the Steadwich

Woah! I’m already at the end of Mark. Not only is the reading pace faster in this book, but it’s shorter than Matthew too. It was interesting to see what was and wasn’t included, and the depth of the things that were included.

Two chunks in this section struck me as I was reading through this morning. In Mark 11, as the disciples and Jesus are walking to Jerusalem, Jesus tells two of the disciples to go into the next city and as they enter, they will find a colt tied up (that has never been ridden)  and bring it back here.

In this bit, this sequence of items seems strange to me. A little bit of a random list. It’s like, go around the block twice, then you’ll find a man with a trenchcoat. Tell him that you love Taco Bell. If he responds with five words, ask him for whatever you need. Weird, right?

This is a reaffirming moment for me that God knows everything. How else could Christ have known that there would be a colt tied up, let alone one that had never been ridden?

Similarly, in Mark 15:12-15 it happens again!

‘So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”‘

Wow. This is such an incredibly simple moment, but so amazing too. How did Christ know that there would be a man with a jar of water? How could he have known that this man would take those disciples to the specific room big enough for 13 of them?

It’s comforting knowing that God knows all of these things. It’s comforting that God is big enough to know them, and comforting that God is small  enough to care about them.

That’s all for now. It’s INN staff play day today, so that’s where my mind is going now. Woo hoo!

Mark is a different book than Matthew. This sounds pretty obvious, but I think I’m finding it to be different in more ways than I expected. For better. One overarching thing that I’m learning through these studies is that I’ve been missing out on a lot. These readings have changed me internally on a basic scale, having more knowledge of the scriptures, but also started developing a passion for the story and stories contained within the bible. Externally, this is adding a depth to my conversations with people, especially within my INN discipleship group. I love it.

Today I was hit by Mark 9:38-41. The scene looks a little bit like a team meeting to me. They’ve just arrived in Capernaum. On the way there the disciples have been arguing about who is greatest. Jesus calls them all together in the house and they sit down for a bit of a chat and Q&A session.

Then there’s a question that I think I might come up with if I were part of the early startup of this thing. The disciples said, “Teacher, we saw a man driving out demons in  you rname and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

While, I expect to hear Jesus say, “yeah, that’s fine”, He brings much more than that. He instructs his disciples not to stop the others,  and later says “whoever is not against us is for us”. Whhhaaaaat?

In the middle, Jesus says that no one who does a miracle in his name can then say anything bad about Jesus. I wonder if this has something to do with the faith of the person doing the miracle in Jesus’ name. If faith in Christ were a requirement to perform the miracle in the first place, I guess this seems logical.

If this were true, then the disciples statement in the begining takes a new shape. There was a man driving out demons in Jesus’ name. It was working. Following what Christ said, since it was possible to drive out the demon, the man must have had faith in Christ and therefore was on their side.

This one left me confused. I’m not sure writing about has helped me. I’m going to keep thinking about this one today.

Immediately in Mark, I’ve noticed a dramatic change in pace. One mentor described Mark as all action, and he’s absolutely right. The first five chapters are filled with healings, the first disciples being called, temptations, and driving out evil spirits.

In all of this, I am caught by Mark 1:35-39. In this chunk, Jesus gets up early in the morning and heads off to a place to be alone and pray. Later, Simon and a few others went looking for him.

If I were Simon and the others, I would be worried. Probably a little mad and afraid too. Earlier in this chapter, Simon had been called away from his boat to become a “fisher of men”. After that, they went around and Jesus taught, drove out an evil spirit, and healed many people until late in the evening. Through this, if I were Simon, I’d be getting excited. In the beginging, when Jesus called me off my boat, and away from the life that I knew, I’m sure I would start wondering what I had gotten myself into as soon as the healings started.

But then my attitude might start to shift. As I listened to the teachings of Christ firsthand, and had the opportunity to interact with him and see how the teachings were lived out, I would begin believing more and more. By the end of a week of teachings, healings, and following Jesus closely, I would be committed. I would believe the things he was teaching and know that I was getting behind something incredible. Maybe the status would start to go to my head.

And then waking up, Simon finds that Jesus isn’t there. What the heck. Has he ran away? Left for good? Was this a quick scam? Something I had fallen for whole heartedly has gotten up and left me without explanation. In a small way, this fisherman had become less of an everyday laborer to the world and kind of an important guy as a Disciple of Christ. But he’s gone.

He’s gone.

So Simon does what I would do too, he goes looking for Jesus. I would imagine this is a bit of a frantic looking, like a parent looking for a lost child in the supermarket, “and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’” When I read that, I hear my parents saying the same to me as a kid. Something like, “Where have you been! We’ve been looking all over for you!”

And Just as Simon might be starting to think that they’ve found Jesus and can return to the city to continue to grow in popularity together, Jesus suggests they go somewhere else. Not just another big city though, but to “nearby villages”. We don’t get to see Simon’s reaction to this, but maybe he just went with it, happy to have found Jesus.

At any rate, it’s clear that Jesus wasn’t in it for one city of popularity or sitting in one place and waiting for people to come to him. Instead, he goes out to villages in the area and preaches there as well.

How often do I wait for people to come to me? What a challenge to not just sit down in FPC on Tuesday night for the INN and wait for people to come to us, but instead also being up on campus meeting with people, being downtown, serving locally and connecting with people in the dining hall. This isn’t saying that I don’t think Tuesday nights at the INN are valuable. They are. I actually really dig Tuesday nights, but I have to remember that it’s only part of it. That as diverse as the crowd is that wanders down on Tuesday nights, there is still so many others in different circles up on campus and around town.

Please pray that we would always be challenged to get out of our comfort zone and get up on campus and wherever we’re called to be. Also, think about how Jesus might be calling you to take his message to others outside of the current “city” you’re in. Sharing the Good News with those we are initially uncomfortable with is not only what we are called to do, but also teaches us about different aspects of God’s love that we are incapable of learning outside of the diverse community of the Kingdom of God.

As I wrap up Matthew, I ran across one of my all time favorite parables. I would point to this parable as one that started on a path of fiscal responsiblity and stewardship in my own life. I very much enjoy the ever famous parable of the talents.

In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus shares the parable of the talents. This is the story of a man going away and giving three of his servents bits of his property to take care of. The first gets five talents, the second two, and the third  gets only one.

The first two invested the money in some way. The third dug a whole in the ground and hid the money. The two that invested ended up with more, and the third servant had the exact same amount. The master expresses how pleased he is with the first two, and to the third he says, “You wicked, lazy servant!”

Ouch.

One thing that I paid closer attention to on this reading of this parable was the wording of the master to the two servants who had invested. It’s exactly the same. Copied and pasted. Tape recorder playback. Broken record. The only difference in this interaction is that the servants were entrusted with different amounts. All of the servants in the story are given something.

I am convinced that if the servant that was given one talent would have also gone and invested it, the response from the master would have been with the same pleasure and celebration that the other two received.

Some of us have a lot, others not much. Whether we’re talking about money, possessions, influence, anything. It’s important to remember that these things have been given to us by God. That alone shifts our thinking about what we have. I’m always more careful when I’m taking care of something that belongs to someone else. There’s nothing worse than breaking something a friend has lent to you.

Beyond realizing that it all belongs to God in the first place, we see in this story that keeping what we’ve been given to our selves isn’t enough. We need to use it, multiply it, produce more, or share it.

So, what have you been given? How can you use it responsibly and increase it for the purpose of the Kingdom?

I don’t think the return needs to be in the same currency as the gift either. I am fortunate to have a car. It wouldn’t make sense for God to have given me a car with the expectation that I multiply my car ownership by his return. Instead of “How many cars do you have for me now?”, I think he is and will be asking, “How did you use that car to advance the kingdom?” or “How did allow that car I gave you that rusts and falls apart to participate in everlasting kingdom moments?”

I hope that with what I’ve been given, I will be responsible, not just for the sake of taking care of what I’ve been given, but also to increase the Kingdom of God in Bellingham and on the earth.