Title: Self-Absorbed Disciples
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Mark 9:30-37
It is easy to tune people out. We don't necessarily mean to. We figure we know what they are going to say, and we turn them into background noise. It is hard to set aside our focus, our issues, our concerns, and our experiences to listen deeply enough to hear another. That is even more the case when what is being presented breaks with our expectations. When we encounter brand new concepts, they don't filter down to our understanding and comprehension immediately. We have to process and consider them. It takes effort to process new concepts. It often takes time. We only learn quickly when we are being exposed to tidbits of new information. How can we ever get past ourselves to see with Jesus' eyes?
Jesus' death is not inseparably tied to concepts of eternity in God's presence in a celestial sphere. We make the association because our understandings developed with the full gospel story. We make the connection from this side of the resurrection. The First Century Jews, however, had no such association to which they might link Jesus' death to any fulfillment of God's Reign. As Jesus spoke with his disciples here about his oncoming death, he had not yet engaged any concepts of eternity lived in God's presence. He was simply expressing the necessity for Messiah to die at human hands. His subsequent resurrection would then serve as a prelude to their accepting what it meant for him to be Messiah.
They were all well aware that Jesus faced opposition. They did not really understand the extremes to which that opposition was willing to go, much less that in killing Jesus they would reveal their hand as having no power over Jesus and God's Reign. No one taught me to write research papers in First Grade. We were still working on learning the letters, their associated sounds, and beginning to put them together to make words. Before I could learn to research, write papers, document sources, an ...
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Mark 9:30-37
It is easy to tune people out. We don't necessarily mean to. We figure we know what they are going to say, and we turn them into background noise. It is hard to set aside our focus, our issues, our concerns, and our experiences to listen deeply enough to hear another. That is even more the case when what is being presented breaks with our expectations. When we encounter brand new concepts, they don't filter down to our understanding and comprehension immediately. We have to process and consider them. It takes effort to process new concepts. It often takes time. We only learn quickly when we are being exposed to tidbits of new information. How can we ever get past ourselves to see with Jesus' eyes?
Jesus' death is not inseparably tied to concepts of eternity in God's presence in a celestial sphere. We make the association because our understandings developed with the full gospel story. We make the connection from this side of the resurrection. The First Century Jews, however, had no such association to which they might link Jesus' death to any fulfillment of God's Reign. As Jesus spoke with his disciples here about his oncoming death, he had not yet engaged any concepts of eternity lived in God's presence. He was simply expressing the necessity for Messiah to die at human hands. His subsequent resurrection would then serve as a prelude to their accepting what it meant for him to be Messiah.
They were all well aware that Jesus faced opposition. They did not really understand the extremes to which that opposition was willing to go, much less that in killing Jesus they would reveal their hand as having no power over Jesus and God's Reign. No one taught me to write research papers in First Grade. We were still working on learning the letters, their associated sounds, and beginning to put them together to make words. Before I could learn to research, write papers, document sources, an ...
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