gospel according to mark 1:1-8

1:1 - The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God .....

1:2-3 - ... begins with the fulfilment of this prophecy of Isaiah - 'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you'. 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight' .

1:4-5 - For John came and began to baptise men in the desert, proclaiming baptism as the mark of a complete change of heart and of the forgiveness of sins. All the people of the Judean countryside and everyone in Jerusalem went out to him in the desert and received his baptism in the river Jordan, publicly confessing their sins.

1:6-8 - John himself was dressed in camel-hair, with a leather belt round his waist, and he lived on locusts and wild honey. The burden of his preaching was, "There is someone coming after me who is stronger than I - indeed I am not good enough to kneel down and undo his shoes. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit."

JB Phillips translation

Retreating From Revelation

Okay, we're moving on. We weren't quite ripe for Revelation; we leaped ahead to the happy ending before we left, with a lot of questions unsettled. I still hope we come back to this someday.

There's one of those scholarly ‘consensus'-es that Revelation was written as merely a religious pep talk for early Christians facing persecution. There is that element; the threat of persecution was obviously on the author's mind, and a key refrain here is that those who keep the faith get richly rewarded, while bad stuff happens to those who don't. That reading makes the whole book pretty trivial, not much to say about it–and so we've treated it.

The happy ending came along, and that should make everybody there celebrating happy enough, but it isn't at all clear how they arrived and why we haven't yet.

Unsettled questions, probably unraised questions. If we're Christians, and Christianity is based on Judaism, what do we make of the prophets' understanding of history? The Apocalypse is the one book of Christian scripture that applies something remotely like the prophets' tacit view of things. We can treat the book as "inspirational," in which case we find most of it more disturbing than inspiring. We can use it to point fingers, as people have been doing ever since "666" became a numerical word-game. If we imagine "prophecy" means merely "prediction," we can mine it for hints of how God plans to whup us next year.

Or if we're looking for that, we can seek ways to better understand God and our own collective situation. The "meaning of human history," as people generally interpret that scroll with all the seals.

Is "Stuff happens" the governing mechanism of the world? Can we rely on?–or must we settle for?–human progress, techniques of political lobbying or grass-roots organizing, framing of issues, creative nonviolent actions like the ones we did last war, some other notion or gimmick to make the world come out better rather than worse? One strong message of this book–one of the things that makes it so very unpopular–is that we can't do that. Whatever your saving gimmick, it isn't the rock and you can't build there.

People keep trying to build Jerusalem and ending up in Egypt, until God finally pulls the rabbit out of the hat. I still don't understand: Why that rabbit, that hat, that time?–rather than sooner or later?

If the message is to "Just trust God," why is God shown teaching it by wars, plagues, famines and earthquakes? What makes The Beast seem the most interesting character here, the Whore the one seemingly most fun to party with?

If we don't like scarey, violent stories full of bad people and disasters–why do people choose the news and entertainment they generally do watch or read?

We don't like to think of God as responsible for the yucky bits–but monotheism demands that God must be. This, however, is hard to square with our knowledge of God's goodness–which is not a matter of intellectual interest alone, but tied to our whole orientation toward life. Do we get to honestly consider it a good thing?

I understand this aspect of Revelation as stemming from the truth of Buddha's statement--that life (as an ego) is suffering.

Without a felt mystical connection to God, life is inescapably tragic.

But then God–from the very depths of our souls-- rains plagues on us, to bring us out of Egypt, that "narrow place" of slavery we imagine to be our only possible home.

2007 Annual Events - Spiritual Directors International

Forgive me for what amounts to shameless self-promotion (but else is a blog for anyway?)

In April of 2007 an international conference will be held in Richmond British Columbia (that's in Canada). The conference is for Spiritual Directors International. I've been a member since 2003 (4?) though I am not a practising Spiritual Director myself. I attended one of their conferences in the past (when it came to Toronto) and while I enjoyed it -- I was also the lone Quaker.

I'm delivering a workshop entitled "Money Work and Identity". It will not be so much on offering spiritual counsel as understanding the dynamics of people in financial crisis and how that may relate to offering them spiritual counsel. I credit this participation in part to a Friend. A number of years ago she recommended my name to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting as someone who might write an article on rendering pastoral care to folks in financial crisis. This workshop will take that article and expand it to include issues of unemployment.

Here is a link to the brochure with the list of workshop offerings: SDI 2007 (pdf file -- Adobe Acrobat Reader required).


I'll be planning and prepping the next few months. Keep me in your prayers.

A New Heavens and a New Earth

The consensus seems to have moved to the Gospel According to Mark. So I will begin posting passages from that gospel in a more or less regular rate starting next week. I thought it sad somehow to leave off this book in the muddle of plagues and disasters, before the decisive battle, kind off like getting all the way to Frodo in Shelob's lair in LOTR and laying the books aside. So here, for weal or ill, is the Revelation 21:1-22:5.

Revelation 21
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and lying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

And the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new. Also he said, Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.

Then he said to me, It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked to me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and he measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, one hundred forty-four cubits by human measurement, which the angel was using. The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day-- and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Revelation 22:1-5
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

housekeeping

Okay, though Quakes go by sense of the meeting and not by vote we still have a tally. Larry votes we bail and move on to the Gospel of Mark. Forrest wants to stick it out with Revelation but will bail if Revelation means he'll be the only one posting.

I can't guarantee Forrest won't be the only one posting. I've abstained thus far and Crystal hasn't said anything. Yet.

I'm heading back into Revelation unless I get an overwhelming response otherwise. I won't get a chance to post before the weekend likely.

I don't feel as strongly as Larry that this text is devoid of wisdom. Luther felt the same way about James, James is my fav biblical tome, James started this blog in the first place.

At the same time -- I'm really not finding a lot to say. And even Forrest, who does find stuff to say, does so by posting long tracts from commentaries (mostly Ellul) which means those who've found the Apocalypse enlightening are is some ways more enlightening than the Apocalypse.

The point however -- we're coming into the pay off. Reading to this point is kinda like buying tickets to an all-you-can-eat rib-fest and ordering a garden salad and leaving.