Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 14-16.

I was going to write about Judas, or about Peter, or perhaps Judas and Peter.  Then I read through the ending of Mark, which appears to be chapter 18, verse 8.  I was going to ignore verse 9 through the end, because that appears to be a later addition.  However, after some thought about how I understand the Bible, and God’s power, I decided to write what I thought about Mark ending with verse 8, then a bit about the rest.  When the women were heading to the tomb early Sunday morning, they were worrying about how they would roll aside the stone in order to get to Jesus’ body to finish the burial preparations.  In a way, they were praying to be able to give their last respects to someone they dearly loved.  God answered that prayer, but not in a way which bore any resemblance to  what they had hoped for.  In fact, God’s answer to their prayer was so much better than what they were thinking that they did not make the connection.  As a result, they were frightened and fled.  They were coming to Jesus’ tomb to say good bye to Him, because they believed He was dead and that they would not see Him again.  Instead, they found Jesus’ body gone and someone who told them that He was risen.  Mark tells us that the women fled and told no one.

Which brings me to the “add-on” of verse nine to the end.  It appears that later scribes who copied the Gospel of Mark felt that this ending left us hanging with no explanation of what came next.  So, they added this bit which contains summations of information from other Gospels.  Now, I had decided, after some thought, that we should consider this addition as the canon, as authoritative, because it has been copied as part of the Gospel of Mark for so long.  I believe in God’s power to maintain the accuracy of the Bible.  Therefore, if this addition did not contain material which God considered important for guide us in following His will, He would have arranged for it to be removed.  Today, as I was putting my thoughts together, I discovered that this addition to the Gospel of Mark goes back to at least the Second Century A.D..  Which means it was likely included by people who knew witnesses to Jesus’ life.  And that brings me to what we need to learn from this addition.  Jesus told His Disciples, and through them us, that signs would accompany those who believed in Him.  I am going to look at one of those signs which Jesus mentions here: they will pick up snakes with their hands.  Some people make a ritual out of following this, but I think it refers more to what happened to Paul after he was shipwrecked.  Paul did not purposefully pick up a venomous snake, but when he did so and was bitten, it did not harm him.  In the same way, we should follow God’s direction without spending time fearing a dangerous place, or even a dangerous action.  That does not mean we do not take danger into account.  It just means that we do not let danger stop us from doing what the Spirit has directed us to do.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 14-16.

Shortly after telling Jesus that even if all others abandoned Him, he, Peter, would stand with Him, Peter fell asleep while Jesus was praying in deep distress. After admonishing Peter, and the other disciples, for falling asleep, Jesus said something which should resonate with all of us.  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  I think that this statement by Jesus about His disciples with Him there in the Garden of Gethsemane applies to us as well and shows how well He understands us.  In many ways, my spirit wishes to serve God, but my flesh is weak and I fail.

I want to highlight that the only followers of Jesus whom the writer records as being present at His crucifixion were women.  I find that significant because it paints a negative picture of His male disciples.  In addition, this account indicates that it was women to whom news of Christ’s resurrection was  first reported.  And why is either of those things important?  Because they make the idea that Jesus’ disciples made up the story of His resurrection implausible.  If the early Christians had made up the story, those who led the early Church would have been cast in a more positive light.  They would have been the ones who stood by Jesus as He went to the cross.  They would have been the ones to discover the empty tomb.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 14-16.

I want to look at the juxtaposition here of Jesus telling the Twelve that one of them will betray Him, then later telling them that all of them will fall away.  I believe that these two are so close together in the narrative to remind us that while we may not actively betray Jesus as Judas did, at some point we will fail to stand up for Him, just as the other eleven did.  Which brings me to Peter, who emphatically stated that he would stand by Jesus, even if no one else did.  We often focus on Peter’s later denial, but his mistake was in thinking that he was more able to stand up for Jesus, that he could stand when all else fell away.  God gave Peter three chances to live up to his claim to be more faithful than everyone else, to stand with Jesus when no one else would.  God did this in order to make Peter understand that he was not stronger, more faithful than everyone else.  However, when the messenger spoke to the women at the Tomb on Sunday morning, the messenger told the women to tell Jesus’ disciples and Peter that Jesus would meet them in Galilee.  So, God reminded Peter that even though he was not better than the others, he was still one of them, and God still loved him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Mark 14-16.

Every time I read the story about the woman who anointed Jesus with oil I always feel like there is more to it than I am seeing.  Perhaps someone reading this blog will be able to provide me such an insight.  So, I get one clear message from this story: we should not feel that our every thought, action, and expenditure must be to help the poor.  Further, sometimes we should do things to show our love to those around us.  Jesus made a point that wherever the Gospel is preached the story of what this woman did will be preached.  Which suggests that the message of this story is critical.  I was going to stop with that, but I had one more thought on this story.  When Jesus told those saying that she should have sold the perfume and given the money to the poor, He quoted from Deuteronomy 15:11.  The context of that verse tells us that we should give to the poor generously, that we should not be tightfisted towards them.  This woman was acting in a generous open-handed manner, while those rebuking her had a grudging heart.

I want to write a bit about chapter 16.  After much thought over the years I have become convinced the Mark ended his Gospel at verse 16:8.  I believe that the rest of chapter 16 is an accurate account, but was added to the Gospel from other sources.  I really think that Mark intended to end his Gospel with the cliff hanger of the women fleeing from the tomb, bewildered and afraid.  He wanted us to come away with the feeling that early that Sunday morning those who followed Jesus were bewildered and afraid, not just the women.  He wanted us to see the contrast between how they acted later and how they felt that morning.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 14-16

Today’s passage starts out with Mark’s account of the woman who anointed Jesus.  Each Gospel contains such an account, but there are differences between them.  Perhaps there were two such events, or perhaps people remembered the details differently (and if there were two such events, people may have mixed up details between the two events).  However, the fact that all four Gospels contain such a story with a similar emphasis in what Jesus says about it tells is that this story contains an important message.  It seems to me that Jesus tells us here that there is a place for spending our resources on luxuries.  While we should make strong efforts to help those in greater need than ourselves, it is not only not wrong to spend some of our resources on making others feel better, we should do so from time to time.

There other part of this passage that I want to write about today is Peter’s denial of Jesus.  When Jesus predicted that all of His disciples would desert Him, Peter vehemently denied that he would ever do such a thing.  Peter insisted that he would stand by Jesus’ side even if everyone else abandoned Him.  Despite his best intentions, when push came to shove, Peter was unable to keep his promise.  One important lesson here is that we can never know how we will hold up under pressure until we experience that pressure.  However, even though Peter failed to hold up this time, we also know that later he did stand up for Jesus in the face of persecution.  I want to note also that Peter did not deny Jesus just once or twice.  He had three opportunities to stand by Jesus’ side in Jesus’ darkest hour and could not do so.  We will also sometimes fail Christ when the chips are down, but we need to repent of our failure and accept God’s forgiveness.  Our failures to stand up for God do not mean that we are forever damned.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 14-16

I am sure I have written this in the past.  When I was younger, Jesus’ instructions to the two disciples He sent ahead to prepare for the Passover meal were related to me as an example of Jesus’ ability to see the future.  It was suggested that He prophetically knew the man would be where he would be and would be willing to allow them to use his room for their Passover meal.  However, as I read it now it seems clear to me that Jesus had made previous arrangements to eat the Passover meal in this man’s room with His disciples.  On the other hand, Jesus’ prediction that one of the Twelve would betray Him is indeed a prophetic pronouncement.  Every time I read that I wonder what went through Judas’ mind at that moment.  

When I read the various accounts of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane I have two separate reactions.  First is the desire and wish to pray as Jesus did when difficulty and struggling confront me: “Please take this suffering from me, but Your will be done, not mine.”  I want to ask God to take the suffering away from me, but I want to submit to that suffering if it is necessary to accomplish His will.  Second is an empathy with the disciples inability to stay awake.  All too often when I attempt to pray in the ways I think that I should I find myself falling asleep.  As with so many other passages on prayer, this passage reminds me that my prayer life comes nowhere close to where it should.