Exodus 17:1-18:27
As soon as you read that they are setting out from the Desert of Sin you know they’re in trouble don’t you? Who on earth would have come up with such a depressing name for a place?? Anyhow, this embarrassing little water-fight scene illustrates pretty clearly what can go wrong with us human beings. (I speculate that the concept of Sin could be derived from this episode - ie the act was named after the desert rather than the other way around). The first problem is that the focus of the Israelites is entirely on the human level; they credit (or discredit) Moses with the exodus from Egypt and look to him, not God, for provision. Secondly, they develop a victim mentality, focussing solely on their own condition and constantly talking about what they feel they are lacking. And, thirdly, they allow this sense of being wronged to turn into an anger towards their leaders and God, understanding themselves as being parties fundamentally in conflict with their leader (and by association their creator). The author of Exodus sums up this quarrel as being about whether God is among them or not, which is very interesting as the Israelites never put it this way, nor even do they seem to acknowledge that God has a part to play in this at all. So, we could conclude that the symptoms of sin are too great a focus on the human level, a victim mentality, and a hostility towards others, especially leaders; while the cause of sin is a doubt of the goodness and the closeness of God. This is a useful concept to hold in our minds, especially for when we later get onto Paul’s letters but also for now, as we seek to eradicate any suggestion of sin from the way we got about life.
Mark 1:1-28
I have this obsession with continually trying to unpick and refine my understanding of Jesus to ensure I’m rooting out all my own little preferences and letting the text, and the Spirit, dictate to me what my understand of Him should be. So I find the start of Mark slightly muddling. There are so many different concepts of Jesus being chucked out that you feel a little like you are being flung around on a wurlitzer. We are told Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the coming Lord, that he will baptize with the Holy Spirit but then we see him getting baptized and the Spirit falling on him, then he is the proclaimer of the good news, then he asks people to become fishers of men, then he is described as the Holy One of God and then he quickly becomes famous as the one whose teaching has authority. Trying to unpick all this lot and work out what is the easiest place to start with Jesus is no easy task. Mark’s gospel seems to be a little like this, continually giving you short, sharp jabs from all different angles so you struggle to retain your balance and end up “trembling and bewildered” just like Mary at the end of the very earliest versions of the gospel (earliest versions end at Mark 16:8). I suspect this is partly what Mark intended; to frustrate anyone who thought they could pin Jesus down as one particular type of religious personality and to emphasise that this is God in human form that we are talking about. It’s a sheer ruddy miracle that the Divine was compressed down into a human being anyway, so it is no wonder that your brain feels like it is taking a serious pasting when you try to neatly grasp Him. Mark is not going to be a particularly comfortable ride but, as my father always used to say, if it doesn’t kill it, it should make us stronger.
Psalm 22:1-11
It’s a shame this didn’t come 2 days earlier to coincide with Matthew’s crucifixion narrative as that would have displayed the sheer magnitude of the prophecy that lies in this psalm. But, what the heck, it’s still pretty mind-blowing whenever you read it, especially when all the 31 verses are read together rather than being split over 4 days.
