Marginal Christianity

                                                           by Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson                                                                                                      ...

Jesus Walks on Water (6:47-52) Mark ties this story with the feeding by mentioning the disciples’ failure to “understand about the loaves” (v.52). Likely, then, the two stories make the same point. There the point was Jesus’ royal messianic identity and authority as leader and agent of God’s New Exodus. We must look for the meaning of this story along those lines as well. Mark began his gospel by calling Jesus “Son of God” (1:1). And he ends it similarly with the centurion crying, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). All the teachings, stories, and events in between fill out what this term means. It is just this that is at issue in the feeding and walking on water stories. And it is just this that Jesus’ disciples (then and now) struggle to embrace. Misunderstandings we have of the phrase “Son of God” don’t help. In the Old Testament it meant the king who was to rule the people as YHWH would (see Ps.72). For many of us today it means a divine figure, the second person ...

  The Dragon and Two Beasts: The First Two Portents  1  (chs.12-13) Three Portents Within this seventh trumpet blast, with heaven opened and the Ark of the Covenant in full view and attended by a panoply of divine fireworks (11:19), something new and significant is at hand. That something Jesus unfolds in terms of three portents (12:1,3; 15:1). The judgment introduced in 11:18 has the dual purpose of rewarding faithful servants (those who practice “endurance”) and “destroying those who destroy the earth.” The faithful are rewarded with the Kingdom's arrival and establishment. The destruction of the destroyers of the earth is the subject up next in Jesus' sermon. The Dragon, the Woman, and the Child (12:1-6) Surprisingly, the next scene in Jesus' sermon is a Christmas story! The Seal and Trumpet cycles have laid a framework for understanding the destiny of the world and the character of the vocation God has called them to enact. And right at the center we ...

The Book of the Twelve for Lent 2016 Grace – Amos (2) Lent 12 As always in the Bible god’s grace comes first and human response follows it. The same is true in Amos. Twice in the early chapters this prophet directs attention back to the founding liberation of the Hebrew people from Egypt as the foundation of their relationship to God. On the basis of this grace shown this people, God expects them to live and love toward him and other peoples the same way.           In Amos 2:10-11 we read: “10  Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt ,                 and led you forty years in the wilderness,                 to possess the land of the Amorite.               11  And I raised up some of your children to ...

The Great Pattern The Old Testament               Walter Brueggemann has noted a “lexicon” of verbs typically connected with YHWH’s actions of liberating grace: -Yahweh brings out -Yahweh delivers -Yahweh redeems -Yahweh brings up [1]           The exodus from Egypt is the paradigm case of YHWH’s liberation. It’s a pattern deeply inscribed in the Bible. Its formative impact is seen in its rehearsal annually at the Passover festival. And they celebrated an event that did not merely happen “then and there” in its history. On the contrary, the community saw themselves within the Story and believed it happened to “us.” This was the formative story of their lives, not just those of their forebears. Listen carefully to the creed they used: “My father was wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great ...