Marginal Christianity

This story about the healing of blind Bartimaeus caps off the journey to Jerusalem. It forms a bookend with the healing in 8:22-26. Between these healing stories lie all the material between them largely concerned with Jesus’ identity and the character of the New Exodus people. Bartimaeus’ story serves as a recap of the story so far and a transition to Holy Week. The rich man and James and John could become disciples. The one because the rich man could not divest himself of his wealth to help the poor; the others because they could not embrace Jesus’ path of downward nobility. Bartimaeus, however, can because he is blind, poor, and does not pretend to see. -the disciples are in Jesus’ band of followers/Bartimaeus is sitting by the “way” (the path of discipleship) -the disciples (Peter) know Jesus is Messiah (8:26) but don’t understand that/Bartimaeus doesn’t know his right name (see 12:35-37 on “Son of David”) but ends up following Jesus “on the way” (of discipleship, v...

Recovering the integrity of Christmas is easy to diagnose but hard to convince anyone to plan for and practice. The season of Christmas is twelve day beginning on Dec.25 and running through Jan.6. The culture is in the post-holiday doldrums. The space is wide open. We've probably lost Advent to our culture. And we lose Christmas too when we try to do it around all the folderol, family traditions, etc. It gets drowned in sentimentality and consumerism. The twelve days of Christmas is the proper time and a culturally open space for us to find faithful ways to celebrate this season.

After this section on “Stuff” Jesus issues the third prediction of his suffering, death, and resurrection to the disciples. We’ll look at the three as a group here and trace out their commonalities and developments (keep your Bible open to refer to each of the passion predictions in chs.8,9,10). A first commonality is that all occur on the way to Jerusalem. But they occur at different stages on the journey. The first happens at Caesarea Philippi, the second passing “through Galilee,” and the third drawing near to Jerusalem. All along the way on this journey Jesus presses this truth upon them. It is clearly the heart of his message. In the first and third predictions Mark says Jesus “began” to teach his disciples. Apparently, they are always “beginning” to try and grasp what he is telling them. And they always fail. Though he taught “quite openly” the disciples think they understand, do not understand, and are afraid. Mark demonstrates this by posturing the disciples as being al...

10:17-22 We draw near to the threshold of Jerusalem (ch.11). This set of teachings rounds out Jesus’ essential teaching on discipleship. A deferential man accosts him with a question: “ Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s not asking about salvation as we tend to. It’s not post-mortem life in another sphere (“heaven”) he’s interested in (he would not have known about that because it did not exist as a part of Jewish faith). Rather, it’s the new age here on earth after God intervenes to judge evil and set all things right that he asks about. Why does the man call Jesus good and Jesus reject this appellation? Remember that Jesus was in conflict and competition with the four other views offering guidance for how Israel should be the Israel God wanted it to be: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zealots. This seeker perhaps knows Jesus’ reputation as a teacher and come to find out what his vision for Israel is in light of the coming cl...

The Strangeness of the Bible Novelist Franz Kafka writes about the kind of the book we humans need, books that make a real difference to us and in us. In a letter by Franz Kafka to his schoolmate Oskar Pollak, on January 27, 1904, he says: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.” Karl Barth, the great 20th century theologian, discovered this truth in the early 20 th century...

Advent 2017 - Week One Isaiah 64:1-9       Psalm 80:1-7,17-19         1 Corinthians 1:3-9         Mark 13:24-37 It feels like we’re in a wasteland, doesn’t it? All around the world. Fear haunts us. All kinds of fears. No one seems to know where we are or how where to go from here. All signs are blank like the one in this picture. Even those loudly and proudly professing otherwise. Few of us are really persuaded by them. And what’s even harder to bear is that we know in our bones, at least a lot of us do, that we have brought a good but of this on ourselves. The church is neck deep in all this too. We’re as befuddled, fearful, lost, and near despair as is the rest of the country. But we do have a word. Not our word. Not at all. God’s word. And every year God graciously gives us a chance to start over. With different words but similar themes God calls ...

Again, the disciples demonstrate their shortsightedness by rudely rebuffing those bringing children to be touched (blessed, v.16) by Jesus. He is “indignant” at this behavior. In the earlier passage about children (9:33ff.) Jesus taught them to welcome the nobodies and throwaways of the world as they would him or his Father. Like the blind person needing two touches by Jesus to see clearly, the disciples need a second lesson on welcoming those regarded by the rest as having no worth or value. Thus Jesus gathers the children in his arms, laid hands of blessing on them. Then he adds a final piece to their instruction. Solemnly (“Truly I tell you”) he tells them, “ whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” Only those “who make no claims, unself-consciously assume their own utter dependence, and are not concerned about rank, status, and self-image” (Boring, Mark :8139-8141) . Only those can receive others who know they are received by ...

1 April 2016 © Robin Heighway-Bury/Alamy Our descent into the Age of Depression seems unstoppable. Three decades ago, the average age for the first onset of depression was 30. Today it is 14. Researchers such as Stephen Izard at Duke University point out that the rate of depression in Western industrialized societies is doubling with each successive generational cohort. At this pace, over 50 per cent of our younger generation, aged 18-29, will succumb to it by middle age. Extrapolating one generation further, we arrive at the dire conclusion that virtually everyone will fall prey to depression. By contrast to many traditional cultures that lack depression entirely, or even a word for it, Western consumer culture is certainly depression-prone. But depression is so much a part of our vocabulary that the word itself has come to describe mental states that should be understood differently. In fact, when people with a diagnosis of depression are examined more closely, the m...

It is my contention that across the board in whatever form we find God’s people, that is a people fleeing Egypt, wandering nomads, a united and divided monarchy, a people in exile in Babylon, and a people exiled in their own land under foreign rule, they are to be a Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement (SCRM). Jesus of Nazareth entered the story of his people under the last-mentioned condition. They are to be God’s SCRM because this world is not as it was meant to be. Instead of a world lathered and luxuriating in God’s presence and the abundance of life on this planet in its full flourishing, humanity turned its back on God in the cruelest of ingratitude. Breaking relationship with God unraveled the good order of his creation. We could no longer live with ourselves, each other, or the creation. God, however, never acquiesced in this fallen state of his creatures or creation. Immediately, he began a reclamation and restoration project. God called Abraham and Sarah fro...

By James K.A. Smith November 23 at 6:00 AM Thanksgiving has always been one of the high holy days of American civil religion. Its rituals are surprisingly widespread — pilgrimages home through packed airports; gatherings of family and friends (and attendant tensions that are the stuff of Hollywood rom-coms); the dining room altar on which the turkey is supped, then a long day of drifting in and out of consciousness while hours and hours of football flicker in our darkening dens. Our Thanksgiving traditions reflect the country’s mix of secularization and religious fervor — what theologian William Cavanaugh calls “migrations of the holy.” In a secular age, our religious impulses aren’t diminished; they just find new devotions: consumption, the self, the nation. Now, the NFL — in all its popularity and current controversy — sets the script for our Thanksgiving Day litany. It gives us something to worship. Of course, the typical symbols and traditions of Thanksgiving h...

Another “test” for Jesus arises as he journeys to Judea and beyond the Jordan. A crowd gathers and Jesus teaches as per usual. What is this “test” or trap? Jesus is at the place where John the Baptist launched God’s New Exodus movement. And John got in trouble with Herod for criticizing his marital unfaithfulness. Can the Pharisees get Jesus to say something about marriage and divorce that would undermine his messianic movement? Further, in Mark’s day, under the pressure of the impending war with Rome, families were divided and torn apart (Mk.13:12ff.). What would Jesus say to those in this crisis? This is clearly not a straightforward doctrinal discussion! Jesus answers their question with one of his own: “What did Moses command you?” (v.3). Here he unearth’s the real issue at stake: authority. Moses is the Pharisees’ authority. And they present his teaching accurately: he allowed divorce with the husband’s penning a “certificate of dismissal” (v.4). Or do they? Moses ...