Bible Study - Mark 10:46-52 (Keith Howard)

Mark 10:46-52 - Bartimaeus

This story is a bookend to another story in which blindness figures prominently - Mark 8:22-26. In fact blindness is one of the powerful themes which runs through the Gospel of Mark (reread chapters 8, 9 and 10 quickly).
There are some differences to the Bartimaeus story: With Bartimaeus Jesus speaks, earlier he spits!; earlier the crowds bring the blind man, now the crowds try to shut Bartimaeus down; and in this story Bartimaeus ends up as a follower of Jesus.

Big question - who would you like to be in the story: blind man, Jesus or the crowd? More soberly - to whom do you feel the closest affinity: the blind man, Jesus or the crowd? (You won’t have to turn in your answers!)

The scene takes place in Jericho. (This is one of the places we hope to visit as part of the Oak Bay United Church Holy Land Tour next October 2013).
Note the name Bartimaeus calls out - “Son of David.” This is the first time this particular title is used for Jesus in the Gospel. It is significant because here Bartimaeus calls out a name often associated with the coming Messiah, the Saviour who comes from the line of David. This means that he is “recognizing” Jesus as the Messiah, the one who was to bring massive social and political change so that the poor would be fed, the lame healed and the blind given care so they could see. This calling out thus carries a social and political dimension and moves the story from one of person - to - person compassion to social upheaval/change. There are echoes here of the Palm Sunday expectation.

The question Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” carries echoes of his conversation with James and John, who wanted to be seated on his right and left in the new world of the Messiah (Mark 10:35-45). The answer from Bartimaeus comes not out of a position of privilege or access but out of a physical need that, in his time, would have led to exclusion and powerlessness, aka he was a beggar!

In response to the realization that Jesus was calling for him, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak and leaps up. As Lincoln Gallaway observes, “In his act of throwing off his cloak, we see the image of one who leaves his former life behind.” We are accustomed to Thrift Stores, Winners and WalMart and so tend to forget that the cloak, for a poor beggar, represents warmth, possessions and potential security. Do you think there is any significance to the fact that the story mentions his leaving those behind? It remains a powerful image of renunciation and dramatic change that often occurs when people get (too) close to Jesus.

Questions to Ponder

1. The role of the crowd is disquieting in part because, in the original context, listeners to the story - especially the young church - would have seen themselves as part of the crowd that surrounded Jesus, eager for his words. In our time, many of those outside who want to get closer to Jesus see the current form of organized religion as the crowd, the ones who shush them, an obstacle to drawing closer. Have there been instances where you have shared that experience? Have there been times when you have had the opposite experience?
   
2. The naming of Jesus is an important clue in reading Gospel stories. Many names were given him; many of which pass us by because we don’t know the expectations behind the name. What is your favourite name for Jesus? Is that the name you would use to introduce him to others?
   
3. The question Jesus puts to Bartimaeus remains powerful for us as a congregation and for us as disciples. “What do you want me to do for you?” How do you think we are answering that question now as a congregation? If it was only between you and Jesus What is it that you really want Jesus to do for you?

Happy Birthday, Eliot! (Kate Soles)

First smile, first stroller ride, first full night’s sleep. At times, my first two years as a parent have felt like one giant unfolding checklist, a multitude of milestones to witness, record on camera and post on Facebook.

As soon as Jean and I brought Eliot home from the hospital, we began to encourage his cognitive and physical development. We read him countless books, played with interactive toys and diligently counted his minutes of tummy time until he reached the daily recommendation. I never had a strict agenda by which to measure his advancement, never thought I would feel like a failure if he didn’t roll over my four months. As Eliot grew and thrived, I gained confidence that he would progress healthily at his own pace. I learned to ignore the sting of seemingly innocent questions from friends, acquaintances and even strangers: “has he taken his first steps yet? Uttered his first word? Waved his first bye-bye?”

Eliot has become an entirely different being from the infant I rocked in the halls of VGH two years ago. And, in many ways, I too feel like a different being; I have grown and changed because of what my son has taught me.

In parenthood, I have learned about patience, how to endure the things I cannot control and respond to mistakes with gentleness. I have learned about flexibility, how to adapt to life’s fluctuations and see opportunity in the unexpected. Most profoundly, I have learned about love, the irresistible affection for a tiny, helpless person. Such love has the power to heal, to foster self-improvement and to inspire kindness and commitment.

Happy Birthday, Eliot; you are more loved than you could possibly know.

I love so much of C.S. Lewis, but my word, he had problems with women

Cover of The Screwtape Letters

Just finished rereading The Screwtape Letters. I enjoy so much of that book so very much. It's a shame C. S. Lewis really seemed to have trouble getting his head around the idea of women as people. He was okay with courageous schoolgirls, who seem to have been essentially just like boys to him, but he couldn't seem to get past puberty, when women changed into The Other. And complicating all this, I think, was his deep uneasiness over all things sexual.

The final letter, which he intends as the triumphant peroration of the entire book, is desperately marred for me by the analogy he uses to describe his hero's feelings on finally reaching heaven. Lewis/Screwtape says that all the temptations to which our hero had formerly been subject would now seem "as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door."

Even the first time I read this, many years ago, I identified with the poor nauseating raddled harlot. I still do. The poor girl. How do we know how she felt? Maybe she loved the hero. Maybe she's heartbroken.  Maybe she didn't see herself as a "raddled harlot" at all. 

But I have this reaction because I see her as a person, and Lewis doesn't. Lewis tried to see women as people; he really did; but when that aim isn't consciously on his mind, he produces passages like this. 

Lewis' uninterrogated assumption is that women are a what, not a who; that we exist as objects that nauseate (but revoltingly attract) men, or else are ideal objects that redeem men; but have no existence on our own account. He finds it hard to rise above that. I will give him credit for often trying to do so. I wish he had succeeded more often. I wish I could enjoy the whole of the Screwtape Letters as much as I enjoy most of it.

And I wish Lewis' opinion of women had not had such an influence on my own opinion of myself, when I was growing up.

Me First Jesus - Continued (Rev. Gail Miller)

I wonder .  . .

I am struck by the outrageous nature of James and John's request - "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."  Do for me whatever I ask.  It seems to me the kind of request that arises from a sense of either desperation or entitlement.

We have all had those times when we beg God for what we believe we want or need with a promise of life long faithfulness and obedience in return.  I get that.

But is it possible these two disciples are telling Jesus that he owes them something, for their willingness to follow him?

I wonder . . .

why . . . the "Word" that has chosen me this week is this phrase "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

Grant us to sit . . . in your glory. The request could be read as a desire to be in the aura of power, perhaps in the hope that their own personal power will be increased. It could be read as a request to be second and third in command, to be at the table where big decisions are made, when Jesus as messiah finally occupies the seat of authority.  This interpretation is supported by some of the biblical commentaries.

But that is not how the "Word" is living in me at the moment.  For it is not power I seek, nor a place at the table where movers and shakers sit.  But something rather opposite; a reprieve, a time out, a good long moment to bask in the light reflecting from the presence of Christ.  Almost like sitting in the sun on a warm summer day.  An opportunity to be present in and to the glory of Christ as it is manifest right now.   Not for power's sake but in order to just "be".

I wonder if this is one of those questions of relationship again.  Keith's sermon last week talked about the rich young man's question as one of relationship - how do I live with the one who is eternal?  In this case - how am I to sit, to be in your glory Jesus?

I wonder  . . .

What is the "Word" that has chosen you this week?  And what do you make of it?

And now to the biblical commentaries - stay tuned!

Mark 10: 35-45 Me First Jesus (Rev. Gail Miller)

Friends


The text for this week is


http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+10:35-45&vnum=yes&version=nrsv


This is my first attempt at the on line bible study.  The format will be a little different than the past few weeks.  There is a particular way that I like to walk with scripture throughout the week as I prepare to integrate and understand the wisdom well enough to proclaim a relevant word on Sunday morning.  Some weeks more than others, I am successful in the proclamation but I find the more interesting part of the journey is living with text all week and letting it shape my perspective.

I like savoring the words and looking around at my life and the world and wondering how that sacred wisdom is being spoken, where I see it in action.  This week I am inviting you to walk and listen with me and look forward to hearing how the wisdom of the text is showing up in your life.

This is a method for doing a sacred reading (lectio divina) of the text.  You will need to take 15 minutes or more if you have time!

1. Take a few minutes to become still and quiet.
2. Invite the Spirit to be present.  Ask for an experience of God.
3. Read the passage out loud and very slowly.
4. Read the passage through a second time, but this time pause on any word that catches your attention and slowly repeat that word, until it feels like it is time to move on.  This may be as far as you get in the passage.  The intention is not to finish the passage as much as to listen for what God is saying to you.
5. When you have taken whatever time you need, give thanks and take a "Word"  - a word or a short phrase -  and throughout the day pause to remind your heart of the "Word."

. . . listen . . . . savor . . . . watch   . . .

Losses and Gains (Kate Soles)

A child whose parents die becomes an orphan. A person whose spouse dies becomes a widow. A parent whose child dies remains nameless; no word exists to capture such an unnatural tragedy. Yet, too often, tragedy strikes. The day before Thanksgiving, my Mom’s neighbours’ six-year-old daughter, Anika, died of complications from Cerebral Palsy. I do not know the depth of their faith but I imagine Anika’s parents currently feel very far from God; I don’t imagine they feel much thankfulness.

What would Jesus say if these parents asked Him how to inherit life with the One who has eternal being? Would He ask them to make sacrifices despite just losing a child? Could He give a valid and comforting explanation of why God cut Anika’s life so short?

Of course, I have no idea what Jesus might say to Anika’s parents. Perhaps, instead of telling them what to give up, He would show them what to gain. I like to think He would help them find strength, the capacity to endure pain with courage and to recognize that suffering can lead to graceful transformation. I like to think He would help them find trust, a surety that a gift or lesson lies in everything that happens. I like to think He would help them find forgiveness, the capability to transform hurt into resolve, to open the door of hope.

Mark 10:17-31 The Rich Young Man (Keith Howard)

The story of the rich young man appears in all three gospels – Matthew 19:16-30 and Luke 18:18-28. The passage is familiar in part because it contains famous phrases like “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” and “go sell what you have and give the money to the poor.”

Like many gospel stories, this one begins with a question: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Eternal life here means life with the One who has eternal being; the reference is not about quantity but quality.

The salutation “Good Teacher,” and the answer of Jesus – “Why do you call me good?” is not about humility but is a device common to students/teachers of Torah. The implication is that the question does not need a new (good) answer from Jesus but can be adequately answered to by reference to the old Torah teachings. Jesus then refers to the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth commandments of the Decalogue (10 Commandments).

There are plenty of sidetracks one can follow in this text: the role and place of wealth in the life of a disciple; the relationship between faith and reward or between virtue and wealth. Does discipleship always seem to involve a “giving up” of something?  The mashup of sayings of Jesus in this passage can be confusing, not only linguistically but morally. If, as seems to be the case on the surface, one becomes a disciple because of great rewards “down the road” (or “up in the sky”) then, in what ways, does the pursuit of discipleship for this motive seem any more virtuous than the naked pursuit of material gain?

This passage overflows with extremes. As Charles Campbell notes (Feasting on the Word), “The text contains extreme demands (sell everything, give to the poor, and follow me), extreme judgement (it is impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God), and extreme promises (with God all things are possible). These extreme assertions are held together with no attempt to lessen the tensions.”

Part of the response to these extremes lies in the matter of the nature of relationships and I think this will be the line pursued in the Sunday sermon (or maybe not).  J

Questions to Ponder

1. Is the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the question you would ask Jesus if you had one opportunity? What is the question to which you covet a Jesus answer?

2. The Jesus sayings about riches and wealth have most often been interpreted (some would say ‘made palatable’) to mean “the love of money.” In other words, it is not money or wealth but making it the focus of life that blocks us from the life of which Jesus speaks. What stops you from having the life or being the person for which you yearn?

3. Rewards seem to play a significant role in the conversation between the young man and Jesus. To what degree do rewards function as motivation for you? What types of reward carry the most power? Do they function as booster rockets to the life you want or anchors that create drag?

Getting Help

Cover of C.S. Lewis

I was told a couple of weeks ago that I have moderate arthritis in one hip, that there is no cure for this, and that I am very likely to need a hip replacement at some point, if not soon.  I have been glum since I heard this.  This is the first thing I have had go wrong with me that can’t be fixed, and can't even be prevented from getting worse.

I tried to think of someone I could talk to about it.  Could I call my sister, who has had a serious chronic illness all her life?  Or an old friend, who has had type 1 diabetes since her 20s? I was going to tell my mother, but she phoned just then to tell me that a family friend, a woman my age, had that day been diagnosed with a late-stage terminal disease and had no more than days left (she died two days later).  My concerns about arthritis seemed petty by comparison.

Still, I am upset. Someone has painted a slogan around a manhole cover down the street from my house:

“Saying you shouldn’t feel bad because other people have it worse is like saying that you shouldn’t feel happy because other people have it better.”

I would rather not have arthritis. It's not selfish to feel this way, I keep telling myself.  It's normal.

So I have been feeling my way since I heard this, trying to get my head around the new normal, and not doing too well. At last one morning this week I was lying on my kitchen floor, partway through doing my hip and joint-mobility exercises, and I fell into flat despair.  I imagined every possible worst-case scenario at once,  thinking, why am I even bothering to do these exercises? It won’t make any difference.  We're all going to die anyway. There’s no point even getting off the floor.  I may as well just lie here all day and cry, what does it matter?

So I lay on the floor feeling miserable, self-pitying and guilty for feeling self-pitying, and it finally crossed my mind that prayer might help. (For some reason this always occurs to me last.) So I prayed. God, I said,I don’t even know if you’re there but I sure hope you are. Please help me pull out of this because I am in a mess. I've got no right to but I feel so bad.

And then I finished my exercises and got up, still feeling low.  But over the course of the day I realised two things.

One was that I wasn’t meant to feel lucky that others have much worse problems than mine, or guilty if I don't feel lucky when I should. Luck isn't the question. We are all so terribly fragile - me, my sister, my friend with diabetes, my mother’s friend, another friend of mine who (I just heard) had an emergency hip replacement a few months back. But lying on the kitchen floor despairing does not help. The only possible response to our fragility is to love each other as much as we can and do as much as we can with the time we have together.

The other thing I realised was that here as so often, C. S. Lewis has some good advice.  In Letter VI of Lewis' Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape is describing a young Englishman's anxiety and distress during World War 2 as he awaits possible military deployment.  The young man is busy imagining all the mutually contradictory ways he could be killed if he is called up, trying to resign himself to all of them at once, and praying to be protected from all these prospective dangers that haven't happened yet.  In this effort God is no help at all; because God does not protect or save us from imagined possible future misery and fear. But God is an immediate comfort in REAL fear.  REAL misery.  PRESENT pain.  The sufferer's real cross to bear was not some possible future disaster; it was his present terror.  And if he prayed for help with that, said Screwtape, he was likely to get it.

My real cross to bear, I gradually saw, was not the possibility that a hypothetical hip replacement might not work or might have awful complications or that 15 years from now it might hypothetically wear out and then I might hypothetically not be able to get a new one because hypothetically there might not be enough bone left to do it.  My real cross to bear is that right now I'm lying on the floor. Right now, I'm terrifying myself by imagining all these things.  My real cross to bear is that I am miserable right now, grieving the loss of my perfect hip and my fantasy future in which I climb Mt. Everest at the age of 80, or become an archaeologist on Mars after I retire (but NASA will never take me now that I have arthritis!)  And when I pray for help with that present sadness, grief, self-pity and driving myself into a tizzy, God is right there, as so often before, giving me a hand up off the floor.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving (Kate Soles)

For abundant food when many go hungry, for family and friends when many walk alone, for health when many suffer constantly, for peace when many live in fear of war, I feel truly thankful.

For yesterday’s beautiful running weather, for the opportunity to watch my son and my dad play together, for time to enjoy the Sunday crossword, for supportive words from my partner, I feel deeply grateful.

Do these sentiments mean the same thing? What, if anything, makes thankfulness different from gratitude? Both involve expression of appreciation; both sooth sadness and lead to acceptance. I think of thankfulness as recognition of bounty, a celebration of our blessings and on the treasures in our lives. Thankfulness restores hope, gives perspective and brings contentment. For me, gratitude represents living in the moments and acknowledging those moments as they unfold. It denotes an openness to notice small graces and to express thanks freely.

Today, above all days, I reflect on my good fortune and wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving.

A Recipe For Peace (Kate Soles)

Peace. The word conjures up images of white flags, of warring factions laying down their arms, biting their tongues and agreeing to coexist in harmony. We strive to maintain it within our families, we give thanks for its pervasiveness in Canada, we pray that it eventually comes to the Middle East.

But peace extends beyond pacifism; it means more than the absence of war. To varying degrees, peace exists within each of us in the form of calmness and tranquility. This peacefulness comes from quiet reflection, from releasing the past, from abandoning the fragmentation of fear.

Like Laurel, I suffer from anxiety and panic disorder. I find it almost impossible to sit still and let go of my worries; I would find it even harder to completely clear my mind for meditation. I smiled when I read that, whenever Laurel chooses a task from her do-list, she feels guilty that she can’t do everything else on her list at the same time. I feel exactly the same.

So does a remedy exist? Can one write a recipe for inner peace? Combine a sense of harmony with doses of justice, love and unity. Mix at a graceful pace, without allowing yourself to become overwhelmed. Filter out any anger and discord before finishing with the most important ingredient: belief in yourself. If only it were as easy as baking a cake!

Anxiety and God

High Anxiety (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thinking about Keith's sermon on the silence we need to hear God's voice, and reading Kate's blog post about courage, have helped me to think about this.

I have an anxiety disorder. This makes it hard for me to talk to God. If I try to talk to God about one thing, everything else I'm worried about will all show up and flood the prayer at the same time, and instead of feeling relieved, I wind up feeling more worried than when I began.

Anxiety makes it hard to meditate as well. The last thing I want is to empty my mind, because any empty space in my mind gets filled with anxiety.  Everything I'm worried about floods in. The longer I meditate, the more I find to worry about. By the end of a session I'm a nervous wreck. This is not the kind of positive feedback that encourages me to keep trying.

I am only now beginning to realize how much of an effect anxiety has on everything I do; that it's not just something that flares up from time to time, it's the water I swim in. For example; I can't plan, because knowing that I need to do something at all means to my anxiety that I need to do it right now, and since I can't do everything this instant, choosing any one task out of the stack of tasks in front of me simply makes me feel guilty and anxious that I am not doing all of the other ones. At once. It's easier to just stay in bed.

It is above all very hard to hear God through all this fretting. I only hear my own fears, echoing back and forth inside the curvature of my own skull, drowning out any other voice.

I'm sure God has something to say about all this. In fact, I even know what it is. It's "Be still, and know that I am God."

That God said this tells me that I am not the first person God has met with an anxiety disorder. Still, being still is precisely what anxiety makes it very difficult to do.

However, I think it's something I have to learn to do, because what I'm doing now doesn't work. So I am going to try meditating for five minutes a day. I know everybody says that's not enough, but I have to start somewhere, and more than five minutes at a time fills me with dread. I hope that with practice I can learn to be still, and know that God is God. And someday, I hope, my own mind will even quiet enough, sometimes, to let me hear God's voice.