Wednesday 19 November 2014

Bible Notes on Mark for Advent 30th November to 21st December 2014 by Barrie Morley

November 30th - Advent Sunday     

The RCL gives preachers a challenging Gospel passage for Advent Sunday this year.
Mark was written during the 'Jewish War' which, in time was to see the sacking of Jerusalem and the ruin of the Temple.  Almost certainly some of Jesus words here refer to that event, almost 2,000 years ago.   Talk of trauma for refugees must ring  bells for the many displaced people in the Middle East this Advent time.   But this passage has become a happy hunting ground for those who only look for predictions of the return of Christ.   The problem is which of these words have already been fulfiled, and which are yet to be?
The 'Second Advent' is very important.  This season is much more than a time of preparation for Christmas, but what can we say as we deal with the confusing picture language of this week's Gospel?   What we CAN say is this.  'in the beginning God....and in the end, God.'    This is the message of the Bible.
POSSIBLE PREACHING TOPIC
Jesus speaks here of a time of trauma.   Modern times produce great distress for so many people.   Let's not get tangled in the intricacies of this passage, but let us hold to its message and the message of the Bible.   'In the beginning God....and...in the end....God.'  This is Advent Hope. 

December 7th - Mark 1:1-8

'To begin at the beginning' intones Richard Burton at the start of the radio play 'Under Milk Wood.'
   
'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' writes Mark in the opening words of his gospel.  'Listen, only you can hear'   continues Burton in Dylan Thomas's play.  You are a secret observer and listener to twenty four hours of life in Llarregub.  Mark too is dealing in a secret.  He shows us that the value and true identity of Jesus and his message is a secret.  The Priests and doctors of the law miss theirsgnificance.  So do the the crowds, and even the disciples.  Even at the Resurrection, the first reaction of the disciples is of fear and astonishment rather than belief. (Ch 16: 8)
AND YET....the reader of Mark is in on the secret of Jesus true identity, and the value of his message.
Mark tells us plainly what it is in the opening words,  'Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'   In Thomas's play we see an open public day in the life of one small seaside town.
Perhaps the link for us this Advent is that now, just as in Mark's time the value of Jesus and his gospel are there for those who will look and listen, but now as then the majority of people in our culture and time miss the true worth of Jesus and his message.  
   
POSSIBLE PREACHING TOPIC
What does it mean in our time and culture,  to be one of a minority who are in on the secret of who Jesus is and what he does?

December 14th - John 1:6-8, 19-28

The RCL now follows its usual pattern of introducing readings from John's Gospel around the Christmas and Easter seasons.   'John the Forerunner' is a traditional Advent topic.  He represents (as Jesus himself said) the height of the Old Testament witness.  There may have been an almost rival discipleship movement to that of Jesus for a time (see Acts  18: 24-19: 7).  However the Gospel of John has no doubt that John the Baptist was no more than the messenger of the coming Messiah.
POSSIBLE PREACHING TOPIC
John preached a demanding, no compromise message.  In our liberal, multi-cultural age, how do we live in the light of John's witness and the more important witness and example of Jesus Christ?

What in the Old Testament do we learn from and live by?  What do we sit more loose to in the light of the revelation of Jesus?

December 21st - Luke 1:26-38

Only Matthew and Luke give us details of the birth of Jesus.  For Luke the Gospel is  'Good news to the poor.'   The shepherds, a low status class of people, are the first to hear the good news, and they receive it whilst out..and working a night shift, ..'Out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.'
Whereas Matthew has Jesus pronouncing  blessings on the poor in spirit,  Luke is more direct in his version of the Beatitudes...'Blessed are the poor.' (Luke 6:20)
So here in today's passage a peasant woman from an unfashionable village is chosen to the mother of the Lord.  Later in this chapter comes Mary's song of praise the Magnificat, praising God for reversing the social status of society then and now.
POSSIBLE THOUGHTS FOR WORSHIP
  • Explore how the poor are blessed and used by God.  'The humble poor believe.'  C. Wesley. 
  • Are their spiritual blessings that only the humble or the poor can receive?
  • What here and now, on earth in 2014 is the Good News to the overlooked unfashionable and poor? 

Sources 

  • Cranfield, C.F.D., The Gospel according to Mark.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959
  • Barclay, W., The Gospel of Mark.  St Andrews: St Andrew Press, 1954
  • Hooker, M., The Message of Mark.  Peterborough: Epworth Press, 1983
  • Hargreaves, J., A Guide to St. Mark's Gospel.  London: SPCK,  1965
  • Martin, Ralph P., Mark: Evangelist and Theologian.  Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1972
  • Leaney, A.R.C., Cambridge: Black, 1958.  

Mark's World and Our World: A Further Introduction to Mark's Gospel Revised Common Lectionary Year B by Rev Barrie Morley

MARK THEN AND NOW 

Those dedicated and hard working people, Local Preachers in training often say that the hardest subject for them to come to terms with is Exegesis.  But it is one of the most important parts of preaching..  What is the point of simply repeating what Paul said to a new church in Ephesus in the first century when addressing a congregation in the UK 2,000 years later?   The words remain the same down the centuries, but  the world has changed, and our task is to dig out the golden nugget of eternal truth and allow congregations to 'cash' it here and now.    For example can we simply quote,  'Slaves be obedient to your masters', or 'Wives obey your husbands?' without putting those words into the context of British culture in this twenty first century?    And if we need to do more than simply quote it without question, then how many other Biblical texts and concepts need careful examination and exposition to ring bells for congregations today?

Several times a year we travel between the East Midlands and North Yorkshire.  I have come to realise that the best way for us to go, is over the mighty Humber Bridge.   The twin towers of that beautiful piece of engineering not only link Hessle with Barton on Humber, or even Yorkshire with North Lincolnshire.  They bridge two regions,  the Midlands and the North.    Just so when we prepare our sermons we stand on one bank of a river of time and ask questions like,  'Why wrote this?'  'When?'    'Under what circumstances?'   'To whom?'    Only then can we stand on the opposite bank of the river of time and begin to ask 'What kind of people will hear this today?'  'What are their "issues"?'  'How do those ancient words apply to todays world which is both different and the same?'  When we do that, we have begun to achieve an exegesis, and can then hope to share that golden nugget of truth in a way that might be helpful  to people today.

SO over the next twelve months we can dig deep into the oldest of the Gospels, the foundation for two of the others, and try to discover Mark's world, Mark's people, Mark's purpose.  Only then can we begin to think of the different people, in a different time, culture and place who will hear it today.    If we go through this process (which can be both fascinating and tedious),each time we preach or listen to a sermon, then Mark's word can come alive in our century just as much as it did in his. 

MARK'S WORLD

Many believe that this oldest of the canonical gospels was written around 80AD, probably in Rome, at a time when Jerusalem had been sacked by a Roman army and the temple reduced to ruins.  (See Dr. David Palmer's article).    This growth was mainly among Gentile people.  many of them were slaves and near the bottom of the social heap.  As the military and civil authorities began to understand that Christianity was a separate faith from Judaism, the followers of Jesus were losing the protection given them when they were seen as simply a branch of the Jewish faith.  Now the threat of persecution was in the air.  The exciting but testing atmosphere was heightened by questions about the promised return of King Jesus to reign.  Eighty years after Christ's death, and around thirty years after the earliest of Paul's letters (Thessalonians) revealed that people were on the tip toe of expectancy, Christ return to reign was still no more than a hope. 
Into these situations Mark composed his Gospel.   It seems to be aimed at those who taught new converts, (Pastors and teachers?) and evangelists who were working to spread the faith among others, and to strengthen believers in difficult times.

OUR WORLD

As we bridge the river of time from Mark's world to ours we find enough similarities to make us excited and bring his gospel to life today.
  • Just as the old faith, Judaism (-see Palmer) had suffered a severe setback, so now in the Western world, Christianity has experienced decades of decline.
  • HOWEVER, this provides a fallow field for evangelists to bring a Gospel which sounds 'new' that is, the Story is no longer known as it was say two generations ago.  To those who have never really heard the story before the Gospel can sound new and exciting Good News.
  • Now as then there are difficulties and sometimes even dangers in following the way of Christ.   Britain is now proud to be secular, religion is often seen as being a cause of conflict and harm in society, and there are restrictions on Chistian life style and worship. (e.g. Sunday work times and worship time can be incompatible).  Christian symbols and public prayers are forbidden in certain places.  
  • Disappointment and apparent delay continue as we still wait for the Kingdom of God to fully come.
  • One of the most fascinating aspects of Mark's gospel is the veiled identity of Jesus.  WE are told in the first verses who Jesus is, but throughout the book the Jewish leaders do not recognise who he is, and his own disciples lack faith and misunderstand that his mission must invlove suffering.   The Messiah, (the one chopsen and anointed by God) ends up dying on a cross.  
The original manuscripts of Mark end (Ch 16: 8) not in strong faith and joy, but  with disiples 'in fear and trembling.'
    
Today as in Mark's time the Lordship and reign of Christ are not obvious.  The way of Christ involves suffering, and it takes faith to see the man on the cross as God's Annointed.
Mark wrote a Gospel, , NOT a biography of Jesus of Nazareth.  In other words he provided material for Teachers and Evangelists.  Therefore we as preachers should be able to use his work in the way he intended - to help create and nurture Christians.
With these links between Mark's gospel in HIS time and in OURS, we turn to the Gospel readings for the season of Advent.

Monday 3 November 2014

Introduction to Mark's Gospel Revised Common Lectionary Year B by Rev Dr Graham G Palmer

Mark

By Rev Dr David G Palmer

Introduction

As a Supernumerary Minister of the Methodist Church, I am pleased to be invited to supply my introduction to Mark’s Gospel. 

I offer here an artwork and some notes of mine. The artwork itself has been produced at Double A0 size for exhibition purposes and is now one of a series that I have had reproduced and miniaturised in charts, jigsaws, mugs, mouse-mats, place mats and greetings cards in an attempt to stimulate and renew interest in the church in a serious study of the New Testament Books. 

The artwork, if you are looking at it on screen, can be enlarged electronically, of course. 

If my notes are too short for you here, there are my books and my website with its fuller presentation of this article, under ‘Samples’: www.davidgpalmer.co.uk.

Rev Dr David G. Palmer, Church Gresley, October 2014



Mark's Gospel

Mark’s Gospel was likely written in Rome soon after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple in 70 CE. The need for ‘Good News’ had to be met, and quickly. The return of the victorious General Titus with his spoils from Jerusalem’s temple, coupled with the news of the annihilation of most of the inhabitants of both Jerusalem and Judea, signalled (as it was thought then) the end 
of the Jewish faith. The ‘Mother Church’ of the new Christian Jewish sect (linked with the temple and keeping to the law) was gone too. Someone elsewhere, therefore, had to make sense of these cataclysmic events. Christians were everywhere scattered around the Roman Empire. Now they were adrift. It was they, in the first instance, not ‘the world’, who needed this Gospel. 

This, then, is the reason why this book’s theology of the atonement focuses on Jesus’ body as ‘the new temple’. It is a new teaching. It did not come from Paul who wrote his letters in the 50s and 60s. This is new thinking and it links the events of 70 CE with the writing of this Gospel. This book was going to be important. It would shape the thinking of the church, of itself as a discipleship movement in the world. It needed to be written well. It had, therefore, to be written to the rules of Ancient Rhetoric that pertained in the First Century [1]. These rules had to do with Idea, Structure, Style, Memory and Delivery. To get at the Gospel writer’s ‘Big Idea’ we have to understand the book’s structure. But to get at this, we first of all have to reckon with his writing style. 

The Title to this Gospel is found in the likely original opening words: ‘Beginning / of the gospel / of Jesus Christ’. It is a three-part construction. The Prologue is similarly arranged. Contrary to much scholarship on the matter, 1.2-20 describes its limits. Parsing establishes this [3]. Day One of ‘Logue’, the narrative of the Gospel, begins at 1.21. The first readers of this Gospel’s manuscript would have spotted these things. As a result they would have expected more of the same writing style throughout the rest of the document. And they wouldn’t have been disappointed! In the Greek, the first day’s telling covers a full 24 hours from dawn, through the twelve hours of daylight and the four watches of the night, to just before dawn on the following day. The writer’s choice is the Civil Day. Armed with these facts, we can go on to uncover the book’s structure.

For each of his Four Series (as my artwork presents them), the writer employs an arrangement that he adopts from the structure of Homer’s Iliad, which consists of a Prologue, a Logue (of Three Days, a Turning Point and Three Days) and an Epilogue. Each of the Series in Mark’s Gospel comprises Seven Days. They are in similar arrangement to that of Homer, ABB’XABB’, where a threesome of days, ABB’ in the telling, is balanced by a second threesome of days, ABB’, around a central day, X. The First Day, A, is introductory, the Second Day, B, is a first development and the Third Day, B’, is a second and concluding development. The overall structure of ‘four’ by ‘seven’ had meaning in the Century. ‘Seven’ represented ‘perfection’, ‘fulfilment’, or ‘completion’. ‘Four’ equated to the ‘four winds’ (for us today, the four points of the compass). The book has universal significance. 

Because we can define the Days in their Series, we can establish that the writer organised his work as a matrix which works vertically, horizontally and, at its middle, diagonally also. Take time to explore the artwork and you will see what I mean. Dualities are everywhere in this Gospel. This arrangement of this Book makes it, above all else, memorable. In an age of learning that was not based like ours on everyone’s ability to read, but was characterised by the oral-aural method, arrangement was hugely helpful [3]. Further, the Logue required both Prologue and Epilogue. Without an Epilogue no audience would have risen to leave!

In the artwork, I express the sunset of the first day’s telling and the sunrise of the last day’s telling, and I have shown the extending rays, in turn, over the different ‘halves’ of the matrix. The whole of the left ‘half’ of the matrix is about Jesus bringing the Old Covenant to a conclusion through fulfilling all its requirements. The whole of the right ‘half’ is about Jesus establishing the New Covenant. To present this Gospel meaningfully to an audience, the reader/reciter has all the help he (she?) needs. The writer enables him/her to deliver the text accurately from memory and ‘expose the speech with art of grace, dignity, gesture, modulation of voice and face’ [4].

We are thus propelled to understand the Big Idea of this book. While the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of its temple and the annihilation of most of the ‘Jerusalemites’ and ‘Judeans’ (see 1.5 for a link) is indeed very bad news, there is, nevertheless, really Good News (even in the Greek, ‘Bravo News’?) to share [5]. The Gospel tells in a fast moving and rivetingly alternating way how the sun set on the Old Covenant and rose on the New. Centring firmly on Jesus (his mission, death and resurrection), this Gospel demonstrates that Christianity is the new world religion. It is Judaism’s replacement and rightful successor! 



Notes

  1. For Ancient Rhetoric, see David G. Palmer, The Markan Matrix: A Literary-Structural Analysis of the Gospel of Mark, Ceridwen Press, Paisley, 1999; also David G. Palmer, New Testament: New Testimony to the Skills of the Writers and First Readers, Fourth Ed., Ceridwen Press, Church Gresley, 2013.
  2. By parsing, I mean that by subjecting the Greek text to grammatical scrutiny phrases and sentences can be defined.
  3. We do, of course, see how visual messaging in our culture has become almost as important as the word.  
  4. From Cicero, De Oratore, 55 BCE.
  5. The eu in euangelion, the Greek for ‘Good news’, means ‘well’, ‘well done’, ‘bravo’.