Confused, impatient, and wondering...

Firewood Man pointed out the bulbs coming up in my bed the other day.  "Look, they are confused, just like you!"

They are!  I didn't see any crocus in the spring.  Of course, the bloody weeping cherry didn't bloom at all.

Last week, there was this one stray blossom that opened up.  How odd!  I supposed all living creatures at this address are a bit confused.

For example, is this progress ... or not????

Standing on the newly decked airing porch and watching the night clouds with an unobstructed view (no power, phone, or Internet cables), I became impatient for the deck to be completed.  I think, perhaps, I shall spend most of my evenings (that it neither rains nor snows) out there.  Peaceful.

Amos, too, is impatient.  He very much wants to join me!  See, he's got a Baby Froggy Baby in his mouth.  "Do you need a Baby, Myrtle?  I've got one right here!!"

I've thought about putting on Amos' leash and letting him come out, but that really is not a good plan.  This is the only part of the railing that is completed.  Tonight, Firewood Man could not get back here because his pressure washer broke and he's now very much behind on his plans for the rest of the week.  It may very well be ... GULP ... next Monday before the other three sections of the railing are put up.

I am confused and impatient.  I remain the former after reading Michael Card's commentary on Mark chapter 13.  Not by Michael Card, so much, as by Mark.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark, there has been this steady march toward Gethsemane.  By that I mean, Mark has been all Jesus, all the time.  Jesus, the Son of Man.  Jesus, the Messiah.  Jesus and His ministry.  Deliberate, methodical, studious, decisive, authoritative, and responsive to all people at all times.  It has been a journey of meeting a Jesus I have never seen, really ... to be honest.  I mean, you hear about Jesus come for you in the doctrine of the Christian Book of Concord, but my history of the Gospels has been about what they mean to tell us about ourselves, our lives at least as much as about Jesus and His life.

Jesus, the Nazarene.
Jesus, the carpenter.
Jesus, the teacher.

But Mark really isn't about those.  Mark is about Jesus the gift giver and Jesus the trainer so that those gifts would remain being given, so to speak.

Mark's story of Jesus has been a man on the move, undeterred from His end goal, though a man who shows great emotion as He does so.  In a way, you hardly have time to take a breath reading of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.  That is, you hardly have time to take a breath until chapter 13.

To me, it is a strange sort of breath.

If you think about the elements of a plot, we have been racing through the rising action at a torrid pace.  Clearly the crucifixion is the climax ... or perhaps the story of Jesus has a two-part climax: the crucifixion and the resurrection.  The denouement begins with the women at the tomb and ends with Jesus final visit with His disciples.

Re-reading Mark chapters 1-12 in order to read 13 reinforced this sense of urgency to the story.  And then chapter 13 happened.  It did not have bookend devices.  It did not have a series or parables or events or questions that informed and supported each other, that revealed more and more of Jesus come for you.

I found it ... well, I keep racking my ex-literacy professor brain cells to try and remember if there is some defined word for what chapter 13 is with regard to plot development.  And, at the same time, I wondered if I would find such a clear literary journey in the other three Gospels as I encountered—for the first time—in Mark ... thanks to Michael Card's commentary.

I mean, it is not like this is a dramatic pause.  Those really can happen anytime.  This isn't a pause, so much as it is a moment out of time.  A moment that transcends time.  A moment both chronos and kairos.  At least I think it is.  I mean, I am not sure I really understand most of both the Scripture and the commentary.

Jesus and his disciples are leaving the temple and the latter comment on the stones.  Massive.  Having now learned about the magnificence of the temple, the observation about the stones has greater meaning ... or greater definitiveness.  Large.  Really, really, really massive.  Dwarf the pyramid stones massive.  Niagara Falls massive.  Grand Canyon massive.

Jesus' response was that no one stone would remain sitting atop another.  The "impressive building" would be destroyed.

Jesus and his disciples are sitting on top of the Mount of Olives, across from the temple complex.  Jesus, Peter, James, John, and Andrew, that is.  The first four.  And they ask Him two distinct questions:  "Tell us, when will those things happen?  And what will be the sign when all these things are about to take place?" (verse 4).

As far as I can gather, the answer Jesus gives points to both the impending moment in time at which the temple at Jerusalem will be destroyed by Titus in A.D. 70. and to the time of tribulation before Jesus returns.  In other words, He is answering about both the end of the temple and the end of this world as we know it.

Each detail of Jesus' words found its fulfillment in the four decades leading up to the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.  Five major earthquakes occurred:  In Crete (A.D. 46), Rome (A.D. 51), Phyrgia (A.D. 53, 60) and Camponia (A.D. 63).  There were three great famines during the reign of Claudius:  in Judea (A.D. 44), Greece (A.D. 50), and Rome (A.D. 52). In addition, A.D. 65 was the worst year for famines and earthquakes in the entire history of Rome, and A.D. 69, knows as the "year of the four emperors," was a time of political confusion and upheaval the likes of which Rome had never experienced.  The book of Acts records the arrests and trials of Jesus' apostles.  Jesus has provided an accurate description of their experience from the present time until the years just prior to A.D. 70.

In Mark 13:14, Jesus' tone shifts. He moves from generalities to specifics, describing the events directly surrounding Titus' destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.  The "abomination that causes desolation" can refer to any numb rod events.  The phrase comes from Daniel 9:27 and was first fulfilled in December of 167 B.C. when Antiochus IV placed a statue of Zeus on the alter of burn offerings in the court of the temple.  Jesus' prophecy most likely refers to the moment when Titus and his soldiers set up altars in the temple area and offered scarifies to pagan gods after the defeat of the Jewish rebels.  Some believe the abomination came when, in A.D. 68, the Zealots anointed a clown as high priest.  The Jewish Christians recognized this as the sign Jesus had spoken of and felt to the city of Pella before Jerusalem was cut off by the Roman tenth legion.


Okay.  Well, I must admit something here.  I actually never really knew that this part was about the destruction of the temple.  I mean, the actual temple.  That building.  The A.D. 70 event.  The emphasis on the word "temple"—for the most part—in my evangelical past had to do with our bodies being the temple of God.  And then there is the part (somewhere) about Jesus saying that this temple would be destroyed and raised up in three days, meaning His own death and resurrection.  I think, too, the idea of the temple being a building are really the times confusing the temple at Jerusalem with Jesus visiting/teaching at a local synagogue.  Hence, the commentary above left me just a tad bit gobsmacked with history ... prophecy and history, I should say.

I did have this very irreverent thought when reading verses 14-16: So, gee, then the saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" doesn't really apply for those about to face the end of all that they know!  Actually, it should be, when the going gets tough, flee!  Retreat is most certainly not a sign of weakness!!

Anyway, as far as I can comprehend, Jesus' answer to the first question of when is to give very specific details of events that will take place before the temple is destroyed.  But His answer to the second question of signs is about the signs of the end times of the world, not merely a building.

In verse 24 Jesus' language shifts dramatically.  Before, he was describing an earthly event, something his disciples could run away from.  Now he answer their second question, "What will be the sign when all these things are about to take place?"  His language become apocalyptic.  He beings to speak in prophetic poetry about the sun, moon, clouds and winds.  He warned them earlier not to be deceived when others would say the Messiah had come, but now he gives them a vivid description.  He will come in the clouds with the angels, gathering the elect.  The vocabulary of his two answers could not be more different.  Two questions were asked, and two answers were given: one cataclysmic but earthly, the other universal.

Another thought popped into my mind:  If the stones of the temple were greater than the stones of the pyramids and the pyramids are still standing now, how in the world was Titus able to destroy the temple complex in Jerusalem???

Jesus finishes His answer by instructing His disciples to learn from the parable of the fig tree.  Another fig tree!!  When the tree's branches are tender and sprouts appear, you know that summer is near.  In the same way, when the times Jesus speaks of come, we will know that He is near.

Then, what probably sounded strange to the disciples, at least in my opinion.  Jesus tells them that even though all this gloom and doom is coming and will happen, even though the world the disciples knew would fade alway, His Words would remain.  If I were a disciple ... at that point, I wouldn't have even heard that bit of comfort.  I would have still be trying to wrap my mind around the concept of not a single one of those massive stones remaining atop one another.

What I liked about the commentary is that Michael Card points out that knowing isn't enough with Jesus.  I mean, Jesus actually finishes His teachable moment with His disciples with the astounding announcement that even the Son doesn't know when, but only the Father.  He tells them three times in five verses to be on the alert.  And He teaches them the importance of being on the alert through the briefest of parables.  A parable, once more, about folk on the lower rungs of the totem pole:  Be like the slaves.

Again the image of the slave surfaces in Jesus' language.  The disciples, Jesus says in this brief, three-verse parable, should be like slaves who have been given two things from their master:  authority and work to do.  Knowing when the master might return is not their concern, only faithful service.  Knowing is not what matters. Obedience is everything.

Now, were this a bible study and not a commentary, this section would be filled with questions about and instructions for being obedient.  The things of works righteousness (or piety) just terrify me for their inexorable failure to comfort or save.

I read and re-read this final paragraph of the chapter, trying to decide what I think about it, what I feel about it, and—if I knew what belief is—what I believe about the Scripture behind it.  I finally decided that I still think about apples and oranges.

I mean, the only real obedience that matters is Jesus' obedience to the law, to the death we all deserve under the law, so that we might be saved.  His fulfillment of the Law.  His freeing us from the Law.  His obedience.  That's the end game.

But when I read the note that the slaves were given authority and work to do, thoughts of all the times Mary's spoken to me about vocation flitted through my head.  Vocation and the recent attempts at trying to help me understand faithfulness.

In the Scripture, the image Jesus gives in the parable is that the slaves don't want to be caught sleeping when their master returns.  I wonder what it really means to be caught sleeping.  Or, rather, not being at work.  In part, I wonder because I am no longer working ... accomplishing ... doing.  I am just being.  And, in my opinion, I am doing a rather poor job at just being.

Take tonight.  Wave and waves and waves of nausea tossed me about for hours on end.  Multiple doses of Zofran, two ginger ales, and a half a sleeve of nibbled saltines later, I lay battered and beaten on the floor.  I was so miserable and lonely and afraid.  Even as I nibbled on the saltines, I fretted about the fact that I have just a single sleeve of them left and still nine days before my next budget cycle.  I have been striving greatly to stick with that most severe of budgetary goals and have remained at just over $102 in grocery and household items—a rather significant fraction of the original budget total for those categories at $310, still significantly less than my modified budgetary goal of $235 and my ideal goal of $200 (on average).  I knew I was heading into Firewood Man doing lots of tending to my home requiring money beyond my budget and into the Time of Financial Doom (what I call the moment I start taking erythromycin in pill format).  Even in a time of overwhelming bodily misery I was worried about the provision of my future needs.

I was so utterly and completely not obedient to any sort of faithfulness tonight.  To continue my metaphor, I was a withered apple.  [If I actually am an apple ... a person who has faith.]

I like that Jesus finishes His answer that includes all this gloom and doom with the Promise that His Word will persevere, will never fade away or be destroyed, will remain present.  I guess what I really wish is that chapter 13 had ended there.  If it had, then that would make sense with all that I read in the Book of Concord:  all Jesus, all the time ... or rather all the work and faith of the triune God, all the time.

Where is Christ crucified for you in Mark 13:32-37?

“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.  And then He will send forth the angels, and will gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.

“Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. Even so, you too, when you see these things happening, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

“Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man away on a journey, who upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. Therefore, be on the alert—for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you I say to all, ‘Be on the alert!’” (emphasis verses mentioned)

I don't know if the paragraph breaks in my beloved NASB 1977 are added, the way that verse numbers were.  Are paragraphs original?  If so, why did Michael Card include the tale end of one paragraph with another as his final section of text upon which to comment?  Putting the parable in context with the whole bit being about the return of Jesus Christ, what does it mean that He charges His disciples to remain alert?  I mean, they are going to be long dead and buried when the fullness of time arrives and Jesus steps back into this world.  Who is the parable for?

In part, I am not asking "What does this mean for me?" since the Life Application approach ravages my spirit as much as dysautonomia ravages my body.  I am asking where this parable fits in the presentation of Jesus' ministry and His systematic instruction of His disciples to prepare them to continue His ministry.  With all the other parables mentioned, they are shared as a means of Jesus establishing His authority (to common folk and religious leaders alike) and/or private instruction for the disciples.  This whole chapter is—I think—private instruction for the disciples, but this last part cannot be for them because they will not be around when tribulation befalls this world.  So, what does it mean to be on the alert???