Harsh Words Signifying Paradigm Shift in Process

3 Pentecost  Cycle B  proper 5 June 9, 2024 
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1   Mark 3:20-35
1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15) Psalm 138

Lectionary Link

Consider the following rhetoric being present within a community about a teacher.  His family says, "He's out of his mind."  Other religious leader say, "he has the representative of the devil Beelzebul.  He casts out demons because he has a pact with the ruler of demons."

This is rather strong language indicating rather severe disagreements about a teacher.

This rhetoric is found in Mark's Gospel.  It was written about 30-40 years after Jesus lived and spoke.  Jesus spoke in the Aramaic language; the Gospel of Mark was written in the koine Greek language which derived from Classical Greek after Alexander and his Generals brought Greek culture and administration to their empires.  As a lingua franca, koine Greek persisted into the Roman Era.  The writer of Mark was educated to write and speak in koine Greek and was writing to an audience who had the ability to understand the language even if not being literate enough also to read and write in the language.

The writer of Mark's Gospel was distilling traditions of Jesus which were available into new writing specifically for the audience of the writing context.  The Gospel writer was setting up a dialogue between the traditions of Jesus with their applications within the settings of the mid 60's to the early 70's of the Common Era.

The Marcan writer practiced an oracular method which in the Gospel was expressed about speaking "in the name of Jesus."  Or as St. Paul wrote, "I believe that I have the mind of Christ."

The Gospel voice is the oracle voice of Christ through the lives of the Gospel writers and preachers, and it was not written for the people who lived with Jesus during his time; it was written for people who were living in the decades which followed.

The oracle voice is a spiritual channeling, a spiritual art in the words crafted to evoke the sublime effects of persuasive meanings about the significance of Jesus Christ, past, present, and future.

The controversy about the spiritual truth of Jesus was an issue for the people who were recipients of the message of the writings of Mark.

To use a modern designation for changes within community; the Gospel writings chronicle a paradigm shift within a community which could be be comprised of various religious parties like the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Zealots, the Essenes, the followers of John the Baptist, and followers of Rabbis like Hillel, Gamaliel, Shammai, and of course, Jesus of Nazareth. 

Sometimes we forget that inter-family, and inter-faith community conflicts are sharp, poignant and fiery in the rhetoric of their disagreements, especially as they approach the occasion of their divorce and separation.  In heated disagreements, people can say unforgivable things like calling evil the very spirit of a new community with a different paradigm.  What happened is that members of the synagogue and the Jesus Movement ceased to forgive each other and so they separated.  What is unforgivable is the lie of separation.  One party cannot excommunicate the other from God's love, oneness, and grace.  Denying the unity of omnipresent Spirit is unforgivable until the error is corrected.

Much of the Gospel writings projects the strong disagreements about Jesus within the various communities of Judaism back onto original disagreements in the time of Jesus, the kinds of disagreements which eventually got him crucified.

I believe that the writings from Mark Gospel are painfully acknowledging the conflict within Judaism about the significance of Jesus for Judaism and express a singular persuasion for a Christo-centric Judaism as the preferred future for living as a minority religious community within the Roman Empire.

The writer of Mark's Gospel believed that the Jesus Movement within Judaism needed to have the mission of converting non-practicing Jews, and Gentiles to a new expression of a family of faith.  This family of faith had to be one constituted in a way that made membership accessible to as many people as possible.  However, to make the faith of Christ accessible, the significant ritual requirements of Judaism had to be made optional.

The parties within Judaism who believed that the ritual requirements of the Torah had to be maintained, could not accept the compromises made by the leadership of the Jesus Movement.  The members of the Jesus Movement believed that God's will could be fulfilled in lives people without adherence to the ritual purity rites of Judaism.  So, those who did the will of God were to be recognized as being brothers and sisters in the family Christ.

The Gospel of Mark is confessing a painful reality: the separation of the Jesus Movement from the synagogue is due to Jesus.  He is a founder of a new paradigm which was to make a "form" of Judaism so evangelical in its appeal to non-Jews, that it would lose it formal relationship with those who remained in the synagogue.

Community divisions are very painful, especially when so much is shared in common as pertaining to shared Scripture, traditions,  and practices.  But community divisions can result in providential expansion of mission.  Mission is expanded through diversity of appeal.

What we can say about the painful division of church and synagogue is that the articulation of different missions to different people has been a benefit to getting the message out about a God who loves us and calls us into God's family, even with various household locations.

What we should mourn today is when we have let the Gospels which chronicle the painful process of division between synagogue and church, be expressed in religious chauvinism resulting in persecution and intolerance, and refusal to accept the various missions of our communities.  The error of trying to preach Christ with a sword of oppression to those who disagree has been the most severe violation of the Spirit of Christ.

Today, we read the Gospels, in a sadness about a ancient division which occurred between synagogue and church, but also with a thanksgiving for the birth of a new mission which has brought the message of the love of God in Christ to a significant number of people.

Today, let us commit ourselves afresh to being the family of Christ, by loving our neighbors as ourselves in winsome ways, but also in ways which discern the love of God working in the lives of people who may not be in our immediate families of faith.  Amen.