Mark 5:21-43

Read It

There are a lot of things that I could discuss in this particular narrative. However, one thing in particular leaps out at me. The theme of touch runs through this narrative like an electric current. The touch of the crowds - unyielding, jostling, forceful. The touch of the woman - tentative, ashamed, yet full of faith. And the touch of Jesus - the touch that sets this story on its edge, rearranging our categories and challenging our assumptions.

What is so significant about Jesus' touch? To understand why this story is so amazing, we must first understand something of Old Testament law. Touch was a sacred thing, something to be guarded and used with caution. More specifically, touch was one way of becoming ritually unclean; coming in contact with unclean people or things would, in turn, make a person also unclean. In this story, two people in particular are notable for being unclean: the sick woman and the dead girl.

The reality of the narrative is that Jesus demolishes the barriers that separate Him from those who have been identified as "unclean". Speaking from the perspective of the Law, the sick woman should not have been where she was. In the middle of a crowd, she most likely would make dozens of people also ritually unclean as a result of contact with her. Her fear of discovery is grounded in the shame of one who has no right to be where she is. In the same way, a respectable Jewish rabbi would certainly not touch a dead body!

The irony of the story is that, not once, but twice Jesus steps over the bounds of propriety in compassion for others. In doing so, however, Jesus does not become "unclean" - in fact, the opposite occurs! Jesus' touch brings healing, wholeness, and life to those who are beyond the bounds of propriety. Jesus does not become "unclean" - the woman and the girl become clean again.

Mark 5:1-20

Read It

This is another odd passage that grates against our sensibilities. I'm not going to list all of the things I find odd about it; no doubt you have your own. It stands in contrast to so much of what we experience in a modernized, mechanized, medicated culture. However, looking past the oddities, two things about this passage capture my attention.

First, I notice that the people from the surrounding area that came to witness the amazing restoration of a man who was once quite insane quickly got over their amazement. In fact, they asked Jesus to leave town. Part of this may be the awe and fear of a power that they could not grasp, that turned their sensibilities upside-down and confronted them with an act of kindness and mercy that they simply had no way of grasping. However, I can't help but notice the comment made by Mark - they heard, not just about the man, but also about the pigs. I have to wonder if, recognizing the cost of mercy, they decided it was rather too high. Were they more concerned about their financial losses than about seeing one who was in bondage brought to freedom and wholeness?

The second thing that I have to notice is that, when the man asks to follow, Jesus turns him down. Instead, he is sent back to tell of the amazing thing that has happened to him. And where is he sent back? No doubt to the very people who were more concerned about pigs than about his restoration, who chained him and bound him and turned their backs as he made his home in the tombs. And I have to wonder about the faith of this man who, as the story goes, followed Jesus relentlessly after a chance meeting that turned his life upside down. I wonder at the faith of this man, who the story does not even name, and at the callousness of those who had no compassion on him, and I ask myself - who in this story do I most resemble?

This Thing We Do

Theology is a strange animal. It appears to have a bit of genus confusion, particularly as popularly practiced and understood in my context, that of the American suburban church with its usual ties to seminary and denomination. I think the confusion results from its attempts to masquerade as a science. Even the name, with its serious and professional-sounding "-ology" suffix, lends credence to this misnomer. The theology that I am familiar with too often looks like a monkey who thinks he's a dolphin, a beast out of its natural habitat who has mananged to convince itself that it belongs but who cannot comprehend its difficulty in adapting to its environment.

When I graduated from college in 1996, I marched down the aisle and received a rather fancy certificate, clean and white and very official-looking, like something telling me I had won a million dollars or a free magazine subscription. As is typical for one who has paid his dues, I hung my million-dollar certificate on my wall in my office, never bothering to consider the irony of what it conveyed - the title of Bachelor of Science in Bible. I often wonder now what Bacon would think of my title, whether he'd be impressed with how far his method has come so as to include even the deity, or whether he'd merely shake his head in incomprehension, wondering how these people had confused observation, experiment, and hypothesis with story, art, and faith.

The problem, I think, with understanding theology as science is that the tools of scientific inquiry do odd, and sometimes bad, things to our search for meaning (which I believe lies at the heart of most theology). Think, for example, about the way in which we approach scripture - we dissect it, cutting it up into the smallest components possible, so that we can describe its systems and connections. Unfortunately, dissection usually involves killing the dissectee. Something irreplacable is lost in the process. In attempting to reduce scripture to its component parts, we have robbed it of the life and beauty and grace that it rightly possesses.

What if we approached theology more as caretakers of the stories of our people and less as scientific authorities? What if we became excited about the grand story of God and attempted to simply live within and articulate that story? What if our theologians became artists and poets and bards rather than scientists and technicians? What if the tools of the trade were not just reason, but also imagination, not just systems, but also stories, not just inquiry, but also mystery?

What if, indeed.

Must Have

As bizarre as this sounds, I'd imagine Darth Tater will be taking a prominent place on my desk this spring.

Mark 4:35-41

Read It

This passage is one of the more familiar passages from the gospel accounts. It is also one of the places where sermons and books have been least kind to the disciples, in my opinion. It's easy to dismiss their fear as something shameful as we sit comfortably at home reading the story of which we already know the end. However, in many ways, I find that this particular narrative encapsulates the experiences of the disciples following Jesus perfectly. Remember that, particulary for Mark, Jesus' identity was something of a secret and was most certainly a surprise. Read this as though you do not know the end of the story, and I think you'll find the disciples quite a sympathetic bunch indeed.

However, even in second reading, this story should be somewhat disturbing. The ill-fated boating trip? Jesus' idea. Jesus leads his friends into the teeth of a life-threatening storm and then goes to take a nap. When the disciples needed him the most, he gave all indications of being unavailable. The words of the disciples, "Is it nothing to you if we drown?" - those words should stick in our hearts, because most likely we have all uttered the same prayer at some point in our journey. Is it nothing to you, you who convinced us to get on the boat, you who set our course, you who went to sleep when you were most needed, is it nothing to you if we drown? It makes me question the seriousness of Jesus' response: "Why did you doubt?" Jesus, did you see the gale force winds and waves larger than the boat?

This is not a child's tale. This story is not for the faint of heart. Here, we are confronted with the not-at-all-tame lion, the unsafe God who lives wildly and recklessly. We are confronted with the fact that we, too, are in the boat with him, that he has set our course and even now is glancing at the stern with sleepy eyes. But trust is called for as well, forcing us often to live in the tension between fear and faith, responding most appropriately with the same words that the disciples used - "Who is this that I am following?"

New Beginnings

Although it wasn't by design, it's good to take a step away from things that are important to you at times so as to see them more clearly. If you are like me, becoming personally invested in a thing colors your lenses, so to speak, preventing you from evaluating them clearly. So it is with this blog. Having some time away gives me a bit of a perspective on where I am with the site and where I want to go. Also, in keeping with the grand tradition of laying out goals for the new year which one has no intention of keeping, I'm feeling somewhat evaluative lately (although my intentions certainly are to follow through). So, with that in mind, I want to share some of my reasons for continuing to write and what I'd like to talk about in the near future, and invite you to come along for the journey.

In honesty, I almost decided to stop doing the site after the spam attack. It was an absolute mess. But one positive thing came out of it - I thought again about why I started to do this and came away with a new sense of purpose. I started this site to engage in conversation with other people who are thoughtful and invested in doing God's deeds and thinking God's thoughts, and I've made some great friends doing so. I also wanted a place to think out loud and have others who would tell me that I'm either onto something or on something, so to speak. Finally, I wanted to write regularly so as to improve my writing skills. I think that theopraxis has, for me, become all of these things, and I would miss it dearly. So where to go next?

First, I want to get back to Mark. I stopped at the end of Mark 4, not on purpose but rather because Real Life overwhelmed me at the end of last semester. I'd actually like to be more regular about it, so expect to see an excerpt from Mark every Monday. If we finish Mark (when I did Mark with my youth group it took eight months), I'll move on to something else - I'm currently leaning towards one of the prophetic books, but that will no doubt change.

Other things I'm thinking about that I want to spend some time on include a discussion on the nature and role of theology and an approach to Scripture. I also hope to continue to write creatively and imaginatively as the occasion warrants.

That's quite an agenda I think! I'm looking forward to writing more, conversing more, listening more, and learning more, and you are welcome to be a part of my journey.

Comments

It appears I still have some tweaking to do with my Movable Type configuration. I can't figure out how to turn off comment moderation. For the moment, if you submit a comment, it won't be displayed until I manually approve it. I don't want to leave it that way, but I don't have time to figure out what's wrong at the moment.

Back

I think I've gotten everything set up correctly. It took much longer than I thought and not everything in the interface is displaying correctly, but at least I can post! Back to writing, thankfully...

Spam

What a week. My dog chewed my laptop power cable, so I've been without a computer for about a week. On top of that, I was hit severely by comment spam this weekend, which ended up crashing the server. I'm back up for now, but I've removed the comment utility as a temporary fix until I can get the site upgraded. It's very discouraging. I won't be posting anything until I get this fixed. Be back soon.