Missed it by That Much — Saturday Sermons from the Sidelines

Read Mark 12:28-34.

“And Jesus, observing that he answered wisely, said to him, ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34a, my translation).

It was Major League baseball player and manager Frank Robinson who first said, “Close don’t count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” The quote appeared in the July 31, 1973, issue of Time magazine (http://www.espn.com/classic/000728frankrobinsonadd.html).

The gospel of Mark works like a labyrinth. Have you ever walked a labyrinth – as a spiritual discipline, for example? When you walk a labyrinth, you can see the “goal” of the walk at all times. The center of the labyrinth is completely visible, as is the entrance/exit to the labyrinth.

A labyrinth is not a maze. The purpose of a maze is to cut you off from knowing your location. During the Halloween season in our part of the country, we often have the opportunity to wander in “corn mazes.” These are paths in cornfields designed to give the wanderers the scary sense of being lost amidst the tall stalks. Between the rustling of the stalks and the complexity of the maze, it can be a disorienting and discounting experience.

A labyrinth is disorienting in another way. Just when you think you’ve gotten to the center of the installation, the path takes you back to the beginning again – sort of like life. That’s what the composer of Mark’s gospel is doing at the end of this reading. The composer has gotten us nearly to the end of the story. But for a moment we find ourselves back at the beginning.

“The right time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has drawn near,” Jesus declares in Mark 1:15, “change your perspective on the world and put your trust in the Good News!” (my translation).

Of course, this proclamation takes us to the very first words of the Markan composition. We hearers know that this “good news” is “the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” We have walked all the way to Mark 12 only to find ourselves right back at the first seven words of the Gospel.

The scribe commends Jesus for getting an “A” on his theology exam. Jesus declares that love for God and love for neighbor comprise, as a matched set, the foremost of the commandments. “Good answer! Good answer!” the scribe replies. This dual invitation to whole-person love for God and neighbor is worth more than “all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

The scribe is “not far from the Kingdom of God” in that assessment. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. “Not far” is apparently not close enough.

In the great old sitcom, “Get Smart,” secret agent Maxwell Smart (played brilliantly by Don Adams) uses a number of running gag lines to cover up his various mistakes. Whenever Smart has a massive fail, he will turn to his colleague or his superior and declare with an absolutely straight face, “Missed it by that much!” Usually, the line is accompanied by Smart’s thumb and index finger about an inch apart. Of course, he “missed it” by much more than that.

I have to wonder if that’s part of the point the Markan composer is making here. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but not in the Kin(g)dom of God. The scribe may have missed it by that much. But, to pile up the cliches and catchphrases even further, when it comes to the Kin(g)dom of God, perhaps a miss is as good as a mile.

But what can this all mean for us? Does the Markan composer want us to know that this Kingdom business has no margin for error? Losing a basketball game by 2 points or 200 is still a loss. Do we walk away wondering if we, too, have missed the Kin(g)dom by that much?

No, I don’t think that’s the issue here – either for the Markan composer or for us. Remember, the Markan composition is like a labyrinth. When you walk a labyrinth, you get close to the center at least once before you’re sent back to the outside again. The key is to keep on walking. It would seem that this is precisely what the scribe did not do.

Jesus bested the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees in a series of public debates about Hebrew scriptures. The scribe liked what he heard. It’s not clear if he liked the public humiliation of the competition or the content of Jesus’ teaching, or both. It doesn’t really matter. He agreed with Jesus and commended the excellence of his teaching.

And then he went on his way.

I served in a congregation where one fellow visited more often than most of the members attended. He was complimentary of my sermons, pleasant at fellowship time, and even made the odd financial contribution. But he resolutely refused any and all overtures regarding membership in the congregation.

One day, I decided to cater to my curiosity. I bought him a cup of coffee and asked the obvious question. Why don’t you join the congregation? Is there something wrong with us? “No, Pastor,” he said with a smile. “I like you all just fine. I enjoy the sermons. I appreciate the music. I feel welcomed by folks.”

This wasn’t helping me. “Why, then,” I asked, “don’t you want to become part of the congregation?”

“Well, you see, Pastor, if I join, then you folks will expect things of me,” he smiled. “And I’m not interested in that.” At least he was honest. For that I was grateful. And our conversation had no effect on his attendance.

It would seem that actually being “in” the Kin(g)dom of God cannot be a spectator sport. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. It would seem the scribe (and my pleasant spectator) missed it by that much. But what did they miss?

God commands what is good for us. Full stop. No exception or equivocation. If we are “commanded” to love God with our whole hearts, souls, minds, and strengths, then that must be what’s good for us. God longs for complete communion with you and with me and with all of Creation. That’s what that foremost commandment means.

The scribe was that close to full communion with the Creator of the universe. And then he went on his way. At least the rich man in Mark 10 had the good sense to be grieved about missing out. Our friend, the sensible scribe, didn’t even notice what he was missing. He didn’t even bother with a follow-up question.

This foremost of the commandments contains within it an astonishing assertion. God desires, God longs for, God yearns for complete communion with you, with me, and with every bit of Creation. God so desires that complete communion that God comes to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As far as God is concerned, nothing in all of Creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God only commands what is good for us. And God only commands what God will do through us. Complete communion is a mutual relationship. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God sends Jesus into my heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s what makes this mutual relationship possible.

Of course, God doesn’t take hostages. God doesn’t capture slaves. I have the “freedom” to respond like the scribe – make a pithy observation and then wander off on my own. It’s a terrible sort of freedom, this freedom to walk away from God, but it’s real.

That being said, I don’t think God ever stops pursuing, inviting, and wooing us back into the complete communion with God for which we are created. I wish the scribe had seen what was staring him in the face when he was so near to the Kin(g)dom. But I also believe that all such scribes among us – starting with me – are the focus of God’s unending and steadfast love.

Of course, this foremost commandment is a two-sided coin. God commands what is good for us. God commands what God will do through us. And what God does through us is what God does to us. Since God loves us — heart, soul, mind, and strength – God loves our neighbor in the same way. And God invites us, through Jesus, to be active partners in that loving.

This, of course, is precisely where my pleasant spectator understood the Christian gospel very well. Complete communion with God results in complete communion with whoever and whatever God loves. So, we are invited to love our neighbors as we ourselves are loved. As Martin Luther puts it, we are called to love our neighbors as Christ loves us.

I don’t have to work out for you what that means for you. I do know that this flip side of the commandment coin can be hardest to implement with those who are closest to us. It’s with those who are near to us that it’s easiest to miss it by that much. So, this loving business is daily effort and discipline.

That takes us back to the labyrinth. No matter where we’re at on this journey of following Jesus, the first key is to keep on walking. Sometimes we’re closer to the center. Sometimes we’re farther away. But let’s resist the temptation to be merely spectators. Let’s not walk off the field and watch from the sidelines. Let’s keep asking questions and taking steps.

Maxwell Smart has another running gag. He suspects some bad news. “Don’t tell me I fell off the horse,” he tells Agent 99. “You fell off the horse,” she says. “I asked you not to tell me that!” He replies. Mark urges us to listen to what we’re told and to keep walking.

Even if we’ve asked him not to tell us that…

Text Study for Mark 12:28-34 (Pt. 6); October 31, 2021

Burning Daylight

What’s the point of this game we call “Life”? That’s the question that drives Jack London’s most profitable and well-read novel (at least during his lifetime), called Burning Daylight. I was familiar, of course, with The Call of the Wild and White Fang, his best-known tales. But I did not know the story of Elam Harnish, aka “Burning Daylight,” the subject of this 1910 work.

I was attracted to the title based on a simple search of the Web. Over the last decade and more, I had adopted the cliché that “we’re burning daylight.” In other words, time is fixed, finite, and flying, falling away at breakneck speed. Not a moment is to be wasted. Not a second is to be lost. There is so much that can be done and experienced and known and so little time to pack it all in.

As I searched the cliché for a different project, I came upon London’s book. Here is, of course, another example of my perspective. How many more great books have I missed simply because I have not been paying attention? A whole universe full, in fact. But that’s another conversation.

Elam Harnish comes on the stage as a brawny, brawling, larger than life prospector in the years leading up to the Yukon gold rush. Part I of the book details how he builds a fortune of eleven million dollars based on daring, Yukon-sized gambles that risk life and limb and contain a vision as big as the man himself.

Daylight, as the main character is known, is not particularly interested in the wealth as such. For him, it’s the “game.” The higher the stakes the better. “A man played big,” London wrote of his protagonist. “He risked everything for everything, and anything less than everything meant that he was a loser” (page 5). The big game produced big bucks. But Daylight learned that the winnings were really of a different sort – the real game was played for power.

In Part 2, Daylight heads south to San Francisco. He brought his money and his nerve to a far bigger playground and to a game called “high finance.” “Big man as he had been in the Arctic game,” London wrote, “it merely showed how much bigger was this new game, when a man worth eleven millions, and with a history such as his, passed unnoticed” (page 105).

Daylight did not remain unnoticed for long. In this second act of London’s morality play, Daylight takes on the robber barons of both coasts. He faces a steep learning curve and doesn’t always win. But in the end, he doubles his millions and more. Yet, the game takes its toll on him in heart, soul, mind, and strength.

“Finance was poker on a larger scale,” London observed, through Daylight’s musings. “The men who played were the men who had stakes. The workers were the fellows toiling for grubstakes. He saw the game played out according to the everlasting rules, and he played a hand himself. The gigantic futility of humanity organized and befuddled by the bandits did not shock him,” Daylight observed. “It was the natural order. Practically all human endeavors were futile” (page 136).

The price to play was steep. His heart became hard to the suffering of others. His soul became bitter and cynical after seeing so much greed, venality, cowardice, and malice. His mind would not rest, because there was always another play, another deal, another crisis, or catastrophe. His strength waned from lack of exercise, too much booze, too little sleep, and too much cruelty. It was not so much that he played the game. The game was playing him.

This was, Daylight thought, simply in the nature of things. “It was life, and life was a savage proposition at best. Men in civilization robbed because they were so made. They robbed just as cats scratched, famine pinched, and frost bit” (page 136). Equipped with that perspective, Daylight made a killing as a financier, and was slowly killing himself in the process. I would not presume to improve on London’s own assessment.

“The grim Yukon life had failed to make Daylight hard. It required civilization to produce this result. In the fierce, savage game he now played, his habitual geniality imperceptibly slipped away from him, as did his lazy Western drawl. As his speech became sharp and nervous, so did his mental processes. In the swift rush of the game, he found less and less time to spend on being merely good-natured. The change marked his face itself” (page 137).

Part II of the book takes a more human turn as we come to know Dede Mason, the one great love of Daylight’s life. Spoiler alert! If you want to read the book for yourself to find out how things end, you should probably skip down a few paragraphs.

Dede leads him to see the truth of his life. “And was it worth it?” Daylight wondered to himself. “What did all his money mean after all? Dede was right. It could buy him no more than one bed at a time, and at the same time it made him the abjectest of slaves” (page 263). Winning the game, Daylight discovers, is a losing proposition in the end.

What is the point of the game? Is it consuming or communing? Elam Harnish played the consuming game for all he was worth. He played according to the few “rules” of that game, and he came out the winner. What he discovered was that in consuming others, he was himself consumed by the game, playing it simply for something to do.

And he discovered that the game took away his humanity.

We are created by God for communing, not for consuming. God desires to have all of me – my whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength. Thus, the only appropriate response to God is to give my whole self to God.

This is the language either of consuming or communing. If it’s consuming – if I am to be eaten whole – that’s the work of sin, death, and the devil. God seeks self-giving union with all of me. We are made to give ourselves completely to God. That’s why we find such satisfaction and meaning in complete self-giving. That will be salvation for Burning Daylight at the end of the story (not to give too much away).

Such complete communion is nearly as scary as being consumed. The Markan composition has a remarkable play on words that is lost in the NRSV translation (unnecessarily so, in my humble opinion). This complete union with God (and as a consequence with neighbor) is worth more than “all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.”

The play comes with the word “whole.” It’s not just all our heart, soul, mind, and strength that God desires. It’s the “whole” of our selves that God calls into union with God in Christ, like the “whole burnt-offerings” (you might want to think of the “living sacrifice” language in Romans 12 in this regard). Just as the “whole burnt offering” is completely consumed on the altar in the Temple, so we are to be taken up into God as a “whole.” That could mean that we evaporate into oblivion, and that’s what scares us.

Or it could mean that we are transformed completely into what God created us to be from the beginning.

That, of course, is what God intends. The point of the game is union with God and with one another. In that union, we become most fully ourselves. If, on the other hand, the point of the game is consuming (winning), then everyone loses in the end. And, as Burning Daylight discovers to his chagrin, that winning makes us progressively less human – less whole in heart, soul, mind, and strength.

What prompts this question about the point of the game? It can certainly be prompted by losing – by losing a loved one, a job, a dream, a child, an illusion. If a person has been working to win and the work doesn’t pan out, we can be driven to seek meaning and purpose elsewhere. I suspect that at least part of the current “Great Resignation” in the job market involves people who were losing at this game and have been forced to wonder if it’s the right game at all.

The question can, paradoxically, also be prompted by winning. No matter how banal the insight, it is indeed true that the one who dies with the most toys still dies. This is part of the point of London’s book, I think. Daylight wins the game, repeatedly. But he cannot claim what matters most to him in the end, even though he has won. He can only find real victory by resigning from the game.

If this reminds you of our conversation about the rich man in Mark 10, that’s not accidental. I think that one way to read the Markan composition from Mark 8:26 through the end of Mark 13 is with this question in mind. What’s the point of the game? Perhaps it is a political restoration of Israel. Perhaps it is accommodating the Roman imperial regime. Perhaps it is wealth and possessions. Perhaps it is raw power – even in Jesus’ glorious reign.

But none of these strategies produces a real “win” in the Kin(g)dom of God. It is as my dad often wondered. What would that dog do if he ever actually caught the car he was chasing? Then what’s the point?

It is the losers who win in the Markan composition – climaxing with our hero, Blind Bartimaeus, dancing with Jesus toward the cross. Perhaps this is the real revolution of Luther’s Reformation – the insight that the Church of his time was simply playing the wrong game. That’s a question for the White church in our own time and place as well. White male supremacy and the racist status quo are simply the wrong game for Jesus followers.

It is even more a question for the political and economic players of our time. Will we resign from consuming one another and consider communing with one another? It’s clear that we must answer soon, one way or another. After all, we’re burning daylight.

References and Resources

Campbell, Antony F., SJ. God First Loved Us: The Challenge of Aceepting Unconditional Love. Paulist Pr. Kindle Edition.

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Furnish, Victor Paul. “Love of Neighbor in the New Testament.” The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 10, no. 2, [Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc, Wiley, Blackwell Publishing Ltd], 1982, pp. 327–34, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40017773.

Greenlee, Mark B. “Echoes of the Love Command in the Halls of Justice.” Journal of Law and Religion, vol. 12, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 255–70, https://doi.org/10.2307/1051616.

HEIL, JOHN PAUL. “The Narrative Strategy and Pragmatics of the Temple Theme in Mark.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, Catholic Biblical Association, 1997, pp. 76–100, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43723803.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

London, Jack. Burning Daylight. Kindle Edition.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Tuomo Mannermaa. Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World (Kindle Locations 201-203). Kindle Edition.

Manning, Brenna. The Furious Longing of God. Colorado Springs, CO.: David C. Cook, 2009.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 12:28-34 (Pt. 5); October 31, 2021

Perfumatory Farts

“How radically must we rework our own self-image,” Antony Campbell asks, “if we accept ourselves as lovable—as deeply, passionately, and unconditionally loved by God?” (page 4). I find this to be the biggest personal challenge in our text. I know that both in the setting in Leviticus and here in the Markan composition, the call is to love my neighbor as I love myself. But, if that’s the standard, then my neighbor is in deep trouble.

Campbell’s question invites me – urges me – to consider the “second” commandment in a different light. He amplifies Luther’s Golden rule, that I am invited to love my neighbor as Christ loves me. The “second” commandment gets to the heart of the matter for me if I read it like this: “love your neighbor as you yourself are loved.”

That seems like a better deal for the neighbor. And it forces me to grapple with, and accept, how I am loved. And if I accept the reality of that love for me, then Campbell’s question takes on its full reality. If I can accept that reality, then I will be changed. I will be changed because, on my own, I will never see myself as loved unconditionally or unconditionally lovable.

If I can’t even accept that for myself, how can I ever share such love with my neighbor?

I stumbled on to Brennan Manning’s work quite by accident in a secondhand bookstore. Thank you, Loving God, for such happy accidents! I would recommend Manning’s book, The Furious Longing of God, as a resource for our reflection together. I won’t rehearse Manning’s journey here (I think I’ve done that before). But I will share some of his insights alongside those of Campbell and others.

“I believe that Christianity happens,” Manning declares, “when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ” (page 23). As we work our way through the final scenes of the Markan composition, I think this is part of the subtext.

The heroes in the story are not those who hedge their bets and strengthen their sense of security. The heroes are those who toss it all away – like Bartimaeus’ cloak and the widow’s offering (spoiler alert for next week) – and follow Jesus to and through the cross. “Does our basic attitude,” Antony Bloom asks (oh, he of the excellent questions!), “emphasize appropriate behavior as a condition for being loved by God or as a consequence of being loved by God?” (page 5).

I know that my default response to that question is to choose the former description rather than the latter. I know, “Welcome to the human race.” We are all in the same boat. And yet, we each occupy our own seat in that boat.

For me it was a family that assumed production and performance as the price of something approximating love. That was not a conscious decision or an intentional strategy. It was both an inherited system and a response to the trauma of the generations before me. My mother – poor dear that she was – suffered abandonment and abuse as a child. And it marked her for life.

Thus, she passed on the certainty that no one could love her – no one could even want her – unless she was doing something of value for the other. Even then, that “love” could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice and often was. Every relationship was, for her, an unspeakable risk. With the exception of my father, she saw every relationship as an attempt to take from her without giving in return. So, the doors remain closed for the most part.

In fairness, that was the family in which I came to life and age. I know it was different for my siblings in some ways. And I’m grateful that it was so for them. But I live – conscious as I am of my tendencies – with the unthinking, knee-jerk, default assumption that what I am and what I do is not up to standards. Thus, I must masquerade as “perfect” in order to fool at least some of the people some of the time and secure brief moments of what passes for “love.”

My CPE supervisor made a repeated observation during my initial interview with him. “You know,” he said with half a smile, “you think your farts smell like Chanel Number 5.” I was unable to respond to that provocation. That’s what it was, after all, not a rude criticism. He was trying to provoke me into deeper self-reflection on my perfectionism.

It didn’t work – not at that moment, and not during the three months we spent together in that basic quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education. But I see in retrospect that my supervisor was also playing the long game.

Obviously, his words continue to have impact on me and my perspectives. I knew then and I know now that I don’t think for a minute that my flatulence is pleasantly fragrant. But I wanted everyone else to think that was the case, to be taken in by my performance. I was a failure in projecting my false self to anyone but myself. Of course, for most of my years, that was success enough.

“The men and women who are truly filled with light,” Manning writes, “are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence” (page 32). Manning was far more courageous in pursuing that gaze than I am. But I know he’s right. Perhaps that’s another lesson from the little people in the Markan composition. The ones who come to life-changing trust in God are those who have less crap to dig through and discard.

How can I love my neighbor as I have been loved if I don’t trust in that sort of love? That’s what I’m wondering with you in this post. Manning recounts the morning he woke up to the graphic realization that he was “filth” (read one of his books).

It was in the midst of that realization that he began to know God’s love for him “for nothing.” He writes that this Divine love “is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods – of elation or depression. The furious love of God,” Manning declares, “knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender” (page 35).

Martin Luther’s theology is typically described with the polarity of faith versus works. But Luther’s description of his personal epiphany is not framed with those notions. Instead, Luther describes his relationship with God in terms of love versus hate. That means something.

If God demands perfect righteousness as a condition for Divine Love, then, Luther thought, we are all lost. He came to his monastic practice and his theological studies with the accepted notion of the “righteousness of God.” This term meant a certain of moral and ethical purity that would qualify one for a relationship with God.

Since no human being could achieve that standard, the medieval penitential system was created to remedy the deficiency. Humans could call upon the surplus in the treasury of merits accumulated Christ and the saints to make up the indebtedness of your run-of-the-mill sinner. With the right rituals and responses, the books could be balanced, and life could go on.

For Luther, this system was not adequate. He was, in his own estimation, an impeccable monk. He engaged in hours and hours of confession and heroic efforts at making satisfaction for his sins. He was so resolute and thorough in his efforts that he wore out his confessor, Father Staupitz. The good father is reputed to have complained to Luther, “Martin, either accept the absolution or get some new sins!”

New sins wouldn’t do it for Luther. He had to get “a new God.” Not that Luther created a new divinity for our worship. Instead, he returned to the God and Father of Jesus Christ – the God who loves nothing into something, who loves for nothing in order to give the beloved everything.

I noted in a previous post that God loves us “for nothing.” This Divine Love creates in us the capacity to love God “for nothing” in return. That’s a sort of operational definition of faith. But that means that I am challenged to accept that “for nothing” love. It is so radical, so unfamiliar, so unmanageable, that it is (for me) a lifetime of growing in order to catch even brief glimpses of that unmerited Love and Favor that we Lutherans often call grace.

If the call of that “second” commandment is to love my neighbor as I am being loved by God – without condition or cost – then I cannot do that on my own. I can do this only if God loves through me. “With the grace of recognition comes the awesome and alarming awareness,” Brennan Manning writes, “that Jesus, the incarnation of the furious longing of God, wants more than a close relationship with you and me; He seeks nothing less than union” (page 68).

That’s what Love does. Love seeks union with the beloved.

This is why I find the work of Tuomo Mannermaa in Two Kinds of Love so compelling. For years I struggled to work to accept the declared justification I have through faith in Jesus Christ. But, as Luther would note, that’s just another “work of the law.” In fact, I am invited to welcome the person of Jesus into my being as well as to accept his work of setting me and the whole Creation right.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” Paul writes to the Galatian Christians. That’s what makes it possible for me to love my neighbor as I am loved by God in Christ. “The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be,” Manning notes, “requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment.” Sounds like conversion to me – or daily dying and rising with Christ.

At least I don’t worry so much about the perfumatory and performatory qualities of my farts. Well, that’s a start anyway.

References and Resources

Campbell, Antony F., SJ. God First Loved Us: The Challenge of Aceepting Unconditional Love. Paulist Pr. Kindle Edition.

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Tuomo Mannermaa. Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World (Kindle Locations 201-203). Kindle Edition.

Manning, Brenna. The Furious Longing of God. Colorado Springs, CO.: David C. Cook, 2009.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 12:28-34 (Pt. 4); October 31, 2021

You Can Be Replaced, You Know

Mark 12:28-34 provides an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast the parallel accounts in Matthew 22:34-40 and Luke 10:25-28. As we view these texts together (that is, “synoptically,”) we can get more of a sense of the intentions, emphases, and themes of each of the gospel composers.

My first exegetical course at Wartburg Seminary was “Luke’s Revision of Mark,” taught by Dr. Ray Martin, of blessed memory. The course was a revelation and epiphany for me in understanding how texts work in the Gospel accounts.

In retrospect, I think the title of the course probably claimed too much, however. Of course, Luke revised some materials from his “copy” of the Markan script. We can see with little effort, for example, that Luke places our text in a very different setting than does Mark. The dynamics of the text and the relationships between the characters are different. If it weren’t for the great commandments in the text, we might wonder if they were related at all.

But to say that Luke “revised” Mark is to create the impression that the Markan composition is somehow more “original” than the work of Matthew or Luke. That impression is what “originally” drew me to deeply into the Markan work. It appears to be the case that the Markan composition came into written form earlier than either the Matthean or the Lukan compositions. It also appears to be the case that Matthew and Luke had “copies” of the Markan composition, or at least parts of it, as they did their work.

My point, however, is that each of the Synoptic composers was working from a set of early and developing traditions. The Markan script is not significant merely because it is earlier in the timeline. The Markan composer has intentions, emphases, and themes not found in the Matthean or Lukan works. Matthew and Luke have their own intentions, emphases, and themes. It’s not that any of them got it “right” (or “wrong”) for that matter. Each is a distinctive witness, necessary for the witness and service of the Church through the ages.

One of the emphases in the Markan composition appears to be a focus on the Jerusalem temple. We get some of that focus here, especially in the scribe’s words in Mark 12:33b – that the double love commandments “is greater than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” What does that assessment mean for the scribe in the story itself? What does that assessment mean for those who first heard the Markan composition performed? And, of course, what does that assessment mean for us as contemporary hearers of the text?

A number of scholars argue that Jesus portrays himself in some way as replacing the Jerusalem Temple. I think we need to reflect carefully on that assessment. If we put ourselves into an historical space where both Jesus and the Temple are in operation (the years of Jesus’ earthly ministry), then it would seem that Jesus puts himself in competition with the Temple. His words and actions seem to reject the Temple and the Judaism associated with it. But that’s an anachronistic view of the Gospels.

Heil’s article is an excellent summary of the Temple theme in Mark 11-16 and will be a resource for our reflection from now until the end of this preaching year. Heil offers this conclusion after his examination of the various texts. “The Marcan narrative invites its audience to become the community that supplants and surpasses the temple by implementing in their lives Jesus’ teaching within the temple (11:1-12:44) and outside the temple (13:1-37), but they are able to do so only with the empowerment of Jesus’ death and resurrection (14:1-16:8)” (page 100, my emphasis).

Heil lays out the specifics of this Markan theme. In chapters 11 through 13, Jesus authorizes the listeners to become God’s new house of prayer for all peoples. Jesus calls them to pray with both faith and forgiveness. They are to be people who worship the God of the living, not the dead. They rely on Jesus as the cornerstone of this new temple. And this new temple is the place where authentic worship happens by means of total love for God and neighbor (see page 100).

Just as Bartimaeus cast away his cloak in order to follow Jesus, so the poor widow gives her whole life as an offering to God in the temple. That is the standard of discipleship in the new temple. That standard is possible, not because of human virtue, but because of God’s victory over death on the cross of Jesus. The curtain protecting the Holy of Holies is torn in two from top to bottom. And Jesus is loose in the world.

All of this is certainly true and an accurate reading of the Markan text. If, however, the Markan composition is coming into written form in the aftermath of the Jewish War of 66 to 70 C.E., the “replacement” of the Temple is a non-issue. The Temple is in ruins. Jerusalem is destroyed. The Jewish rebels have been defeated and executed. There is nothing at that point for Jesus to “replace.”

Instead, the question, at least for Jewish Christians, really seems to be something more like this. Since the Temple is no more, now what do we do? I can’t help but think of Peter’s question in John 6 at this point. Lord, to whom shall we go? The issue is not, therefore, some kind of replacement or supercessionist theology. It’s a matter of a desperate search for an anchor in a chaotic and rapidly changing world.

Jesus is portrayed in each of the Gospels as that anchor, at least for those who follow him on the Way of the Cross and Resurrection. Hurtado argues that “in Mark 11-16 a claim surfaces again and again that Jesus in some way replaces the temple as the central place where God manifests himself” (page 202). Wright offers a similar perspective in his popular commentary (Kindle Locations 3046ff.). That’s certainly true as far as it goes, but this assessment can quickly lead into ascribing an anti-Jewish bias to the gospels.

I think Hurtado is guilty of the kind of anachronism I described above. “Mark’s readers would have seen the scribe as anticipating their belief that the temple rituals were expendable and thoroughly secondary to the higher obligations reflected in the two commandments cited. Jesus’ commendation of him,” Hurtado concludes, “seems to underscore this position” (page 202).

No, that doesn’t follow, from my perspective. If, in fact, temple rituals were impossible by the time of the Markan composition, then it makes no sense to argue that they were “expendable.” It would seem that early Christians maintained contact with the Temple and those rituals as long as that was possible. It was when the structures, system, and community in Jerusalem were destroyed that alternative ways of thinking had to be considered.

This process certainly must have begun prior to the Jewish War, at least for those Christians who were geographically separated from Jerusalem. Just as synagogue worship and community arose in the Diaspora following the destruction of the first temple, so Christians at a distance would likely have felt less need for and less allegiance to the Temple than did those who were closer. But the discussion in the Markan composition shows that the Temple was a theological challenge for the Markan community, regardless of where they were located.

Perhaps we can think about our own situation as the Church in the Western world. It’s not that most Christians really want to abandon Church as we’ve known it for the last five hundred years or so. Most of us were not looking for a seismic shift in our institutions (although we probably should have). Instead, the shifts are happening in spite of us and without us. The question is not what should replace what we have. The question is much more since the Church as we know it is going away, now what do we do?

The counsel we find in the Markan composition is to return to the core of our theology and practice. N. T. Wright asks, “when the crisis comes, what remains solid in your life and the life of your community? Wholehearted love of God and neighbor? Or the mad scramble of everyone trying to save their own skins?” (Kindle Location 3053).

We are preaching in a time of similar dislocation and even chaos for the Church in the Northern and Western world. The Covid-19 pandemic took people out of their traditional worship spaces and practices and forced us to consider new ways of doing and being Church. While it appears that many of us will return to our previous practices over time (unless some other crisis occurs), the question has been raised? How necessary are our buildings, our organizations, our practices and patterns?

We are preaching in a time when traditional lines of theological consensus are crumbling. Robert P. Jones has written, for example, that we are witnessing the end of White Christian America. I cheer that ending and hope the process accelerates. But for those of who were part of that structure, now what? If our five centuries of White Male Supremacist Christianity are over, if our dependence on the Doctrine of Discovery is a house built on sand, if we who have been so accustomed to being in charge for so long must give up the reigns of power, then what?

It’s not that the former consensus is being replaced. It is being destroyed. In the wake of that destruction, will we seek the central anchors of our confession – to love God with all our being and our neighbors as Christ loves us? That’s a question, perhaps, that this text engages for us.

References and Resources

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Tuomo Mannermaa. Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World (Kindle Locations 201-203). Kindle Edition.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 12:28-36 (Pt. 3); October 31, 2021

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

How is the foremost commandment – to love God with one’s whole self – connected to the second-most commandment – to love one’s neighbor as oneself? In his book, Two Kinds of Love, Tuomo Mannermaa puts it this way.

“God’s Love helps human beings, first of all, to love God as God and not only the goodness received from God, and, second, to love other human beings for themselves and as persons, instead of loving only their precious qualities and for what could be gained from them for the benefit of the one who loves” (Kindle Locations 201-203).

Mannermaa suggests, in other words, that human love is connected to and even mirrors God’s love when we love “for nothing.” That is, God loves not for what God can gain but rather for what God can give. When human love functions in the same way, it is a product of God’s love.

Mannermaa roots this discussion in the final thesis Martin Luther proposed for debate as part of the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. That thesis reads, “God’s Love does not find, but creates, that which is lovable…to it. Human Love comes into being through that which is lovable to it ” (Kindle Location 133). God’s love is given to something or someone which can produce nothing in return or is, in fact, nothing in itself.

Human love, apart from God’s love, is always focused on that which can and does produce something in return. Human love on its own, at its best, is seeking the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. In simpler terms, human love on its own gives in order to get. Mannermaa argues that “human beings always seek their own, that is, their own good, in the objects of their love” (Kindle Locations 145-146).

Mannermaa is not being overly cynical about the nature of human love. Nor is he judging any particular instances of human loving. Instead, he is describing the nature of love possible for a creature on its own. This is how we are able to love apart from God’s love in us. It’s not bad in and of itself. It’s just not all there is. And it’s not the full love for which we were created.

This notion of loving “for nothing” or “for something” fits in with one of the overall directions of the Markan composition. Think back to the two times that Jesus puts a child in the midst of the disciples. Jesus tells us that unless we receive the Kin(g)dom of God like a child, we will not be able to enter into it. Remember that this is not about childlike innocence or any other romantic notion. This is about welcoming God among us “for nothing.”

We are called to welcome God among us “for nothing” because that is how God welcomes us. This is the Good News that Jesus proclaims, embodies, and enacts in his mission, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. Remember that Jesus comes as the Son of Man, not to be served but to serve, and to give his life. God does not come in Jesus to get. God comes in Jesus to give.

“God’s Love is not oriented toward ‘what is’ but rather toward ‘what is not,’” Mannermaa writes. “That is why God’s Love does not desire to gain something good from its object but rather pours out good and shares its own goodness with its object” (Kindle Locations 149-150). What God’s Love pours out is the presence of Christ in the hearts of those who trust in Christ, as we saw in the previous post.

Paul follows up his assertion in Romans 5:5 with a description of our condition when that “pouring in” takes place. Here we are – weak, ungodly, sinners, enemies of God – and Christ dies for the love of us. That love creates something where there was nothing. That’s what it means to be in bondage to sin – to be reduced to the nothingness of death. But that’s where God does God’s best work.

It’s for that reason, backing up a bit further in Romans, that Paul uses Abraham and Sarah as an illustration. Abraham was, Paul says, as good as dead. Sarah was barren –her womb was empty. Out of that nothingness, God creates new life. Out of that death, God brings resurrection. Trust in Jesus is trust in precisely that God, who handed him over to death for our trespasses and raised him for our justification.

“God’s creating love is especially manifest,” Mannermaa argues, “when God-and and those human beings in whom God’s Love dwells-loves the sinners who are wicked, foolish, and weak, in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong” (Kindle Locations 154-155). Mannermaa reminds us of a great Luther quote at this point. “Therefore sinners are beautiful because they are loved; they are not loved because they are beautiful.”

Thus, God loves us “for nothing.” That’s the nature and definition of God’s grace. “Because God’s Love does not find but creates that which is lovable to it, it is not determined by the attributes of its object,” Mannermaa notes. “It does not choose its object on the basis of these attributes, nor does it depend on human opinions, according to which the object of love always should be something” (Kindle Locations 157-158).

God loves us “for nothing,” and creates in us the capacity to love God “for nothing” in return. That’s a sort of operational definition of faith. We Christians would say that this capacity comes to us as Christ lives in us and through us. When our love for the neighbor is “for nothing,” that is, for the sake of the neighbor rather than for our own benefit or advantage, then our neighbor love is a reflection of and response to our love for God.

Mannermaa notes that Lutheran theology, and especially analyses of Luther’s theology, tend to downplay, or even ignore Luther’s thinking on God’s love and human love. But this thinking is critical to understanding Luther’s work and the Markan composition at this point. It’s not that we can use human love to help us understand God’s love. It is, rather, that God’s love is the standard by which all human love should be judged.

“God loves human beings by giving them Godself fully, that is, by giving them God’s full ‘nature’ with all of God’s characteristics.…” (Kindle Location 398-399). This is the “joyous exchange” I mentioned in the previous post. God’s love is always more than a feeling. It is the gift of God’s very self, given to us in the living and transforming presence of Christ within us.

“Faith receives the good deed of Christ,” Mannermaa continues. Notice that we are back to what it means to receive or welcome the Kingdom of God. Faith receives God’s love in Christ poured into our hearts by the Spirit. And we receive that love, trusting that we are loved “for nothing” and not “for something.”

I know far too many people who are certain that they can only be loved “for something.” They are convinced that they have to produce, to provide, to be used and exploited in order to receive anything that looks or feels like “love.” Most of us live this way most of the time. My chaplaincy supervisor said that most of us believe that “bad breath is better than no breath at all.” We settle for being loved “for something” rather than risk not being loved at all.

The joy of the Gospel is the realization that God loves me “for nothing,” that is, for me just as I am – not for what I can produce or provide, not for my perfection or pretense. I only get brief glimpses of that Good News in my heart now and then. But when I do, it is, to quote Luther, as if the gates of Paradise have opened wide.

The second-most commandment, then, comes out of the foremost – but applied to our neighbor. “This means, to do for their neighbors as Christ has done first for them,” Mannermaa argues, “to give the good gifts they have received to their neighbors in need, and to relate to the neighbors’ sins, weaknesses, and needs as if these were their own. In this way,” he concludes, “Christ, Christians, and their neighbors form one body in God and God’s love” (Kindle Locations 400-402).

Reflect on those moments in relationships when you have felt most loved. I suspect those are moments when you experienced love that was for you as you were, not as you were expected to be. When we have someone in our lives who loves us that way, it is the greatest of all gifts. That’s the sort of love that changes people, makes people better, makes people closer to what God has created us to be. That sort of love is a means of God’s love for us.

Is it any wonder that when the scribe affirms Jesus’ words here, Jesus says that he is “not far” from the Kin(g)dom of God? The scribe doesn’t stick around, however, for the way this works out in reality. After all, self-giving love – loving “for nothing” – is always suffering love. This love is always on the way to the cross and resurrection.

“Because of the nature of God’s love,” Mannermaa writes, “all God’s action in the world has the form and shape of the cross” (Kindle Location 489). Therefore, if our love is to be “like” that love, our action in the world will also have the form and shape of the cross. Again we come to Luther’s formulation of the Golden Rule – “Do to your neighbor what Christ has done to you.”

“These are the true Christian works,” Luther says in a sermon, “that the Christian falls and plunges into the mud where the sinner is, and is immersed in it as deeply as the sinner is; and that the Christian takes the sinner’s sins upon oneself, and rises up again with the sinner, acting as if those sins were one’s own.”

That’s what Love’s got to do with it.

References and Resources

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Tuomo Mannermaa. Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther’s Religious World (Kindle Locations 201-203). Kindle Edition.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 12:28-34 (Pt. 2); October 31, 2021

Commanded to Love

What does it mean to say that we as Jesus followers are “commanded” to love God and neighbor? How can Jesus (or God or Scripture) “command” an emotion? I have heard that question many times over the years of my parish ministry. Framed this way, Jesus’ words seem to be nonsense to twenty-first century ears and minds.

How can loving be a commandment? It’s a post-Kantian, Romantic question – at least in terms of the history of Western ideas. Immanuel Kant taught us that morality is about the rules that we would be willing to universalize. While Kant’s rule-based understanding of ethics is not the only option, it is a highly influential one.

Combine that with the Romantic (as in the philosophical and literary school of thought called Romanticism) notion that emotions are the essential marks of our humanity and that love is the primary human emotion, and we have a problem.

Of course, Jesus is not a Kantian moral philosopher. Nor is Jesus a Romantic poet. Our protests about rules and emotions are anachronistic at best. That means that we need to hear Jesus’ words in the Markan composition within something approaching an “original” framework if we want to make any sense of them at all.

Let’s think about the “commandments.” It’s not really helpful to understand the commandments are rules for living. It is more helpful to understand them as practices or disciplines or patterns of character-forming behaviors.

In modern Jewish usage, the word for commandment (“mitzvah”) often refers to a good deed or set of good deeds. That usage goes back to quite ancient documents, including the Jerusalem Talmud, which takes us back to within a century or so of the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Tzvi Freeman notes that the word may be related to an Aramaic verb meaning “to attach” or “to join.” The Aramaic word can mean companionship or personal attachment, Freeman observes. Thus, a mitzvah is not about a rule but rather about a relationship. “In this sense,” Freeman continues, “a mitzvah bundles up the person who is commanded and the Commander, creating a relationship and essential bond.”

Given this framework, Jesus’ reply to the scribe makes good sense. The foremost commandment (mitzvah) is about our relationship with God the Creator. The second most salient commandment is about our relationship with our neighbor. It is “like” the foremost commandment because both are about the relationships which define us as human beings.

I find the description of commandments as character-forming patterns of behavior to be the most helpful understanding of the term. When I think, for example, of the Ten Commandments (found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5), I don’t think of these statements as ways in which God legislates the fun out of life. Instead, God gives commandments because they are good for us. I find it to be a rule of thumb in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures that God wants from us what is good for us.

Keeping the commandments is a way to practice the habits that form our character in a particular way. I would argue that God’s commandments are intended to form us into the fully authentic and joyful human beings God created us to be from the beginning. Freeman quotes a commentary on the commandments from a thirteenth-century Jewish author in Spain. “A person’s attitudes,” the commentator wrote, “are molded by his behavior.”

If a preacher were to use our text on Reformation Sunday (as I am proposing), then some time meditating and reflecting on the nature of God’s law would be in order. Martin Luther is often caricatured as saying that the Law is uniformly bad and is the “opposite” of the Gospel. That cannot be right, of course. After all, Luther spends the majority of both his Small and Large Catechisms expounding the Ten Commandments. If the Law were bad, why waste all that ink on it?

Luther reminded the Western Church that the Law is the result of our relationship with God, not the road to that relationship. As he reads the Ten Commandments in the Catechisms, for example, he sees the words of Deuteronomy 6:5 as the “Introduction” to the Commandments. “I am the Lord your God,” we read in that verse, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” It is only in light of that gracious act that the following commandments make any sense at all.

Therefore, Luther argues, it is faith that fulfills the commandments. By that he means that it is trust in that gracious relationship which God initiates which is the keeping of the Law. But even this trust in the relationship is not a “work,” something that we humans – in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves – can produce on our own.

Faith itself, the capacity to respond to God’s gracious gift, is also God’s gracious gift. “Thus, God’s promises give what the law demands,” Luther writes in The Freedom of a Christian¸ “so that everything may belong to God alone, both the commands and their fulfillment” (page 496). Jesus roots the covenant connection with God in relationship, not rules. The scribe agrees with that assessment and is, therefore, “not far from the Kingdom of God.”

This faith relationship, according to Luther, is far more than a pleasant connection. He describes three “powers” of that faith in The Freedom of the Christian. First, the gift of faith forms us for our loving union with God. Second, the gift of faith equips us to treat God as God – as Jesus would put it, loving God with the wholeness of heart, soul, mind, and strength. Third, the gift of faith unites us with Christ (see pages 496ff.).

To illustrate this third power of faith, Luther uses the metaphor union between the “bride” (my “soul”) and the Bridegroom, Christ. The working of this union is what Luther describes in many places as the “Joyous Exchange.” He puts it this way in The Freedom of the Christian: “Accordingly, the faithful soul can both assume as its own whatever Christ has and glory in it, and whatever is the soul’s Christ claims for himself as his own” (page 500).

Our trusting relationship with God is not something already within us that Jesus uses to build us up into perfection. In the words of Tuomo Mannermaa, faith is the presence of Christ in us. “Christ gives his person to us through faith, Mannermaa writes. “’Faith’ means participation in Christ, in whom there is no sin, death, or curse” (Kindle Locations 321-322). To put it more simply, Mannermaa notes, “Salvation is participation in the person of Christ” (Kindle Location 319).

Faith – the presence of and participation in the person of Christ – forms us for works of love. And works of love then further form us for faith. Have you ever noticed that the real “virtues” are self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating? By that I mean that the best way to be more trusting is to practice trusting. The best way to have more hope is to practice hoping. The best way to be more loving it to practice loving. The practices themselves form us more fully into the Christ within us.

This sounds a great deal like the understanding of commandments with which I began this post. A person’s attitudes are molded by their behavior. And a person’s behavior molds their attitudes as well. While the Law cannot bring us into relationship with God in Christ, Luther asserts, it can help us to grow deeper in that relationship. The Law can guide us to discipline ourselves for living. And it can guide us into fruitful ways to love our neighbor.

Jesus notes that the “second” commandment is somehow connected to the foremost. We can and likely will examine that idea in more detail downstream. But for now, let’s think about it in terms of a kind of descent. The ancient principle is that “like begets like.” The second commandment is the “offspring” of the foremost. Love for neighbor as oneself is the natural progeny of the trust in God that produces love for God.

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul writes in Romans 5:1 (NRSV). He concludes that sentence at the end of verse five by noting that we have this peace with God “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” It won’t be a Reformation Day observance without some heavy-duty Paul-quoting, eh?

“God’s love” is a plenary genitive in this passage. It is both God’s love for us and our love for God. Not only has that love been poured into us through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is poured through us onto our neighbor. The second commandment is the offspring of the foremost commandment and is the expression of the presence of Christ in us – the clearest expression of our faith in Christ.

I’m not arguing that Jesus was a Lutheran and didn’t know it. I do hope, however, that Lutherans have a faithful way of talking about Jesus. That’s what theology is good for, after all – to bear witness to the Good News of God in Christ in ways that can make sense to people. Our love for neighbor is the result of our relationship with God in Christ.

Luther puts it this way in The Freedom of the Christian. “Therefore, I will give myself as a kind of Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to me. I will do nothing in this life except what I see will be necessary, advantageous, and salutary for my neighbor, because through faith I am overflowing with all good things in Christ” (page 524, my emphasis).

In this time when the assertion of individual “rights” at the expense of the neighbor, the community, and Creation, has been raised to the level of an ultimate concern, a review of the Lutheran basis for love of neighbor might be a helpful thing. It should be clear that putting individual preference ahead of the needs of the neighbor cannot qualify as love for neighbor (or self, for that matter) according to Lutheran theological categories.

Luther’s “Golden Rule” is not “do unto others as you would have them to unto you.” Instead, Luther’s Golden Rule goes like this. In faith (that is, the presence of Christ in us) “in turn and mutually, we are a second Christ to one another, doing for our neighbors as Christ does for us” (page 525, my emphasis).

That’s the real application of the “second” commandment in the life of the Jesus follower: do for your neighbor as Christ does for you.

References and Resources

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 12:28-34 (Pt. 1); October 21, 2021

Say What?

Let’s begin by situating our text in the larger structure and context of the Markan composition. There is no end to the proposals for how to structure the Gospel of Mark as we have it and how the various pieces of the account fit together. Many of the proposals have their relative merits, and none should be taken as reflecting the “mind of Mark.” We don’t have access to that insight, and it’s not obvious from the text we have. So, any proposed structure or outline is really a heuristic device – a tool to assist our study and interpretation. That is certainly true of what I’m going to propose.

It appears that Mark 10:46 is the conclusion of and punchline for the “Way of Following” section of the Markan account (from Mark 1:16 to the end of chapter 10). Mark 11 leads off with the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. I think this story serves as the mini-prologue for chapters eleven through thirteen. This section focuses on the Jerusalem Temple and the related political and religious establishment. The section concludes with the Markan “Little Apocalypse,” which helps the audience of the composition to interpret and deal with the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of the Jewish rebels in 66-70 C.E.

If you’ve read some previous posts on the Markan composition, you will know that chiasm is one of the Markan composer’s favorite techniques for organizing material. It’s always worth looking for chiastic structures, both large and small in the composition. I am reading Mark 11:11 through the end of chapter thirteen as a loose sort of chiasm with some small structural elements thrown into the mix.

The reason for examining and analyzing such structural elements is not merely to show off (although I’m certainly not above that failing with some frequency). Instead, the purpose is to try to discern some of the emphases and purposes of the Markan composer in telling the story. As I have noted in the past, these structural elements helped those who presented and performed the Markan composition to keep things organized in their memories.

I want to suggest this loose sort of structure.

Unit	Text	Theme	Details
A	Mark 11:11-25	Fig Tree and Temple Incident	Intercalation
B	Mark 11:27-33	Jesus’ authority (in the Temple)
C	Mark 12:1-12	Parable of the Wicked Tenants (who kill the son)	Allegory
D	Mark 12:13-34	Questions in the Temple	Rule of 3 with a twist
C’	Mark 12:35-37	David’s Son	Note son in the Parable
B’	Mark 12:30-44	Jesus critiques Temple/Scribes
A’	Mark 13:1-32	Little Apocalypse	Fig Tree image as climax

Just as the Triumphal Entry serves as a connection to the previous section (especially the story of Blind Bartimaeus), so Mark 13:32-37 serves as a connection to the Passion account proper, especially with the emphasis on keeping awake. In just a few paragraphs, the central disciples will not be able to keep their eyes open while Jesus prays in the garden.

The center of a chiasm usually contains the most important theme in that section of the Markan composition, whether the chiastic structure is large, as in this case, or small. I read the set of three questions in the Temple as the center of the structure, so we need to pay close attention to what is happening here.

In addition to the chiasm, we get another example of the Markan composer’s use of the Rule of Three, but with a striking twist. The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, in Mark 11:27-33, have challenged Jesus’ authority to interpret scripture and to attack the Temple system. So, they are the primary audience for the Parable (Allegory) of the Wicked Tenants.

They sought to restrain and/or arrest Jesus, and they were afraid of the crowd, the Markan composer tells us. They were afraid because they perceived that he spoke the parable for, against, or about them (the preposition is ambiguous). As a result, they vacated the scene.

Different sets of debate partners now come onstage for honor jousts with Jesus. These debates are still happening in the Temple. There is no indication of a scene change. The original “odd couple” in the Markan composition, some Pharisees and Herodians, try to trap him with a political question. The Sadducees pose a riddle about the Resurrection – a possibility they regard as scripturally impossible.

We would expect the third question to be another hostile challenge to Jesus (and it is portrayed as such, for example, in Luke). But it is not. That’s the really interesting piece here. “Nothing in Mark’s story prepared the reader for this conversation between Jesus and this Jerusalem scribe,” Emerson Powery writes in his workingpreacher.org commentary. “Nothing!” The scribes, for the most part, align themselves with the opposition. The listeners are reminded that the scribe overhears the previous dispute.

We are prepared, as were (I assume) the first listeners, for this scribe to be the most critical and obtuse of all. Yet, this one is not far from the Kingdom of God. Apparently, the joke’s on us this time around! The scribe appreciates Jesus’ responses to the other debaters, both in terms of content and style. The scribe noted that Jesus answered “well” – which can mean both of good quality and honorably.

“Part of the shock of this story was the agreement of the Jerusalem scribe,” Powery writes. This scribe chose to engage with Jesus rather than to trap him. The scribe takes Jesus’ critique and analysis even further when he argues that the love Jesus describes is of a value surpassing all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. Powery notes that this seems to be “an implicit temple critique.”

Why does the Markan composer choose this particular story/memory to include in the composition, and why does the composer put it in this place in the narrative? “The answer is probably that Mark wanted to show that the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish establishment was not based on a rejection of the OT or a complete disavowal of the law by Jesus,” Hurtado proposes, “but instead on the refusal of the Jewish authorities to accept Jesus as the final interpreter of the Jewish law” (page 201).

Was there a constituency among the Temple establishment that held an anti-Temple bias? Powery wonders this but dismisses it. “It is hard to imagine an anti-Temple scribe in Mark’s narrative, so it is better to assume otherwise,” he argues. But that doesn’t mean he disagrees with Jesus at this moment. “In fact, this individual scribe, in a collectivist society, probably represented many Jewish leaders who appreciated Jesus’ teaching,” Powery suggests. “We find hints elsewhere in the Gospel narratives (cf. Luke 7:3-5).”

The punchline in this three-part joke is that a scribe agreed with Jesus. Powery notes that this should give us pause about assuming the mindset of those who might debate with us, at least on matters of faith. “Stories like this one, rare as they are within the Christian canon, must drive us to become more willing to open up to the other,” Powery argues, “including the faithful people within our own religious tradition and those without.”

The larger question in this section of the Markan composition is the basis and nature of Jesus’ authority – especially when it comes to challenging the administration of and practices in the Jerusalem Temple. Scribes were essential to maintaining both that administration and those practices. Thus, Hurtado argues, “the point of this passage seems to be to show that Jesus’ criticism of scribal tradition did not amount to a rejection of the validity of the OT law as a revelation of God. Rather,” he continues, “Jesus’ reply to the scribe…shows what Jesus saw the proper point of the law to be” (page 201).

“This isn’t designed as a ‘new religion’, a way of life somehow different from what pious Jews sought after,” N. T. Wright agrees, “This is the fulfilment of the law and the prophets” (Kindle Location 3039).

Certainly, one of the things to take from this text is that we are listening in on an intra-Jewish debate. This is not an attempt on the part of the Markan composer to portray Jews as bad and Gentiles as good. The debates about the Temple, in the actual time of Jesus, had to be about reform rather than replacement. Of course, by the time the Markan composition achieves written status, reform is no longer an option. The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed.

Yet, the debates about the authority and meaning of the Hebrew scriptures must have remained live issues for the Markan community. For the composer to have a story at hand in which a Jewish authority figure commends Jesus for his accuracy and orthodoxy must have made a significant impact on those debates within the Markan community – especially if we locate that community in the fraught environment of Rome following the Neronian persecutions and the Jewish War.

“There is no limit to the amount of work to be done in the church in correcting anti-Old Testament bias,” Sarah Hinlicky Wilson writes in her workingpreacher.org commentary. “The habits of disdain toward Judaism and the faith of Israel run very deep, almost as old as the church itself, and will not be corrected easily. But preachers can and should take every opportunity,” she urges, “to inculcate a better take on the Hebrew Scriptures within the Christian canon.”

References and Resources

Freeman, Tzvi. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1438516/jewish/Mitzvah.htm.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Tuomo Mannermaa; Kirsi Irmeli Stjerna. Christ Present In Faith: Luther’s View Of Justification. Kindle Edition.

Powery, Emerson. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-4.

Wilson, Sarah Hinlicky. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-2/commentary-on-mark-1228-34-5.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.