Rev. Jean's Bible Study

  Why?   Mark 15:20-47 Paul called the crucifixion of Jesus a stumbling block and foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23).   Christians down through the centuries have struggled to make sense of it.  Sometimes we are left with questions but no answers; with mystery.  Some people find solace in the idea that Jesus died for my sins.   Others find that idea ridiculous or even repugnant.   They reason that although they are not perfect, their sins don’t require torture. They ask to whom is Jesus “paying the price” when he died in “my place”?   Why does a God of love require such a ransom?   The Christian church has been teaching the idea of substitutionary atonement for about 1,000 years, only half of its life.   It has become the dominant way of talking about the cross in our culture and in our hymns.    There are other ways to understand the cross.   Jesus sacrificed his life for the cause of justice and righteousness (like...

  In it for the long haul:  Mark 14:53-15:20 In an ancient parallel to the trials of the ‘two Michaels’ Mark recounts how both the Jewish religious aristocracy and the occupying Roman force conspired to execute a rebel who was a threat to their power. These parallel trials happen behind closed doors, secretively and expeditiously.  Just as the disciples fled the inevitable bloody conclusion, so the crowds are wise enough to know when it is time to avoid a massacre.    It is easy to condemn Peter, but I think he deserves some credit for following Jesus at a distance. Peter did what most of us would do; he said what needed to be said to save his life.   Was he wrong? If he had gotten himself killed too, who would have started the church?   How do we relate to this story when our faith has demanded so little of us?   Maybe if my faith was stronger, I would see that it actually demanded more.   What does your faith require you to do?   I...

Week Five:  Praying Mark 14:32-52 Can you imagine that late night walk out to Gethsemane ? They had celebrated a Passover Supper but Jesus’ talk had been strange. His speeches to them about his body and blood, about betrayal and denial must have put them all on edge .  Something was about to happen.  They tried to stay awake, but they just couldn’t.  What does it mean that Jesus told them to pray that they not come to the time of trial , when it seemed he was quite sure they were about to do just that?  Jesus didn’t want to suffer (and God didn’t want or need him to suffer ) but the alternative would have been to deny his message of God’s rule.  His suffering (and that of his disciples) was the result of his faithfulness and it condemns the human systems that caused it. Those evil systems could not operate in the light of day but had to sneak up through the shadows with excessive force.  It was a covert military operation against an accused rebel wh...

Week 4:  Mark14:1-31   Giving Up: Giving In We have been hearing, amidst all the pandemic and political news, of the protests in Myanmar over the military coup.  Can you imagine yourself as one of the protesters going into the streets, day after day, week after week, never knowing if this would be the day that you would be in the line of fire when the military descended or if this was the day the massacre would come?  Can you imagine being one of the leaders whose continued involvement meant almost certain arrest, probably torture and possibly death?  Do you wonder how long they can go on before the movement fizzles and democracy is snuffed out by violence once again?  It is hard for me to imagine myself in that situation.  How much courage or desperation would it take to get me out on the streets?  photo by Zoe VandeWater (unsplash) Jesus and the cheering band of supporters came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday full of hope and resolve but all t...

Week Three:  It Won’t Be Easy:  the Apocalypse  Mark 13 Many of us find it hard to read with any degree of seriousness these extreme descriptions of persecution and judgment.  The people for whom Mark was writing were about to or were already experiencing such disaster.  Like us, they probably didn't want to accept it for the life-changing crisis that it was to become. One year ago, many of us were skeptical of the experts who were telling us that the second wave would be worse than the first.  We didn’t want to hear that thousands would die and we would be wearing masks in public spaces for the foreseeable future.  We did want to hear that this pandemic would someday be over and that life would be better, that we could even make it better than it was before.  We didn’t want to hear that it would not be easy to do so.  Mark wrote around 70 AD when the disaster was not a pandemic but war.  Jerusalem had been or was about to be destr...

Week Two:  Confrontation:  Mark 12:1-17 Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard.” Jesus’ hearers would know that the vineyard was Israel and that it belonged to God—a common allegory in the Hebrew scriptures.   Ironically, in the lives of the Galilean peasant, they were the abused tenants and the rulers in Jerusalem the absentee landlords.   In the parable, it is the Jerusalem landlords that are reminded of their tenant status before God and their responsibility to care for the vineyard and give the owner rightful dues.                      When they realized that he had told this parable against him, they wanted to arrest him but they                                    feared the crowd. So they left him and went away. The scribes and chief priests, the rulers in Jerus...

Why do we need Good Friday?  Can’t we just have Easter?  During Lent we will look at the last days of Jesus life on earth, what led to the cross and how we can bear our crosses and get to Easter.  These reflections rely on the work of Marcus Borg and John Crosson, The Last Week as well as Ched Myers Binding the Strong Man.   Week One:  Palm Sunday  Mark 11:1-25 Whenever you pray, forgive so that God might also forgive you. Marching into Jerusalem on a donkey, cursing a fig tree, overturning tables in the temple, moving mountains.  What was Jesus doing? The people who first lived and heard these stories knew their Hebrew scriptures much better than most of us.   Our scholars remind us that others over the centuries had staged marches into Jerusalem both in triumph and in rebellion.   Mark’s first readers lived when the temple was about to be (or just had been) destroyed.   The temple was on THE mountain.   The fig tree wa...