On Line Bible Study - For the Week June 15-21, 2013
Lesson 567
We are going to spend the next three lessons with an overview of the gospels and the theology of the passion narrative - we begin this overview with ...
Mark & Matthew ... In these two gospels Jesus is abandoned. He is left to face this hour alone.
Jesus undergoes a religious (Jewish) and a Roman trial. False testimony is give in which Jesus is accused of threatening to destroy the sanctuary. Jesus is accused of blasphemy when he speaks on his own behalf.
While he is being abused and mocked as a "false prophet", his prophecies with regard to his followers - especially Peter and Judas - are actually coming true. The fact that the disciples - and especially Peter - were so fervent in their profession of faith that Jesus was the Messiah makes their fleeing and denial all the more poignant.
Neither the religious authorities nor the government give Jesus a fair trial.
Matthew presents us with what Raymond Brown calls a haunting issue of responsibility. Judas finds himself guilty of the blood of an innocent man wrongly accused. Pilate's wife wants him to have nothing to do with this innocent man.
Jesus dies with no friends present. Woman are watching, but from a distance. The only time Jesus calls out or speaks the phrase "My God" is in these gospels when he utters his final words before his death: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Even this dying prayer provokes a reaction closer to mockery than sympathy from the people standing by.
Following Jesus' prayer, after he is offered the wine / vinegar, Jesus lets out a gasp or a cry that is like to that of the demons when they are cast out of people.
While the temple sanctuary is not destroyed, the curtain is torn in two. And in Jesus dying moment, his words of 'blasphemy' are recalled by the Roman centurian, now as a statement of faith - Surely this man, says the soldier, was the Son of God.
Jesus gives us an image of a God who does not take; rather, God gives in the extreme; and Jesus will be vindicated, for while it seems he was abandoned during his suffering, following his death God acts in a most surprising way - and the most powerful way possible. Jesus belongs fully to God.
Mark insists throughout his gospel that the disciples do not understand who Jesus is or what his mission is about because they are unable to grasp the necessity that Jesus must suffer. Mark's gospel offers the most graphic description of Jesus' suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. The starkness of Jesus' suffering is embossed by the young man who flees - naked - in terror when Jesus was arrested.
As unusual natural phenomenon are associated with the birth of Jesus in Matthew (the star), so too we read that the earth shook, and the rocks split when Jesus breathes his last.
Human resistance serves not to thwart the plan of God, but to further it.
This gives us an overview of Mark and Matthew. So much to ponder here! But we must move on. Next time we will do the same for the Luke.
We are going to spend the next three lessons with an overview of the gospels and the theology of the passion narrative - we begin this overview with ...
Mark & Matthew ... In these two gospels Jesus is abandoned. He is left to face this hour alone.
Jesus undergoes a religious (Jewish) and a Roman trial. False testimony is give in which Jesus is accused of threatening to destroy the sanctuary. Jesus is accused of blasphemy when he speaks on his own behalf.
While he is being abused and mocked as a "false prophet", his prophecies with regard to his followers - especially Peter and Judas - are actually coming true. The fact that the disciples - and especially Peter - were so fervent in their profession of faith that Jesus was the Messiah makes their fleeing and denial all the more poignant.
Neither the religious authorities nor the government give Jesus a fair trial.
Matthew presents us with what Raymond Brown calls a haunting issue of responsibility. Judas finds himself guilty of the blood of an innocent man wrongly accused. Pilate's wife wants him to have nothing to do with this innocent man. Jesus dies with no friends present. Woman are watching, but from a distance. The only time Jesus calls out or speaks the phrase "My God" is in these gospels when he utters his final words before his death: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Even this dying prayer provokes a reaction closer to mockery than sympathy from the people standing by.
Following Jesus' prayer, after he is offered the wine / vinegar, Jesus lets out a gasp or a cry that is like to that of the demons when they are cast out of people.
While the temple sanctuary is not destroyed, the curtain is torn in two. And in Jesus dying moment, his words of 'blasphemy' are recalled by the Roman centurian, now as a statement of faith - Surely this man, says the soldier, was the Son of God.
Jesus gives us an image of a God who does not take; rather, God gives in the extreme; and Jesus will be vindicated, for while it seems he was abandoned during his suffering, following his death God acts in a most surprising way - and the most powerful way possible. Jesus belongs fully to God.
Mark insists throughout his gospel that the disciples do not understand who Jesus is or what his mission is about because they are unable to grasp the necessity that Jesus must suffer. Mark's gospel offers the most graphic description of Jesus' suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. The starkness of Jesus' suffering is embossed by the young man who flees - naked - in terror when Jesus was arrested.
As unusual natural phenomenon are associated with the birth of Jesus in Matthew (the star), so too we read that the earth shook, and the rocks split when Jesus breathes his last.
Human resistance serves not to thwart the plan of God, but to further it.
This gives us an overview of Mark and Matthew. So much to ponder here! But we must move on. Next time we will do the same for the Luke.
posted by Mark D at 5:54 PM
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