Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:20-30 (day three)

“He has lost His senses.”

When one encounters new circumstances, one can wedge those new circumstances into an already existing understanding of the world, or one can change that understanding to accommodate the new circumstances. Therein lies the fundamental difference between those who did not believe Jesus and those who did. The Pharisees – and others who disbelieved – never strayed from their insistence that the world is as they say it is. Jesus’s own family started in this frame of mind. Their reasoning regarding the difficulties and controversies Jesus found himself in shows a family trying to fit what they see into what they know. What they come to realize, though, is that it doesn’t fit. They will have to live with that incongruity, or change their minds. The Bible records the family’s gradually allowing what they see  lead them to know something new.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:13-19 (day three)

“And he appointed twelve, so that they would be with him and that he could send them out to preach.”

When God reveals himself, he does so through human beings. We’re frequently looking for revelation in some other form, though. We want a sign, a miracle, or a special effect to erase our doubts and calm our fears. In short, we want God to validate us. Then we’ll know he’s for us. Then we’ll know we’re safe. But here’s the punchline: God’s self-revelation through human beings is itself a validation of human beings. The Incarnation is the most glorious validation of all, followed by the sending of ordinary men and women to proclaim the truth: The Twelve, Mary Magdalene, Paul, et al. God tells you all you need to know about your worth when someone just like you speaks to you about God.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 3:1-12 (day three)

“All those who had afflictions pressed around Him in order to touch Him.”

There is something poignant about the description of desperate people reaching out for Jesus. The emotional power of that picture doesn’t arise so much from sentimentality, though, as much as it arises from the heart-wrenching reality that Jesus was the only one – the only one – who took the time to address the hardships that burdened people to the point of despair. Where were the attempts to help from those who should have known better – from those who did, in fact, know better? Jesus gave freely of his power; he even told his disciples that they would wield the ability to do greater things than these. The reason Jesus was the only one dispensing heaven’s compassion wasn’t because heaven was stingy and proprietary, but because those in power were.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 2:23-28 (day three) 

“Have you never read…?”

If ever there were an argument for free and unfettered access to the scriptures for all, this is it. The scriptures said what the Pharisees said it said. Jesus opened that lockbox right up. In the hearing of everyone, he posed questions that circumvented the Pharisees’ preferred interpretations. Of course, many people couldn’t read anyway, and that reality presented an opportunity for the powerful to build a worldview on the backs of the powerless. Nonetheless, Jesus’s questions required people to think for themselves, which took power away from the religious establishment. There will always be people – laity and clergy – who will interpret the scriptures in unhelpful ways. Peter says as much in his second epistle. But the Bible is best read in communities where everyone has a voice so that we can all teach one another.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 2:18-22 (day three)

“One puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”

Across the Old and New Testaments, the witness of the Bible is that God shatters the understanding of what’s possible. God is “going to do something new;” he’s “created a new thing on the earth;” the Lord is “making all things new.” And when the Bible says new, it means new: the insignificant soaring to greatness, the weak confounding the strong, the meek inheriting the earth, the blind seeing, the captive tasting freedom, and ultimately, the dead rising to life. What do all these new possibilities require? A place to take root. If God were to confront you with a new possibility – which often looks like something you would least consider to be a work of God – would you recognize it? It’s likely he’s confronting you all the time. Take a second look.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 2:13-17 (day three)

“He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth.”

Jesus saw Levi (called Matthew in the other gospels), but it wasn’t merely an instance of line-of-sight, x-y axis perception. He saw “Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth.” Here was a person with a name, a familial context, a social circle, a skill set, weighed down with the burden of living and working in two cultures – one Jewish, one Roman. That’s far more than “human in field of vision.” What could happen to this man and to the world if Levi turned his interests, his knowledge, his abilities, his influence, his physical presence, and his energy toward eternal realities? It was with that kind of whole-person thinking that Jesus looked at this individual. Jesus will teach us to consider others with such whole-person thinking as well.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 2:1-12 (day three)

“Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

There’s a perverse logic at work in the kind of reasoning that claims the act of forgiveness is above one’s pay grade. If forgiveness is the domain of God alone, you don’t have to bother with cancelling the moral debt of people who’ve wronged you. Let ‘em take it up with God. But Jesus doesn’t just show us what forgiveness looks like. He tells us that unless we forgive those in our debt, no life with God is possible (see Matthew 18), and that the way we treat one another has eternal consequences (“Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” – again, see Matthew 18). To say “some things only God can do” is often a very clever way to dodge the kind of life that our Lord calls us to live.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 1:36-45 (day three)

“Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”

Theories differ as to how miracles happen. Some say they result from a suspension of the laws of nature: molecules of water vanish from existence and molecules of wine appear in their place. Others say no, miracles result from a mastery of the laws of nature: an enormous amount of energy is brought to bear to break the water’s molecular and atomic bonds and reassemble them into the molecules for ethyl alcohol, etc. At issue, though, is not the method of Jesus’s miracles, but rather their meaning. Without meaning, a miracle will carry no soul-healing power. Jesus told the man that only the fellowship of God’s people would teach him this miracle’s place in the purpose and potential of his life.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 1:21-35 (day three)

“Immediately on the Sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue and began to teach.”

Jesus would have delivered the brief homily that members of the community or itinerant rabbis were encouraged to give after the reading of the scriptures. Brief indeed. Mark doesn’t present that sermon here, but the one that Luke records in chapter 4 of his gospel amounts to less than 130 words in English. “No one’s ever heard a bad short sermon,” goes the old saying. The congregation in Luke apparently disagreed; that sermon ended with the attempted murder of the preacher. Words have power. No one knew this better than Christ himself, through whom all things were made with a word. The words Jesus preached were met variously with anger, elation, fear, hope, puzzlement, and faith. At issue is not whether a person will respond to Christ’s words, but how.

Re:Verse passage – Mark 1:16-20 (day three)

“Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”

Jesus had stirred in Simon and Andrew a curiosity about a world larger than the one they inhabited. That’s not to say they considered their society unenlightened or that they longed for “freedom” in the way we would think of that concept today. Spiritually, they would not have yearned for an end to religious rules. They weren’t looking for “grace” so they could be “freed from the law.” Such ways of thinking are later developments that came through Holy Spirit-inspired reflection on Christ and his work. But Simon and Andrew were curious about what Jesus knew of the world. What did his words about God mean? Where did he get his confidence? How did he exude such peace? He wasn’t calling people who would give answers. He was calling people who would ask questions.