ANDY AND MARK (You are on. Blog is under construction, Folks.).)

          Can we grasp the urgency, the importance of this time and place 

and immediately follow our risen Lord and Savior?           

          Some like to think that the Bible is an ancient text, witnessing to an ancient faith that doesn’t really relate to our lives today … I don’t know about you but I think those are pretty relevant questions for us.  Questions Mark first asked of his community 2000 years ago, questions that still hang out before us, for you, for me, today. 

         Andy speaks first.

          

So I’m not really sure what the formal policy is supposed to be for Pastors and having favorites.  I’m not sure if it is like having children and the fact that though you may indeed love them all from time to time you may have one you’re relating to easier than other but you’d never, ever admit that they were your favorite.  Or whether it is like ice cream where you can just say that’s my favorite.  It was never explained to me just what the rules for me, in my role are … so I guess I’ll just make up my own and tell you that the gospel of Mark is my favorite gospel.  It just is.  Now I don’t mean that Matthew with his emphasis on the kingdom of God doesn’t have good things to say or Luke and his emphasis on Jesus humanity and oneness with all of us isn’t important and God does know how much the gospel of John challenges me in its sometimes convoluted literary structure but also the challenging authority of Jesus demonstrated within John’s words.  But Mark is where my heart is at.

          First, Mark doesn’t mess around right.  I mean he just tells it like it is.  He doesn’t need to begin with any messy genealogy or history of where Jesus came from, he just says it, this is the good news of Jesus Christ.  Period.  I love it.  It’s bold, clear and challenging all at the same time.  He doesn’t give us an abundance of details or stuff to sort through.  He tells us what he thinks we need to know and leaves it at that.  I mean in the best manuscripts of his gospel he doesn’t even see the need to have Jesus appear after the resurrection.  The women run from the tomb, afraid and we get left to fill in the blanks about how this message goes out.  His gospel is short, is compact and doesn’t mince words.

          Second, Mark's audience is also appealing.  Mark, from all that the best wisdom is able to discover, is writing to a non-Jewish group of people that is unfamiliar with Aramaic terms, Palestinian geography or really much at all to do with what we commonly think of going on within ancient Israel.  In short they’re a lot like us, maybe even less educated than many of us are about Israel’s history, traditions and geography.  Thus Mark has to keep explaining the important parts, and only the important parts, to them.  He doesn’t explain the nuances off where Israelites believe their chamber pots should be kept for the night but when a leader’s daughter seemingly dies and Jesus says to the little girl, Talitha cum – Mark tells audience that it means Little girl get up or when Jesus confronts Pharisees about their hypocritical belief that causes them to ignore the hungry in their midst Mark explains to his audience that the Pharisees observe strict rules and restrictions about what they eat, when they eat it and with whom they eat.

          Third, Mark is also in hurry to get this story out.  It's urgent, important and it needs to be told.  Within the first five chapters of his gospel Mark uses the phrase “and immediately” at least a dozen times.  And immediately Jesus did this, and immediately Jesus did that, and immediately this happened, and immediately that happened.  Our English translations have softened this because it doesn’t make for very good English composition.  Mark wouldn’t have passed High School English class but Mark didn’t care.  He wanted to convey the sense of urgency that Jesus had, that he had, that we should have in sharing this story.  I love that urgency and quite frankly that you don’t have to tell the story perfectly in order to get it out.

          And I could go on and on but I’ll just tell one more thing about Mark’s gospel that makes it my favorite which is that I think many of the details that Mark includes and he only includes the details that are important to his community, I think many of the details Mark includes are also important for us. 

          Take for today, for instance.  At the end of this passage we hear this (read 3:31-35).  This is a short summary saying basically that many if not all the allegiances, loyalties, commitments we have within our world pale in comparison to that which true faith in God demands.  The words here sound harsh or difficult to our ears – how could someone say such things about their own mother, their brothers, their sisters.  But Jesus, through Mark’s witness, is telling us that God needs to come first and then all else will flow more smoothly.  It is meant to be a word of comfort, specifically to Mark’s community which would have found the indebted family and social structures of their day to be confining and restrictive, but it is also important for us who have found ways to put so many non-life giving things before faith in God.  They can go from churchly things – our tradition, our history, our individualization of the faith, to national things – our belief in the superiority of America, our economic policies and actions as one of the lone remaining superpowers of the day, our voting patterns serving our own self interest first, to individual and personal commitments we put before God – our judgment of others with whom we don’t agree, our inability to define ourselves and live connected but not enmeshed with others, our unwillingness to commit our own voice to that of others to make a unified statement of purpose, of belief, of love.

          In short Mark sought to help his community see that doing the will of God incorporates us into the body of Jesus our Christ and nothing else.  And for a community that had so many rules and restrictions that it lived with that was pure gift.  They didn’t need to earn their place in God’s world but merely live out the place they’ve been given.  Mark sought to form a new body of people that would live out of their gifted place as God’s children.

          Can we do that?  Can we live together, in God’s world, in 2012, in the Columbia River Gorge, as Methodists, as Lutherans, as faithful people, with one unified voice?  Can we grasp the urgency, the importance of this time and place and immediately follow our risen Lord and Savior?

          Some like to think that the Bible is an ancient text, witnessing to an ancient faith that doesn’t really relate to our lives today … I don’t know about you but I think those are pretty relevant questions for us.  Questions Mark first asked of his community 2000 years ago, questions that still hang out before us, for you, for me, today.

~ Andrew Wendle, Pastor ~ The minute I realized I agreed with his message heart and soul, I asked Andy for permission to repeat it. Thanks, Pastor Wendle, for your grace. ~ dgd