Mark 15:1-5

Mark 15:1-5 

English Standard Version 

  I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I can still remember mean things people said about me a few decades ago.  The human mind is amazing, right?  We zero in on the negative things people say, while often the good things wash right over.

  Here, Jesus is being accused of all sorts of things.  We remember that Jesus is perfect, but that doesn't stop them from making false accusations.  Jesus is calm in the face of it all -- he is completely confident in his identity as a beloved child of God.  He has no fear of false accusations.  He knows that everything is held in God's hand.

  May we find the same courage to ignore the false and malicious things people say about us, and may it lead us to a place of peace, where we don't worry about the negative things coming from others, and we focus instead on the fact that God loves us and wants more for us than we can possibly ask or imagine.

Mark 14:66-72

Mark 14:66-72 

English Standard Version 

  I've said it before and I'll say it again -- I love Scripture because of how human and accessible it is.

  You've probably heard the argument that every Olympic event should have one average person in it just so we could truly appreciate how great Olympic athletes truly are.  We take their greatness for granted because that's all we see during the Olympics, but if you saw me struggling to throw a javelin more than 5 feet or watched me fall on my tail 16 times during an ice-skating event, you'd probably recognize how great those athletes are.  

  When we read Scripture, we can take the same mentality into it if we're not careful.  We can look at people like Peter and Paul and David and Abraham and think they're super-human and super-Christians, but the Bible doesn't portray them like that.  The Bible tells us their flaws and shows us how broken they are.  They don't hide their imperfections -- Mark tells us how Peter promised Jesus he would never forsake them and then reveals how Peter denied knowing Jesus shortly after.  This is the same Peter who would go on to be a leader in the church, and everyone knew his flaws.  

  The message here is that your flaws don't disqualify you from membership in the church.  There is a place for you, brokenness and everything, because the church is always and has always been a community of sinners, each of us redeemed through the love and grace of God.

Mark 14:53-65

Mark 14:53-65 

English Standard Version 

  Have you ever decided you didn't like something before you tried it?  Or made a decision about a person before you got to know them?  Maybe you went to a restaurant that didn't look very nice, but the food was fantastic, and you found yourself surprised at how good the food was.  Or maybe you met someone who didn't look like they'd be very impressive, and then you discovered how kind or wise they were.

  The high priests had already decided that Jesus was guilty.  They didn't like the threat that he represented to the power that they held. They saw him as an enemy, and nothing he said would've mattered.  

  I think there are a lot of people in the world who have formed opinions about Jesus based on what they've heard from people other than Jesus.  Maybe they heard a piece of a talk or read something a leading Christian wrote, and that was enough.  It's unfortunate, but people form their opinions based on followers of Jesus.  It's so important that we go to the Gospels, that we hear from Jesus himself, to read his words and learn about his actions, so that we have an unfiltered opinion and hear the wonders and love directly from him.  We can use others to help us learn, to help us grow, but nothing is a substitute for hearing directly from God, in study of the Word and prayer.

Mark 14:51-52

Mark 14:51-52 

English Standard Version

 I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas!  It will never cease to amaze me that of all the ways God chose to enter the world, a poor couple in a stable was the preferred method.  Given that the magic of Christmas is still celebrated around the world thousands of years later, this was clearly the correct choice, but it's not the one that I would've come up.  I would've designed something different, based on human wisdom, and it would've failed.  

  The Gospels are simply unique, and the story is triumphant because God's wisdom is greater than our own.  They are true, because they don't hide the bumps in the road that are part of every journey, but they show us the larger story arc winning out despite human weakness.

  Take this short part of Mark, in the midst of Jesus being arrested.  This is thought to be autobiographical, with Mark including this detail about his own flight to safety away from the soldiers.  Mark was running for his life.

  Why would you include this if you were making up a story?  It's embarrassing.  It's awkward.  Mark is forever known as the guy who ran away naked rather than risk association with Jesus in the garden.

   You'd only include it if it was true.  You'd only include it if your failure had been redeemed by the love of one so powerful that even death itself is no longer a threat.  You'd only include this if you were in a place where you could laugh at your weakness because human frailty doesn't matter anymore -- it's been covered by grace, and only hope and redemption matter now.

  You'd only include this if you believed the truth of the Gospel had won the day. Thanks be to God that it has!

  Merry Christmas!