🦁 Lent 2-👑

Readings: Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-10; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15. 

Reflection

Welcome to first forward Advance Scriptural Insight for Christian Soldiers. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. The readings for Lent to come to us from Genesis 17, Psalm 22, Romans four and Mark eight and those who have been listening for a while. No, you know, I'm I always gravitate to the Gospels. I almost never, you know, interpreted reflect on the Psalms. That's not really the function of the Psalms typically in a worship service. But you will remember from last week with Lent one and this this notion of covenant and what it means and where it comes from as a word in the Hebrew word that we translate covenant is from splitting or cutting. And that's why when Abraham becomes Abraham, he walks or the the Lord walks between the split animals. It was a ritual in the ancient near East, and it's a giving up of your wealth, your livestock. But it also is a simile or a metaphor for your own, your own life being ripped apart and being grateful or thankful or recognizing that that's not happening. Coming just up to taking your own life, it's like taking a vow of honor, right? I really think we need to get back to this idea that, you know, all you really have is your word. And trust was tantamount to nomadic people like Abraham has been called to be. He's called out of earth to wander in the desert as as a Bedouin and as a Bedouin as as a pastoral people, a tribe or clan. Like what you have is what you have, right? You survive off the meat of your animals, the kindness of strangers. And so your word is really supposed to be all important. You know, lying is so much bigger of a problem in the ancient world than it is today. You know, this was before, you know, propaganda and, you know, marketing like what you said mattered. And if you did not honor your own word, there were consequences. And people would tell other people that you were not trustworthy. And so making a covenant is supposed to be the sacred vow, the sacred honor that is signified in killing another animal and recognizing that I will kill it in my stead. And that's how much, you know, this is supposed to mean. And what caught my eye in in the reading from the gospel, Jesus is saying, and of course, Mark is written after Jesus death in the midst of the rebellion and in about 67, 68, when that will conclude with the destruction of the temple, Saul goes around writing all these letters in the fifties and into the sixties, dies in 64, and then the nationalistic element in Judaism, in Jerusalem begins to take power. The Zealot party, as Josephus calls it. And they want Rome out, and the Sadducees and the people who have power in Jerusalem through Jewish means, through the temple economy, they're like, Oh shit, man, you know, we're not going to hold this back. We need to throw in our lot with the zealot party. 

And so Mark, as he's writing this, knows that trouble is brewing and this is the farthest that a Jewish nationalism has gone. There were, you know, kind of hotbeds of activity. Josephus and other and even contemporary writers who recognize there's there's messianic pretenders, there's rebellious actors, you know, even before the Maccabee ends, right? This is a recurring theme. And almost always they get knocked down and destroyed. And so as Mark is writing this, reflecting on Jesus's life, he's you know, I hear in Peter saying so. So Jesus is saying, look, what's going to happen when you in with me and with what we're doing is I'm going to undergo great suffering. I'm going to be rejected by everybody, the priests, the lawyers and theologians, and I'm going to die. But I'll be back. And Mark knows he'll be resurrected. That's not news to the community. He's just recording it. But what he what the Martin Community and its author and editors seem to be remembering is that Peter takes Jesus aside later and says, No, no, no, we're going to win this thing. We're in it to win it, right? We're going to overthrow Rome, not like the rest of them. You know, we're not going to fail. And this is Peter that it's that Mark puts it on the lips of. Right. And maybe it was. But what's significant with Peter is that he's also the person who is going to doubt Jesus. Peter is so bought in. Peter is maybe one of Jesus most zealous followers, and he is convinced that they're going to win that of all the other people, you know, Theodosius the Egyptian, you know, all these other messianic pretenders, they all failed. Even the Maccabees ultimately failed. But we're going to win it with you, Jesus and Peter. And what upsets Peter is that it says he's Jesus is saying this quite openly and the the word Israel, which is like speaking. And then all or open right everybody hears is not hiding the fact that he's going to be killed. And remember what I said last week in Lent. One, if you are if you're a human being and you think that you're going to get away from death, I'm very sorry. You're living in an illusion. That's a fantasy world. We're all going to die. Jesus knows that. I know what God knows that Peter knew it. But you want to get as much out of this life as he can. Maybe you want to get as much money, as much freedom, as much success, as much power. I don't know. Whatever the fuck it is that is, I think that impulse in Peter that is pushing back and he says, No, no, no, no, you're not going to suffer and die. I mean, yeah, maybe we'll suffered, but like dying, that's failure. And Jesus says, Get this is he says, Get behind me, Satan. Right? And not because Peter is a douchebag necessarily, but because Satan and God are on opposing sides. They're not equals, but they're on opposing sides. And that's why he says immediately following you're setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things, mere human things that I can get as much out of this as I as I or I should get as much out of this life as I can. That success looks like being on top of my enemies. And this is well attested in the Psalms and everywhere. Like that's that's a human instinct. But like we forget that all of it's going to be gone eventually. We like to forget that, you know, from dust. We came and to dust we will return. The Egyptians used to bury themselves with their own possessions, thinking they would get them in the afterlife. And that's, you know, this is you know, I think it's still alive. We may not bury ourselves in caskets of gold or something, but we like we've set up trusts and foundations to keep putting our names on shit. And that is what it means to be after human things. Soldiers in battle or even in service know that the chance that they're going to die is high. In this moment, many of us wrote, I called it a death letter or is that when I think I don't remember what I called it, but I wrote letters saying goodbye to everybody. I feel them in an envelope. I gave it to my dad and said, If I die, please hand these out. That is what it means to face death and to figure out what this life means when you don't have it right. It's not what is my legacy, but what? What am I truly after? Am I after the things that I think I need to grab from other people? Or am I after the things that I know God has provided for all of us? 

Peter was convinced and many of the early followers of Jesus were convinced that he was one of these imposters, one of these messianic folks. But the real one. Right. And that the script goes, I'm going to throw off our oppressors and then we're going to be free. And this is straight out of judges, right? That when the voice of the Israelites cry out on behalf of their task masters, their oppressors, a judge comes and saves them. Yasser And the say the salvation usually comes through military means. Gideon Often the Aldebaran. Barak like this is all they all saved Israel, quote unquote, through military means. And we'll forget for a moment. That's that Joshua And judges were metaphorically written. I mean, it's very clear, it's not ambiguous, but that is that is what we get in our head, that we just need this charismatic figure who is trustworthy and who can who can wield the sword to throw off our oppressors and time and again in the Old Testament, when you actually read it, that's not what happens, right? Barack is not the one who wins. It's some woman whose name means Mountain Goat. Joel, and he doesn't get the credit for the win. Joel does, a woman does, and Deborah does, who is his commander. So we get these pattern in our head of thinking, whether it's patriarchy, primogeniture, the oldest should get the largest inheritance. Like we get these things in our brains and the Bible comes along and says, Now get that out. Right? Be happy with what you've got. Sure, pain is bad. I'm going to come to your aid when you are under oppression, but it's not going to come in the way you think. That's why Martin Luther King, when he inherited the double V campaign from Black Civil World War Two veterans, he probably didn't know when or how he would die, but he knew it was going to happen. There was at least two assassination attempts like he knew right. But he he almost certainly knew that very, very early on in the process. Otherwise, like, if he didn't know and he was surprise it, you know, somebody is going to come at him with an ice pick in his chest. He would have walked away. But he knows that death is not the problem. It's what you do with your life, the impact that you have and the extent to which you reflect God's goodness and togetherness here in the world. That the light can shine in the midst of darkness. That victory does not look like what you think it will look like. It will not be without compromise. It will not be without a little blood, sweat and tears. And it will always be partial until that moment that Christians and Jews had believed that God really would come back. Right and right. All these things we have in Revelation and the same idea was alive and Jesus was here. And that's why they thought that this was God coming right now in all the glory that we anticipate. Right. And what we learn in the Gospels is that God does come, but not in the form that we expect doesn't take the the steps or the strategy that we anticipate that we want. It's not it's it's not for us, for humans. It's not about vengeance. It's about following God and doing those things that God has or becoming the kind of people, the kind of creatures that God has created good together. Right? Trusting, vulnerable. And when that vulnerability is exploited for so long, it's hard to continue to be vulnerable. But that is what God does over and over and over again. Israel lets God down and God never forgets Israel. 

Jesus is the culmination of God's promise. Not the not the the end of it, right? I don't. I'm not I'm hope I'm trying not to say that this is the this is all of God's revelation. I think there is more coming. But what we have before us in the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian Testament, we've so often sold ourselves short. We're like, Peter Well, no, no, no. You know, if if we just get control of the government, if we just get this, if we just get that, like what if no, what if what if that's not what God has called us? To what if nationalism is is alive not only in the kind of make a make America great populist, kind of like whatever fascist populist fascism or something. I don't know what if it really is about being satisfied with what you have, finding the goodness in what you've been provided and making the most of the things that you do have in your power to to, to to live and to be the kind of world communities, neighborhoods that reflect the values that we encounter in the Bible that God has been forming in us from the from the very beginning.