See this as a PDF
Mark 10:35-45
I’ve always thought this was a strange account from Mark. John and James seek to reserve seats of honor next to Jesus in a future kingdom. It sounds like these Galilean fishermen imagine some kind of grand throne room in Jesus’ future. Apparently it’s a throne room with three chairs in it: one chair for Jesus and two unclaimed chairs, one chair on each side. Can you save those seats for us, they ask.
That question has always sounded out of place to me. Why would John and James ask Jesus such a selfish question? What was it about them that made saving seats important? What if saving seats was a part of the way their family did things?
As you know they shared in the family business, so maybe their father would say to them, “Boys, when you get older there will be two seats saved for you on the fishing boat.” When they were older, maybe he would say, “Boys, we’ve got a big day tomorrow, so we should get an early start. Your seats will be waiting for you.” Maybe their mother would go to the synagogue and tell the Rabbi, “John and James are still out fishing with their father and will be late to Sabbath school. I’ll make sure they’re there, but can you save them a seat?” Maybe on holy days when the family was going to the Synagogue they would run ahead and save a bench for their father because he liked to sit near the back (Some things don’t change.). Maybe saving seats was a regular part of the Zebedee household.
Most readers come away from this account labeling James and John as ambitious for asking Jesus to give them a place of honor, but I can also imagine that saving seats may have been a normal part of making plans. The problem with their request this time, however, is that the seats they are asking for aren’t on a boat of in a Rabbi’s home or in a house of worship. Jesus kingdom doesn’t have a room where he sits to receive guests. Those kinds of rooms are for earthly monarchs and Jesus kingdom is not of this earth. (more…)
See this as a PDF
Mark 10:13-16
The sad news of the past week has been difficult to hear: a gunman in a Colorado High School and then within days another report about a gunman in an Amish School in Pennsylvania. They are both horrific stories to hear and we should all be praying for the families that are grieving.
It seemed like there was another layer of sadness in the Amish community tragedy because it is such an unlikely place for this kind of a story come from. Few images were as sad to watch as a long line of black carriages full of Amish heading to a cemetery to bury children. The Amish have built a religious society apart from a world that includes things like school violence, and so why would that be something to confront their peaceful way of life?
This week, the news of the violence in Colorado and Pennsylvania has taken me to the account in Matthew’s gospel of Herod’s order to kill the children of Bethlehem. Herod was an evil soul who felt threatened by the wise men who claimed they were following signs in the heavens which would lead them to the one born king of the Jews. No king would challenge his power and so he asked the wise men to report to him after they find the child. When they did not, he was enraged. You may remember they were warned not to return to Herod but to go home by another way.
Before Herod’s violent plan could reach Jesus, Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to hide. While they remained safe, many did not and so after this sad story is told, Matthew turns to the prophet Jeremiah for comfort in the face of violence. Jeremiah reaches into Israel’s history to one of its ancestors, Rachel. Jeremiah imagines her weeping for her children as they were taken into exile. In Matthew, she again weeps for her children killed by the violence of a troubled soul. (more…)
Mark 9:38-41
Did you follow that story a couple of weeks ago about the various reactions to the Pope’s speech that included references to Islam? There was a strange irony in those reactions. Violence was used to protest the accusation of being called violent.
Part of that violence was against a nun who was killed in Somalia? Who translated the Pope’s lecture so that thugs in Mogadishu could misunderstand it lash out? Who spun the report so that it sounded like the Pope was expressing his own views on Islam? It shows how fast information or misinformation can travel, and how small our world is becoming.
The world is not big enough to send everybody to their own corner to stop conflict. That’s the parenting approach. And there is something about the way information travels that makes it seem like some people want to keep things stirred up. The misreporting about the Presbyterian General Assembly this summer shows that even when a denomination has good intentions about helping its own people explore the mysteries of God, someone is going to give it a spin to make it sound misguided. Consider this paraphrase of the Robert Frost poem, Mending Wall. Something there is that doesn’t like people to get along, That sends a frozen-ground-swell under calm, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps that even two can argue through. (more…)
