"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."-------|-------
"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."-------|-------
"How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast."-------|-------
"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins."-------|-------
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.-------|-------
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."-------|-------
"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up."-------|-------
"Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand?"-------|-------
"With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more."-------|-------
"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."-------|-------
Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground."-------|-------
"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod."-------|-------
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"-------|-------
"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other."-------|-------
But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."-------|-------
"Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all."-------|-------
"A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower."-------|-------
"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door."-------|-------
"Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch."-------|-------
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take it; this is my body." Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many," he said to them.-------|-------
Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: "We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.' "
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Metaphors of Mark
Here are the ways Jesus spoke of the kingdom, as recorded by Mark.
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Now you're talking my language. I know we've walked a ways down this road together, my friend. But I think what I'm doing, now that it's daylight, is walking back down the trail we've already ascended, looking at all the crumbs that Jesus left on the trail for us.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not picking the crumbs up as I go. No, no. They're not mine to pick up. Instead, by making these lists from Jesus' words, I'm clearing away the weeds and grass that have grown up around these word pictures of the kingdom.
Hopefully it will be easier for others to walk this same trail.
And it seems that if I want to see God, I must have an eye for imagery.
ReplyDeleteAnd somehow that means being pure in heart.
Just was reminded about something in the bible that confirms that there is no singular home for God, no one metaphor, no one image.
ReplyDeleteEphesians 4:6 talks about this kind of God: "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all".
He is over all, through all, and in all. Not that he IS all, but that he is IN all. It's not that God IS a leaf or a stream or a farmer or a husbandman. It's not that the kingdom of heaven IS a treasure hidden in a field or a woman who found a pearl of great price, but God is IN all of these metaphors, God comes to us THROUGH them, and God is OVER all of them, seen or unseen.
And despite the fact that everything got screwed up when we sinned and broke our connections with each other, God, and all creation, God reconciled ALL back to Himself in Jesus Christ. "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."
Our image of God is only limited by our stubbornness to see with the eyes of our heart what is over, in, and through all. All creation, all nature, all people, all cultures, all tongues, all religions, all nations, all ideas. "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1). All things belong in this image of God that the Jesus movement was chartered to paint. All are ours—whether the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is of God's. (1 corinthians 3)
Everyone and everything is a candidate for Jesus to put on display to show the world what God is like.
This from Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis (page 73):
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I assume you have had moments like this when you were caught up in something so much bigger than yourself that you couldn't even put it into words.
What is it about certain things that ignite something within?
And is that something actually someone?
Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn't deny these moments but embraces them. I need a spiritual understanding that celebrates these kinds of transcendent moments instead of avoiding them. These moments can't be tangents. They can't be experiences that distract from "real" faith. A spirituality that is real will have to make sense of them and show us how they fit. They are expressions of what it means to live in God's world.
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