Gripped with Fear

Mark 16:8

      It can be hard to hold fear inside in a way that doesn’t let it show on the outside. It is difficult to hide the emotion of fear. Fear can affect us much more than we are willing to admit. Fear can keep us locked up for years. Fear can give a person a heart attack or a stroke. Fear can end relationships, leading to divorce. And yet, fear is a God-given emotion. Fear has its place.

      The women who arrived at Jesus’ borrowed tomb had good reason to fear. The One they had followed and interacted with over the past three years had been killed, brutally killed just a few days before. They had seen it happen with their own eyes. They probably helped tuck the temporary grave clothes around His body. They saw the stone rolled against the entrance to the tomb. They had walked home to wait until time had passed, the Sabbath had been completed, and they could return and finish the job of burial.

      But now the time had passed. They had returned to find the stone rolled away and a scary angel told them things their minds couldn’t fully comprehend. Fear was their dominant emotion. It had taken over their grief. And the absence of the closed tomb and the presence of the angel had completely rattled them. They just didn’t know what to do with the information they had obtained.

      As a woman in that society at that time, their testimony wasn’t officially accepted. They were like women in many Muslim cultures today, second class, subservient. But the Gospel changed all that. Everyplace across the globe where the Gospel has been preached and accepted women have been freed. Their status in society has been raised. In the Gospel, men and women stand before the Lord as equals, equal sinners and equal saints. Nothing enables the recognition of human value more than the Gospel. The LORD cared enough about us, placed so much value in us, that He was willing to interrupt history to correct the fatal flaw that sin caused.

      But silence can be hard to maintain. Once the fear had worn off, they told what they had seen. But for those first minutes, fear had their tongues tied in knots. Their grief and sorrow was transformed to fear. Fear is about survival, and these women had encountered a scary angel. So what do they do? They flee, they skedaddle, they get their tails in gear and leave.

      Their reactions were just like our reactions. People often run from scary situations, seeking safety in other more familiar surroundings. They put distance between themselves and the fearful object or situation.

      One other things that fear does. Fear often shuts down the brain’s ability to speak and articulate rationally about the situation. Different parts of the brain are used to survive, and all the resources to survive are the priority. Paying attention to the aesthetic beauty around you will not save your life. Quoting or composing poetry will not protect you. Running will. So the fact that they didn’t tell anyone makes sense. Fear gripped them and telling people wasn’t important.

Mistaken Words

Mark 15:33-36

      Not understanding, or perhaps misunderstanding what someone says can lead to all sorts of wrong conclusions. Wars have been waged over words. Duels have been performed. Divorces have happened. Brawls have started. Riots instigated. Let’s just say that bad things can happen over words spoken.

      Jesus has been on the cross for about six hours. He has said some other things while hanging there which are recorded in the other Gospels. But Mark chooses to focus our attention on one set of words, a shouted quotation from the Old Testament. These few words encapsulate Jesus’ experience on the cross.

      There have been hours of agony, physical agony. Every breath after the first few minutes requires effort. He must lift His chest up in order to breath. The position of His arms would have exhausted His muscles to the point that He could not breath without effort. And that effort, pulling up with His arms and pushing up with His feet, would have placed pressure on the tissue around the spikes that held Him in place.

      The one thing you do not want to do if you have a large foreign object lodged in you is to wiggle it repeatedly. In fact, the first aid step is to wrap the object and stabilize it. Moving it causes pain and bleeding. Doctors wait until the person is in surgery, or at least under anesthesia before attempting to remove it.

      So for Jesus to be able to cry out in a loud voice took considerable effort. Six hours of exhausting effort preceded these words. These words were not uttered easily. He wanted those listening to really hear what He was saying.

      And yet some misunderstood what He was saying. It could be that Jesus cried in Hebrew “Eli, Eli …” rather than “Eloi, Eloi….” For those who don’t know, Hebrew and Aramaic are sister languages or maybe uncle-cousin languages. They are very similar to each other. Many of the words are identical, only different in the ending.

      The ending meaning “my” in Hebrew would sound more like the name Elijah, and Psalm 22 was written in Hebrew. But Aramaic was the common language of that day, rather than Hebrew. So it would have been easy to miss the quotation of Hebrew for exhausted pronunciation of the name Elijah. This is especially true if you imagine that Jesus had to take a breath between each word. He would be shouting through pain and exhaustion. And to take a full breath would have been almost impossible. Single words would make more sense considering His physical condition at that point.

      And what do they think Elijah is going to do? They think Elijah is going to rescue Jesus, take Him down from the cross. Elijah, if you remember, was one of the greatest, most powerful prophets of the Old Testament. Many supernatural miracles happened as part of His ministry. Fire came down from heaven, that kind of stuff.

      So wanting Elijah to show up would be something you could tell your grandkids about. No wonder these onlookers hang around. They are there for the entertainment value of the event.

      But Jesus is calling those who hear and we who read these words to reflect on Psalm 22. I want to encourage you to do just that. Take time today to ready Psalm 22, slowly, deliberately, reflectively, prayerfully. Listen to the words and imagine experiencing the things the writer was experiencing. Maybe you will understand the separation that Jesus felt in those moments, totally alone for the first time in His existence, sin having separated Him from the Father, our sin.

Walking Trees

Mark 8:23-24

      I often wonder how other people see the world. I assume that people see trees the same way I see them, that green looks green and brown looks brown. But I don’t really know. How do you really know what other people are seeing? I know that we can see the same things, but end up giving them different labels. The famous Rorschach inkblot test proves that people place their own interpretation on what they see. Those messy blotches of ink made by putting ink on the paper and folding it, creating mirror images, are used to discover some personality profiles. But they are just inkblots, not pictures of anything.

      I know that our available language helps to determine how we describe and categorize what we see. An example of this is pretty evident in our culture. Men often don’t have the same depth of vocabulary to describe paint colors. I tend to keep to the basics: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, white. I don’t even know what chartreuse is, let alone mauve or fuchsia. So when I describe a color I see I have to use the vocabulary I have to label my experience. If I knew more words for the subtle differences in colors, my descriptions would be more accurate for someone who also possessed the full vocabulary of color. They would know what fuchsia looks like and how it is different from blue. Not me!

      The blind man in our text has spent a lifetime in the dark. He has experienced the world through the ends of his fingers. You could hand him and object and he would tell you what it was by rubbing his hands all over it and ‘seeing’ it with his fingers. He would weigh it, find the openings, determine the materials, and then be able to guess at its use. He did this by comparing what he had experienced in the past through his fingers with the object now placed there. He would take the known and guess about the unknown.

      Jesus enters his life and brings him sight, but his interpretation of what he sees is skewed. He needs a link to google images files so that he identifies what he sees correctly. He sees people and he labels them walking trees.

      But think about it for a moment. Apart from hearing someone’s voice, blind people identify others by touching their faces. The subtle differences are picked up by finely tuned fingertips, and each person can be identified correctly. Blind folks don’t usually explore other parts of the body to determine who they are interacting with. That could be embarrassing.

      So this man is healed, but the healing only restores his ability to see, not his ability to understand what he is seeing. He takes what he knows and now adds visual images. There isn’t an accurate connection between what he has ‘seen’ with his hands and all this new visual information.

      The disciples were used to seeing things on a physical level and Jesus introduces a whole new depth of conversation. Jesus speaks about yeast, but He is talking about teaching content. The disciples only pick up on the bread. They don’t yet know how to incorporate Jesus’ insights into their lives.