Author: Bryan Richardson

RE Verse reading–Mark 15:40-16:8 (day four)
“In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs.”  The spirit within a man fears isolation.  Part of what it means to be fully human is to live and move in a social context.  From estrangement from family to solitary confinement to shunning by a community, isolation sets a person at the terrifying edge of the abyss of loneliness.  God is the only person who will never lose track of you.  Even in the midst of abandonment by friends, followers, and hangers-on—even as in the Pharisees’ eyes he became a pariah—Jesus knew God’s provision.  Food, clothing, local arrangements for lodging—these women took seriously their privilege of caring for this man.  At some point, “God with us” must manifest as “friends with us.”  We can go to extraordinary lengths in excruciating circumstances if we know we’re not alone.

RE Verse reading–Mark 14:10-11; 17-21; 41-50 (day three)
“It would be better for him if he had not been born.” The human will can devote itself to a certain path, and it can organize the mind, body, and social context of a person to help it stay on that path. The longer these things assist the will, the stronger the will becomes in its determination to stay the course–until it becomes difficult for the will to consider any other possibility. When this happens towards the things of God, we call it discipleship. When it happens towards the things of man, we call it destruction. The most Judas’s hardened will would register after his evil deed was a feeling of remorse. Repentance would have led to a new path and a forgiving Savior. But the remorse mustered by the hardened will of Judas found its only answer in suicide. The will is the heart of a human life. No wonder the scriptures tell us to guard it.

RE Verse reading–Mark 12:28-34 (day three)
“And they rebuked her harshly.”  Suddenly, they championed the poor.  Well, welcome to the entire Old Testament.  God had been the poor’s champion all along, but these folks just now got religion, apparently.  Except they hadn’t.  While they were busy co-opting the poor to cover for their own love of money, Jesus saw a moment of beauty.  While they found the poor temporarily useful, Jesus exulted in a display of extravagance that had no utilitarian purpose whatsoever.  Beauty is rare in this broken world, and its presence always—always—signals that God has not abandoned us.  And beauty is rarely “useful” in the sense of getting done what we want done.  To find people useful, then, is the height of selfishness.  To find people—and their extravagance born of love—beautiful is to worship God.

RE Verse reading–Mark 12:28-34 (day three)
“And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”  Songwriters often fear performing their songs for an audience.  Painters often dread exhibitions.  Actors languish in profound anxiety waiting on the critical reviews after opening night.  Their music or their canvas or their character are extensions of themselves, and it’s not uncommon for them to view critique of their art as a critique of who they are or who they’re becoming.  So it is with belief.  If we really believe something, that belief is part of who we are.  To understand that we have believed something that turns out to be false is a prospect of which we are very much afraid.  So if we never seek truth from the Lord, we don’t have to fear that we’ve been wrong all along, do we?

RE Verse reading–Mark 7:1-23 (day four)
The problem with the Pharisees was not that they participated in elaborate rituals.  The problem was that they looked with contempt on those who did not.  Many of their practices had developed over the centuries to discipline mind and body toward greater understanding of and faithfulness to the Law of Moses.  The Bible does not forbid the development of such practices; Paul himself spoke of disciplining his body so as not to become “disqualified for the prize.”  But the Pharisees forgot that disciplines and traditions serve not as laurels for the strong, but as braces for the weak—people who need assistance to train themselves toward obedience.  By that reasoning, the Pharisees could have used more ritual, not less. Jesus’ disciples were in the physical presence of one who was himself serving as a brace for them as they learned obedience, so they had no need for these other methods at this time.  The Pharisees ignored that, to their great peril.

RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day three)
The fact that we read “He was amazed at their lack of faith” tells us that this was something Jesus did not expect.  That doesn’t make the Savior less divine.  It does make him human.  In Jesus we see how a human being at his best operates in the face of unexpected turns.  Jesus was amazed, and that amazement began to shape the way he engaged people.  It informed his refusal to force his thinking upon people when they clearly did not want it: Witness his “Shake the dust off” instruction to his disciples later.  It drove him to look for open doors to the gospel—even when those doors led to places and people outside Jewish ethnic zones.  May we become as amazed and as responsive.

RE Verse reading–Mark 5:22-43 (day three)
High school students commonly receive assignments to work out given scenarios that involve two life-threatening events competing for attention: Saving one person’s life seemingly means not saving another person’s life. These exercises are meant to highlight questions of ethics and promote critical thinking. Jesus faced a real situation that bore similarities to the high school scenarios: Saving the life of a widow seemingly meant leaving no time to save the life of a young girl. But Jesus, though living within the realities of time, did not surrender to the common perceptions of time. For him, the question was not, “How can I get as much done as I can in the time allotted?” Rather, it was “How can I do all the work God desires me to do?” So he saved the lives of both people, even when time ran out.

RE Verse reading–Mark 5:1-20 (day three)
“No one could bind him anymore.” Leaks always get bigger, tears always get wider, and corrosion always goes deeper. When our machinery or equipment fails, the breakdown is simply the outcome of neglecting to address breaches, rips, or rust. You can’t patch forever. There comes a time when you must repair. In our society, greed becomes more insistent, lust becomes more insatiable, and anger becomes more destructive. We patch these things with money or serial marriages or blaming others, but the day comes when people break. And society breaks. And no one can bind it anymore. In a society that is well, no one lives among the tombs. But healing from the Savior will come with the burden of submitting our will to his. This is what the people of the Gerasenes were afraid of. So they decided to keep on patching.

RE Verse reading–Mark 2:13-17 (Day Three)
“…for there were many who followed him.” The “many” in this case refers to tax collectors. The entire culture in which Jesus was raised steeped him in ethnic and nationalistic separateness and exclusivity. There were plenty of reasons for Jesus and Roman loyalists to keep their distance from each other. And yet, “there were many…” These fraternizers with the Empire would not have been many if they did not believe Jesus wanted to be around them. For Jesus not only to eat with socially shunned people, but actually to enjoy their company, was a slap in the face to those who longed to be free of Caesar’s dominion. And yet, a refusal to love people is a slap in the face to God. At the end of the day, Jesus knew whose kingdom mattered most.