Four Questions...

Did you know there is such a thing as fat free sweet and condensed milk?  I didn't.  At least I didn't until I went to make a second batch of Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares.  Somehow, when shopping, I picked up the wrong kind of sweet and condensed milk.  Thankfully, since I had not remembered to allow the butter to come to room temperature before setting out to bake, I started with the zesting and juicing of lemons.  There is lots and lots and lots of juicing of lemons in the making of this deliciousness.  When I realized I had the wrong type of sweet and condensed milk (seriously???), I covered the glass measuring cup I was using for the filling and put it in the refrigerator.

Why in the world would you want to make fat free sweet and condensed milk?  I mean, the whole point to baking is a balance of ingredients and you cannot have a balance with heavy carbohydrates without fat.  And when it comes to fat, milk fat is simply not the problem.  Milk fat is not the problem with childhood obesity.  And removing milk fat whilst increasing carbohydrates to try and restore the lost flavor from the lost fat does not make something more healthy.

Balance is important in baking.
And in most things.

I confess that I have been fearful about reading further into the Mark commentary.  I am at a crossroads of sorts, standing between the story Michael Card has been presenting of the ministry of Jesus and His death and resurrection.  To be perfectly honest, everyone I know has strong emotions about the latter.  What if ... what if in reading it now I do not?

In the Kindle version of the commentary, each chapter has an image that I presume is from the printed book.  It is like a table of contents for the chapter or a preview or both.  For the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the title is Four Questions:  Of Divorce; Of Salvation; Of Suffering; and Of Fundamental Need.

Seeing that image gave me pause.
I finally girded my loins to read the chapter.
I've been too chicken to write about it.

Funny.  I blatantly said that I wasn't going to write through the commentary, and yet I have.  Not, mind you, that I have written but a fraction of what I could have recorded, captured for later.  On this chapter, I am a bit fearful of putting my thoughts down, of taking them from the inside of me to the outside.

I admit, I gave a great big guffaw at the first sentence of the commentary's chapter (the commentary follows the scriptures):  "What Luke requires ten chapters to tell, Mark give us in one."  Never would I be accused of exhibiting Mark's literary constraint!  Though I often teach writing students that "less is more" because it is.  And isn't that the most oft repeated refrain of Michael Card's commentary on Mark.  There is less.  Less words.  Less teachings.  Less backstory.  And that less most certainly is more.

We have the ever-present crowds.  We have the questioning Pharisees.  And we have one of the hottest topics in the Christian life:  divorce.

Michael Cards gives a great tutorial on the breadth and depth of asking Jesus this particular question as His test ... as the shot across the bow before the assault commenced.  For a bit, I was distracted by the fact that "The central issue for the rabbis was the meaning of "something improper," or "shameful."  The answer to whether or not it is okay to divorce a woman hinged on Moses' original perquisite for a certificate of divorce.  What those two phrases means.  As Michael Card explains, there were two schools of thought on the matter and your answer to that meaning puts you in one camp or the other.

But my first thought on reading that was not learning these schools of thought.  No, instead, all I could think about is the fact that the Church as I have experienced has a dearth of teaching and consolation about shame.  And that, to me, is an egregious perfidy to the untold number of wounded souls in her pews.  This is especially so because the members of the Church at large are really, really, really good at heaping shame upon others.  No matter that we are all sinners.  Through and through.  No better or worse a sinner than another because sin is not something to be quantified and classified for spiritual or faithfulness evaluations.

So, I read through all the explanation and historical lessoning, thinking more on upon the words "improper" and "shame,"  having both of those heaped upon my head, until I came upon the turning point in the discussion:  "The key concept in Jesus' understanding of marriage is oneness."

In the next three verses, as he provides his definition of marriage, Jesus uses four expressions to describe the idea of oneness:  "be joined," "become one flesh," "no longer two," and "what God has joined."

Later...

If true marriage is a God-created bond that man cannot break, then the conclusion is this:  If someone divorces—that is, tries by human designs to break God's bond—and then remarries, that person has never truly divorced and so commits adultery.  Jesus applies the principal to both men and woman.

To those who have been abused by this verse, to those who have suffered through a divorce and then remarried, I believe the operative words in Mark 10:9 are "What God has joined together."  Because of the hardness of the human heart, marriages occur that do not have as their foundation this bond created by God.  Those marriages do not fall under Jesus' severe conclusion.  But we must be cautious and preserve his original intent.  If two people come together acknowledging that the Lord has bonded them and made them one, then when temptation arises to give up on that union, they must take seriously what Jesus said about the un-desolvable bond God has created.  The biblical provision for divorce is a sad concession God has made due to the hardness of our hearts, not his.

When I was 11, went to that camp, hear the Word of God, and (hopefully) received the gift of faith, I came home and told my mother that she was an adulteress.  Not the words I should have spoken to her.  Not the words of the Gospel, of the compassionate understanding God holds of and for His creation.

It is that ... compassion ... that puzzled me in the next question, the one of Salvation.  Or, as most would know it, the question of the rich young man.  I was mind-boggled, full of caddywhompus, to read of this.  I mean, Michael Card pointed out the earnestness of the questioner.  He knelt.  He addressed Jesus as Teacher.  He asked a personal and pressing question.  He was not asking about salvation for all, but for himself.  He knew of his own works of faith.  He hoped they were good enough.  But he needed to know if they actually were.

"Then, looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him ..." (verse 21).  Wow!  Jesus loved him and answered him.  All throughout the Psalter we are taught that God desires to hear from us ... and that He loves us.  How remarkable that was the way Mark begins the answer Jesus gives the young man:  to cease breaking the first commandment and allow God, not money, to be his god.

Was the man stunned at the demand because he had not thought he was breaking the first commandment?  Or was he stunned because he was a greedy soul not willing to part with his wealth? "But he was stunned at this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions" (verse 22).

The man was grieved.
He was not angry or defensive or belligerent or contemptuous or any other prideful, arrogant state.
The man was grieved.

Then the disciples needed a bit more instruction.  Hey, Jesus, what did you mean back there when you answered that guy?  Jesus' answer:  more hyperbolic language.  A camel through the eye of a needle.  An image of impossibility.  The point?  Saving is God's business.  He makes all things possible.

A person does not enter the kingdom with anything—not with wealth, not with accomplishments, not with degrees.  We come into the kingdom with one possession:  the grace of Jesus Christ.

Still, if we are to engage with the passage and understand what lies behind the disciples' amazement, we need to step into their shoes.  They come from the same world as the rich young man, where wealth is an unqualified blessing from God.  Hence their disturbance at Jesus' words.  In their world, poverty and sickness are punishments from God for sin.  But Jesus  has come to shatter this understanding of the Father.  His embrace of and openness toward the poor and sick are his way of confronting the old system.  As the rich young man walks away dejected, Jesus has shattered yet another obsolete notion.  If it is hard for rich men and women to enter the kingdom, the disciples moan, then "who can be saved? (Mk 10:26).  Jesus' reply?  Saving is God's business.  He makes all things possible. (emphasis mine)

In a sense, the encounter with the rich young man was not about the man.  Nor was it about keeping the first commandment.  It was (and is always) about Jesus!

The balance between the Law and the Gospel, between both the fate and the lives of the old Adam and the new, is Jesus.

Neither of the first two questions, asked about man, is not actually about man.  They are about God, about His work, His plan.

Remember the father seeking healing for his son.  "I do believe!  Help my unbelief!"  The point, once again, is about Jesus, not the father's faithfulness, but God's help with the old Adam, constantly at war with the new.  We are not fighting the battle, but Jesus.  It's all about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of Man, who has compassion on sinful man, loves him, and dies for him.

Two of the four questions, thus far, continue on with theme of Jesus' teaching:  It's not about you, but me.  Because ... because I know you and love you and am providing for you.

I am improper.
I am ashamed.
And I wonder about salvation.