Sabbatarians,

The Gospel appointed in the RCL for next Sunday, Pentecost 20 (October 5), is Mark 10:2-16. Just in case "ochlos" texts from Mark are getting to be a bit much for you--the term's there again in 10:1--I'll also try my hand at a Crossings matrix for the Second Lesson: Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12. But first to Mark.

PROLEGOMENA for the text from Mark 10:

1. The "crowds" (10:1) who are the audience here are once more the "ochloi."

2. The ones diagnosed by Jesus on this dicey issue of divorce are the Pharisees. The clear contrast to them are the children of 13-16 who don't "do" anything except allow Jesus to "do" to them his embrace, laying on of hands, and finally, blessing.

3. Early on in the text are three diagnostic indices: obsession with the "Is it lawful?" question, testing Jesus, hardness of hearts. Those three items could almost serve as the three diagnostic stages of our Crossing matrix. See below.

4. The disciples are (again) on the wrong side, and that's true in both parts of the pericope. Re: divorce: After Jesus has "settled" the divorce issue with the Pharisees, "the disciples asked him again about this matter." Whatever the Pharisees were supposed to have heard, the disciples didn't. My own imaging of that episode goes like this: "Ahem. Jesus, what was that all about? Is divorce lawful or isn't it?" The Pharisee heresy is theirs too: wanting to live by the law, and therefore wanting every jot and tittle of that law "perfectly clear."

5. Re: the children: When the disciples shoo the children away from Jesus, they signal that they are still clueless about the "Kingdom of God," about Jesus' role in it, and why kids (ochlos, of course) qualify. The posture for "receiving [important verb] the kingdom of God" reverses the frequent admonition: "Don't just stand there, do something!" Here the counsel is: "Don't (keep on) doing something, but just stand there, and let the Ochlos Messiah do his deed of blessedness on you."

6. Jesus did not make his blessing the kids contingent on their even understanding what he was doing. Their "faith" was simply letting him do it to them. Faith = the posture of receptivity. Au contraire the Pharisees who seek to test him, thus reversing the roles of active subject and receiving subject in their encounter with Jesus. Up till now this is true of the disciples too as Mark portrays them. It doesn't get any better either when later in this chapter Jesus make the third passion prediction.

7. This text is mis-read when seen as "Jesus' teaching on marriage, divorce and remarriage." It is well nigh impossible to take that perspective on the text without falling into the legalism trap. Despite the alleged piety of wanting to get Jesus's own "straight" answer to this "Is it lawful?" question, it mis-reads this Messiah fundamentally. It is another attempt to "test" (rather than to receive) him. Throughout the Gospels Jesus never answers such questions. For to do so would pull legalists even deeper into their entrapment. The ochlos Messiah came not to trap sinners, but to bless them (v.16).

A CROSSINGS MATRIX FOR MARK 10

STAGE 1
Obsessed with the question: Is it lawful? Living life by that fundamental rubric.

STAGE 2
But law is only for the hard-hearted (whatever all that might mean). So the legalists' question exposes the legalists' heart. Doubtless a diagnosis they would protest. Yet when legalists' hearts brings them to "test" Jesus, rather than "receive" him, the case is made for that heart's hardness. Testing Jesus is a test-case for exposing a legalist heart.

STAGE 3
At the deepest level to pursue the "is it lawful?" question is to expose that the questioner--despite his protests--is already breaking the first (sic!) commandment. To the Pharisees Jesus says point blank: sundered marriages contradict God's will "from the beginning." So even to ask for what's permissible on divorce is to be already on the wrong side of the fence from God. In his re-run for the disciples Jesus leads them via the adultery commandment to the same end-point: breaking the adultery injunction is breaking the first commandment. Beset by divorce, frazzled marriages, sequential adultery, etc. hard-hearted sinners--today as well--need more law like they need a hole in the head. Which is what more and better law finally is. What such sinners need is rescue from the law's constant accusations, call it the blessedness of the Kingdom of God.

PROGNOSIS: Receiving a blessing beyond "what is lawful."

STAGE 4
No surprise, the Ochlos Messiah brings blessing for those cursed by the law's unending accusation and their curious addiction to that law nonetheless. Jesus is God's Kingdom coming, God's mercy-management of sinners in place of God's otherwise "lawful" counting trespasses and paying sinners what their just deserts are. Christ is God's blessing in place of the law's curse. In his cross and resurrection he sweet-swaps his blessing for our curse.

STAGE 5
Again, no surprise, the only way to receive this mercy-regime from God is to let his Christ do it to us. Call it faith, the posture of receptivity.

STAGE 6
Disciples who've received Christ's "hands-on" blessing replace "Is it lawful?"living with mercy-management as their lifestyle--for themselves, for others. Especially do they do so with the ochlos in their lives, not begrudging them Christ's blessing, but embracing them and bestowing it upon them--hands on!

A QUICKIE ON THE SECOND LESSON: Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12

1. The problem for the original readers of Hebrews is burn-out, their faith burning out. Their long pilgrimage down faith's road, with the persecution they've experienced along the way, has just about got the best of them. They're on the verge of cashing in their chips.

2. The text begins with a tour-de-force doxology to God's Son and his genetic perks: his title as Son, heir, co-creator, glory-reflector, "homo-ousios" with God's very being, and cosmos-sustainer from the very outset. And now after making purification for sins (=the cross and resurrection) this Son sits at the right hand of the divine majesty, with a top-of-the-charts name that is supra-angelic.

3. After all that hype about the Son, the author shifts to the sub-angelic, to humans, who are currently "lower than the angels," and links the supra-angelic Son to them. Said humans, according to the promise of Psalm 8, should also be supra-angelic, but that is not yet so. So the author shifts his (or is it her?) view, and ours as well, to Jesus, the Son now incarnate. This Jesus, in order to get God's human children to the supra-angelic glory Psalm 8 ascribes to them, "for a little while" joined them in their sub-angelic current situation, but is "now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death [entailed in joining God's human children] so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone."

4. So how does this benefit human children of God, folks on the brink of burnout with no glow at all, neither on their faces nor in their lives? Thought you'd never ask. See vv. 10-12. Since this Son #1 got (back) to glory [glow-ry] through suffering, was even "perfected through sufferings," he is the pioneer running on ahead on the very path where today's pilgrims are trudging and about to toss in the towel. But not so far ahead that he is out of sight and thus no resource for the trudgers.

5. The metaphor then shifts to "holy." Since Son number one [the sanctifier, who reconnects God's burned-out kids to God's holiness] and the the human kids [receivers of this holying] all have the same Father, the One up ahead is their brother. And even though they are a motley bunch of long-distance losers, the front-runner calls them siblings, and is not ashamed even of their shoddy performance.

6. Because of this Pioneer's past performance and on-going "Keep on coming! This way, this way!" encouragement, low-glow burnouts are candidates for re-ignition. They can indeed glow again, first of all in the reflected glow of Big Brother who is up ahead, but with face turned back toward them.

7. The theology supporting all this hope for burnouts is anchored in the writer's brilliant portrayal of Christ in the metaphors of the Melchizedekian high priest. The hype about Christ as Melchizedek grounds the hope for sojourners nearing the end of their rope. You have to read the rest of the 13 chapters to fill in the blanks.

A MATRIX

STAGE 1.
The agony of faith burning out.

STAGE 2.
No longer obeying [ob-audiencing: "listening toward"] God's grace coming from the mercy-seat that Christ-Melchizedek has made accessible for all burned-out sinners.

STAGE 3.
Tragically "never entering into the rest," the great Sabbath, that God has prepared for them. They face a future of "tasting death" on their own.

STAGE 4.
The new covenant (and the new Sabbath) in God's Son and its manifold Melchizedekian meanings. E.g., even severe sinning, even severe suffering (burnout included), does not bar access to the glory and grace of God.

STAGE 5.
"Since we have this great high priest...therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." 4:14ff.

STAGE 6.
Back out into the world, back on the pilgrim's path with a lifestyle portrayed in chapters 12 and 13. See especially the opening sentence of chapter 12.