Archive for category On Second Thoughts

Our text for Sunday reveals Jesus asserting to a paralytic man, “your sins are forgiven,” which carried deep connotations for Mark’s original audience. Commenting on this event, Ched Myers states:

“In choosing to introduce the language of the debt code, Jesus is elaborating the symbolics of hierarchy. The man’s lack of bodily wholeness would have been attributed to either his own sin, or, if a birth defect, inherited sin; he was thus denied full status in the body politic of Israel. Jesus summarily releases him from all debt – hence restoring his social wholeness and thus his personhood, which in turn is equated with the restoration of physical wholeness. The man walks, and the crowd glorifies God: the “body” (physical/social) has been restored (2:12). Once again, the crowd is amazed (cf. 1:27) that Jesus has out-duelled the scribes.

The scribes are incensed, and for good reason. Their complaint that none but God can remit debt (2:7b) is not a defense of the sovereignty of Yahweh, but of their own social power. As Torah interpreters and co-stewards of the symbolic order, they control determinations of indebtedness. But as Jesus did with the priestly prerogative, he has also expropriated this function. Faced with this threat, the scribes accuse Jesus in the strongest possible language: “He blasphemes!” (2:7a). This will ultimately be the charge for which Jesus is condemned to death at the end of the story (14:64). Though here it is not yet pressed, it is no accident that the next time the scribal authorities appear it is in the person of government investigators from Jerusalem (3:22).”

- Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, 155

In addressing the text before us tomorrow, N.T. Wright asks

“Why on earth did Jesus not want anything to leak out about his having healed a leper? If he was going around telling people the good news of the kingdom, surely more publicity was what he wanted? Why did he tell the poor man so fiercely (the word ‘warned him sternly’ is a very strong one in the original Greek) not to say anything? And are there any times when we, today, should be silent, however much we want to speak about Jesus and what he’s done for us?

The answer seems to lie in what Jesus then told the leper to do. The sort of skin disease he had – the word ‘leprosy’ in those days covered a wide range of skin complaints, of which what we call ‘leprosy’ today is only one – was feared as highly infectious. That’s why lepers had to live outside the towns, in special colonies. (see some background to this practice here)

Of course, if Jesus cured a blind person, then it was obvious that they could see. If he cured a cripple, anybody could tell that they were now able to walk. But if someone who had had leprosy showed up in their original town claiming to have been cured, people would be deeply suspicious. So Jesus told him to go through the official system. He should show himself to the priest; apart from the chief priests, who were based in Jerusalem, the priests lived all over Judaea and Galilee, acting as the religious and often scribal officials in local communities. And the next time the man was in Jerusalem, he would have to make the required sacrifice, thanking God officially, as it were, for his cure, and coming away with a proper public clean bill of health. The leper needed to keep the command of Moses, not in order to become clean, but in order to be seen to be clean.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was worried about, then, was news leaking out that he was doing things which seemed to challenge the authority of the Temple itself… It wasn’t just that if news of spectacular healing got round, he soon wouldn’t be able to move for the crowds (this is more or less what happened). It was that he might be attracting the wrong kind of notice. People would get angry. He was by-passing the system. And soon the question would be asked: is he really a loyal Jew? Can his message about the kingdom of God be real? Can we believe him? Isn’t he dangerous? Hasn’t he gone too far?”

- Mark for Everyone, 14-15

When asked about the role her faith played in a decision to get plastic surgery, a reality television star recently asserted:

“My body is just a shell; God doesn’t care. It’s what’s inside that God cares about.”

Without getting into an unnecessary discussion regarding plastic surgery, what are we to make of this rather common idea – that God only cares about “spiritual” things? Can it be defended in light of our text for Sunday?

In his epic tome The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder offers some thoughts that could help guide us on our day trip to Capernaum this Sunday:

If our lostness consists in our subjection to the rebellious powers of a fallen world, what then is the meaning of the work of Christ? Subordination to these Powers is what makes us human, for if they did not exist there would be no history nor society nor humanity. If then God is going to save his creatures in their humanity, the Powers cannot simply be destroyed or set aside or ignored. Their sovereignty must be broken. This is what Jesus did, concretely and historically.

This Sunday, January 10th, we’re thinking together through Jesus’ baptism (by John the Baptizer!) and forty days in the wilderness.

N.T. Wright says of this account: “The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it’s true: God looks at us, and says, ‘You are my dear, dear child; I’m delighted with you.’ Try reading that sentence slowly, with your own name at the start, and reflect quietly on God saying that to you, both at your baptism and every day since… This is true for one simple but very profound reason: Jesus is the Messiah, and the Messiah represents his people. What is true of him is true of them.”