Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – Mark 7:1-23 (day three)

“You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.”

Jesus and the Pharisees agreed on at least one thing: their standing as experts. They touted their expertise in the law; Jesus pointed out their expertise in setting aside the law. It seems that often within the spiritual and moral realm there exists a drive for assurance that one is properly spiritual and moral. Assurance-seeking will always involve self-policing and then expand to the policing of others. Righteousness-policing becomes the touchstone of assurance rather than, you know, actual righteousness. Jesus declared that his disciples were experiencing an immersion in the pursuit of righteousness, while the Pharisees were immersed in the pursuit of assurance of righteousness. The former flows from a state of wonder at God’s goodness, the latter from a state of fear of God’s rejection.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:45-53 (day three)

“Seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea; and he intended to pass by them.”

What to make of Jesus’s apparent non-interactive close encounter? There are various viewpoints on this, but perhaps Jesus intended merely to look in on them to see how they were handling a potentially dangerous situation, not necessarily intending to interfere if things were fine. If so, that action would indeed be in keeping with Jesus’s tender shepherding. Where there is danger, the Savior is near. But he also desires us to the greater things – he says so elsewhere in the gospels – and so he leads us to live with power and ability. His nearness, though, means that in our cries for help we can discover he’s already there.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:30-44 (day three)

“He saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

When did compassion well up in Jesus? When the people’s anxious experience of life washed over him. He felt in his body the emotions at work in their bodies. That’s empathy – remaining with people in how they’re experiencing their circumstances, witnessing how hard it is for them, feeling the weight they feel as they show you how it is for them. And empathy gives birth to compassion, always. Where there is no compassion, there’s no empathy, and there’s no seeing another person – not really. There’s only agenda and disdain and shaming. The Incarnation forever puts the lie to the claim that empathy is a fancy word for coddling. The Incarnation is itself the ultimate empathy. And so we now follow the Savior’s lead.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:14-29 (day three)

“But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, ’John, whom I beheaded, has risen!’”

Herod had a bad feeling about executing John. Not bad enough to keep him from killing him, though. And now his life became a nightmare. This wasn’t superstition, as if his first-century mind didn’t know that people who are dead tend to remain that way. No, this was much more serious. It was reality. Not that John had risen from the dead, but that Herod’s sins were finding him out. Herod was running out of room to maneuver. The man with so much power grew weak-kneed at the enormity of his transgression. Herod could save face in front of his dinner guests. He couldn’t save his soul in the face of God’s judgment. He couldn’t bring himself to humble his body and soul before God.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:7-13 (day three)

“They went out and preached that men should repent. And they were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them.”

The timeline can seem wrong in this passage. First comes Jesus, then comes the crucifixion, then comes the resurrection, then comes the Holy Spirit, and then comes the preaching in power. Right? That’s orderly and clean. Except that’s not what the Bible shows us here. The disciples begin seemingly ahead of everything else that was to come, so was this just a dress rehearsal? Repentance from what? To what? When Jesus taught in the synagogue from the book of Isaiah, he said to the people, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And so it is. Wait not for future things when Jesus is right here, right now. Go with him this moment.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:1-6 (day three)

“Is not this the carpenter…?”

There’s an exotic allure in someone strange from somewhere else promising something new. But Jesus presented as just Jesus from the other end of the village. The people wanted Messiah to come as a conquering hero wielding a sword. What they got was a Nazarene wielding a try square. To this crowd, it felt like an insult. Everyone in the town had lived close to him and his family since they’d returned from Egypt years ago. How could the people not already know everything he knew? Yet the folks couldn’t quite catch on to what he was saying, which they found all the more annoying. Was he talking down to them? Was he disrespecting his roots? Was he rabble rousing? Whenever God has acted in the world, it’s always been difficult to take in. It still is.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 5:21-34 (day three)

“A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse…”

Not only did this woman suffer from severe anemia, but also from violations of her bodily autonomy and privacy by men hawking various purported cures. In addition to that ignominy, the repetition of useless curative attempts had siphoned away hope, leaving her weaker and more poverty-stricken than ever before. She wasn’t just bleeding, but humiliated, shamed, exploited, poor, and neglected after her encounters with every alleged healer for over a decade. No wonder she wanted anonymity. The Lord’s mercy allowed her that dignity. Only after curing her body did Jesus inquire about her identity and restore her self-worth by addressing her as “daughter.”