Never Perceiving In the kingdom of God, the sick receive healing, the poor have enough to eat, and the weak are powerful. Yet no matter how much Jesus preaches about this kingdom, the disciples don’t get it. They want to know if they’ll sit at his right hand in heaven. They want glory and power. But Jesus called them to serve. In the Gospel of Mark, he must repeatedly admonish them to stop thinking about their own desires, stop seeking to be served, and strive instead to become better servants. As Geert Van Oyen points out in his analysis of the gospel, the acolytes want to fulfill “their own interests”…
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Calming the Storm
God’s Power Over the Elements Read from a Christian perspective, Mark’s Gospel guides us, step by step, to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah, the one sent to Earth to redeem our souls. Thus, the story of Jesus calming the sea becomes one more miracle tale, meant to be taken literally so we might be convinced. Children’s lessons highlight Jesus’s power over the weather, over disease, over everything in the universe. That’s how amazing he is. That’s how we know he’s God. And this God will help us when storms rage in our life. If we have faith, we need not be afraid. [1] That message is not unique…
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Texts of Terror and Love
Death in Numbers 25 The Hebrew Bible is the story of a love affair between Yahweh and his chosen bride, Israel. In return for God’s blessings, the people promise fidelity, yet over and over, they rebel, complain, and bow down to other gods. Sometimes Yahweh is patient. At other times, he punishes them harshly. One such harsh punishment occurred at the end of the Israelite’s wilderness journey. They were camped along the Jordan River across from Canaan. In between Balaam’s prophecy that Israel would be victorious in battle against the neighboring tribes and the taking a census of the Israeli people, lies the tale of the murder of Zimri and…
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Hannah and Claiming a Voice
Hannah Transforms Prayer Samuel was a Nazarite, promised to God for his lifetime by his mother before he was born. The biblical book that bears his name tells not only his story as the last judge of Israel, but also that of Saul and David, Israel’s first kings. This is a book of transitions. Politically, it shows how Israel went from being ruled by the guidance of prophets or judges to being ruled by kings. It also marks a religious transformation, a new understanding of how to pray. Our story takes place before Samuel was born, when his mother spoke heart-felt, but silent words to God. It would be more…
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God’s Wrath and God’s Love
Divine Inspiration Divine inspiration comes from many sources. In Ancient Greece, there were the muses. According to the tradition of some religions, God spoke directly to their founders. For instance, there was the Mesopotamian author of the Atra-Hasis; Muhammad, who wrote the Quran; Joseph Smith of the Latter Day Saints; Báb and Baháʼu’lláh, authors of the Baha’i scripture; and Helen Schucman, who claimed that, when she wrote the Course of Miracles, she was receiving dictation from a voice who identified itself as Jesus. Although neither Jews nor Christians assert that God dictated their scriptures, many consider the Bible to be God’s spiritual word, if not the literal one. If nothing…
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Being Seen and Hiding No More
Shame and Being Seen Last week we talked about our shadow side, the part of our psyche hidden from our conscious mind. By living an examined life, we discover more about ourselves each day, yet we will never fully understand what lurks within the recesses of our being. We often act out of ignorance, deluding ourselves about our true purpose, feeling annoyed by the idiosyncrasies of others that – without our knowledge – touch on our own. With effort, we can mitigate our flaws, but we never avoid them completely. One way to discover our true self is to allow others to see us. This is also the only way…
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The Temptations of Jesus and Our Inner Demons
Jesus Is Tempted Three of the four canonical gospels describe how Jesus was tempted by Satan. The first one written, that of Mark, offered few details. After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness. “He was in the wilderness forty days,” Mark wrote, “tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:11-13). Afterwards, he went off to start his ministry. Matthew and Luke offer a richer version. In their gospels, Jesus fasted for forty days, becoming “famished.” At that point, the devil appeared and offered three temptations. The first was that Jesus should prove himself to be…
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The Way, Truth, Life: A Study in Universalism
The Best Way During my first year of seminary, I took a class on pluralism. I expected it to be something of a world religions course, one that taught us about other faiths so we could learn to live peacefully with those who believe differently than we do. After all, it seemed to me, when you live in a pluralistic country, you should be able to get along with people who aren’t like you. To my surprise, the course, while it did explore other religions, focused on how Christians could best preach the Jesus’s message to these nonbelievers. After all, everyone except I understood that Jesus was the way and…
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Shema: Listen and Respond
The Shema and Obedience The religions of the book emphasize obedience to God. The name “Islam,” for instance, comes from an Arabic word that means submission. Christians have the model of Jesus who followed the will of his God the Father. “Not my will, but yours,” he said. In the Jewish faith, we can see how important obedience is in a prayer observant Jews recite every morning and evening, the Shema. Shema, Yisrael, the prayer begins, or “Hear, O Israel.” Shema means listen or hear, but it also means obey. If we think about it, that makes sense. After all, we can’t obey if we don’t listen first, and we…
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In the Beginning Was Love
In the Beginning In the beginning, there was Love, and Love longed for a beloved, and out of that longing, the world was formed, the creatures created, and we humans born. Love is our birthright. Every child comes into this world with a seed of love lodged in its chest. Sometimes the seed flourishes, blossoming into a wild and fragrant flower. At other times, the seed is crushed or parched, so that instead of love, bitterness grows. Yet we are made for love, and we all have the ability to find our way back to our birthright. The Christian story tells of a God who loves his creation, loves his…