Thomas Mocket, Puritan minister, lists good reasons for generosity to the needy. This list ended up in the Westminster C.F. Among benefits of giving are that it opens hearts of those refreshed, and stops the mouths of religion’s critics.
In contrast, I hear Puritan scholars endorse contemporary books on Christian advice to the young which don’t mention liberality, but the need to resist the trans movement.
How can you give glory to God?
Good morning friends. This beautiful Saturday remember who Loves you. Remember the one person in this entire universe an all the others that will love you no matter what. All he asks in return is your. love.
For the Love and Glory of God
Psalm 148:1-2 1 Hallelujah! Praise Abba God from the heavens; praise God in the heights. Praise Abba God, all you angels; praise God, all his host. [May these words praise God!]
Introduction
In 1984, Tina Turner asked, “What’s love got to do with it?” And looking around our local and national environment, I think that’s probably the question we should be asking. But just hollering into that caustic and vitriolic sinkhole, “Just love one another!”, is adding more fuel to the fire because we often don’t know what we mean when we say it. The reason for that? Most people, on either side of the divide, truly think they are acting in loving ways. So, hollering, “We just need to love one another!” is met with blank stares in response because, well “I AM!”
We truly believe that love will solve our problems, sooth our tensions, eliminate our divisions; and I agree with this. But the thing is, we must get real about what it means to love…We must start at the beginning and notice how God loves the cosmos and how God in Jesus Christ loved the neighbor. We must embrace that to love doesn’t always make one comfortable and cozy—either the beloved or the lover. We must be willing to take our love beyond good feeling and allow Love (capital “L”) be the force that guides our actions in the world causing us to prioritize the well-being of the neighbor o according to what they need and not what I think they need. So, I’m glad John is here to walk us (back) through what it means to love…
John 13:31-35
Our passage falls near the end of Jesus teaching his disciples about love in the upper room before his crucifixion. Essentially, we are—for all intents and purposes—back at Maundy Thursday. The chapter opens with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. At the conclusion of this event, Jesus gives a teaching on what it means to be a disciple of Christ: to serve each other and not to be served. Then Jesus tells of his betrayal. Here Judas is just flat called out and dismissed from the table to do what he is going to do. Then we come to our passage for today where Jesus explains what is happening and then gives his disciples a new commandment (to love). Chapter 13 closes with Jesus promising Peter that he will not be able to go where Jesus is going, but that Peter will deny Jesus three times. In this chapter, love has a lot of work to do.
John writes, Therefore when [Judas] went out, Jesus said, “Now the son of humanity was glorified, and God was glorified in him. If God was glorified in him, then God will glorify him in God, and God will glorify him immediately” (vv. 31-32). Jesus isn’t speaking abstractly here; he’s speaking very literally. His death comes as Judas goes out; the present moment is binding together what was with what will be.[1] The “now” there is doing a lot of work and emphasis should be placed on it. In this moment, among the disciples, there is a collision of time: what was is becoming what will be right then (now!). Jesus has glorified God in his active love in the world and this glorifying of God will become Jesus’s future glorification in the resurrection from the death that is coming now (because Judas left and all that is coming by his betrayal is as good as done). In other words, the Cross and the Resurrection are going to be the full culmination of what was colliding with what will be and creates an entirely new now for the disciples of Christ.[2] It is this new now that the disciples are ushered into by faith (and which is only accessible through faith).[3]
Jesus then addresses the disciples personally, Dear little children, I am still with you a little bit [longer]. You will search for me, and just as I said to the Children of Israel, “Where I, I go my way you, you are not able to come,” and to you I say [this] just now. After a pronouncement of God being glorified (both past and future) in and through himself, Jesus informs the disciples that the way he is going is his way alone and they are not able to come. Jesus’ presence with them is coming to an end; the disciples will no longer be able to walk (literally) with him and they will learn that it is necessary for them to be abandoned by Jesus (in his death and also in his future ascension). What he did with them will have to be enough…for now; the disciples will be stripped of their teacher, left to their own devising.[4] Or so they think…
Then Jesus speaks into their burgeoning doubt and threatening despair and promises that even as he leaves, he is with them. How so? Through a new commandment that has to do with the disciples loving each other as Christ loved them. Jesus exhorts, A new command I give to you: you love one another. Just as I loved you, you, you also love one another. In this way, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among you. As Jesus’s time with the disciples wanes, he gives them a commandment that will transcend any epoch and era and any country and continent. In a swift motion, Jesus redirects their attention away from themselves and toward something in the future; to this command they can cling because it is not clinging to a stone tablet but a real person by faith; in it resides the entirety of Jesus with them, and if Jesus then God, too.[5] In loving one another like Christ loved them, they are never abandoned and are always with Christ and also with God. This is not a cold command to love as if it was of one’s own power; this is a command that is founded on and in and by the love of Christ for them, which is the love of God for them. [6] If the disciples love in the way of and like Christ loved them, then their discipleship status will be noticed by all people because in this love Christ will be proclaimed.[7]
The new command doesn’t replace Jesus, this would then make Jesus and faith in Jesus superfluous. Rather, the new command becomes the “essential nature” [8] of the burgeoning new community that follows this new way of Christ in a world that will find this all very strange.[9] (And, according to John, this love does start first among the new community. [10]) This new command of love is not feeling loving emotions toward someone; that is not how Jesus loved the disciples. Jesus loved the disciples (and others!) through acts and deeds of service that brought love, life, and liberation to them in both material and spiritual ways.[11] Thus, the disciples’ activity in accordance with this new command reinforces that the disciples are never far from Christ because this liberative love is the very love of Christ. And it is distinct and new because it is not the love of the kingdom of humanity but of the reign of God bringing life where there is death, Easter where Good Friday refuses to leave.[12]And if the disciples are never far from Christ in this liberative love, then it will be easy for all people to know they are HIS disciples.
In this way God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation continues in the world as Jesus goes his way and the disciples remain behind. The mission doesn’t end with Jesus; it is just the beginning of the advent and incarnation of the reign of God overhauling the kingdom of humanity, bit by bit, moment by moment, in this era and that era. [13] And, as this new community of disciples loving each other as Christ loved them goes into and through the history of the world, God is glorified in them because Christ is the glory of God and where this community is and loves as Jesus loved them, Christ is there and brings God glory.[14]
Conclusion
So, “What’s love got to do with it?” Well, according to John, everything. This command was not just for the disciples there with Jesus at the table but is timeless and knows not a static captivity to the past. The new commandment transcends time and space, it goes and is wherever there are those who gather in the name of Christ and love as Christ loved. This new command is for us today: it guides us, teaches us, corrects us, forms and reforms us, and it is still the way all people will know we are the disciples of Christ. They will know us by our love because our love will be liberative and life giving, it will be more than “thoughts and prayers,” more than some sort of comfortable message, even more than abstract Christian colloquialism that never hit the rock bottom we hit. This love will not bring death, indifference, and captivity; it will not hold up legalism, traditionalism, and dogmatism over the well-being of anyone (those here and out there) [15]. It will cause us to relinquish our excess to meet the needs of others and to abandon our self-imposed isolation to find deep community with others. It will be the source of our unrestrainable hope that will radiate out from here infecting others as it streams through the world to its farthest recesses. It will bind us to God, thus bind us to that and to those whom God loves: creation and our neighbor. Dorothee Sölle writes in her book, To Work and To Love, “The God who created the universe, including our planet, and who delivered us from slavery is the same God who raises the dead to new life, so that we who were dead and without hope might become resisters and lovers of life. ‘Lover of the living’ is an old name for God (Wis. of Sol. 11:26). So shall it be our name for evermore.”[16]
[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 523. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “It is that νῦν, in which past and future are bound together, stressed particularly at this point by the paradoxical juxtaposition of ἐδοξάσθη (v. 31) and δοξάσει (v. 32).”
[2] Bultmann, John, 523-524. “The subject is that δόξα which is at the same time the Son’s and the Father’s: καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἐδοξάσθη ἐν αὐτῷ. What has already happened sub specie aeterni unfolds itself in the temporal future; and because this is so, the word δοξάσει (as if this future were at a distance from the νῦν) can be picked up again in καὶ εὐθὺς δοξάσει αὐτόν, which is a reference to the immediately imminent passion. It draws our attention again to that paradox inherent in the concept of δόξα, viz. that the δόξα becomes apparent precisely in the cross; and it also indicates a rejection of the naive primitive Christian eschatology, for there the revelation of Jesus’ δόξα was expected only at his coming Parousia (mk. 8.38).”
[3] Bultmann, John, 524. “The period of his personal presence has come to an end…His own will miss him; they will not realise the full significance of that νῦν immediately. Their faith has to stand the test.”
[4] Bultmann, John, 524. “…to some extent the believers are in the same position as the men of the κόσμος. Of course the situation does not contain for them, as it does for the latter, that element of the ‘too late’; but both look back in the same way on a ‘no longer’, and the beginnings of despair are there for the disciples too. They have to learn that the Revealer has not come to be at their disposal through their faith. What now lies in the past does not guarantee the future, but is called into question by it. Jesus, in whom they believed, disappears from them, and they are left with no security.”
[5] Bultmann, John, 525. “Then how can their relationship with him be retained in the face of this isolation?…The future is subjected to an imperative! Their anxiety was centred on their own actual existence, but now they are directed towards an existence that has the character of an ‘ought.’ The illusion that they possess him in such a way that he is at their disposal is confronted by another kind of possession: one which consists in fulfilling a command. Their despairing gaze into the past that is no more is redirected to the future, which comes and lay sits obligation upon them. An unreal future, which would only be a persistence in the past, is made into the real future which demands faith. And in so far as the content of the ἐντολή is ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους, the care for oneself is changed into a care for one’s neighbour.”
[6] Bultmann, John, 525. “But since it is precisely this becoming free from the past and from oneself that is subjected to the imperative, the future that is grasped as command coincides with the future that is promised for loyalty of faith; for it was freedom from the past and form oneself that was promised to the believer. Thus the imperative is itself a gift, and this it can be because it receives its significance and its possibility of realization from the past, experienced as the love of the Revealer.”
[7] Bultmann, John, 528. “…all loving becomes the proclamation of Jesus—which means that it can always become an offence too, not just in the individual case, but especially because the association formed by this kind of love cuts across the associations of the world in a special way.”
[8] Bultmann, John, 527. “But Jesus’ command of love is ‘new,’ even when it has been long-known, because it is the law of the eschatological community, for which the attribute ‘new’ denotes not an historical characteristic but its essential nature. The command of love, which is grounded in the love of the Revealer received by the disciples, is ‘new’ in so far as it is a phenomenon of the new world which Jesus has brought into being; and indeed 1 John 2.8 describes this newness as that of the eschatological event.”
[9] Bultmann, John, 527. “V. 35 states that the new world becomes reality in the community: reciprocal love within the community is the criterion of the discipleship of Jesus for those outside. The fact that the command of love is fulfilled there demonstrates the strangeness of the community within the world, and results in the world calling those who love the disciples of Jesus. Not just because there is a community in which love is both an injunction and an actual practice. Much rather because love itself there takes on a form that is strange to the world.”
[10] Bultmann, John, 528. “It is no general love of mankind, or love of one’s neighbour or enemy that is demanded, but love within the circle of disciples. Naturally this does not mean that the all-embracing love of one’s neighbour is to be invalidated; but here it is a question of the very existence of the circle of disciples. How does the departing Revealer remain present for his own? By the vitality of the gift of his love in their love of each other, and by their representation within the world of the new world, which became reality through him.”
[11] Bultmann, John, 526. “Jesus’ love is not a personal emotion, but is the service that liberates; and the response to it is not a mystical or pietistic intimacy with Christ, but the ἀλλήλους ἀγαπᾶν.”
[12] Bultmann, John, 526. “The significance of the past lies in the fact that the encounter with Jesus was experienced as his service which made the believer free; thus the significance of the future can only be that in it this freedom is brought to fruition. And this take s place int eh fulfillment of the command of love. Because this command and its fulfillment are grounded in the Revealer’s love which has actually been experienced, the believer always remains bound to the Revealer’s service and is never centered on himself. And to put it the other way round, the faith which has accepted that service can only continue to come to fruition in the attitude of service, i.e. of love.”
[13] Bultmann, John, 529. “But the community itself fulfills its commission to the world…only if the ἀγαπᾶν remains the response to the love of Jesus, and so long as it does note exchange it for an ἔργον of the world, or for efficacy within world-history. It is not the effect it has on world history that legitimates the Christian faith, but its strangeness within the world; and the strangeness is the bearing of those whose love for each other is grounded in the divine love.”
[14] Bultmann, John, 526. “Only if they are themselves loving do they who belong to him remain in the experience of his love; in the same way they can, and do love, only on the basis of this experience. Thus the believers’ past and future are bound to each other like the former and the future δόξα of the Revealer himself: the future receives its meaning form the past, and the past becomes significant in the future. But that means that in the future, despite their separation from him, they remain united to him. In their action, his act is present.”
[15] Bultmann, John, 528. v. 35 disciples “…a definition of their essential nature. The association with Jesus, therefore, is not realized by possessing articles of knowledge or dogmas, nor in institutions or experiences of individual piety, but in pupil-hood,’ in obedience to the command of love.”
[16] Sölle, To Work and Love, 165.
#Community #Discipleship #DivineLove #DorotheeSölle #GodSGlory #Jesus #JesusTheChrist #John13 #Liberation #Life #Love #PresenceOfChrist #RudolfBultmann #TheDivineMission #TheGospelOfJohn #TheLoveOfChrist #TheNewCommand #TheRevolutionOfLiberation #TheRevolutionOfLife #TheRevolutionOfLove #ToWorkAndToLove
Thomas Parker, English Congregationalist, on the church in the city. Reflecting on Job’s example (29:16), he asks if we are feet to the lame. If we were to disappear, would the neighborhood, family, or workplace feel as if there were an eclipse of a great light?
I’ve heard that some wait staff at restaurants dread the news that the convention coming to town is a Christian one, because it will mean less tips.
How can you be eyes to the blind?
Psalm 104:1, 25: Bless Abba God, O my soul; O my God, how excellent is your greatness! You are clothed with majesty and splendor. O Abba God, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Introduction
The clear and overarching question for Mark and Mark’s audience: “What does it mean to be a disciple of this man who is God, Jesus the Christ?” As we make our way through the Gospel of Mark, we see Mark’s proposed answer to this question encompasses more and more of the disciple’s lives. If the disciples thought it was about following this teacher and being taught some cool things about God, they needed to think again. Jesus has been redefining their lives from the heart outward; to drop their nets and follow Jesus means to take on a deep and abiding similarity (inside and out) to this man who is the Son of God and the Son of Humanity. Moment by moment, Mark’s Jesus is molding and shaping, preparing and forming his disciples (in mind and body) to be as him—Jesus the Christ—in the world when he leaves them so that God’s revolutionary mission of love, life, and liberation continues from one generation to the next, from one nation to the next, from one person to the next.
The most stressed aspect of discipleship in Mark’s gospel is that the disciples cannot keep/allow themselves to think according to the common sense of the kingdom of humanity. If we slow down and pay attention to what Jesus has been doing all these many weeks—since chapter 7—this focus of Jesus reveals itself as the controlling narrative for the disciples and discipleship. Time and again, Jesus takes the time and space to educate (reeducate?) these disciples who are “following the way”—Jesus’s disciples, in Mark, are always “on the way”. He goes to great lengths to teach them that (truly) they will walk, talk, act, and be different in the world. For Jesus, the reign of God cannot and will not tolerate the enmity and hostility, the division and separation, the boundaries and borders, the oppression and marginalization that thrives in the kingdom of humanity. To be Jesus’s followers, according to Mark, means to be those who are as Christ in the world, who drink from the cup that he drinks and are baptized with his baptism.
Mark 10:35-45
And then Jesus called to himself the Twelve and says to them, “You have known that the ones who seem to rule the Gentiles over power them and their great-ones exercise authority over them. But it is not like this among you. Rather, they who wish to become great among you will be your servant; and they who wish to be first, will be slave of all people. For the Son of Humanity came not to be served but to serve and to give his self [as a] ransom on behalf of many people.” (Mk. 10:42-45)[1]
Chapter 10 of Mark’s gospel brings us closer to Jesus’s death; time is running out, and the disciples still need to learn what it means to be of the of the earth and in God.[2] Remember that Mark’s gospel is written with speed, it sounds fast. Mark peppers his text with the introductory “καί”, “And then…” It gives the reader/listener the impression of time sensitivity. And our passage for this Sunday opens with another introductory “καί” that follows (another) segment of Jesus (pulling aside the Twelve and) telling them what will happen once they get to Jerusalem[3]: he, the Son of Humanity, will be handed over, tortured, killed, and (then) after three days he will rise again. And, like, immediately, the disciples reveal that they really👏just 👏don’t👏get👏it👏 None of what Jesus just said registered; they’re stuck in the thinking of the kingdom of humanity, convinced that Jesus will be entering into material glory and triumph,[4] and that they, too, will reap from those rewards.[5] They’re not entirely wrong; they will reap something but not what they are imagining.[6]
Enter James and John and another discussion about status.[7] These two, immediately, corner Jesus—pulling him away from the others—and they ask him for a very self-centered request (and they know it because of their round about approach to asking: Teacher, we wish that you might do for us whatever [if] we might ask you…). Jesus (kindly) responds, What do you wish I might do for you? And they reply, Please give to us that one might sit down of your right hand and one of [your] left hand [when you enter] into your [royal[8],[9]] glory. As bold as they were, Jesus was just as bold. You have not perceived what you ask; are you able to drink the wine cup which I, I drink or to be baptized with the baptism which I, I am baptized?
Here, Mark infuses Jesus words with two important images for the community to whom he writes. Mark’s community is under threat of persecution (thus the rapid flow of the text: this community may not have a lot of time), and the role that baptism (Greek: submersion partly unto death[10]) and the cup of wine (of the new covenant made through Christ’s shed blood and judgment[11]) play as sacramental images reminding these disciples that, yes, they participate and live in God, and that also, yes, they are under threat for who they are (followers of Christ).[12] In and through Jesus, Mark is, essentially, pastorally comforting this community who—in their own baptisms and cup participation—have echoed James and John’s courageous and loyal,[13] We are able. But unlike James and John, Mark’s community did know what they were signing up for when they entered, by faith, the community of the followers of the way.[14]
Jesus’s reply to James and John affirms the community’s experience and reassures them that he is present with them, The wine cup which I, I drink you will drink and with the baptism which I, I am being baptized you will be baptized. But to sit down of my right and or of my left hand is not mine to give but [is] for the one for whom it is prepared. While our minds go to the two thieves on their own crosses, one on the left and one on the right of Jesus, or, according to Mark, “two rebels” (15:27), we must see the pastoral implications for Mark’s community: Jesus goes into heavenly glory through death on the cross and into the new life of resurrection identifying with those who suffer and are grieved for their well-being and safety, those who are afraid to be out in public as they are[15]—this is about identification and solidarity and not about favors and gifts bestowed by an earthly king to his loyal followers.[16] Without making suffering a virtue (because you can’t earn this place by suffering[17]) or sacrament (by which people are forced to suffer to be holy and pleasing to God), Mark is telling his community, As those who are baptized in the baptism of Jesus and those who drink of the cup of Christ, Jesus is with you and you are (yesterday, today, and tomorrow[18]) already in the warm light of his heavenly glory for it is he who has the last word of life and not your suffering even unto death.[19]
Mark isn’t finished. Apparently, the other disciples take notice of what is going on: And then after hearing, [the other disciples] began to be incensed about James and John. Why are they “incensed”[20]? Not because James and John asked for such a bold request, but that James and John beat them to the punch. [21] All the disciples are sharing the same kingdom of humanity views about status and glory. [22] We know this because Jesus immediately called them [all] to himself and determines to teach them, yet again, about the divine equity that qualifies those who live by the (very revolutionary[23]) expectations of the reign of God.[24] According to Jesus, those who follow him (those who are to be baptized with his same baptism and drink from the same cup) will not be like the tyrants and oppressors[25] of the kingdom of humanity: You have perceived, Jesus says to the disciples, that the ones who appear to rule the Gentiles overpower them and their great-ones exercise authority over them. But it is not like this among you. Rather, they who wish to become great among you will be your servant; and they who wish to be first, will be slave of all people. For the Son of Humanity came not to be served but to serve and to give his self [as a] ransom on behalf of many people.
Conclusion
The truly revolutionary aspect of the mission of God in the world just dropped on the disciples like a bomb; their minds explode.[26] What Jesus is asking them to do isn’t just to be nice to other people including those of low status, but to literally take on a radical posture of service and obligation toward others especially those low in status.[27] In other words, just as Jesus[28] identifies with the least of these and will do so until he dies, so, too, will the disciples[29] identify with those who are least. Their road is not a road of material glory but of heavenly glory defined by God’s revolutionary action in the world in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where the kingdom of humanity says it is great to be served, to be feared, to be respected, to be rich, to be great, those of the reign of God say[30]: blessed are the poor, blessed are those who grieve, blessed are those who are reviled, blessed are the oppressed, marginalized, ostracized, outcast…because in their midst where God and God’s love is manifest in substance and action of the community bearing Christ’s name. In other words, where those who represent God in Christ are, there God is, there is divine love, life, and liberation. When the kingdom of humanity argues about greatness, the disciples of Christ—those baptized into and who drink from the wine-cup of the new covenant of the reign of God—go in the opposite direction: they love where there is indifference, liberate where there is captivity, bring life where there is death, serve those denied service, and see the power of peace of divine equity that triumphs over the security manufactured by the kingdom of humanity. In other words, the followers of Christ participate in the mission of God in the world to keep human life human[31], all the way down.
[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted
[2] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 150. In this portion of text, “Jesus is going to his fate.”
[3] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 414. “The previous passion predications have each been followed by an example of the disciples’ failure to grasp Jesus’ new scale of values and by consequent remedial teaching.”
[4] France, Mark, 416. “As Jesus has used the title ὁ θἱος τοῦ ἀνθρώπουfor himself, his disciples have grasped its royal connotations and can envisage a time when it will be fulfilled for Jesus….and therefore also for his faithful followers.”
[5] Placher, Mark, 150. “Now, shortly before they reach Jerusalem itself, two of the disciples manifest the last and perhaps most dramatic of Mark’s many cases of disciple misunderstandings. They still think that Jesus is headed for glory and triumph, and they want the positions of greatest prominence, at his right and left hand. They have understood neither the egalitarian character of the new community nor the suffering that aways Jesus. He challenges them on both counts.”
[6] Placher, Mark, 150. “Are they ready to suffer what he will suffer?”
[7] France, Mark, 414. “The issue of status is thus yet again brought to tour attention, with James and John as the negative examples. The setting of their request, with its presumption that Jesus is on the way to ‘glory’, is remarkable, following immediately after the most ominous and detailed of Jesus’ a passion predictions.”
[8] France, Mark, 414. “To speak of sitting…on the right (or left) of someone implies royal throne with the places of highest honour on either side; there are of course only two such places, leaving no room for Peter.”
[9] France, Mark, 415. “The request, precipitated perhaps by the excitement of coming near Jerusalem, the ‘royal’ city, assumes that Jesus, as ‘king’, has positions of honour and influence in his gift.”
[10] France, Mark, 417. “…in the narrative context we must suppose that Jesus has coined a remarkable new metaphor, drawing on his disciples’ familiarity with the dramatic physical act of John’s baptism, but using it…to depict the suffering and death into which he was soon to be ‘plunged.’”
[11] France, Mark, 416. FT image of Cup can be of blessing but more often of judgment.
[12] Placher, Mark, 150. “He uses two images—to be baptized, and to drink the cup. ‘Baptized’ in Greek can also mean ‘flooded with calamities,’ and the image is of an immersion that is partway toward drowning. The cup, as Jesus will soon explain to them, is the cup of his blood. Thus the images are both symbols of sacraments and symbols of threats, and this was appropriate to the church of Mark’s time, where joining the Christian community or participating in Christian worship did risk torture and death.”
[13] France, Mark, 417. “[James and John] may lack understanding, but not loyalty or courage.”
[14] Placher, Mark, 150-151. “Do they know what they are promising? Probably not. It is a common human experience to discover we have assigned on for more than we realized or intended. Sometimes that discovery comes with panic and the need to escape, but sometimes we are grateful in retrospect for the veil that hid from us a destination we would not have had the courage for at the time.”
[15] France, Mark, 418. The “for whom” it is being prepared will not include those who are expected but the unexpected, like those of low status.
[16] France, Mark, 414. “But in the end v. 40 undermines the whole premise on which their request was based, that status in the kingdom of God can be bestowed as a favour, or even earned by loyalty and self-sacrifice.”
[17] France, Mark, 417. “…even if they fulfill the ‘conditions’ he has set down, their request still cannot be granted. The cup and the baptism thus prove not to be qualifying conditions at all, but rather a way of indicating that their whole conception of δόξα and of the way it is to be achieved is misguided.”
[18] France, Mark, 416. “For Jesus the route to glory is clear; it is by way of the ποτήριον and the βάπτισμα which await him…and anyone who wishes to share the glory must first also share those experiences.”
[19] France, Mark, 416.
[20] Placher, Mark, 151. “The others among the Twelve hear that James and John have been lobbying for privileged positions, and they are angry. Again, Jesus explains the nature of the new community he is creating.”
[21] France, Mark, 418. “…their annoyance is not over the ambition of the two brothers as such, but over the fact that they have got in first and tried to gain an unfair advantage over their colleagues in the competition for the highest places. On this issue they are all equally at fault.”
[22] France, Mark, 414. “…moreover, the other disciples seem to share [James and John’s] perspective, and Jesus responds with the most thoroughgoing statement yet of the revolutionary values of the Kingdom of God.”
[23] France, Mark, 415. “…v. 43a now offers a further ‘slogan’ which encapsulates the revolutionary effect of his teaching about the kingdom of God…”
[24] France, Mark, 414. “The second section (vv. 41-45) picks up the theme of 9:35 and again subverts the whole notion of leadership and importance which human society takes for granted.”
[25] France, Mark, 419. v. 42 kata terms, “…convey the oppressive and uncontrolled exploitation of power, the flaunting of authority rather than its benevolent exercise.”
[26] France, Mark, 415. “The ‘natural’ assumptions and valuations by which people operate no longer apply in the kingdom of God. it is a genuinely alternative society.”
[27] France, Mark, 419. v. 43a “…sums up the revolutionary ethics of the kingdom of God. the natural expectations of society are reversed, and leadership is characterized by service, by being under the authority of others, like a διάκονος or δοῦλος. Nor is this just a matter of recognising a higher rank within a recognizes hierarchy: it is to everyone…that precedence must be given.”
[28] France, Mark, 419. Son of humanity in v. 45 “…provides the supreme model of status reversal in that he whose destiny it was διακονηθῆναι…was instead to become πάντων διἀκονος.”
[29] France, Mark, 419. “[διακονέω] does not denote a particular role, but rather the paradoxically subordinate status of the one who should have enjoyed the service of others. The following καὶ δοῦναι does not so much specify the form of service, but rather adds a further and yet more shocking example of this self-sacrificing attitude which he in turn enjoins on his followers.”
[30] France, Mark, 421. “It is not the λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν that they are expected to reproduce: that was Jesus’ unique mission. But the spirit of service and self-sacrifice, the priority given to the needs of the πολλοί, are for all disciples. They, too, must serve rather than be served, and it may be that some of them will be called upon, like James and John, to give up their lives. There is no room for quarrels about τίς μείζων.”
[31] Paul Lehman, Ethics in a Christian Context
https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/10/20/with-this-baptism-and-this-cup/
#Disciples #Discipleship #DivineLove #DivineMission #DivineRevolution #EthicsInAChristianContext #Glory #GodSGlory #Greatness #HumanBeing #HumanLIfe #Jesus #JesusTheChrist #Liberation #Life #Love #PaulLehmann #RTFrance #RadicalRhetoric #Service #SonOfHumanity #Status #TheGospelOfMark #WilliamPlacher
Celebrating the Strength and Faith of Women on this Special Day. 'Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.' - Luke 1:45. Happy Women's Day!
Download the Bible Notes App for free for a 30 day trial and then $0.99c per month.
Partner with us on our vision to get FREE digital bibles around the globe
#VerseoftheDay #Godsglory #Grace #Truth #Women #WomensDay #Jesus #JesusSonOfGod
Today’s verse tells us about, how He who is God now also became a man. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God.
#VerseoftheDay #Godsglory #Grace #Truth #Father #Jesus #JesusSonOfGod
Greg Johnson
Alive in Christ
Assembly Bethesda
LaurenRELarkin.com
Corey Trevathan
biblenotesapp