First observations on Mark 7: 24-37

Gospel text for Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B [Sept 6, 2009]

v. 24 “He entered a house there where he didn't think he would be found, but he couldn't escape notice” [The Message]. Thirteen foreign men [and maybe some hangers-on] arrive in a town and nobody is expected to notice? It seems that somebody must have asked a few questions and somebody spoke, perhaps after sophisticated questioning, perhaps more voluntarily. Likely one of the twelve? Maybe somebody connected with the owner of the house [landlord/landlady? Host?] or somebody connected with him/her?

Why do some versions say Tyre and Sidon and others just Tyre? Different texts, or is it more like Tampa and St. Petersberg?

V. 25 The woman hears at once. More reason to suspect that information may have been leaked earlier from a local source.

Greek, Syro-Phoenician by birth. Likely considered Greek by the Hebrews and non-Greek by the Greeks? Matthew’s similar story says Canaanite. May be different stories, but there is so much similarity. Maybe all the labels are true, they are all labels bestowed by others. In any case they refer to a Gentile. In Matthew, Jesus did not answer her until until the disciples tell him to shoo her off. It does not seem unlikely that they were less than polite.

Jesus knew the Greatest Commandment, that neighbors need to be loved as much as selves. There must have been a reason He reminded the foreign woman of her non-Jewishness and its assumed inferiority.

Is the lesson that if we have faith that we all get our place at the table? Or that because of this woman and her attitudes/teaching [and others like her] that the table is available to all?

The demon gets evicted without the physical presence of the Redeemer. Jairus’ daughter was raised off-site as well. Has anybody else ever wondered why some miracles require direct presence and others do not? But the distance healing shows that the power of God is more than a bit of prestidigitation.

The second miracle (vv. 31-37) involves direct physical contact. Same question only in reverse.

How many times do the healed and those around them break the command to tell nobody?

v. 36 Everything he does is good. He has done everything excellently. He has done it all and done it well. How wonderful it would be if things even half as good could be said about us.

Full communion?

From a post at Christian Post:

Lutheran ministers who are in same-sex relationships will not be allowed to serve as clergy in United Methodist congregations despite the new full communion agreement between the two denominations.

The post goes on to state that Gregory Palmer, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, states that the recent ELCA action does not negate the UMC Book of Discipline.

I think I understand how this works, but it does make me wonder if “full communion” is not a misleading term. But it has been in vogue for a few years now and may not go away.

Government can be an inefficient deacon

I recently saw two articles – one by Robert Martin in the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and the article to which he is reacting, by Tim Stoltzfus Jost in The Mennonite.

The Jost article calls for Christians to support proposed health care legislation. Martin agrees but notes:

I agree with the article in The Mennonite and the resolution in Columbus that the Mennonite church “asks members to urge their legislators to support legislation extending access to all Americans, especially the poor and disadvantaged”. That is EXACTLY what the Mennonite Church has done over the centuries. But what is MOST important to our traditions of the church, is that it doesn’t stop there. It is the church (meaning the body of believers characterized by faith in Christ) living out the mission of God that ultimately bears the responsibility for the Kingdom. To sit back and expect the government to do so I would argue is going along with the idolatry of the government (also stated in Article 23 of our confession of faith). To say that the government has more power than the church to effect change in our society, I believe, is a wrong statement.

This seems like good advice for all Christians. We need to want our government to do help bring about justice for all and justice means more than being civilly or criminally correct in the legal sense. But we need to remember that government can never be Christ-centered in what it does and that Christ-centered ministries fill a different, no less valid role.

Martin notes that the Anabaptist/Mennonite foundations are not advocating government to do things and let the government determine the ethics involved. but do what needs to be done themselves. This would be what I have always understood about Mennonites, that they have a long history of being noted for their pacifism. But we need to remember their often lesser-noted social programs and the successes they have had.

There are other Christian organizations who do great good work. We should remember that church or other Christian organizations such the Salvation Army, Church World Service, and many others have often outperformed government and secular private organizations such as FEMA, Red Cross, and numerous “Human Services” departments. I cannot help but think that part of that is that they consider themselves serving a Cause and not just helping clients, able, because they answer to God rather than a bureaucracy.

First observations on I Samuel 17 [David vs. Goliath]

The entire concept of holy war has bothered me since I grew up. When I was a boy it seemed that David was a great guy because he was helping God's people against a bunch of heathen non-believers [although he did go off the way a bit with that Bathsheba thing], but as I got older and learned that it was acceptable to kill Vietnamese who weren’t doing anything to us but might have some kind of Communist connection and saw many American Christians exult after the Six-Day War I really began to have problems with some of this. I assume that there are lessons to be learned here on things like faith, courage, and the perils of bad-mouthing the LORD.

v.4 For some reason, I have never questioned the height of Goliath, although I do wonder how close [based on possible translation problems that differing languages and systems of measurements] we can infer nine feet or so, but I always wondered how one could make a fair determination of a winner from a one-on-one conflict. It would seem that with so many armed men present that they would not accept the result.

v.11 why were Saul et. al. terrified. Settling disputes by one-on-one could not have been the

v. 16 What were both armies doing for 40 days? You have to assume that they didn’t just retreat to their tents and play cards until the next day’s challenge.

v. 17. It sounds almost like the Iraq war. Soldiers need things from home that the government which has hired/conscripted/recruited them does not supply.

v. 20 David the shepherd had a shepherd.

v. 28 David’s oldest brother already thought of him as conceited. Nowadays battles are often available for viewing, but how would one just watch one then? And if it were possible wouldn’t there have been wives there helping out?

v. 37 Saul seems like a less than decisive guy, allowing himself to be persuaded by the boy’s arguments from his shepherd experience. Or did he question his own relationship with the LORD so much that he was afraid of David being closer to the Divine that he?

v. 39 David did not eschew armor because of any matter of principle but for comfort.

vv. 40-47 Both of the men are guys and could talk big.

Lectionary text cuts off with Goliath going down, saving us David's severing of Goliath’s head and hes carrying it around with him.

Although it is not a text question, one does wonder a bit why those who created the Lectionary ended the story at this point. To spare parishes the gore when it was read? To make the text more PC?

What's in your mailbox?

The mainline church I attend would not expect Communion to be celebrated without a clergyperson officiating. “Order” seems to be important. I do not personally agree that ordination is a requirement for the celebration, but understand that others have that opinion, one which I think is an anachronism surviving from pre-Reformation, Transubstantiation days.

But, despite that tradition which limits Communion and where and when [and by inference, with whom] it can be celebrated at least a little, we, like what seem to be most congregations in the United Church of Christ, seem to want to go out of our way to encourage participation by everybody, even by those who are too young and too skeptical to know what “remembrance of Me” might mean.

But now a church in England [not the Church of England] is offering mail-order Eucharist. The Open Episcopal Church is now sending Eucharistic wafers out by mail. There is a handling fee, although it seems modest and they insist that they are not charging for the wafers.

They note that many people just cannot or will not get to church.

The creeds refer to the one catholic church ‑holy and universal, spanning all time and nations – of which those who cannot get out of their abodes would be members, members who should still have access to what God and the Christian community have to offer. However, it makes me wonder how much awe and reverence a wafer received in the mail [and I don’t know British mail, but I assume not received on Sunday] inspires or how much sense of Christian community this brings about.

Television has long been accused of making us a more non-social world and these days the internet receives the same accusations, not without reason.

We do Communion in our church the first Sunday every month and on special liturgical occasions [e.g., Maundy Thursday] and my attendance is little affected by that schedule. Communion services are not the reason I attend church, although I know that many of my fellow congregants do think it important. I guess I attend to listen, learn, and pray with others, to receive a message, and to socialize a bit in a way that one cannot do that by television or on line.

Link: Host by post

At cross purposes with the message

There is continuing to be a lot of furor over the murder of the Kansas abortionist in his own church. Most mainstream and liberal media are bashing any and all pro-life people.

It is undoubtedly a case of people working at cross purposes when the educating people in the pro-life movement, including some people who consider themselves pro-choice, continually remind us that there is a victim in each abortion, a message which, although it needs to be aired also seems to incite people to extreme, sometimes violent, action.

I found an interesting post on the Christianity Today politics blog.

I found the first comment [June 3 by Brendan] enlightening.

People for the American Way - whose very name insidiously implies all who disagree with them are being "un-American" - has once again gone overboard, linking all strong pro-life rhetoric with a vicious murder by a deranged individual..

Curiously, in the same breath they say pro-lifers have "dehumanized their opponents." Pot, meet kettle.

Similar problems came up during the great national arguments over slavery. Remember John Brown.

Preliminary observations on Mark 4:35-41

As we read the Gospels we continue to wonder why the disciples “didn’t get it.” From early ministry until even after Resurrection this seems to be a constant recurring thing, in the synoptics and in John

This is an earlier one and one that seems more understandable. They had left what they had and had followed a man of great leadership and charisma, but their understanding was just that, they were following a man – and man in lower case.

And what lower-case man can stop the weather?

When I was a child and heard the story the KJV word “ship” was used. I guess back then I was thinking of a large vessel, maybe something like the Queen Mary. I had a harder time imagining a storm big enough to sink it and then thinking that it must have been a REALLY BIG storm.

Somehow realizing that the ship was really a boat seems to make the disciples’ fear more understandable but has not made me think the calming of the storm less miraculous.

And I really like the way the passage end in the Message where the disciples are saying, "Who is this, anyway? "Wind and sea at his beck and call!"

I know that most Bible translations or versions do not capitalize pronouns and nouns referring to God and that many modern sources, Christian and secular, no longer do so either. I continue to do so in my own writing because I think that sometimes it makes what I am writing clearer but do not necessarily infer hostility to Christianity or to God when the capitalization is not done. The reference above was only used as an illustration that divinity was not something they were yet attributing to their Friend and Leader.