Mark 8:1-21.  Long again yesterday but shorter than the day before.  Hope I’m not causing you not to read.  As I read today’s reading it seemed to me that the trip to Dalmanutha and back was mostly to create an opportunity for Jesus to instruct his followers.  When we last saw Jesus he was in the region of Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee.  IN today’s reading Jesus and the disciples cross the sea twice.  In tomorrow’s reading Jesus is in Bethsaida on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee so the crowd in today’s reading is probably on that side.  Scholars don’t know where Dalmanutha is.  In Matthew 15 we see that same story and Matthew tells us that they went to Magadan another place we don’t know the location of.  From the flow of the story these places must have been on the estern side of the Sea of Galilee.  Most of the eastern side was “gentile” territory and the Pharisees avoided going into gentile territory if they could so that is another indication that Jesus and the disciples went over to the western shore.

In the beginning of our reading we see a miracle very similar to one earlier in Mark (Mark 6:33-44).  Jesus is teaching a large crowd and realizes that they must be hungry.  They have been listening to him for three days and many had traveled a long way to hear him.  When the disciple question him about where they will get enough food he asks them how much they have and then give instructions for everyone to sit down.  After praying he has his followers hand out the food and like the time in Mark 6 we see that everyone is fed and there is quite a bit left over.  This time we learn tht there were about 4000 people there.

Next Jeus and the guys get into a boat and go to Dalmanuth (or Magadan or both).   While there some Pharisees (Jewish religious leaders) come out and begin to argue with Jesus, then they demand proof of who he is, they want a sign; a miracle.  The problem is they wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t heard all the stories of what was going on with Jesus, there had been plenty of miracles so far, they just didn’t like what that all meant, Jesus was God.  Jesus was saddened by their request and refused to do a miracle for them.  Verse 12 literally says, “If a sign should be given to this generation…”  The statement is incomplete leaving the Pharisees to wonder.  It’s sort of a question like, ”What sign should I give this generation?” or “What sign would be good enough?”  Some scholars think the implied sentence should go something like, “If I give a sign to this generation may I die.”  Mark tells us that Jesus ‘sighs’ before he gives this answer.  Maybe he was hinting at the ultimate sign that he would give, dying on the cross.  Paul told the churches in Galatia many years later that everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed (referring to Jesus crucifixion and quoting Deuteronomy 21:23).  It is very interesting that that statement is in the Law of Moses since executions in Law were to be carried out by stoning and crucifixion wasn’t even invented for centuries after Moses wrote the Law down.  I think Jesus was in some way setting up the Pharisees for the greatest sign or proof of all, his death and resurrection.

In Mark we have seen that Jesus is doing a lot of “setting up” or preparing of people so that the good news about him will spread for a long time after his return to Heaven (see Acts 1:8).  Jesus was certain “setting up” his followers.  After talking to the Pharisees (a seeming wasted trip, but not if you realize Jesus is working through a plan), Jesus and the disciples go back across the Sea of Galilee.  Mark then tells us that they only had one loaf of bread with them, thay had forgotten to get more.  Jesus instructs them while they row across (remember this is a large body of water maybe 5 miles across and it can get very rough and windy).  He uses a parable of sorts and tells them to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees”.  “Leaven” is like yeast and is used to cause bread to rise.  In Jesus time it was a symbol of sin or evil.  In Matthew 16:12 we learn that Jesus is talking about their teaching.  Matthew mentions the Pharisees and Sadducees  (a second group of religious leaders in Israel at the time) but Mark mentions the Pharisees and Herod (the Roman ruler of the area who pretended to be a faithful Jew).  The warning, I think, is about not just the teaching of these people but about their closed minds about what the Old Testament meant.  Even the disciples were only looking at life from their own immediate situation.  “Oh, Jesus knows we are worried about not having enough bread.”  But that is not what Jesus was talking about at all, and they shouldn’t have been worried about bread when they had just recently seen Jesus turn a few loafs into enough to feed 4000 people (including them I suppose).  Jesus brings up theses miracles and then asks them if they really don’t get it.  In Matthew they finally get it but Mark leaves the question hanging, sort of like the unfinished question to the Pharisees.  In Matthew we learn that Jesus is confronting their lack of faith or trust but in Mark we see that he also was their lack of trust was self-made.  Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9-10; 42:18-20).  In another place in Matthew (Matthew 13:14-15) Jesus quotes those verses and it becomes clear that the problem is that the people are unwilling to understand what they clearly see and hear.  That seems to be the case with the Pharisees and Herod and the Sadducees and Jesus is warning the disciples not to fall into the same trap.  We need to not let our agenda block us from seeing the great things God is doing.  In Matthew the disciples get it but Mark leaves us hanging.

I think it’s important that Mark leaves these questions unanswered because we see the struggle that people have with accepting and following Jesus.  When we get to the end of Mark we will see that the original apostles struggle with following Jesus is a main point of Mark.  That would be meaningful to the believers in Rome who were also struggling to follow Jesus.  After all the disciple finally did stand up and live for Jesus and they changed the whole world, so there is hope for all of us, but they struggled.  We need to know that Jesus cares for us and our needs, and that he also cares about our fears. We also need to know that we have the same power available to us that helped the original followers through their fears and lack of faith too.  We just need to open our eyes and ears and especially our minds and hearts and see what Jesus has done, the signs are already there.

God help me believe.  Help me trust.  Help me see.  Help me not be afraid.  Let me look beyond today’s needs.  Let me trust you for them and for eternity.

Mark 7:24-37.  Yesterday’s comments were way too long.  I hope I am not driving anyone away by writing too much.  The purpose of this blog is to help people read there Bible’s regularly and it’s hard to read something that you don’t understand.  I want to give enough information to help people understand and keep reading.  I will try to write less though.  In yesterday’s reading we saw Jesus challenged about the actions of his followers with respect to following the washing habits and traditions of the religious leaders.  Jesus’ answer went way beyond the issue and according to Mark he basically wiped out the rules about what not to eat.  Jesus’ teaching was that being “unclean” comes from within, from our hearts, and not from what we eat.  The rules were there to teach the Jewish people (and the world) that god is pure and that we are not.

The Jewish people felt that they were special, and they were, God chose them to be an example to the world.  But being special did not make them perfect, in fact the fact that they were not perfect seems to be the main point of what we learn from them.  Because they had the Law of Moses and did not keep it we all understand that god is perfect and that we are failures.  We also learn of the mercy of God and his plan to fix our relationship with Him through Jesus.  In today’s reading we see Jesus dealing with the attitude of the Israelites (Jews) toward non-Jews (Gentiles).

Remember that Mark was writing to a group of believers who were mostly not Jewish, the church in Rome.  Also remember that they were seeing more and more hostility from those around them, it would not be long before even the emperor was attacking them.  They were also seeing more and more hostility from Jewish people, some of whom may have been friends and relatives.  Mark arranged the stories he chose to tell about Jesus with all of this in mind, he wanted his history of Jesus to be useful to the believers in Rome.  As non-Jews (Gentiles) it would have been good to hear that they did not need to abandon all of their culture to follow Jesus, also it may have been much more difficult for them to find “approved” food in a Gentile place like Rome.  Not to mention the fact that the Jewish people there may have made it even more difficult to buy the “right” food, if they had wanted to obey all the rules that the Jewish leaders had placed on the Jewish people.

In today’s reading Jesus moves from the actions of these non-Jewish believers to their actual existence.  Jesus leaves the “Jewish” region of Galilee and goes to the coast.  In the history of Israel the coastlands were often occupied by a group of people know as Philistines (you may remember the story of David and Goliath (a Philistine) or of Sampson (who had a lot of trouble with the Philistines).  Tyre and Sidon were both cities on the coast that had been centers of Philistine life and culture.  Tyre was about 35 miles north-west of the Sea of Galilee in a Roman territory known as Syria or Syro-Phonecia.  This was not a “Jewish” province and most of the people there would have been Gentiles.  In this story it seems that Jesus is taking a break.  Although he may be taking a break from the crowds Mark’s gospel always moves and Jesus is there to continue working out God’s plan to save people.  The fact that Jesus didn’t want people “knowing” he was there does not mean that he didn’t care about people or that he was trying to generally keep his identity a secret.  Jesus was there for a specific purpose and it didn’t involve the crowd.  Jesus had a specific thing to do in Tyre to move god’s plan a little bit further forward.  I build and fix houses and what I do isn’t always about  pounding nails, sometimes I have to plan, get supplies, call people and arrange for them to come work,, etc.  When I have people working with me or for me it’s not always about pounding nails for them either, sometimes I need to sit down and train them, or explain the plan to them.  In this story Jesus is doing something like that.

While in Tyre a woman comes to him because a demon has possessed her daughter.  She wants Jesus to order the demon out.  In verse 26 Mark tells us that the woman was a “Greek” of the “syro-Phoenecian race”.  The Greek part probably refers to her “culture”; how she acts.  The “Syro-Phoenecian” part tells us that she clearly was not an Israelite.  Jesus tells her that he is supposed to be focusing on the Jewish people.  His comment doesn’t reject Gentiles completely because he says he is supposed to help the “children” first.  Sometimes the Jewish people are called the “children of God” and that is what Jesus is talking about here.  I the way he is dealing with the woman Jesus is sort of living out a parable with her.  He is using a picture of family life to help her, and us, understand.  So a good parent makes sure the children are “fed”.  Jesus tells her a good parent doesn’t make dinner and throw it on the floor for the dogs and leave the children at the table hungry.  Behind this example you need to understand that Jewish people often referred to gentiles as dogs.  It wasn’t a kind comparison.  Jesus doesn’t feel the same about the gentiles but is probably trying to point out just how shocking and against the “rules” what he about to do is (the same rules that the religious leaders had made up to override God’s real purposes, see Mark 7:7-13).  Instead of being insulted by Jesus comments the woman stays focused on her need (By the way some experts like to point out that Jesus uses a form of the word for “dog” that is something like “puppy”.  They think that it makes what he said less harsh.)  The woman uses the example and point out that the dogs under the table often get the crumbs that the children drop.  She doesn’t want to take food out of the “children’s mouths”, she just want a little crumb.  Clearly from what we have read in Mark so far, casting out demons is a big deal, but this woman realizes that it is just a “crumb” of what Jesus can do, she’s not starving anyone.  Jesus compliments here great faith and tells here the demon is gone.  She was right, Jesus, didn’t even have to go see the girl, his power is so strong that all he had to do was want the demon gone and it was.

After leaving Tyre Jesus took the long way back to Galilee traveling through more Gentile territory, Sidon and Decapolis.  Along the way he does another miracle, he heals a deaf and mute man.  This story may seem odd because of what Jesus does as he heals the man.  First he touches the man.  The fact that this man is living in Decapolis probably means that he is a Gentile too.  Mark doesn’t tell us that but it certainly seems to be the point of this part of Mark as we will see.  Jews avoided going into gentile territory and even tried to avoid physical contact with them, so this is unusual activities for a Jewish Rabbi (teacher), which Jesus was.  Jesus put his fingers into the mans ears then put some spit on his fingers and touched the man’s tongue.  Yuck!  What’s that all about?  In ancient days doctors would use similar ritual to try to heal someone, so Jesus was copying what the doctors would do in his day.  But why?  I’m sure the man had seen this before, and the key word is “seen”.  Remember that man could not hear.  Jesus actions would have communicate to the man that he was gong to heal him.  Of course Jesus didn’t need to follow some stupid ineffective ritual to heal, we just saw that with the woman, but by following the ritual Jesus communicated to the man in language that he would understand.  But Jesus did more, he prayed, and he did it in a way that would also help the man see.  Basically Jesus was acting out for the man this message, “I’m going to heal you and it is going to be by the power of God.”  Then Jesus healed the man, the man could hear and speak.  Some translations tell us that originally he could speak with difficulty, and that is the meaning of the word translated “mute” in verse 32.  But in verse 35 the word used means that he couldn’t speak at all and verse 37 is a quote from Isaiah 35:5-6 where the Hebrew word used means “not speak at all”.  In an old Greek translation of Isaiah 35 it actually uses the word from verse 32 to translate “mute”.  Whether the man could make any noise at all isn’t the point.  The point is that his broken body was fixed and by quoting Isaiah 35, or hinting at it, it is clear that the people saw some sort of connection with Isaiah’s words.  Those words are in a part of Isaiah where he is talking about the time in history when God will take over the world and the messiah, the Christ, the chosen one, will rule it.  It will be a time when all the promises made to the Israelites will be fulfilled.  If you read through Isaiah with us you might also remember that those promises were not just for the Israelites but that all the people groups, all the nations, of the world would share in them.  Pretty cool stuff to be hearing in from the people in the gentile region of Decapolis.  They seemed to be starting to realize that Jesus was the promise one.

God had a plan, a plan to save the world.  By world I mean the people in it.  God wants his relationship with us fixed.  It took God coming into the world and taking the consequences of our disobedience and rebellion (sin) on himself to do that.  That is why the sinless Jesus died on the cross and suffered separation (death) from God the Father; to pay the price in our place.  But that substitution would be useless unless people hear.  So God’s plan involved sitting down (or traveling around) with a small group of followers, showing and explaining who he was and what he was doing.  Jesus had more to do that just die on the cross. That is why sometimes he needed what he was doing to be private, just for his close followers, just for a time.  Remember the religious leaders were looking to destroy him (Mark 3:6).  Jesus had a complete story to set up so the whole world would be able to hear and understand and be healed.  This story was good news for those “gentile” believers living in Rome and it is good news for us too.  Jesus is willing to heal even us; Jesus’ power is for even us.  Jesus is available to all people; all the nations get to share in who the messiah is and what he is doing.  Awesome.

Jesus thank you that you do not play favorites.  Yes you had a plan and it started with the Jews, but it didn’t end there.  Thank you for being about people.  Thank you for being about me.  Help me trust you and give you honor.  Help me see you as the fulfillment of all the promises made to mankind.  Thank you for crushing the serpent (Genesis 3), help me not resurrect him in my life.  The demons are gone, my ears are open, help me speak your words of love and healing to the world around me.