An Age of Unbelief: A Meditation on Mark 5 for the Season of Pentecost

While he yet spake, there came from

 the ruler of the synagogue's house

 certain which said,

Thy daughter is dead:

why troublest thou the Master any further?

As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken,

he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue,

Be not afraid, only believe.

 

The words of Mark’s fifth chapter can seem a long way distant to us.  It opens with the story of a demoniac who was liberated by Jesus, and his town so terrified by this redemptive power that they begged Jesus to leave.  After coming back to another town, a throng enveloped him, but one woman who had been bleeding for years, was suddenly healed by her faith and the mere touch of Jesus’ garments.  The chapter ends with the story of Jairus, a ruler in the synagogue, who’s sick young daughter died before Jesus brought her back to life.  An exorcism of a man possessed by a Legion of demons, a healing of a chronic disease no doctor could cure, and the resurrection of a 12 year old girl everyone knew to be dead—three stories which would invite incredulity and derision in almost any modern venue of western civilization.

 

Perhaps there’s some rationale for such incredulity.  Anyone’s who’s lived long enough, has been acquainted with a huckster or con artist.  They pepper the airwaves and the internet with infomercials and clickbait, claiming to offer the miraculous for a price: cures for cancer or obesity, mantras for luck or success, technologies to stave off death or maybe even live forever.  Sometimes they wear flashy clothes, while others might wear religious garments, and still others wear lab coats; sometimes they adorn their names with credentials earned, won, or fabricated; sometimes they present themselves with grandiose vocabulary, and other times with somber sincerity.  Regardless of the trappings of such people, the ruse remains the same—an appeal for misplaced trust, exchanging naivete for advantage, usually resulting in the fleecing of the target with the enriching of the con.  Such liars and frauds are common place, and we see them everywhere from bars and street corners, to universities and laboratories and board rooms and halls of government.  If the old maxim is true that a fool and their money is soon parted, it is equally true that there are plenty of clever, malicious people out there who are happy to facilitate the exchange.

 

Yet Jesus is different.  He didn’t sell liberation from demonic powers, or healing from chronic illness, or even resurrection from the dead.  He didn’t fleece anyone, and every promise He made, He kept.  Unlike the titans of industry and politics, from Silicon Valley to the District of Columbia, who always seem to over promise, under deliver, and make fortunes in the traffic of human souls, Jesus came to give life and to give it abundantly.  Jesus had no ulterior motives to fund a vacation home in the Hamptons, or to cross the Rubicon with a conquering army.  He wasn’t building an economic or political empire, nor was He making a living off the misery of afflicted people.  Rather, Jesus gave His own life as a ransom for the world, calling everyone to lift their eyes to a higher truth that would set them free from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  And in case anyone thought He was promising what He couldn’t deliver, He showed His divine power by casting out demons, healing the sick, and raising the dead—not just once, but over and over again.  Crowds were thronging Jesus because they both heard and saw what He said and did, just as the hucksters and con artists in positions of leadership saw and heard.  Jesus was the real deal, a light in the darkness of wicked men, calling everyone to faith and repentance that they might live forever.  Some would repent, believe, and live, while others might ignore Him out of apathy, and still others would persecute Him even unto a tortuous death for His audacity in revealing their manipulative fraud.

 

We ought not be surprised that the charlatans of our age push so hard for disbelief in Jesus.  His Word continues to enlighten people in their darkness, and draw them away from the enslaving machinations of miscreant cons.  In fact, the smarter ones who wield power over others through deception and deceit know that their game is undone when the light of truth hits their schemes, and like every dark soul who loves the darkness because their deeds are evil, their reaction to Jesus is everything from derision and insult to injury and murder.  Having failed to keep Jesus in the grave some 2000 years ago, they now turn their ire upon His Church, where His lavish gifts continue to be poured out day by day.  In some places they scoff, in others they legislate, and in still others they deride, form mobs, and brutalize those who shine the light of Jesus’ Living and Eternal Word into the darkest corners of every human heart.  Still the masters of dark arts plot to suppress the Light which undoes them, and still the Light of Christ comes to illumine the whole world with grace won through His Cross.

 

And so, while the words of Mark’s Gospel may seem far from the modern world, they are near and present among Jesus’ people.  Here in the communion of the saints, one holy Church connected across all time and place by grace through faith in Jesus, people are liberated from demonic powers, healed of diseases in both body and soul, and sealed with the promise of resurrection from the dead.  Every day the power of Jesus’ Word brings new life to dead sinners, opening blinded eyes to eternal realities, and opening deaf ears to the glorious symphony of the Everlasting Gospel.  Every day, Jesus speaks His consoling Word to suffering souls, just as He did to Jairus on the dusty roads of ancient Israel: do not fear—only believe.  And today, as it has been from the beginning of the world, and shall be until its end, those who set their fears aside to trust in Jesus find out that He really is who He said He is, has really done everything He said He would do, and has proved Himself faithful to accomplish every promise He has made to mankind.  In our age of unbelief, propped up by the Machiavellians to preserve a dark covering for their dark deeds and ambitions, the Word of Jesus still brings the light of liberty, healing, and life.  Hear Him as He calls to you this day, with a Word which reaches to the darkest depths where sin sick souls lay in anguished servitude to unworthy masters:  little one, I say unto you, arise!  Amen.

 

Why Such Fear? A Meditation on Mark 4 for the Season of Pentecost

And the same day, when the even was come,

he saith unto them,

Let us pass over unto the other side.

And when they had sent away the multitude,

they took him even as he was in the ship.

And there were also with him other little ships.

And there arose a great storm of wind,

and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.

And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow:

and they awake him, and say unto him,

Master, carest thou not that we perish?

And he arose, and rebuked the wind,

and said unto the sea, Peace, be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

And he said unto them,

Why are ye so fearful?

how is it that ye have no faith?

And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another,

What manner of man is this,

that even the wind and the sea obey him?

 

Fear is not a unique marker of our age, but it is certainly magnified in many of our communities.  There is fear of crime, of politics, of economics, of disease, of injury, of oppression, of being left behind in a technological revolution, of unidentified flying objects, of environmental disaster, of homeless encampments, of international crime syndicates, of red states and blue states, of traffic patterns, of dark money, of the dark web, of cyber terrorists, of shadow banning, of de-platforming, of volcanic eruptions, of earthquakes, of hurricanes, of Sasquatch and Chupacabra… and a thousand other things.  Fear may not be unique to us in our time and place, but we certainly have a lot of it going around, and unlike any age before ours, we seem to be really adept at spreading it.

 

Fear is not wrong of itself when properly aligned, but it is an emotion easily sent out of whack and manipulated by others.  For example, rightly ordered fear and reverence for the King of the Universe manifests in a life of trust and faith conformed to His Word and His Will.  This is a proper fear, since God alone is the Judge of all things, and the One to whom all will give an account.  He is also the only One who can forgive sins, offering life in place of death, grace in place of judgement, for the sake of His own Son’s Vicarious Atonement on the Cross in our place.  As the divine Author and Source of all Law and Gospel, He is rightly the only object of our fear, reverence, love, trust, and hope—of our living faith which transcends all created things and all occurrence of happenstance, because He alone transcends all creation, of which He is the beginning and the end.  A loving trust in God for the sake of His saving promises in Jesus results in a proper and reverent fear, while a rejection of God’s grace results in a terrible but proper fear of God’s eternal judgment.  Whether we trust and love Him, or reject and hate Him, our fear of God alone is justified.

 

But other than God, what is there to fear?  The disciples in the story above were afraid of the wind and the sea, of being drowned and lost in the darkness by the storm which rose against them.  Their fear was not without precedent—weather forecasting was not the science it is today, and many boats were swamped by surprise storms in antiquity (even today, ships are lost regularly to all sorts of climactic occurrences on the sea which are still unpredictable to our tools and analysis.)  The disciples were afraid of death at sea, and in their panic, they woke up Jesus who was asleep down below… apparently unafraid of the wind, the sea, or death.  When Jesus arose and settled everything down, He cajoled the disciples by asking why they were so afraid, and how it could be—after everything He had shown and taught them—that they had no faith?  In this moment of terror, Jesus took time not only to preserve everyone’s lives (the lives of those in the boat with Him, and all the “little boats” that the text reveals traveled with Him,) but to teach them that their fear was misplaced by their lack of faith in God.  As the wind and seas were stilled by His Word, He left them with the inescapable conclusion that Jesus really was the Son of God, the King of the Universe, and the only One to whom their fear could be rightly ordered.  This is revealed by the disciples’ and the crew’s last recorded question that night, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?

 

And that is the question which helps us reorient our fear today.  The charlatans and the malevolent of every age know that fear is useful for manipulation at both the individual and the communal level, so they distort it for their own profit or power.  Disordered fear, like any other human passion, can be used to create great havoc, and eat away at the faith and virtue which emerge from a properly ordered fear of God.  Fear is a money maker in the wrong hands, and taking just a few steps back from the rhythm of modern life will reveal how many hucksters have been trying to tap into this well of emotion for their own benefit while grinding down people to the point of despair.  To see such opportunists for what they are, quickly strips away their perceived power, and liberates both mind and body from their influence.  There is no tech oligarch worthy of our fear, just as there is no politician or bureaucrat worthy of it, either.  No gang, no camp, no journalist, no scientist, no researcher, no philosopher, no theologian, no angel, no demon, and not even the forces of nature itself are worthy of our fear.  None of these hung the stars in their places, set the course of galaxies, or fixed the laws of physics; none of them built the foundations of life in chemistry and biology; none of them created themselves or gave themselves the gift of rational thought; none of them can say they are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  Only God can truly say that, and only He is worthy of our rightly ordered fear.

 

To every soul in the whole of creation, this is great and wonderful news.  For the only One to whom our fear is rightly ordered, is the One who has set our fears at ease.  The Judge has become our Savior, giving us eternal life in Him, restored to full communion and fellowship with Him forever, by His own gracious work on our behalf, in which we trust and hope by faith in Jesus.  What can possibly terrify such a child of God, whose life is secure in Him?  Should the workings of political animals, or the machinations of industrial giants, or the rising of armies, or the dereliction of mobs and gangs disquiet us anymore than the convulsions of nature?  No matter the threat which attempts to terrify a child of God, there is no one and no thing in all creation which can separate such a person from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and nothing in heaven above or hell below which can take away the eternal life given to them by the irrevocable work of Jesus upon His Cross.  Neither life nor death, nor things present nor things yet to come, as St. Paul would say, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus, nor break this sweet communion of the whole household of faith.  The earth itself is not destined to be ruled by evil, but to be inherited by those made righteous by grace through faith, a resurrection of the world in which all the forces of malignant fear are imprisoned forever, and the people of God shine forth like the stars of heaven unto all ages, because the Rock of Ages is both their foundation and their future.

 

Hear the Word of your God and King this day, that He may set your heart at ease, and dissolve your fear into a loving, trusting hope which transcends every peril of this life.  For the One who has lived, and died, and risen never to die again, comes to speak peace and forgiveness to you, that you might live in Him forever.  Hear Him as He speaks peace and stillness into the winds and storms around you, that you may answer with faith the question posed by those frightened mariners so many years ago.  Amen.

 

Parables of the Kingdom: A Meditation on Mark 4

 And he said, So is the kingdom of God,

as if a man should cast seed into the ground;

And should sleep, and rise night and day,

 and the seed should spring and grow up,

he knoweth not how.

 

St. Mark’s fourth chapter contains several parables about the Kingdom of God, as well as some insight as to why He used parables to speak to the people… and why He explained those parables only to His disciples in private.  Jesus began by using the parable of the Sower and the seed, to describe how the hearts into which His Word was sown would in part determine the outcome of that Word’s work upon them.  He continued with the parable above, regarding the mysterious nature of God’s Kingdom, and how its growth was His doing rather than the work of the farmer who benefits from it.  Then Jesus closed with a parable regarding how small the Kingdom of God can seem when it starts, but how it will fill the whole world as it grows, providing shelter for all who come to rest in the grace of its shade.

 

There’s a pattern which emerges from these parables which we can see in the world today, just as it has been evident across all ages since the world began.  In the beginning is the Word of God, framing the cosmos and everything in it, from the fundamental natural laws of physics where matter and energy are perfectly mathematically balanced to support refined complexities of chemistry and biology, which in turn support the wonderous array of life in this world and the great unexplored expanses of the universe.  This Word which first breathed out our existence and life, which set the heavens in their order and our planet on its course, from Whom came all things and to Whom all things shall return, also came to us in our self-inflicted calamity of suffering and death, to speak a new Word of redemption, forgiveness, and life.  This Word of Gospel was and is spoken to all people, like seed spread in what might appear an indiscriminate and gratuitous manner, regardless of how people will choose to receive it.  Some will ignore it, and the devil will snatch that hope away from them quickly.  Some will respond to it vapidly, and when the devil presses them with persecution, they will abandon it.  Some will consider it philosophically or emotionally, but only in so far as their love of material things will accommodate it, choking that Gospel Word in them until it is unfruitful.  And some will receive it as the life changing Word that it is, transformed by a new birth from above by Water and Spirit, where the Gospel Word grows in and around them richly.

 

Moving from the general to the specific and back to the general, Jesus taught His disciples that of those who received the Gospel in faith and repentance, the Kingdom would grow in and among them by the mysterious power of His Word and Spirit.  The Kingdom was not theirs to grow, but to experience as living members of that Kingdom.  The Christian lives and moves and has their being in Jesus, even as Jesus speaks the Word of Gospel which created the Kingdom into which we are reborn.  Like a farmer who lives and works in his field, receiving the mysterious blessings of renewed life from the hand of God, so the Christian lives and works in the Kingdom of God, receiving its blessings from His hand.  Just as the farmer did not create the land and the physics and the chemistry and the biology of his farm, neither does the Christian create the Kingdom into which he is brought by grace through faith in Christ alone.  The Kingdom of God remains a divine and gracious mystery, both in the individual life of the Christian, and in the community of all the faithful of every time and place.  Thus what started small and was generally disregarded, became the immensity of the holy Christian Church, a fellowship of every soul which has ever trusted in God’s Word of Gospel through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, a Kingdom which transcends time and space to form one Communion of the Saints, within which everyone who seeks shelter finds eternal rest and redemption.  A Kingdom like a great tree for those who can see it, with roots tapped into the Word of God at creation, and extending through every epoch by the life-giving Word and Spirit of Jesus.  Thus Adam is forever linked to Enoch, just as David is linked to Elijah; as Noah is linked to St. Peter, and Daniel to St. John; as St. Paul is linked to St. Augustine, and St. Mathew is linked to St. Chrysostom; as the Church Fathers at the first Council of Nicaea are linked to the Church Fathers of the Reformation, and as every faithful parent and child have been linked in every generation since the dawn of time.  This great Kingdom of God does indeed fill the whole world, and in fact, overflows it, with both roots and branches reaching across eternity.

 

In this, there is great hope.  For the Kingdom of God among us can no more be dislodged or destroyed by the reprobates of our age, than it could by the vicious and vainglorious of any age past.  This great tree into which we have been grafted is Jesus Christ, the Incarnate and Eternal Word of God, who is in the unity of His Person fully God and fully man, and in the unity of His essence indivisible from His Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever—a unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity.  This is the great mystery into which all the faithful are pressed, a fellowship in God’s Kingdom which has no end.  Do not be confounded by the convulsions of a world mortally wounded by sin and despair, for the evil of this world is passing away, together with all its delusions and lusts and violence.  Only the Word of the Lord endures forever, and the fellowship of those bound together in it by grace through faith in Jesus.  Hear His Word to you today, that your eyes may be opened, your ears may be cleared, your heart be enlivened, that you also may through faith and repentance join this great and everlasting fellowship of sinners saved by grace.  Amen.

 

Dangerous Blasphemy: A Meditation on Mark 3 for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said,

He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils.

And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables,

How can Satan cast out Satan?

And if a kingdom be divided against itself,

that kingdom cannot stand.

And if a house be divided against itself,

that house cannot stand.

And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided,

he cannot stand, but hath an end.

No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods,

except he will first bind the strong man;

and then he will spoil his house.

Verily I say unto you,

All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men,

and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:

But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness,

but is in danger of eternal damnation.

Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.

 

As western culture has become more vulgar both in its thoughts and its words, the concept of blasphemy can almost seem quaint.  Epithets that would have earned a slap in the face or expulsion from polite society only 20 years ago are now common place in everything from social media, to entertainment, and academia.  Sometimes lost in this sea of vulgarity is a casual disregard for the name of God or specifically Jesus Christ, and a growing secular disdain for all things traditional, authentically virtuous, or biblically Christian.  A short stroll through Netflix, news outlets, Twitter, your local college campus or neighborhood pub, will reveal just how cavalier many people have become with their use of language toward anything holy, and how quickly rage rises for impugning anything unholy.  While certainly not a universal trait of modern western culture, it is an increasingly common example of how appreciation has flipped in the minds of many regarding the value of what is good, and what is evil… and perhaps of the generally degrading aptitude of individual linguistic skill.

 

It is important, however, to distinguish garden variety vulgarity from blasphemy.  Going blue, as they used to say in the 1970’s and 80’s, was a comic’s way of shocking the audience with frequent use of vulgarity to accentuate their routines, and it was often effective to get laughs (assuming they haven’t been “canceled” from the internet yet, a short survey of early stand up routines from Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and George Carlin will suffice for the early progenitors of the modern blue comedy scene.)  However, when the general use of four letter words shifts to insults or depravity aimed at God, this is where blasphemy comes in.  Specifically, accusing God of unfaithfulness, deceit, ineptitude, or evil, refusing to believe Him in what He says and ascribing to Him fruits of evil which alone are the responsibilities of sinful men and wicked demons, is the heart of blasphemy.  Ours is not the first generation to become salty tongued and bawdy in our common language, but it’s been a very long time since the West has seen such a prevalence of outright blasphemy so commonly directed at the Almighty.

 

In the story above, St. Mark recounts an event where the religious leaders of Jerusalem surrounded Jesus after He had cast out numerous demons from oppressed people, and in order to persuade the people to ignore such profound divine deliverance, they accused Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebub (another name for Satan) and using demonic power to cast out demons.  After refuting the rank stupidity of their argument, Jesus went on to tell them that all blasphemies and sins against Him would be forgiven men, but a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness in either the present time, or the eternal age to come.  Specific to this text, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which Jesus denounced among the Pharisees and Sadducees was publicly trying to lead people away from the deliverance of God by ascribing to Him and His grace the works of the devil.  This rejection of God and His grace, publicly attributing to the Holy Spirit of the Living God the spirit of darkness so as to lead people away from the salvation of Jesus Christ, is a blasphemy which Jesus tells us has eternal consequences.

 

Jesus was not telling those around Him that generally vulgarity was damnable, nor that otherwise obscene blasphemy couldn’t be forgiven by grace through repentance and faith in Him.  But the heart so hardened against God that it would publicly accuse God of evil so as to lead others away from saving grace, is a heart in mortal peril.  To be frank, these kinds of hardened hearts seem to appear less often in the general populace, and much more often amongst the educated and affluent set—particularly among college professors, politicians, and professional theologians.  Like the religious leaders of Jerusalem, those who have attained power and control over people rarely like to give it up, and many have achieved this power through dark and dubious means.  When the light and life of Christ breaks into the world and calls lost sinners to forgiveness, life, and salvation, it casts out the works of darkness upon which so many elite leaders have made their living and enforced their power.  Such wickedness in high places is threatened by the Eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen for sinners, so they lean on the only dark resources they have to try to push away the light, resulting in the kind of blasphemy described above.

 

This reality should give us both pause and hope.  Pause, because we should always be careful in our thoughts and our speech, regardless of vain norms which prevail in our day.  Our tongues should not be used to speak evil, but rather to echo the words of life and grace which saved us from the darkness of this fallen world.  If we find we have spoken poorly, or even blasphemously, we have the testimony of the Holy Spirit within us, working through the proclamation of the Word of God to convict us of our sin, and lead us back to the font of forgiveness in our Savior which can always and only be received by grace through faith.  And hope, that even those in places of power and authority who have eternally rejected God and work feverishly in their dark minds with a demonic energy to lead people away from Jesus, can no more resist the Light of Christ than the demons to whom they cling.  Jesus Christ is victor not only over the grave, but over every power of darkness that assails His people, no matter the time or the place.  There is no blasphemy uttered by reprobate souls which can snatch us out of His pierced hands, nor take from us the blessings of grace and forgiveness in Him.  The world will rage on for the time the Lord has appointed to it, yet the Lord God Almighty will abide with His people always, and unto the end of the age will He bring the healing balm of His Word and grace to all who repent and believe.  The blasphemers of Jesus’ day did not stop His Kingdom come, and nor have they stopped the proclamation of Jesus and His Word in any day since.  The faithful need not fear the rage of the blasphemer who shows his own condemnation through his rejection of all that might save him, but rather with compassion and boldness, we bear witness to Him who is the light and life of all who put their trust in Him.  Amen.