The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Ordinary Time
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What does it mean to be a disciple?
- Isaiah says it is to be one who listens and acts in the face of overwhelming odds
- Mark says it involves denial of one’s very self, a taking up of one’s cross
- James says it involves an intertwining of faith and works
Isaiah 50:5-9
We read part of today’s passage on Palm Sunday. Chps 49 through the beginning of 51 move us from sorrow to the hope of redemption
This is one of the suffering servant songs (42:1-7, 49:1-7, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12). Almost from the moment of Jesus’ passion, the early church found a mirror of him in the suffering servant songs. These passages are interesting in a number of ways:
- Each of them interrupts the narrative, like it doesn’t really belong there.
- Each has a theology and interpretation mostly independent of the surrounding narrative.
- Each speaks of an individual person of supreme holiness, greater than any single Israelite of the past.
In this passage, the servant has already been at work and is frustrated and discouraged by the lack of fruit in his ministry. Nevertheless, he is confident in God. He is a mysterious person who undergoes torments and suffering, but has an unwavering attachment to God’s will in the midst of all of it along with a certitude that expects reward and fulfillment.
The people are in exile. They’re weary and discouraged. They will reject the prophet’s message of hope but the prophet will persevere.
The passage begins by saying, “He rouses my ear to hear like a disciple.” Disciple is the passive form of the Hebrew verb “to teach.” In order to teach, one must first experience what is to be transmitted to others, just as Jesus will experience the passion for us. Experiencing what one teaches is part of what it means to be a disciple.
The suffering servant does not turn away or reject his calling. Like Jesus, he sets his sights on Jerusalem and resolutely journeys to his destiny. Like the prophets before him, the suffering servant is, at best ignored and, more commonly, maltreated. Of course, the early church saw in these lines, particularly, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ passion.
V6 says he was spit at. We might imagine a face hard as stone, where the spit and insults simply roll off. He remains serene in the face of so much suffering. How?! What is his secret?!
“The Lord GOD is my help.”
On the cross, Jesus will cry out, “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” He will always turn to the Father.
Recall a time when you were discouraged and weary. Did you find it hard to hope? What helped you believe in a better future and how might you share that hope with others?
James 2:14-18
The lectionary spends five weeks with this short letter. I encourage you to read it in its entirety at least once, if not every week.
Faith vs. works – the perennial debate. This passage is often used to illustrate the case where someone supposedly has inward faith but no outward signs of that faith. It also points out that the reverse can be true as well: a person can be doing good things but have no inward faith that fuels those good works. The encyclical Gaudete et Exsultate talks about these and calls them both “harmful errors.”
We could sum up this passage by saying that faith and works are two sides of the same coin. Maybe even one side of the same coin. True faith results in outward evidence, called “works” here. A faith that does not transform us is no faith at all.
It’s always good to define terms. In this passage, faith is the free acceptance of God’s saving revelation. Works are the obedient implementation of God’s revealed will in every aspect of life. These are not works in the sense of something one does in order to earn salvation.
James is contrasting a faith that is alive (evidenced by living a life in conformance to God’s will) with a faith that is dead – there is no evidence of the kind of faith that leads to salvation.
Ponder the role of “works” in your own life. How does how you live evidence your faith?
Mark 8:27-35
Today moves us into a new section of Mark. Up until this point, the primary question of the gospel has been “Who is this man?!” You might want to take some time this week to read the Gospel up until this point and see how that is question asked and what answers are suggested.
Today Mark will give us an answer to that question, although it might not be what we expect.
In order to appreciate what’s going on in today’s passage, we have to back up a bit and read a passage the lectionary leaves out. Vv22-26 are key to understanding the next couple of chapters, and, I might even say, to understanding Mark’s overall literary approach. This curious story is sometimes interpreted as a healing that Jesus doesn’t get quite right the first time around. It’s a key to Mark’s gospel.
What’s going on here is the idea that sometimes we can see, but not clearly. In the first round of healing, the man can see enough to identify people but they don’t look quite right. The second time, the healing is complete.
In today’s passage, Peter is going to name Jesus as Messiah. But Mark wants us to know that even Peter doesn’t see quite clearly. In Mark 8:31 through 10:45, Jesus is going to teach the disciples what they need to know in order to see clearly. This will be followed by the story of another healing, this one instantaneous. With that story, Mark is telling us that now we have all the information to know who Jesus really is by knowing what we have to do to follow him.
So these two healing stories are key to understanding what’s going on in these intervening chapters. This also ties in with what we refer to in Mark’s gospel as “the messianic secret.” Jesus is always telling people, “Don’t tell anyone”! Because they don’t yet understand who he really is.
Chps 8-10 there will be a pattern of three actions and it will repeat three times:
- Prediction of Jesus’ passion
- An inappropriate response
- Teaching on discipleship
In v27 Jesus asks a question “along the way,” a euphemism for the Christian journey. One of Mark’s literary devices is that when Jesus asks a question, it’s a way of preparing his listeners for a new teaching. “Who do people say that I am?”
John the Baptist had recently been executed by Herod, and rumors abounded that he might have been the Messiah. So people are saying maybe Jesus is John the Baptist come back.
Or maybe Jesus is Elijah, whom the Jewish people expected to return before the Messiah:
See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.
Malachi 4:5
Others were saying that perhaps Jesus wasn’t that great, but maybe he was another one of the prophets. No one is outright calling Jesus the Messiah, but all of these suggestions allude to it. They sort of dance around it.
So Jesus gets even more direct and personal in v29. This is the question at the heart of Mark’s gospel, addressed not only to the disciples but to every reader of the gospel.
Who do you say that I am?
Peter answers with the thing that no one else will say outright: we believe you are the Messiah. “You are the one through whom God will accomplish all that he has promised!” Peter’s recognition of all that Jesus was is still imperfect at this point because he’s focused on the miracles and he clings to his notion of a Messiah as a temporal ruler.
Jesus doesn’t deny Peter’s proclamation, but He’s still saying, “Don’t tell anyone.” He still has teaching to do before they really understand what all this means. Last week he told people not to tell because he was more than a healer. This time he’s telling the disciples to keep it quiet, partly because announcing himself as the Messiah will bring him into direct conflict with the authorities much faster, and it’s not yet time for that. There’s still the “messianic secret” going on, but now it takes on a new layer of meaning. A sense of urgency is now evident.
V31 is where the pattern starts, with the prediction of the passion. Jesus calls himself the “son of man,” indicating he is fully human. He is a true son of Adam. He doesn’t call himself Messiah here because he’s about to tell them (and he wants them to understand) that his version of being Messiah is not what they anticipate. He references the elders, chief priests, and scribes; these make up the Sanhedrin, like a municipal senate in Jerusalem. This is the group that will eventually bring him before Pilate.
Jesus lays it out pretty starkly: he must suffer greatly. That was not in the picture for the anticipated Jewish Messiah. According to the rabbis, the Messiah would come in splendor to conquer Rome and set the people free from suffering. Jesus is saying that we must understand suffering as part of the bargain. As the master goes, so must the disciple.
V32 is the second part of the pattern: an inappropriate response. Peter cannot imagine a Messiah who suffers and dies, Jesus’ sharp response makes this passage a central, defining moment in the gospel.
V33 starts the teaching – what does it mean that Jesus is Messiah and what does it mean to be his disciple? These two are intricately connected!
There are some stories in the gospels that we can be almost certain were actual historical events. Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is one of them. What nascent movement in their right mind would record a primary leader being so sharply rebuked, shamed, and even called “Satan” in their sacred texts?!
Jesus is saying anyone who denies the necessity of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ is on the other side, in league with Satan himself.
In v34, Jesus summons the larger crowd of those following him, and begins to teach them as well. He’s laid it out very clearly for the inner group of disciples, and now he will expand the teaching to all who wish to follow him.
The Greek word for Messiah is christos and it means, simply, an anointed one. This was most commonly used of kings who were anointed at their crowning. In the Old Testament period, around the time of the exile, they began to use this term in connection with the one expected to come and free them from oppression. As they further developed that idea, they connected it with the last days, God’s final coming, and the ushering in of God’s kingdom.
I’ll remind you of these words said at your baptism:
Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Has freed you from sin,
Given you new birth by water and the Holy Spirit,
And joined you to his people.
He now anoints you with the Chrism of salvation,
So that you may remain as a member of Christ,
Priest, Prophet, and King,
Unto eternal life.
Christ was the anointed one just as we are anointed. As master and teacher, so the disciple. Jesus tells us in v34 that we must take up our cross. Because Christianity isn’t lived in the head – it’s made up of concrete actions. This pours right into the James passage – there must be outward evidence of the faith we profess. And, as the Isaiah passage indicates, we must be ready to pay any price that such a lifestyle demands of us.
V34 uses a rhetorical device called chiasm. We might picture it like this:
A follow me
B deny yourself
B’ take up your cross
A’ follow me
Just like “come after” and “follow me” are saying the same thing, “deny yourself” is another way of saying “take up your cross.”
Some people use the term “carry my cross” to mean stoically accepting the difficulties in life. “My arthritis is my cross to bear.” Jesus did not mean it that way. He chose to die. The cross was not forced upon him. He could have chosen to stop his public ministry and live out a natural human life. He had the freedom of that choice and he chose to continue. Implicit in that choice was the choice to die. Crosses are not passively accepted as a burden; they are actively chosen “for Jesus’ sake.” And we might also remember Hebrews 12:2, which tells us that Jesus edured the cross for the JOY which was to come out of that.
V35 tells us that self-preservation cannot be our highest value. That place belongs to the gospel, the good news.
Who do you say that I am? This question is for each of us to ponder. Is Jesus a Messiah of our own making? Or will we choose to follow in his footsteps as anointed sufferers for the sake of the gospel?
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© 2024 Kelly Sollinger