstituting an inclusive Abrahamic people God intended to use to bless the world, Mark wants us to see that taboo-breaking inclusivity in action in him. To have an outreach to the Gentiles grounded in the ministry of the Master would be important, crucial even, for the New Exodus movement that continued on after his earthly ministry. Indeed, we have here an important allusion to the Exodus, I believe. Then, the narrator of Exodus notes, a “mixed crowd” left Egypt with the Hebrews (Ex.12:38). An Exodus of more than just the Hebrews will be matched and exceeded by a New Exodus of more than Jewish people! 7:24-30: A Syrophoenician Woman This story unsettles readers because it suggests that Jesus was reluctant to help...

This is my attempt to help us see the forest of Root's presentation since we've looked at all the trees. If you need more on any of this you may reread the relevant section of my review or read the book itself! In future posts I will offer some evaluative comments.  SECULAR 1, 2, 3                                                                                                                      ...

Purity is always an issue for peoples everywhere. Purity guards identity and identity is a peoples’ profoundest possession. They fight, suffer, and die for their identity. Insults cut deepest when they trash identity. Identity harbors integrity and integrity flows from identity. Why should Jesus bring this up now? He has just lodged the most serious critique possible of the people and its leaders: they have been faithless to God who redeemed their people from slavery in Egypt and chose them to be the prototype of his design for all humanity. Defaulting on this calling they have forfeited their identity. Having called them out for their faithlessness, Jesus now tells them what the problem is. He goes to the heart of the matter: the human heart (v.21). The Bible conceives of the heart as the control center of a person. Think the control center of NASA space flight. Everything pertaining to the flight is centered and controlled from there. Similarly the human heart. Not just our...

The two dramatic stories of a miraculous feeding and a sea walk have given some major clues as to who Jesus is even though the disciples don’t get it. Though scarcely as compelling, the inter-Jewish debate Mark narrates here follows the previous stories nicely. Mark has made huge claims for Jesus – the hugest! He is the messiah! Jewish leadership, however, were not going to take that claim sitting down. It’s not surprising, then, that Pharisees and scribes come to him to contest his spurious (to them) claims. They attack him on purity issues – the nest of traditions of washings before meals that marked Jews off from other peoples as Jews, God’s people. Jesus’ disciples apparently no longer observed these regulations or human traditions. Surely messiah would not condone such flaunting of Israel’s identity markers. He speaks for Israel after all. Indeed he does. And that’s just why his disciples engage in such scurrilous behavior. The issue here is who really speaks for I...

This is the last chapter. We've looked at the trees in the forest. The next post will try to give a picture of the forest with a synoptic summary and sketch of the whole of Root's argument. Conclusion: practical steps to consider as the household of ministry The Church “As the household of ministry, the church is the place where we experience the real presence of Jesus as minister . . . the church is a gathering place to receive the ministry of Jesus through the embrace of others.” (4959) “The church’s job is not to fight for space in Secular 2 but to be the outpost of ministry in the world. The only thing the church offers the world is ministry! And this only thing, as we’ve seen, is everything.” (4966) Core Dispositions of church: -gratitude -giftedness -rest Gratitude “The church is first a community of gratitude; receiving the ministry of divine action and experiencing the very being of God through the unveiling of God’s ministerial being, we ...