Meditations in Mark – chapter 15 06/25/2023

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Welcome and Prayer: Nancy Lopez

Good morning, RefleXion Community.            The Lord is with you!

In honor of Chuck’s birthday, which he will celebrate this week, I want to begin with a scripture verse that I call “the birthday verse.”  From 2 Corinthians 4:16:  So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

I think I’m one of the oldest people in the room, so I will give you my perspective on aging…. it’s not for sissies!  I think we all know that from birth our physical bodies, our mental acuity, and our emotions grow in capacity and strength; and then, by some unseen clock and timing, they diminish, and we become frail and weak.  “Everything goes south, as they say.”  That’s gravity, but, as this scripture reminds us, it’s gravity and grace.   The verses that continue after the “birthday verse” say, For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

We don’t often think about our unseen spirit that is given to us by God as growing us, yet our spirit, which we’re born with, gives us the ability to search for and to know God. The Holy Spirit received reveals God to us and enlivens our spirit to become like Him.  Like a flower or a bird that is programmed on the inside, so are we.  Remember our grandmas who often said to us, “Look how big you’re getting!”  Well, maybe we all need spiritual grandmas who say, “Look how far you’ve come!”  I love this quote from Morgan Harper Nichols, who invites us to look and to see that “All along you were blooming.”

So, Chuck, thank you for letting us in on the ponderings of your spirit with these meditations in Mark.  May you never lose heart and may God bless each of your days with the Spirit’s renewal of hope and peace, and, yes, joy.

Join me to pray will you:

Lord, spare us the continuing demand for youth.  Give us instead the desire for maturity and for the wholeness of who you have made us to be.  Let the Spirit make real to us this truth from the inside out, that we might live our lives with integrity.  Thank you for our teachers, for our friends, and thank you for the way you have created us—to search for and to know you.  We welcome your work in us; let the desires of your heart be ours today.  Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?: And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take hi down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” Mark 14:22-39

Intro: This story is about Christ the Victim becoming Christ the Victor

I’m going to jump right into my meditations on this chapter
My meditation: “I want Mark to use his remarkable storytelling skills to enhance the details of what is depicted here. I want him to enable us to visualize it and hear every sound. It would benefit us to begin to fathom what Jesus suffered and to feel the utter hopelessness of the cross. I feel it’s important to sit in dark shadow of his abandonment, aloneness, sorrow, and death. But here, when I think the action should slow down and perhaps zoom in on still frames, Mark hurries us along at his usual fast clip, using “and . . . and . . . and . . .” to keep the action moving quickly.
But Mark has his own agenda and his own purpose. He carries us from one critical point to another, rising and falling like peaks of a wave. That is how he presents the story and that is how we must receive it, noticing when he wants to emphasize a specific sentence.”

I have several meds on verses 1-20 that I’ll run through quickly

My meditations, verse 1: “‘And as soon as it was morning . . .’ The Greek says, ‘immediately [in the] early morning.’ In scripture, to get up early signifies eagerness. Mark captures the enthusiasm of the priests and scribes to convene a meeting and rush Jesus to Pilate. Perhaps they feared losing ground if they were to wait for due process to run its course.
What inspires me to jump out of bed early in the morning? The chief priests and scribes were eager to get rid of Jesus. Am I equally eager to get up to meet with Jesus? Am I as motivated as the women who went to his tomb ‘very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen’?
Why did the pious trolls tie Jesus’ hands. Were they afraid he might Kung Fu his way to freedom? Did they do it to humiliate him or make him look like a criminal when they delivered him to Pilate? I like to think they were afraid he might try to touch and heal someone on the way, and so expose their wickedness. Jesus the innocent. Jesus the Savior. Jesus the Christ. Those hands! That touch!”
verse 2: “Mark has created a dark chapter. I find it disturbing this morning–it’s not what I think I need to read. My circumstances tell me I need a living, powerful, miracle-working Savior with me, not someone who allows the world to roll over him. Jesus is dreadfully quiet in this chapter, and reading it feels like I’m losing Jesus, my one hope. I want to skim the chapter, fast-forward to the resurrection, and move on.
I am afraid; afraid of being stuck at the ‘Place of the Skull,’ stuck in a world without Jesus in it, without my link to God, a world in which the crucifiers are in control and good things die. But this chapter is not the end of Mark’s story, and it is not the end of my story either.
And I know it’s a fatal error to think a dying Savior is not what I need.”
verses 4-5: “In the beginning of Mark’s gospel, people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching and how he spoke (with authority). Now his silence is just as amazing. I wonder if Mark intended for us to also find Jesus’ abrupt silence amazing? Perhaps Jesus fell silent because at that moment silence was the best answer (regardless of how defenseless it left him).
No doubt Pilate, who had seen many people on trial for their lives, assumed this would be the moment a person would be desperate to speak, desperate to defend themselves, when their life was on the line and many accusations were leveled against them. To witness the Lord’s absence of need to speak up, to counter his accusers, or justify his actions amazed Pilate.”
verses 6-15, “Barabbas: “I can see how Jesus appeared to be a threat to the religious trolls, but I do not know why they felt so much contempt for him. They despised and feared him so much that rather than see him released, they chose to free a murderer. Even Pilate was confused by this move, and asked them, ‘Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?’”
verses 16-20: (The Roman soldiers tortured Jesus) “These verses are hard to read and digest. The soldiers scourged Jesus because that’s what they were ordered to do—everything after that was entertainment. Perhaps they were frustrated with being posted in Israel and viewed the Jewish people as a constant aggravation. After all, the legions were not there for the benefit or prosperity of Israel, but to maintain the Pax Romana, and brutally squelch any sign of revolt.
Their brutality ‘wasn’t personal.’ Jesus meant absolutely nothing to them. Of course, it’s personal to me. Seeing him suffer all the degradations of an abused criminal, the humiliations of a hated victim, the torments of a rebel of Rome is too tragic to absorb. But to know that he was dragged to the bottom of the world in order to identify with and redeem those who live at the bottom–those he refers to as his brothers and sisters who are ‘the least’ because of their zero status in society–well, this is a revelation of his incomprehensible love.
I wonder whether I can endure my relatively lightweight burdens and put up with my aches and pains and feelings of despair, and at the same time be responsive to the needs of others. I don’t feel like I can. I don’t have that kind of strength or energy left in me. However, seeing what Jesus endured, I want to keep moving forward. His example inspires me and his Spirit enables me.”

The following meditations are from the passage above

Here we come to the crescendo of Jesus’ suffering
– he entered Jerusalem with shouts of welcome and praise
Hosanna! (or, Save now), and Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! (Mk. 11:9-10)
• but here he staggers out of Jerusalem, wounded and bloody
• then, when his body is fixed to the cross,

he is jeered at, scoffed, and harassed
– for me, this is the most painful and frustrating part of the ordeal
• as a child, I was conditioned to feel foolish and clumsy
◦ for me, there was no such thing as simple embarrassment
◦ what I felt was shame, humiliation, and rejection
• for years I would get stuck in this passage because it bothered me so much
◦ it distressed me to see Jesus treated like a fool and just take it

My meditation: “Jesus was accused of being the Messiah, Israel’s Savior (14:61-62), so this became the nature of their insults. The sting was that they were not saying, ‘Save Israel,’ but ‘Save yourself.’ The chief priests and scribes joked among themselves, ‘He saved others; he cannot save himself.’
No one there spoke up for Jesus. No one offered him comfort or support. Nor did the crowd allow him to die in peace. He was the laughingstock of the heartless bystanders. I imagine that the scorn of the pious trolls was most hurtful. They were responsible for engineering this injustice; responsible for bringing the ministry and life of Jesus to an end. Now that they had won their victory, they were not off gloating in a side chamber of the temple, but right there in front of his cross. They mocked Jesus and made sure he could hear them.
I have been misjudged and slandered. People who thought they knew something about me have taken potshots at me. A couple times I made the mistake of offering a friendly response to their criticism and insults, but all that accomplished was to trigger a more aggressive and demeaning reaction.
I think most people feel passionate about defending themselves, squelching rumors, and getting the truth out there. So I wonder how Jesus could allow those offensive words to be floated in front of his face and not strike back. I know it’s unrealistic to think anyone would listen to him, hanging there between two criminals, and I admit my imagination can go off the rails. I want Jesus to transform into a super hero, glide down from the cross, and kick their butts. In fact, it seems some people thought it possible that there could be a last minute rescue, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ But the Lord just takes their abuse, as if he were totally helpless–as if they were right and he deserved this horrible death. He lets them have their fun.
Can I comprehend in any way Jesus’ devotion to the Father or his devotion to us? Can I make sense of the Scripture that says, ‘for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame’ (Heb. 12:2)?”

In all the emotional intensity, we are liable to miss the impact of two events

The moment Jesus died, two miracles occurred
My meditation: “‘And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.’ This weird phenomenon, when the barrier that protected the holiest room in the temple from the intrusion of anyone but the high priest, could signify one of two things: Either the ultimate desecration of Israel’s religion or the end of our separation from God. Never again would we have to feel alone or abandoned.”
My meditation: “The most amazing word spoken regarding Jesus is heard from the mouth of a Roman centurion. Only after his death, when Jesus could not hear it, and it could not do him any good, or relieve an ounce of his suffering, was one decent thing said of him, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’ Only in his death was the full revelation of the Lord Jesus seen by someone, and that someone was an outsider to Israel’s religion and covenant. Still, this is the point that Mark has been trying to bring us from the first verse of chapter 1. He has wanted us to make this discovery. And it comes not after a noteworthy miracle, but at the end of Jesus’ life. But still, Jesus’ crucifixion was not a mistake or merely a cruel martyrdom, but the culmination of God’s victory over all the powers of evil, seen and unseen.”

There is one other direction we need to look, off in the distance
There were also women looking on from a distance . . . . When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem Mark 15:40-41

My meditation: “Why does Mark bring these women into the narrative at this point? Were they brave to venture so close to the site of execution? Or were they so marginalized as to be invisible? Was it safer for females from Galilee to be present than the males? It is easy to forget that many of Jesus’ disciples were female. We learn that these women have been in the background all along, and were associated with Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. In those happier times, the only threat to Jesus in Galilee was the risk of so many people trying to get to him they might crush him or prevent him from having time to eat or sleep. But now it seems the women are light years from those pleasant days around the lake, when Jesus brought the kingdom of God so near that disciples were beginning to stumble into it. How sad that Jesus might have been reminded of Galilee and the loving care of those women in his dying moments.
Do the women surface now because in that culture women were more involved in caring for the corpse than men? (Remember in the previous chapter, as Jesus said, ‘she has anointed my body beforehand for burial’; Mk. 14:8.) Is Mark working a theme here, in which women are last at the cross and first at the empty tomb? Was it because women had a special attachment to Jesus, being present at his birth, his death, and everything in between? Does the presence of women heighten the sentimental effect of this phase of the story? I ask, because I am always wondering What am I missing? And not just in my study of scripture, but in my life and the life of my spiritual community.”

Conclusion: The last face we see is that of Joseph of Arimathea

My meditation: The women ministered to Jesus during his life; Joseph came after he was dead. Favors shown to the dead are small compared to those given to the living. But Joseph has this going for him, he was looking for the kingdom of God. His concern for Jesus’ body tells us that he had not given up that hope, and it was still connected to this wonderful person who spoke as no one else.

From the start, Jesus’ message was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk. 1:15).
He did not say the time is at hand, but the time is fulfilled
Jesus brought the kingdom of God into our world,
and now we get glimpses of it, if we’re looking for it!
It will appear to us in flashes this week;
the smile of a stranger,
a spray of flowers,
a light breeze brushing our cheek.
When we see anything beautiful,
we will know God is near,
if we are looking for the kingdom of God
and step through the door when it opens