The Internet Monk Archives

Wendell Berry: …these were Heavenly

River Shore, Deep Summer (Harlan Hubbard)

•

“…these were Heavenly”
by Wendell Berry

The painter Harlan Hubbard said
that he was painting Heaven when
the places he painted merely were
the Campbell or the Trimble County
banks of the Ohio, or farms
and hills where he had worked or roamed
a house’s gable and roofline
rising from a fold in the hills,
trees bearing snow, two shanty boats
at dawn, immortal light upon
the flowing river in its bends.
And these were Heavenly because
he never saw them clear enough
to satisfy his love, his need
to see them all again, again

•

from Wendell Berry. Leavings: Poems

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: Labor Day Weekend 2020 Edition

The first official Labor Day was born in a context of protest and violence…

On May 11, 1894, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car manufacturer near Chicago, went on strike to protest their low wages and 16-hour workdays. On June 22, members of the powerful American Railway Union joined their struggle by refusing to move Pullman’s cars from one train to another, thus crippling rail traffic across the country.

On July 3, President Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago to end the boycott. Strikers rioted and on July 7, national guardsmen fired into a mob and killed as many as 30 people.

In an attempt to appease the strikers and their supporters, the Senate had passed a bill designating Labor Day a public holiday. The bill was signed by President Cleveland June 28, 1894. It didn’t stop the violence, but the Labor Day commemoration, which had been languishing in Washington, finally became a day of rest to honor workers.

•

Completely off the rails…

From now on, I refuse to grant John MacArthur any more space here at IM.

•

Quote of the week…

All of the virtues depend upon truth, and truth depends upon them all. Final truth in this world is unattainable, but its pursuit leads the individual away from unfreedom. The temptation to believe what feels right assails us at all times from all directions. Authoritarianism begins when we can no longer tell the difference between the true and the appealing. At the same time, the cynic who decides that there is no truth at all is the citizen who welcomes the tyrant. Total doubt about all authority is naïveté about the particular authority that reads emotions and breeds cynicism. To seek the truth means finding a way between conformity and complacency, towards individuality.

• Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (p. 280)

•

Glad to see someone is focusing on the most important issue of the day…

A Lincoln man spoke passionately at a recent City Council meeting about the improper use of a term used in restaurants and bars across the world.

The term: Boneless Chicken Wings.

Lincoln resident Ander Christensen spoke during the public comment period of the meeting, encouraging society to rebrand the popular food item.

“Lincoln has the opportunity to be a social leader in this county,” said Christensen. “We have been casually ignoring a problem that has gotten so out of control that our children are casually throwing around names and words without even understanding their true meaning.”

The man proposed that Lincoln remove the term boneless chicken wings “from our menus and from our hearts.”

He went on to list the reasons why and offered a list of alternative words to describe the chicken product. Alternative names included buffalo-style chicken tenders and saucy nugs.

“We’ve been living a lie for far too long, and we know it because we feel it in our bones,” said Christensen.

•

More on building a restaurant business…

From Reuters:

TOKYO – A sushi restaurant in central Japan is trying to boost sluggish demand during the coronavirus pandemic by sending shirtless bodybuilders to deliver food to its customers.

The service dubbed “Delivery Macho”, was established by 41-year-old Imazushi chef Masanori Sugiura who is also a competition bodybuilder.

Sugiura has recruited his friends who worked at fitness gyms to work as sushi delivery staff, as they were out of work during the pandemic.

The only condition is that customers need to order a minimum of 7000 yen ($66) to get a taste of the delivery macho.

The promotion has been a sensation on Twitter, and Sugiura receives up to 10 orders a day with monthly earnings from the service of about 1.5 million yen.

•

12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee…

Seen at Mockingbird

We admit that our single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.
Have come to believe that our means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind.
Realize that we detest mercy being given to those who, unlike us, haven’t worked for it and don’t deserve it.
Have decided that we don’t want to get what we deserve after all, and we don’t want anyone else to either.
Will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to anyone but ourselves.
Are ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
Embrace the belief that we are, and will always be, experts at sinning.
Are looking closely at the lives of famous men and women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like us.
Are seeking through prayer and meditation to make a conscious effort to consider others better than ourselves.
Embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and glorious reality.
Choose to rid ourselves of any attitude that is not bathed in gratitude.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to others who think that Christians are better than everyone else.

• John Fischer, 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (like me)

•

R.I.P. Chadwick Boseman…

Kaleb Murray, 4, and his mother, Jasmine Pearson attend a community celebration for late actor Chadwick Boseman in his hometown of Anderson, South Carolina. (REUTERS: Chris Aluka Berry)

•

R.I.P. Tom Terrific…

•

Photo of the week…

Read about it HERE

Pastor Jes Kast shares a message with the congregation of Faith United Church of Christ during a floating service at Bald Eagle State Park, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 30, 2020. (RNS/Abby Drey)

•

HAPPY 100th, BIRD…

Read “How Charlie Parker Defined the Sound and Substance of Beebop Jazz”

Bebop…arose on the brink of the Second World War, and came to fruition while the war was being waged. It’s one of the triumvirate of modernisms that was born from a generation of noncombatants, of 4-Fs. Like Jackson Pollock and Orson Welles, Parker, Monk, and Gillespie were deemed ineligible for service; what Welles did for film direction and Pollock did for painting, Parker, in particular, did for jazz, by representing the unrepresentable. Parker’s art is one of sonic images that give form to ideas that were hiding in plain sight or off the map of American mainstream culture; his tone embodies the very urgency of these representations. The abstractions of his art expressed the violence, the horror, the existential danger of wartime; furthermore, his art also gave voice to the blare of total mobilization in pursuit of victory in the war—and the injustices and indignities borne by Black Americans at home, which mocked the ideals of that national effort.

People could and did dance to Parker’s music, but it was essentially concert music; it wouldn’t have served to back a floor show (as many big bands did, despite the epochal inventiveness of their music). With its intricate harmonies, Parker—nicknamed Bird, which was in turn short for Yardbird—turned soloing into a jittery and skittering rope dance of chord changes that made his melodic inventiveness, his depth of feeling, his supersonic virtuosity, and his mercurial imagination all the more astounding.

Read more: “Charlie Parker at 100: What to Read, Watch and Dig”

Reconsider Jesus – The Baptism (Mark 1:9-11)

Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark
A devotional commentary by Michael Spencer
Compiled and Edited by: Michael Bell
Table of Contents

The Baptism

9 About that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. 10 As soon as Jesus came out of the water, he saw the sky open and the Holy Spirit coming down to him like a dove. 11 A voice from heaven said, “You are my own dear Son, and I am pleased with you.”

Mark 1:9-11 – C.E.V.

When it comes to the story of Jesus’ baptism, most of my “memory” of the event is a combination and harmonization of all four gospel accounts. When we look at Mark’s account by itself, we are struck with its brevity, but also with its directness and the force of its conclusion. Though some well-known critical scholars question whether this event ever occurred, its very inclusion speaks highly of its historicity. To elaborate on what was discussed in a previous chapter, it would have been an embarrassment for the early Christians to explain why the Son of God was baptized by a Jewish prophet in a ceremony that indicated conversion or repentance from sin! Yet, all the Gospel writers make it a centerpiece of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Time is a hard matter to trace in Mark’s Gospel. Mark hits the ground running and is more concerned with “what’s next” rather than with “when.” This contrasts with Luke, who carefully anchors many events into the historical and political figures of the day.²² As to when Jesus was baptized, it is simply “about that time” or as the NASB version states it: “And it came about in those days.” We can assume that this is during the ministry of John the Baptist. As I have mentioned earlier, it is easy to fit an extended time of contact between John and Jesus into what the Gospels tell us, though it is not certain. I find it unlikely that this was the first time John had met Jesus or vice-versa.

Baptism is not a secret ritual and Jesus certainly publicly presented himself to John. What was going through the mind of those two men has been a fascination for Christians ever since. Why was Jesus baptized? Those who see here a denial of the Christian doctrine of the sinlessness of Christ are being shallow. The message and ministry of John are incomplete without the one who would come after, the bridegroom for whom the friend is only the announcer. What other way was there for Jesus to be presented into the plan and ministry of John? There is also a picture here of the savior of sinners standing in the place of sinners, a preview of the cross that is to come. Most likely, this was simply the place where the Father directed Jesus to go, the place where he would receive the spiritual release for his ministry.

The later Gospels tell us that Jesus had to explain to John the importance of carrying through with this ritual, one that places Christ in a position of humility and service. One of the answers Jesus gives is that it is necessary to “fulfill all righteousness.”²³ The heart of Jesus is to submit to the heavenly Father in all things. Those coming out of the waters were proclaiming their ultimate allegiance to the Kingdom and their abandonment of everything to prepare for it. Jesus comes to the waters abandoning family and reputation, completely surrendered to the will of God, while he does not need cleansing, obedience requires him to publicly lead the way that will be the way of his disciples.

Jesus has many admirers today who may imagine they are disciples. Baptism, and the public identification with the purposes of God, was the way chosen by Jesus for himself and his followers. How do we imagine ourselves followers of Jesus if we cannot go the way that Jesus himself followed? While many may say they are “followers” but not “joiners,” you cannot be a Kingdom person and a secret disciple.

The language of baptism would indicate immersion, which the word baptizo most closely resembles. The mode of baptism is relatively unimportant, but for those who want to follow Jesus there is significance in following his example by “coming up out of the water.”²⁴

Water was frequently associated with end-time cleansing and renewal. Passages such as Isaiah 44:3, Ezekiel 36:25-38, and Joel 2:28-32 reminded the Jewish people that the Spirit of the Lord would cleanse and anoint at the time of his Kingdom’s arrival. Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of the fulfillment of these prophecies.

Mark immediately moves on to what happens next. Note his use in verse 10 of the phrase “as soon as”. In other Bible versions it is translated “immediately” or “just as”. This is a favorite Markan device used for tone and pace in the narrative. There is a rush, an immediacy to Mark that is not in the other Gospels. Mark has a movie director’s sense of pace and he pushes his characters at a ruthless pace!²⁵ But there is something to be said for this; Mark wants his readers to be caught up in the action. He doesn’t linger often and wants his audience to follow Jesus literally, as Jesus moves immediately from event to event.

Then the unexpected happens, “the sky opens”, or more literally “the sky was torn open.” The language parallels that of Isaiah 64:1, “Rip the heavens apart! Come down, Lord; make the mountains tremble.” This was not a mere parting of the clouds that is described here, but a sign of God acting directly in the earthly sphere. It speaks of God removing a barrier between himself and his creation, similar to the tearing of the temple veil in Mark 15:38. It also marks the end of God’s silence and the beginning of his speaking through Jesus. When we read about the life of Jesus we should expect the unexpected. This first unexpected event is quickly followed by another, and Mark tells us of the descent of the Holy Spirit and the voice from heaven.

The comparison of the Holy Spirit to a dove never occurs in the Old Testament or in Rabbinic literature. Some say this image may be intended to draw us back to Noah and that the dove is a symbol for a new world. More likely this is purely descriptive and points to some visible aspect of the Spirit’s coming upon Jesus. Those who actually picture a bird landing on Jesus have missed the point! Isaiah 61:1 says that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon the Messiah to anoint him for ministry, and this is undoubtedly the experience Jesus has at his baptism.²⁶ ²⁷

The words God uses to identify his son are found in two (or possibly three) Old Testament passages. Psalm 2:7 speaks of the royal Son, Isaiah 42:1 about the suffering servant who pleases God and Genesis 22:2 about the beloved Son who is offered. All these Old Testament motifs surround Jesus at this point. Mark is also identifying Jesus to his readers, but his identity is still a secret to all others. This is the beginning of Mark’s ironic use of secrecy. The reader will know Jesus’ identity, but it will be an unfolding secret to all others. God himself proclaims that this is his son. It is not a matter of human opinion. The scriptures have spoken of him long before he came into the world. Now Father, Son and Holy Spirit come together to inaugurate the Kingdom of God that comes in Jesus.

Jesus’ baptism is a beautiful picture to contemplate. It is a crucial experience in Jesus’ own life, a dividing line between what has gone before and his coming ministry. He will be directed by the Spirit from here to the cross. His baptism is also a model for all of us to follow. It is the public announcement of our heart’s intentions. It is a picture, in water, of a spiritual reality. In baptism, the Spirit comes to us as well, to cleanse and to anoint for ministry. The Father says to each of us that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And where to from here? To the desert of temptation and testing!

—————————————-

Footnotes:

[22] Luke 3:1-2 “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.” – NIV

Tiberius Caesar started his rule in A.D. 14. which meant that John started his ministry about A.D. 29. This date fits with the dates that we know for the others mentioned in this passage.

[23] Matthew 3:15

[24] The Didache, best described as an early Christian instruction manual, recommended that Baptism be performed if possible in cold running water. However, as a Pastor friend noted, “I see very little spiritual benefit in being baptized in cold water!”

[25] The portrayal of Mark as a Movie Director can be found in the Introduction to Mark in the NIV Student Bible. Notes were written by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford.

[26] Compare Isaiah 61:1 with Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4:16-21.

[27] We cannot overlook the similarities between the experience of Jesus here, and the experience of the Apostles in Acts 2. Those who say Jesus had no crucial experiences of this type are going against the clear direction of this entire passage.

Notes from Mike Bell:
1. What questions or thoughts come from your mind from what you have just read?
2. Would you be interested in a paper or Kindle version of the book when it is available? Please email us at michaelspencersnewbook@gmail.com so that we can let you know when it is ready.
3. Find any grammar or spelling errors, phrases that are awkward or difficult to understand? Also send these type of comments to the email address above.

What is the real science around masks?

What is the real science around masks?

On the BioLogos Forum Daniel Fisher cites an article from the Foundation for Economic Education entitled “Europe’s Top Health Officials Say Masks Aren’t Helpful in Beating COVID-19” and asks the Forum:

So forgive me for rocking the boat, but my interest is hearing all the science and making an informed decision…

Can anyone tell me what to make of what is reported at the following? I hardly have much inside information, but the individuals and organizations that question the efficacy of masks don’t exactly seem fringe or agenda driven.

Thus it raises my suspicion again to be told yet again “the science is settled” when there seems to be legitimate dissent from very serious scientists and public health organizations.

The article purports to quote from recognized health officials in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland that downgrade the efficacy of public mask wearing to minimize COVID-19 transmission. Some examples from the article:

Denmark. ““All these countries recommending face masks haven’t made their decisions based on new studies,” said Henning Bundgaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Rigshospitale…”
The Netherlands. “From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation,” said Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark.” “Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,” said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. “There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.”
Sweden. “With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top infectious disease expert…”

The article goes on to criticize mask mandates as anti-freedom as well as possibly even harmful.

Moderator Christy Hemphill responds with the following links that challenge the FEE article:

Utah sees virus surge – but not in county with mask order https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/utah-sees-virus-surge-but-not-in-county-with-mask-order
Kansas counties with mask mandate show steep COVID-19 drop https://apnews.com/f218e1a38cce6b2af63c1cd23f1d234e
Coronavirus cases rise in states with relaxed face mask policies https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-19-coronavirus-face-masks-infection-rates-20200624.html
Coronavirus cases down as Californians must wear face masks in public https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/19/coronavirus-cases-down-as-californians-must-wear-face-masks-in-public/
Hamilton County’s mask mandate: Is it working to curb coronavirus? https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2020/aug/07/hamilton-countys-mask-mandate-it-working-curb-coronavirus/529350/

Those links seems pretty conclusive to me. So what’s with the European health experts so-called skepticism?* BioLogos commentator James McKay offers an explanation:

Here’s a simple question. In the whole discussion around masks, who is actually providing the technical explanations and hands-on demonstrations?

It’s not the anti-mask brigade. If you look at their claims that the science is “not settled,” all you see are appeals to authority from experts-for-hire. And when you actually click through the links to see what the experts’ concerns about masks actually are, what do you find? They aren’t saying that masks are ineffective at all. Their worries are about people ending up with a false sense of security. Or about wearing their masks in ways that reduce their effectiveness. They are being portrayed as saying that masks are not necessary when in actual fact they are saying that they aren’t sufficient.

What you don’t see from them is any kind of critique of the reasons why we are being told to wear masks. No discussion of the R number. No discussion of the fact that the virus gets carried in droplets, and it’s those droplets rather than the individual virus particles that get stopped by masks. No discussion of the demonstrations of why masks are effective that are two a penny on YouTube. Such as this one for starters:

How Well Do Masks Work? (Schlieren Imaging In Slow Motion!)

That’s the thing you need to realise about science. It is not something that gets decided simply by pitting one set of opinions against another. It is a very hands-on, practical activity where you learn and draw conclusions by actually doing it or seeing others do it.

This issue continues to rage and all too often its evangelical Christians participating in the anti-mask raging. I am still seeing anti-mask posts on Facebook from my Christian friends trying to make the issue into a “free exercise of rights” issue. That’s why I’m posting this. It is a clear case of not understanding the science. Ask yourself this- why are hospital surgical teams ALWAYS masked with no exceptions? Would you want your surgeon operating on you without a mask? It is not a rights issue. We give up certain rights for the public good. You can’t drive as fast as you want through a school zone. Men can’t walk away from their children without supporting them. You can’t pay your workers poverty-level wages. Free speech doesn’t give you the right to yell FIRE in a crowded theater. The right to swing your fist ends at my nose. You don’t have a right to infect me with a virus.

Mask wearing in public isn’t a perfect solution, but it does have limited effectiveness. See the links above from Christy Hemphill. I’m going to end with the illustration from BioLogos commentator Dale Cutler. It’s a little crude, but it does help get the point across –

(* If you follow the money on the European health expert article you find that FEE is financed through the Koch brothers. I don’t begrudge the Koch brothers their right to express their opinions but I do recognize they have a definite agenda, and it isn’t always neutral science.)

Bonhoeffer on “The Leader”

Bonhoeffer on “The Leader”

Only the leader who is in the service of the penultimate and ultimate authority merits loyalty.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation”
in Clifford J. Green. The Bonhoeffer Reader

• • •

It is always a fraught proposition to speak of Nazi Germany and Hitler and the Third Reich when considering one’s own moment of history. I do not for one moment consider that our nation, our people, our politics, and our world are in the situation Germany found itself facing after World War I. Nor do I imagine that conditions favorable for a rise in the kind of nationalism, the extreme forms of “racial purity” doctrines, and the fascist dictatorial leadership and military expansionism that led to unthinkable genocidal attempts at world domination are on the horizon.

However, this does not mean we should avoid seeing reflections of this history when they appear, however faint, in front of our eyes.

On February 1, 1933, two days after Hitler ascended to the chancellorship of Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a radio address that was part of a series speaking to the younger generations in his country. This address was called, The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation.” Bonhoeffer was concerned that young people in Germany were showing an unhealthy hunger for a “strong leader” (führer) to restore Germany’s greatness and lead them out of the humiliation and economic devastation that followed their defeat in the Great War.

In his address he contrasted legitimate forms of “leadership” with the concept of the führer.

…previously, leadership had found its expression in teachers, statesmen, fathers, that is, in the given social structure and offices, but now the leader has become a completely autonomous form. The leader has become totally divorced from an office; he is essentially and only leader.

A good Lutheran, Bonhoeffer believed that God rules in this world through both spiritual and temporal institutions, and that those who served in civic offices governing our daily “secular” lives were to exercise their vocation (calling from God) faithfully. But the youth in Germany were resisting Kaiser and Church, as well as their familial and community elders, having lost faith in the institutions that now seemed to be failing them.

And to what — or, better, to whom — were they looking to bring Germany out of its chaos? The Leader, one who, to them, embodied the ideal hope for which they longed.

This leader, arising from the collective power of the people, now appears in the light as the one awaited by the people, the longed-for fulfillment of the meaning and power of the life of the Volk. Thus the originally prosaic idea of political authority is transformed into the political-messianic idea of leader that we see today.

Rather than understand “leadership” to mean the less spectacular duty of “faithfully discharging one’s office” as a servant to that office and to the people, the prospect of a führer found people clamoring for an idol in a personality cult, a person who stood above office and who was due what, in effect, was religious devotion and obedience.

If a leader accepts this role and sets himself up as this impeccable führer, Bonhoeffer says that he then becomes a “mis-leader,” one who acts improperly towards himself and his own calling as well as toward the people he is called to serve. In contrast, “The true leader must always be able to disappoint.” He must never point to himself as the perfect repository of hope, but must constantly direct the people to their own responsibility to uphold “the social structures of life, toward father, teacher, judge, state.” He himself must also submit to the penultimate authority of those societal structures and institutions and recognize that his task is to serve them for the common good, not transcend them and welcome adulation as an autonomous ruler above and beyond them.

While the led believe and hope that their leader is the epitome of an autonomous human being, the masterful human being who is totally free, the leader must be aware that because of the followers, the leader is the most bound, the one most burdened with the responsibility for the orders of life, the epitome of a servant.

And, of course, because Bonhoeffer believed that all these “orders of life” — familial, societal, and civic institutions — were ordained by God, that means the true leader, in faithfully discharging his office, will be submitting to the ultimate authority as well.

All this has implications for “followers” too. When individuals and communities look to a leader (führer) in this ideal and inappropriate way, they exchange their own rights for loyalty to the leader, in whom they put all their trust for the future. The freedom to fulfill their own vocations, to work thoughtfully and responsibly within the orders of society for its betterment and to share in the mutual accountability those orders provide becomes swallowed up by a communal obligation to follow the führer and his agenda. It becomes a matter of fealty and obedience rather than personal responsibility and freedom.

•

I don’t know about you, but a lot of this resonates with what I am seeing today.

I’ll just go ahead and say it: it seems to me that there is a constituency in the U.S. that mimics what Bonhoeffer is writing about here in their loyalty to Donald Trump and the “Trumpism” that has largely swallowed up the Republican party. The party didn’t even set forth a platform at this year’s convention. Their agenda is Trump.

It also seems that the president has welcomed and continues to encourage this kind of mindset in his followers. He may not be a “führer” in the sense Hitler proved to be (in fact, I doubt very much that he will), but echoes of fascism reverberate, and I, for one, don’t like it. I certainly don’t think it is fitting or beneficial in our representative democracy.

What do you think? Over-reaction? Reading too much into our historical moment here? Or do Bonhoeffer’s words and ideas find resonance within you as well?

Tuesday with Michael Spencer: The Missing Voice of the Christian Counter-Culture

Note from CM: Here is an interesting post by Michael from 2008 (which I have edited to make it more concise). I’m not sure I heard him talk or write much about the things he says here. I wasn’t sure if he went through the same “counter-culture” experiences as I did or what he thought about the 60s and early 70s and the social/cultural upheaval of those times. On the other hand, much of the “Christian life” that I have known was a direct product of those times. I have always seen the spiritual awakening I had as a teenager as of a piece with the idealism and energy I saw in the youth “counter-culture,” the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. This was the narrative of the “Jesus Movement” as a whole, and it energized the early forms of “contemporary Christian music” that we listened to in those days.

In our day, we are seeing a return to some of that idealism and the energy of counter-cultural protest. And again, it’s proving to be messy, chaotic, and sometimes harmful, even deadly. I wonder what our friend Michael would say in 2020?

• • •

Tuesday with Michael Spencer
The Missing Voice of the Christian Counter-Culture (2008, edited)

(For N.T. Wright, Bono, Bob Dylan, Sara Groves, Derek Webb, Steve Earle, Larry Norman, Johnny Cash, Michael Been and Steve Taylor)

Floating somewhere around the web is a picture/mp3 of Anglican bishop and theologian N.T. Wright, complete in lavender shirt and bishop’s collar, playing Bob Dylan’s sixties anthem, Blowin’ In the Wind on an acoustic guitar.

It’s not anything I’d pay money to have on my iPod, and I doubt his audience was blown away. But I don’t think the bish was having a moment of youth minister envy. His admiration for Dylan and the counter-culture voices of the sixties comes from something else.

Wright was singing Dylan because, in his particular take on Christian eschatology, he sees something very admirable and good about those idealistic kids in the sixties. Something in their optimism and idealism resembles his belief that we are called to Kingdom work in every area of human life now. Wright believes that Christians are a Holy Spirit empowered Christian counter-culture movement at work with God in the world’s hopeless places and unsolvable problems. He profoundly believes in resurrection, but not in the despair that has overtaken much of the church — Protestant and Catholic — in these days.

Wright believes the Kingdom of God is at work in the present everywhere that Christians put their audacious resurrection hope into practice: in politics, art, society, education, peacemaking and yes, even the church.

I’m starting to see Wright’s larger point, and why the good bishop is playing that Dylan song.

In some of my classes this semester, I’ve been using protest songs from the classic era of folk music to illustrate points regarding Biblical literature and elements of English literature. And as I was listening to Phil Ochs Outside of a Small Circle of Friends yesterday, a thought occurred to me that’s been rattling around in my head ever since.

Why aren’t more Christians making the sounds of counter-culture protest in their art, their literature and their witness?

I want to be careful at the outset to acknowledge that some Christians ARE making the sound of counter-culture protest, and I want to salute them and promote them.

But what do we hear when we listen to Christian music today?

Praise and Worship.
The soft sounds of baptized psychology.
God-experience in highly personal terms.
A tip of the hat in the direction of evangelism.

That’s the vast majority of what Christian artists and voices are bringing to us. Of that collection, the largest pieces of the pie chart go to “praise and worship” music and expressions of fuzzy personal experience with a decidedly “girl-friendy” Jesus.

Now as I’ve said before, I’m encouraged by how many contemporary artists and authors are personally involved in ministries of mercy and issues of compassion and significance. These are a generation of artists who are busy supporting International Justice Mission and Blood:Water Mission.

But few of them are raising the voice of a true Christian counter-culture; few have the sound of counter-culture protest, lament or outcry. Few are taking on the voice of the prophet. Few are using artistic irony and sharp observation and storytelling to penetrate into those aspects of our culture where the truth of God has a sure and true word for us. Few are articulating the vision of anything approaching a radical kind of Christian discipleship.

I don’t hear the kids of voices that shined the light of God on the darkness of racism, that opposed the Vietnam war with a Christian conscience or that awoke to the realities of poverty and corruption in America. Evangelical art seems to reflect the concerns of the status quo, and the easy acceptance of a world where how we feel is the great crisis of our time.

Those artists that do find a prophetic voice stand out immediately from the bland majority.

Christian radio will not play these voices. They will not be leading the bouncing worship songs at your next youth event. They are not entertaining the sheep into a state of altered- and largely insensitive- consciousness.

You will find them at Square Peg Alliance and Paste Music. You’ll hear them cited as “indy folk” more than Christian. You’ll have to endure the question “But is that really Christian music?”

Evangelicals have now produced a massive consumeristic niche ready to buy, wear and applaud whatever fits in its pre-described mold of entertainment oriented discipleship and warm, fuzzy, evangelical experience.

It’s personal miracles, not social transformation that has the attention of evangelicals. It’s the culture war’s short list of approved issues, not the prophetic agenda of justice and compassion that inspires most music, conferences and major events today. It’s the sounds of “We want more of you Jesus,” not the cry for justice for the hungry, the oppressed and the displaced that inspire evangelical art.

When I expose my students to the protesting voices of the sixties, their reaction is varied. Some are more interested in the iPod than the song. Some are completely clueless as to what I’m referring to. Others are drawn toward the knowledge that young people were once, as a generation, animated in causes greater than acquiring expensive shoes.

When I preach, I preach N.T. Wright’s vision of Gospel application in the empire. I preach MLK’s application of the Gospel in a way that challenges evil with sacrificial love. I preach examples of personal engagement with causes greater than the expansion of church facilities and more sales of the latest praise and worship ditty. I constantly urge my students to see Jesus as a radical and to see following him as a radical exercise extending into economics, racial reconciliation, compassion, the arts, politics, justice for the excluded, the creation of community and the renewal of the local church along new covenant priorities.

But I feel that my voice is one voice; one voice largely overwhelmed by the current vision of Christianity as an extension of the American dream of personal affluence and evangelical cultural triumph.

My students will hear a hundred voices telling them to march against gays for every one they hear saying they should befriend the oppressed and the rejected. (One friend told me that when his church volunteered to help with a fund raiser for the local AIDS hospice, the directors were so stunned that they thought it was a joke.)

My students will hear that Martin Luther King, Jr was an adulterer 25 times for every time I point to his model of sacrificial non-violence. Few of them will ever read any of his sermons, but many will be told of his moral failings. (And the same is true for many activist Christians. Some evangelicals make it a point to morally impugn anyone who pursues that they label as the “social” Gospel.)

My students will be offered a hundred “Christian” things to buy for every one time they are challenged to give anything away or to use their money to dig a well. Thank God for the thousands of Christians who generously give time, talent and money to help the suffering, but they do so in the midst of an evangelicalism that has found a way to bless every excess of the American materialistic lifestyle.

My students will hear hundreds of moralistic, pietistic and privatistic applications of the Gospel for every time they see or hear the Gospel lived out in Jesus shaped ways. If evangelical sermons and publishing is our measurement, then economic, missional, socially redemptive discipleship is far less interesting than end times scenarios and diets.

My students will be encouraged to accept the evils of society as the unfolding of the end times plan a dozen times for every time anyone tells them to go out and personally do something to make a difference in that world. After abortion and homosexual activism, the average evangelical’s engagement with social issues goes off the radar.

My students will be told that church should be fun, entertaining, cool and better than a mall a thousand times for every time they see a church embodying the suffering, justice, poverty, prophetic truth and radical love of Jesus for the poor and the sinful.

My students will hear the siren songs of evangelicalism endless times for every time they hear about a truly prophetic, counter-cultural, compassion-passionate Jesus shaped spirituality.

I’m waiting for the birth of truly counter-cultural Christian voices; voices as arresting in these times as Guthrie, Dylan, Ochs and Seeger were in theirs. Christian voices that don’t require us to go to non-believers to hear the authentic message of the compassion and present power of the teachings of scripture on justice and mercy.

I’m waiting. And while I have a voice left and anyone to hear me, I’m using my voice as best I can. I won’t be singing Blowin’ In The Wind at my next Bible study, but I understand what the Bishop was trying to say. We have an answer more sure than those who mounted the counter-culture critique of the sixties, but our voices are strangely silent.

Reconsider Jesus – From Nazareth (Mark 1:9a)

Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark
A devotional commentary by Michael Spencer
Compiled and Edited by: Michael Bell
Table of Contents

From Nazareth

About that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee…

Mark 1:9a – C.E.V.

We leave the interaction between Jesus and John the Baptist for a bit, to focus on an intriguing piece of information that Mark provides us: The location of Jesus’ childhood. In fact, this is the only thing that Mark tells us about Jesus’ childhood.

Did you realize that Mark does not tell us the names of Jesus’ parents? Mary and Joseph are not mentioned by name in Mark. You have to read Matthew or Luke to get that information. When a modern biographer writes about someone’s life, a lot of time is spent researching the parents and the childhood of the person in question. These are things that really influence what a person becomes. Mark is not interested in that. In fact, none of the Gospel writers are really very interested in Jesus’ childhood. There is only one story in the entire New Testament about Jesus as a child and that story is only recorded in Luke’s gospel.¹⁵ We do not know what kind of child Jesus was, what his favorite pastime was, who he played with, or if he went to school. We do not know anything about how Jesus looked. Was he tall or short? Was he muscular or heavy? Mark is silent about these matters.

It is fascinating that Mark, the first gospel writer, does not feel any need to tell us many of the things that we would like to know about Jesus. Mark gives us no information about Jesus’ family or ancestors because his purpose to identify Jesus as the Son of God overrides this sort of detail. The only thing Mark does want us to know, and does tell us about Jesus’ childhood, is that Jesus is from Nazareth in Galilee.

You get a better idea of what people thought about Nazareth from a comment in John’s Gospel.¹⁶ Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples, is excitedly telling Nathanael about Jesus. “We found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael replies, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Obviously Nazareth was not held in high esteem.

For a long time archaeologists could not find the ancient village of Nazareth. Scholars also searched for it in ancient writings from both Jewish and non-Jewish sources. They could not find the name of the town in any writings prior to the third century. It was not until 2009 that the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that they believed that they found the evidence of human habitation in the Nazareth that existed when Jesus was alive. We do not know for sure the population at the time of Christ, only that it was a small village.

This does not mean Jesus grew up isolated, or in a cultural backwater. Nazareth was only four miles from Sepphoris, a large Roman town that served as the provincial capital. It was a Roman city rebuilt by King Herod Antipas. It had beautiful Roman architecture, an amphitheatre, and government buildings. Jesus likely would have worked there at some point in time.

Galilee itself was an area that had been controlled by the Assyrians in the later Old Testament era. It was known as the home of many non-Jewish inhabitants and was quite multicultural for first century Palestine. Greek, Roman and Jewish languages, culture and ideas were all part of Jesus’ world. Jesus would have likely spoken four languages. The common language of the time was Aramaic, and Mark leaves a few words of that in his gospel in different places. He would have had to speak and read some Greek because that was the language used in commerce and business. Jesus also would have had to speak a little Latin because the Romans were in charge of the country and that was the language of the Government. He was a Jew, and would have been able to speak and write Hebrew, as that was the language of the Jewish faith.

Galilee in the time of Jesus was also known as an area where the Zealots were based. The Zealots were fanatical anti-Romans who rebelled against Roman taxation and control and who wanted a war. The Romans, on the other hand, were demonstrating that they were in control, and so Jesus would have probably seen bloodshed growing up. He certainly would have heard people out in the streets inciting rebellion, and there would have been attempts to convince Jesus to join with their cause.

Nazareth was an agricultural community like so many other Jewish towns. The little bit of evidence we have about Nazareth shows us that the big industry there was viticulture: the raising of grapes in vineyards. Most people were farmers, but they were sharecroppers and did not own their own land. They raised their crops on someone else’s land and probably never got out of debt. We see this reflected in the parables of Jesus. He talked about people who owed money to kings, and workers who farmed land for other people.

There would have been a few people with a trade, and that is apparently the kind of family Jesus grew up in because he was called a tekton. Traditionally, this is a word, that has been translated carpenter, but it may also mean someone who worked with stone. Either way, Jesus had a craft. This meant that his family likely owned their own house and had enough to take care of themselves, but it was still a subsistence living.

Mark tells us in chapter six¹⁷ that Jesus had at least two sisters and four brothers, so he was the oldest of a big family. It is likely that Joseph had died prior to Jesus’ adult ministry as he is conspicuously absent during those latter years. Jesus probably stayed at home until he was an adult and helped provide for his mother and his family.

Jesus lived at the only time in the history of the Jewish people where they had temple Judaism and synagogue Judaism. In Jerusalem was the temple, the priests, and the sacrifices that Moses had described. In every little town there was a synagogue where Rabbis read the word of God and people studied the word of God together. Rabbis also would have gathered disciples together for teaching, so Jesus calling his own disciples together was not that unusual for that time and place. In Luke chapter four¹⁸ it says that on the Sabbath day Jesus “went into the synagogue, as was his custom.” Gathering with others for the purpose of worshipping God and learning about God was important to Jesus, and he did it his entire life. Even when Jesus became very aware that he disagreed very much with what people were doing and what some of those teachers were saying, he didn’t bail out. When Jesus knew that people would hate what he had to say, he still went to the synagogue. That is where he loved to be, where he loved to heal, where he loved to teach. That is where he got in a lot of trouble, but that’s who Jesus was. He did not stand outside and throw rocks, he stood inside with God’s people.

Jesus probably felt about a small town the same way a lot of us do. John Mellencamp sang in the 80s, “I want to live in a small town… I was born in one, want to die in one, want to raise my children in a small town…”¹⁹ We may have an idealized view of a small town, but a small town can have another side to it. Everybody knows everybody and calls everybody by name. They know your mother, your father, and your grandparents. They know what kind of people you come from. They know all the mistakes you made. They know what you were supposed to be and what you turned out to be like.

Later on in Mark’s gospel²⁰ Jesus comes back to Nazareth and the people say, “We’ve heard about you, up in Capernaum. You have done good up there. What are you going to do here?” And guess what? Jesus really disappointed them. It said that Jesus did not do many miracles there because they didn’t believe in him, which is the ironic thing about the small town Jesus was from. They rejected Jesus. When they were confronted with who Jesus was, and what that would mean they said, “We don’t want that.” In fact in Luke chapter four it is recorded that they tried to throw him off a cliff and kill him.²¹ Some reception from the place where you grew up!

Sometimes when people grow up in small communities, change is very difficult to accept. People say, “this is how I was brought up, this is what I have always believed, this is the way I’ve always talked, the way I’ve always done business, and the way I have always treated people.” They find out that following Jesus means that you need to be different! You need to be loyal to, and changed by Jesus Christ, and not just be a product of where you are from.

Many of the things that I learned in my childhood community I now understand to be wrong. I learned a lot of racism growing up there. I was told that having a big house out in the suburbs and making lots of money is what life was all about. High school was all about getting drunk and having sex.

In contrast, if you want to ask me who I am today I will say, “Look at Jesus,” because Jesus is the one who has really made the difference in who I am and what I am. I am grateful for where I am from – all of us have a place where we live and where we can influence and help others – but the defining person in our life should be Jesus Christ. He should overrule and override anything that we grew up with, anything that we are, any mistakes that we’ve made, and any reputation that we have.

—————————————-

Footnotes:

[15] A collection of childhood stories about Jesus were written in the 2nd or 3rd centuries in the falsely attributed Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas which is also not part of the accepted canon of scripture.) We have no way of verifying their accuracy.

[16] John 1:45-46

[17] Mark 6:3

[18] Luke 4:17

[19] John Mellencamp, “Small Town”. From the album “Scarecrow” – 1985.

[20] Mark 6:1-5

[21] Luke 4:29-30

A Blessing for You Today on Your Journey

A Blessing for You Today on Your Journey

•

May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh, how far you are from home

Mornië utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornië alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now

May it be the shadows call
Will fly away
May it be your journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun

Mornië utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornië alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now
A promise lives within you now

•

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: August 29, 2020 — Mostly Music Edition

Billie Holiday singing *“Strange Fruit”* at the Tiffany Club in LA (1952 photo by Bob Douglas). Displayed at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this summer as part of their exhibit, “It’s Been Said All Along: Voices of Rage, Hope & Empowerment,” presented in support of the racial reckoning and social justice movements that are happening across America in 2020.

• • •

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: August 29, 2020 — Mostly Music Edition

•

Peter Mayer’s song set to transcendent time lapse videos of northern lights, the Milky Way, meteors and more. Video by John Ashley. Magnificent.

•

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty!

Tomorrow is the Sunday for what is perhaps my favorite Bach cantata. The hymn represented here is certainly one of my most beloved praise hymns. In a post I wrote in 2017, when we were sharing a cantata each Sunday, I said:

One of Bach’s cantatas for Trinity 12 takes a different form. Cantata BWV 137 creates variations on the five verses of Joachim Neander’s great hymn,“Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren,” which English hymn singers know as, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”

This is one of my favorite hymns, so it is a special delight to meditate on Bach’s rendition. The overall impression of the piece is like that of a small stream that grows in depth and fullness as it moves toward the sea. The melody becomes more and more prominent as the cantata unfolds, until the chorale of the final verse, where the hymn is heard in all its glory.

•

Paul McCartney’s favorite song?

This week in 1966, the Beach Boys’ song God Only Knows peaked on the charts at #2 in the UK.

In an interview with David Leaf in 1990 Paul McCartney said, “I was asked recently to give my top 10 favorite songs for a Japanese radio station … I didn’t think long and hard on it but I popped that God Only Knows is on the top of my list. It’s very deep. Very emotional, always a bit of a choker for me, that one.”

Man, Brian Wilson can write beautiful songs.

•

Becoming Orthodox to the Sounds of Arvo Pärt…

I just learned that a friend, one of my teachers and mentors in my Lutheran journey several years ago, was chrismated into the Orthodox faith in May 2020 at St. Stephen the First Martyr Orthodox Church (an OCA parish) in Crawsfordville, Indiana. Dr. Robert Saler is a professor and dean at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Journey to Orthodoxy did an interview with him this week. Here were some of his comments.

I wrote my first book in 2012 on contemporary Protestant theologians who convert to Roman Catholicism, so the issue of conversion has always loomed large with me. My first concrete encounters with Orthodoxy came in the form of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where I became involved with the Arvo Pärt Project in 2014 (Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music). I began to become more heavily involved in Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue via the International Orthodox Theological Association, where I chair the Ecumenical Observers group. I began making prayer pilgrimages to Orthodox settings, in particular the Mull Monastery of All Celtic Saints on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. Trips to parishes and monasteries in Romania, Estonia, and Jerusalem, usually connected to my academic work, were also vivid and definitive. I don’t draw very strong distinctions between my theological work and my personal spirituality, so the deeper I went into the one the more the other would emerge.

Is there one person who most influenced you in becoming an Orthodox Christian?

For a variety of reasons related to personal journeys of repentance, I became intrigued by the story of Moses the Black. In particular, I was fascinated by the accounts of his martyrdom, in which he willingly submits to the violent hands of those whom he must have recognized as images of himself in a previous spiritual state. The peacefulness and power of that image both stayed with me and guided me. I should say too that the privilege of working so closely with faithful and brilliant Orthodox theologians through IOTA and St. Vladimir’s also gave me visceral encounters with what it means to have one’s theology operate in service to the church, and to think within the church on the basis of matters that are firmly settled and issues that remain contested.

…What parts of Orthodox theology were most attractive to you?

As someone who has long wrestled with the question of discipleship (influenced perhaps by my teaching and writing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer), I became deeply struck by the ways in which the lives of the saints serve as a sort of “living exegesis” of the gospels. This may sound obvious to cradle Orthodox, but as a Protestant the idea that engaging Christ through the lives of the saints is more like a ladder than a barrier was new to me. To be clear, Luther and other Reformers thought that the lives of the saints were helpful models for the Christian life, but the more I walked alongside the saints in the path of discipleship the more I realized that I was not relating to their examples – I was relating to them. And it was a short leap from wanting to be in their company to wanting to share the same sacramental mysteries as them, especially the Eucharist.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in me, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me,
Christ with me.

Text from Saint Patrick’s Breastplate

•

45 years ago…

From Grammy.com:

With their first two LPs—Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, both from 1973—Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band cemented themselves as masters of both contemplative singer/songwriter elegance and triumphant orchestral rowdiness. Despite the mostly positive critical praise they garnered, however, neither record reaped the financial success and mainstream devotion the group deserved. Understandably, this led to a lot of internal and external frustrations and doubts, so all parties involved knew that—as the saying goes—the third time had to be the charm.

Luckily, 1975’s Born to Run proved to be precisely that, launching Springsteen and company into the hearts and minds of virtually the entire world. All of its songs became beloved radio/concert/pop culture staples—thanks in part to a $250,000 marketing campaign by Columbia Records—and it ended up not only reaching the #3 spot on the Billboard 200, but earning praise from Rolling Stone, the New York Times and The Village Voice. Since then, its ability to bring new levels of poetic phrasing, symphonic instrumentation and heartfelt slice-of-life narratives (regarding blue-collar struggles, youthful romantic idealism and urban rebellion) to heartland rock has led many to deem it one of the greatest albums of all time.

Speaking of the Boss, if you haven’t seen this yet, I urge you to not miss it.

•

MLB play of the week and an original you may have never heard…

Sign him up for soccer!

•

The greatest guitarists in rock history…

This week in 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named its top 100 guitarists. Here are the top ten:

Jimi Hendrix
Eric Clapton
Jimmy Page
Keith Richards
Jeff Beck
B.B. King
Chuck Berry
Eddie Van Halen
Duane Allman
Pete Townshend

Other guitarists on the list: George Harrison (11), Stevie Ray Vaughn (12), Neil Young (17), Les Paul (18), Carlos Santana (20). Chet Atkins came in at 21st, Prince at 33rd, The Edge at 38th, and Mark Knopfler at 44th. At 46th was Jerry Garcia and Steven Stills followed at number 47. Muddy Waters shows up at number 49. The guitarist many point to as the root of most great blues/rock guitar, Robert Johnson, is ranked at 71.

Looks to me like mostly a roots/rock/blues list. There are some great jazz guitarists who aren’t represented.

Let’s get some feedback here. Check out the complete list at Rolling Stone. What do you think about the rankings, and where would you put your favorite guitarist?

I always thought this guy was right up there with the best of ’em myself…

•

Oh, and by the way…

•

R.I.P. Justin Townes Earle…

From Rolling Stone…

Justin Townes Earle, the singer-songwriter known for his mix of old-timey roots music and modern-day Americana, has died at age 38. A rep for Earle’s label New West Records confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone, though a cause of death was not immediately revealed. [Later, police called it a drug overdose.]

Earle was raised in Nashville, but also lived in New York and, recently, in Portland, Oregon. According to a spokesperson, he died at his home in Nashville.

…Earle, a tall and gangly figure with a from-another-time aesthetic, was a captivating presence onstage, where he’d sometimes address the crowd in a carnival barker style. But it was his albums, like 2010’s soulful Harlem River Blues, 2017’s introspective Kids in the Street, and last year’s shuffling, ominous The Saint of Lost Causes that best summed up his man-out-of-time appeal. A favorite in Americana music circles, he was named Emerging Act of the Year at the 2009 Americana Honors & Awards, and nominated as Artist of the Year in 2012.

…Born January 4th, 1982, Earle was the son of the country-rocker Steve Earle, who named him after his friend, the songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

…Earle first came on the scene with the 2007 EP Yuma, and would release a string of albums on the Bloodshot Records label. The title track to his 2010 project for the label, Harlem River Blues, won Song of the Year at the 2011 Americana Honors.

This is my favorite song from his final album, The Saint Of Lost Causes.

There’s so much at stake
How far will it go?
Only a fool would place such a bet
On which way the winds are blowing

‘Cause there’s no way of knowing
What the damage will be
We can’t just live on hope
We’ll never get out alone

Storm coming
No way it’s gonna miss us now
Storm coming
Don’t be frightened by the sound

•

Finally, some sounds for your summer evening…

Let’s conclude with a piece from my favorite jazz guitarist and his group when they were at the height of their Latin/South American period back in the late 1980s. This is the Pat Metheny Group from the album Letter From Home (1989).

This is summer to me.

Reconsider Jesus – The Forerunner (Mark 1:4-8)

Reconsider Jesus – A fresh look at Jesus from the Gospel of Mark
A devotional commentary by Michael Spencer
Compiled and Edited by: Michael Bell
Table of Contents

The Forerunner

4 This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. 5 All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 6 His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.

7 John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

Mark 1:4-8 – NLT

So who was John the Baptist? He is certainly one of the most intriguing figures in the entire Bible. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century, devotes a large amount of material to John,¹¹ and Acts 19:1-7 indicates that his influence extended far beyond a few converts at the Jordan river.

Many scholars have pointed out that the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist is one of the most historically certain parts of the Gospel story, not only because it is recorded in all four gospels, but because the baptism of Jesus by John would have been an embarrassment to the early Christians, particularly if there were an active “John the Baptist Movement” existing at the same time as early Christianity.¹² Yet all the Gospels agree that Jesus’ ministry is inaugurated in a formal sense with his baptism by John. They also agree that this baptism was the time of a special awareness of Jesus’ relationship to his heavenly Father.

Mark relates John to the Old Testament role of the messenger who would precede the Messiah. This was prophesied in Malachi 3:1 and had become a popular expectation at the time of Jesus. The arrival of the messenger meant that centuries of prophetic silence were over and God was once again speaking to His people. The messenger would prepare the people of Israel for the coming of the one who would cleanse and purify the nation.

John comes to his ministry with a full awareness that he is taking up the prophet’s mantle. His dress is similar to the prophet Elijah¹³ and his lifestyle speaks of sacrifice and withdrawal. His ministry in the desert is significant because the desert is where God has met and purified his people in the past as they prepared to enter the promised land. There is an intentionality about John that proclaims that the prophet of God is once again bringing the message of God to His people at a critical time.

John’s message is simply summarized by Mark. First of all, he is preaching repentance. The Greek word metanoia has been often explained as an “about face” or “change in direction,” but here it is an act of total life reorientation to the great reality of the approaching Kingdom. Nothing about what God is asking of his people in his Kingdom is a minor change of direction or “turning over a new leaf.” This radical life change means making every decision from a Kingdom perspective. Modern Christianity needs to remember what John is preaching when it considers what Jesus asks of his followers.

Converts to Judaism were baptized by other Jews and baptism was not something they would have considered lightly. What John was calling for was a step of real humility for these proud Jews: To be reduced to the same level as a convert, and to come as an outsider, as one who was unclean and unwashed. The way into the Kingdom is a way of humility from the very beginning.

Mark spends very little time on the subject of baptism as compared with any of the other New Testament writers. What he makes plain is that this baptism was for the forgiveness of sins and was a public proclamation of readiness to follow the anointed one. Those baptized must publicly confess their sins and publicly participate in the ritual. Baptism has multiple meanings in the New Testament, but John sees this as a cleansing with water that precedes a cleansing/filling/washing by the most powerful agent of all — God’s Holy Spirit. When John states that “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!” he is verifying that water baptism is never an end in itself, but a pointer. That is, baptism is a picture of a greater, deeper spiritual reality.

Mark says that John’s message was focused on the one who was coming after him. Jesus would be more powerful, and more worthy than John. Most importantly of all, this coming one will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The contrast could not be greater. John is preparing the way of the Lord and knows that the way requires repentance, radical reorientation and a recognition of the identity and worth of the one who is to come. This is a clear map of how we receive Christ today. We turn from sin, orient our life around a new master and recognize him as Lord.

Some scholars have speculated that Jesus may have spent a considerable period of time with John before separating from him to his own ministry. Mark does nothing to help us with this possibility, but I believe it is quite likely.¹⁴ There is no reason to believe that Jesus developed his message in a vacuum. It is quite likely that Jesus left home and either joined the Baptist or listened to him frequently. Luke’s story of the family relationship may be one way of hinting at this. How did Jesus come to hear God’s voice definitively? Could it have been under the mentoring of John? Could John’s knowledge of the coming one be a result of his increasing understanding of Jesus? Could it have been possible that after a period of being the “student,” Jesus becomes the “teacher?” Although the biblical text is silent about such matters, it is an intriguing possibility.

On the level of a story, a forerunner focuses our attention. Like a warm-up act, he brings the audience to the point of being ready to listen to the main performer. John only briefly appears on Mark’s stage, but he sets the framework for much of what we will hear from Jesus. Though John will appear later in the story, his main purpose occurs here, to begin playing the melody that Jesus will pick up and write into his own song of life, death and resurrection.

What does John have to say to us? The modern religious person would likely want to put this wild man away as soon as possible, but John’s proclamation does not allow this. His thunderous and clear introduction of Jesus will also not let us take Jesus away from his Old Testament roots and the message that God was sending through the entire Bible. Elijah, the forerunner of John the Baptist, was an unfashionable and uncomfortable prophet in a time when Israel had turned away from God. John appears in our world, standing on the pages of Mark and shouts some uncomfortable words to us. Let go of your sin. Confess your wrongs. Humble yourself to receive forgiveness. Most of all, prepare to receive and follow the one who sends the Holy Spirit to cleanse us inside and out.

—————————————-

Footnotes:

[11] Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 18, chapter 5,2

[12] In textual criticism, a story that is embarrassing to its author is presumed to be true, primarily because an author typically would not want to invent an incident which would embarrass himself, or this case, embarrass the subject around which his story is constructed.

[13] 2 Kings 1:8

[14] See John Meir, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol.2 for a detailed discussion.