Up Early

Mark 16:1-8

      Most people I talk to want a bit more sleep. This is especially true this time of year. All the preparations, all the late night gift wrapping, the baking and shopping. It can really wear a person out. And yet there are times when coffee just isn’t enough. I hope this isn’t one of those mornings. This is Christmas morning, after all. And if you have little ones, they have a hard time waiting for you to finish your coffee before they want to open those presents.

      My tradition growing up was that we could open our stockings before breakfast, but that we had to wait until after our breakfast, everyone’s breakfast, before we could sit together and open the presents, one at a time.

      Don’t get me wrong, paper flew, but it was in a more controlled way. We took time to see what everyone else was getting. We tried to enjoy the process. Or at least that was the official line. You have to remember, that we, the kids, had already scoped out the presents under the tree. We had check tags for our names. We might have even tried to guess the contents. Lifting and shaking were off limits, but a little poking and x-ray vision were allowed. We knew there would be some of the standards, underwear and socks, but it was the other things that excited us.

      But for the women in our text today, their two previous nights of waiting would have been much more difficult. They had been waiting to return to the tomb. And not just any tomb, Jesus’ tomb. The hasty burial prior to the Sabbath meant that their job had not been completed. In fact, it hadn’t even begun. Joseph of Arimathea had received the body from the Roman authorities and quickly placed it in his own tomb as a place of safe keeping. The Roman’s has secured the site with a contingent of soldiers to ensure no one would steal the body.

      But the women, I am sure, haven’t thought of anything but the upcoming tasks. They must wash and prepare Jesus body, honoring Him with their tenderness and tears. So they might have spent some of the Sabbath day gathering the things they needed for their task. But remember, they couldn’t do work on the Sabbath. So maybe they just did all the coordination, finding where things were, devising a plan of action for that morning.

      The sun slipped above the horizon and off they went, plan executing, supplies gathered, rendezvous and walk. Remember, they are visiting the area for the Passover festival. They don’t necessarily know all the suppliers and connections. But they probably did what most people do, they connected with each other. They got the ladies’ supply network engaged. They ordered from Amazon, and asked for two day shipping.

      And all the while they are grieving! Jesus was dead. They were going to prepare His body. But when they get there, no body, just a young man telling them Jesus has risen! This did not compute. They were there to finish the burial, and now they are being told Jesus isn’t there. Wait a minute. He’s not here? Where is He? What do you mean He is going to meet the disciples in Galilee?

      And without resolution, they leave. Their hearts are now really troubled. How are we supposed to finish our task if there isn’t a body? They don’t quite know what to do now. Would you?

The Present - Now

Mark 12:26-27

      There is only one time to live, right now. You can’t live in the past, although it seems as though many people think they do. You can’t live in the future either. Right now is all we have. This is the space in which we must live our lives, the here and now. Until we invent time travel that works, we are stuck here in the present.

      Some people get so stuck in the past in their thinking, or in the future with their dreaming, that they aren’t much good in the present with their living. The mistakes and abuses of the past can overwhelm the present, even though they are past. The brain wants to protect the self from further harm. So when current things remind the brain of the pain of the past, signals are sent to the body almost immediately: fight, flight, or freeze. And the rest of the body happily follows the lead of the brain. That past moment is alive and active in our responses. Those responses have kept us alive through many an ordeal. It is the way God designed us to work.

      Jesus is answering a question about the future, about heaven and life after this present time. His critics are trying to trip Him up, catch Him saying something that could be used as an excuse to kill Him. But Jesus isn’t so easily caught in a trap.

      Jesus is now appealing to the Scriptures to prove the Sadducees wrong about their belief, or should I say, lack of belief in Heaven and the Resurrection. He quotes from the book of Exodus, a part of the Scriptures over which there was no disagreement about its authority in their lives. And He zeros in on the fact that when the LORD is talking to Moses He uses the present tense. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even though they were dead and buried.

      God didn’t say “I was” the God of these three men. He says that He is, right now, in the present moment, the God of these three. He also doesn’t say that He “will be” at some future moment. This is the only way that the passage makes sense. These men must be living. And the LORD is still their God.

      What a wonderful message. Even after death, we will live somewhere, and we will still be in relationship with God. Even death can’t stop that connection. Heaven is the home of those people who have the right relationship with the LORD in this life. Those who reject the LORD in this life have an alternative place, absence in this life means absence in the next.

      We need to carefully read the Scriptures if we want to stay true to the text and really hear what the LORD wants from us. When we rush through the text we often miss some of the reality presented there. I am sure the Sadducees knew the quoted passage by heart. And yet, they missed this very important concept of the LORD’s power to bring to life those who physically die. He sustains a relationship with them because they aren’t dead. They are alive.

Petty Games

Mark 12:18-23

      Games and distractions when there is important business to attend to is an affront to thinking people. It can be very frustrating when you are trying to get something done and no one will take you seriously. All you get is jokes and goofing off. No one is taking what you want to do seriously.

      This kind of distraction is often a tactic used to prevent serious forward movement. You make fun of your opponents and their ideas, or at least your representation of their ideas. You grab the attention at just the right moments so that the plans can never move forward.

      Magicians use this technique to pull off their tricks. They control where you look, and at what you look. They use the power of suggestion to get you to think what they want you to think about what you saw or didn’t see. They don’t actually pull a coin out of your ear!

      In an attempt to catch Jesus in a violation that would provide the excuse for His execution, the religious group call the Sadducees comes with a trick question. Their concept of heaven was simple: there is no heaven, eternal life, spiritual realm or God’s involvement in earthly life. When you die, you die, all of you. When it is over it is over. So they hope to show just how impossible their theologically opponents’ understanding of these ideas had become.

      The come with a question about heaven in an attempt to make Jesus look foolish. They think heaven doesn’t exist, so their imagined non-existent place is just like earth, with the same relationships and limitations. So they think they can trip Jesus up, make Him look foolish, catch Him in a contradiction that will give them an excuse to kill Him.

      They apply the Law of succession and responsibility that the Law prescribes to the extreme. Having an heir to maintain property on behalf of the family was a vital part of Jewish law. If there was no child, then the property was lost to the family. So if someone marries and then the man dies, there was a responsibility of the man’s family to provide for the dead man’s wife and provide a male child as an heir to his property.

      If mathematical precision was at stake, these Sadducees had it down. They carry this succession down through seven brothers. Their point could have been proven with only two brothers. The principle would have been the same. But having two husbands in heaven is not nearly as absurd as having seven, which is what they are proposing. And remember, they don’t even believe heaven exists. Polygamy can’t be good, whether it is two spouses or seven.  

      Culturally the idea of marrying your brother’s widow doesn’t sit well with us westerners. But in a society where land and children are of vital importance, keeping it within the family makes a whole lot of sense. And this takes on special significance in a culture that doesn’t grant women the same rights as men to inherit property. So the wives needed a male child in order for them to be protected from life’s harshness.

      One last note: Paul declares that categories like male and female are null and void when it comes to place in God’s Kingdom. All earthly categorizations don’t matter at all. We are all one in Christ. We all have identical standing. We all share the same entrance credentials: Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Withered!

Mark 11:19-21

      How long does it take for a tree to wither? Before I moved to Florida, I would have thought that it could take weeks or months. But now that I am here, I notice that some of my shrubs wither on a hot afternoon. The leaves all go limp, and hang downward. They usually perk back up when they get some cool in the evening and the dew in the morning, or if they are lucky I will put the hose on them for a minute or two to give them a drink.

      Jesus has left Jerusalem which is packed with pilgrims preparing for Passover. All the available beds are taken, and Jesus and His disciples have chosen to stay outside the city limits, about two miles away. So they travel there in the evening.

      The next morning they take the same route back into Jerusalem. Along the way they pass the fig tree Jesus cursed the day before. It didn’t have any fruit. And Jesus uses the occasion to teach an object lesson about the spiritual state of Jerusalem and the Jewish leadership. They were devoid of spiritual fruit.

      As I have read this account in the past I always had the picture of a tree dried up with brown crinkly leaves. But now that I have experienced what withered trees look like, I have a different picture of this tree. The day before the leaves were perky, ready to do their job. I imagine the leaves withered, hanging limp, screaming for some moisture. Jerusalem wasn’t dead yet, it needed a new source of water. The old way of doing business wasn’t cutting it. Jesus was offering to change all that. And He did.

      One of the important lessons we need to learn in life is to recognize when something is withered spiritually. We need to see it in ourselves and in others. We need to see it in organizations and movements.

      If there is not fruit, or fruit that remains and fulfills its intended function, then perhaps withering has started. When we look at church history, when withering starts, God raises up a fresh movement. It can sometimes take a generation to recognize that death has set in, but once withering starts, unless there is a fresh source of moisture, death will follow.

      We can see it happening is several denominations today. They have abandoned the source of spiritual strength, the Scriptures. They have become a source of truth for themselves, accepting and rejecting what they want to believe, what is politically palatable and comfortable for everyone. They have eliminated the offense of the Cross.

      And the Cross is the source of new water, new life. Without the Cross, we have a naïve man dying believing a lie, and His disciples continuing that lie, foisting this hoax on countless millions who followed. We really are to be pitied if Christ didn’t die and rise again.

Bleach Blonde Hair

Mark 9:2-4

      The term ‘bleach blond’ hair was not used in a kind manner when I was younger. It was contrasted with ‘natural blond,’ and what could be better than natural. But remember that Ebola is natural. Small pox is natural. Tsunamis are natural.

      But the term ‘bleach blond’ didn’t start as a put down. It started as a descriptive term. It spoke to the whiteness of a person’s hair. It spoke to the effects of bleach on hair, its power to remove color. For thousands of years people have struggled to get stains out of clothing. This was not the result of marketing in the 20^th Century. When you purchase clothes, you want to keep them clean.

      Jesus takes His inner circle of three disciples aside for something special. These three are going to get to see a glimpse of God’s Kingdom here on earth. They are going to have the curtain pulled back, the one that separates this earthly realm from God’s heavenly realm.

      And when they get there something happens. Jesus’ appearance changes. It goes from ordinary to white-hot light. The author describes it in human terms. It was whiter than anyone could bleach it. Imagine a 1,000 watt light bulb blazing in your face. It would be painful to look at directly. You take quick, sideways glances to try to look.

      But Jesus is now not alone. There are two other figures identified as Moses and Elijah, the two greatest prophets of the Old Testament. These two represented the whole of God’s revelatory history. Moses received the Law and Elijah was the first great prophet, telling it like it is. In Elijah all the other later prophets find their genesis.

      I am not sure how those who watched knew it was Moses and Elijah. There were no Instagram photos of these two that could be quickly matched with facial recognition software. I imagine that Jesus told them who the two were after the fact. Or perhaps their identity was revealed to them directly. We just don’t know. But here they were talking with Jesus.

      One of the things that this points out to me is this. Not much separates us from this heavenly realm. Here Jesus is standing on physical earth and heaven is right here showing itself. This is what theologians call the imminence of God. He is right here present with us. The God we serve is not far away on some distant ethereal throne watching as an observer the things that happen here in this realm. He is right here. Good to know when we feel alone. Feelings can mislead us. We are never alone when we trust Him.

      There is more to life than meets the eye. Jesus had been walking with them for a couple of years and they had never seen this side of Him. They were wondering what rising from the dead might mean, and Jesus takes them aside and shows them a glimpse of the power and majesty of God that was present in Him. They see what we have yet to see.

      I think they needed this glimpse in order to make it through the coming events of his suffering, crucifixion and death. Even though it didn’t ‘stick’ when the events came, they all abandoned Jesus at the crucial moment, they could look back and recall this event and gain new insight they had missed before.

      Are there any events from which you later gained insight?