Jesus is the way!

The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

Mark 10: 46-52

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with the disciples and a sizable crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus ben-Timaeus, was sitting at the side of the road: When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth passing by, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!" Many people rebuked him, telling him to be quiet,but he shouted all the louder. "Son of David, have pity on me." Jesus stopped and said, "Call him here." So they called the blind man, "Don't be afraid," they said. "Get up, Jesus is calling you." So throwing off his cloak, Bartimaeus jumped up and went to Jesus. Then Jesus said, "What do you want me to do for you?" "Master, I want to see." Jesus replied, "Go, your faith has saved you." Immediately Bartimaeus received the gift of sight and began to follow Jesus on the way.

Today we continue to read from the Gospel according to Mark.

The Bible writers don’t usually name the people that are cured, so probably in this case, Bartimaeus was someone that was known by the readers of Mark’s Gospel, perhaps a member of the community there. In Mark’s usual way of sandwiching things, this ending section of the central section of Mark’s Gospel balances the cure of a blind man with the cure of another blind man which started this section. This blind man now recognizes Jesus as “Son of David” which is Mark’s term and which would be understood by his readers as another term for Messiah.

The major difference here may be the fact that the Gospel ends with “immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.” The “way” was a very early name the followers of Jesus gave to what came to be called Christianity. It probably is related to John’s “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. But the “way” is a wonderful expression to describe what Jesus was providing for us. He was pointing the way to salvation and the way becomes a path to the actual fact of salvation through his suffering and death. This points the way to the next section of Mark’s Gospel which is what Mark has been having Jesus prepare the disciples for: the Passion and Death.

Could Mark be saying that the Christian on the ‘way’ is blind unless we follow Jesus in the path of suffering. The whole point of Jesus’ work was not the healings and the miracles, but the path to resurrection through suffering and death. How are we following this straight path, this ‘way’, this map that Jesus has given us. When Jesus tells Bartimaeus that his faith has saved him, it is because Bartimaeus didn’t just run off and enjoy his newfound sight, but understood that Jesus was giving him more than physical sight. He was giving him something eternal, something which would last, and so he wanted to follow Jesus.

That is why our first reading today is so joyful. Usually when we read Jeremiah, it is filled with guilt for the Jews – and us – failing to listen to God and accepting a needed repentance. But this is a Jeremiah who can, like Bartimaeus see the end of the Way: God is bringing his people back from captivity, from their blindness. Everyone, Jeremiah says, will return and God is claiming them all: I am going to gather them from the farthest parts of the earth of the world, among them those who are blind and those who are lame, those with child and those in labor, together… I will lead them back… in a straight path!” The straight path, the “Way” is Christ, who like the Jews in captivity departed in tears and suffering, but at the end of the road or the way there will be “brooks of water” – the baptism of our salvation.

And who is this person that is the Son of David, the Messiah? We learn more about that in the second Reading today when Paul describes Jesus as the High priest. A high priest for the Jews was an hereditary office and the high priest was CEO of the other priests. He was the one allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, the place where God dwelled on earth, and his anointing was different from other priests as was his clothing. Paul shows how Jesus was the High Priest, the one who offered sacrifice for us all in three ways- he was appointed by God, he was selected for sacrificing for us, and he is able to deal patiently with the lowest in society- like the blind man Bartimaeus.

Jesus then is seen as the one who will lead us on the way, out of the sinfulness of men to a new kingdom – where love will prevail. So Does Jesus have the ability to see deeper into the blind man’s needs? And what does Jesus mean by the word “faith” which he says ‘saved’ the blind man?

Jesus knew that bodily healing was not enough, that men and women needed a spiritual healing as well, and that was his purpose or goal in his suffering and death. So yes, Jesus knew that Bartimaeus wanted more than physical sight. We also know that because Bartimaeus followed Jesus, probably remaining part of Mark’s community in Cyprus or Rome, he must have had great faith in Jesus both as a healer and as a messiah. Faith in this story is the ability of one to see, and Mark is using both the physical and spiritual sense of it here.

Do we really see what has happened here? Do we really have the sight of faith that will allow us to follow Jesus’ way of suffering, death and resurrection? Let us pray the we too will have the sight of Bartimaeus which goes beyond the physical sight, and be able to live our lives in such a way that we use our sufferings and misfortunes, our successes and failures as a Way to God.

St. Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963
Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

True greatness means being the servant of all.

The 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." He replied, "What do you wish me to do for you?" They answered him, "Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left." Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" They said to him, "We can." Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared." When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John. Jesus summoned them and said to them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Today we continue to read from the Gospel according to Mark. I think the reason that the Gospel according to Mark is my favorite to study is really because of the treatment of the Apostles. This was the first Gospel written, and it was closer to the actual events described than the other three. Perhaps that is why the Apostles come across as not only so human, but oftentimes, rather dull and somewhat out of it. I like that fact that they are human and make mistakes, that Jesus has to correct them patiently, and sometimes not so patiently, and that it takes them a long time to understand the significance of what is actually going on. I guess it is because I can better relate the Apostles to my ‘slowness’ in getting things as well. I have only been ordained for a couple years, So, it took me a long time to ‘get it’, too.

First, we need a little context because today’s reading has been taken out of its context. In the paragraph just before our Gospel reading, Jesus was going up to Jerusalem with his Apostles and he began to talk again of the events that would soon happen – that he would be taken up by the chief priests and scribes, condemned and put to death. It is hard to imagine what must have been going on in the minds of the Apostles when Jesus spoke like this. Since they hadn’t yet put the whole puzzle together, it may have seemed to them merely that Jesus was showing what ‘could’ happen to him as a result of some of the revolutionary teachings he was giving. What Jesus says to the Apostles is similar to the first reading today – the suffering servant who makes ‘his life an offering for sin’. His death would be necessary for the establishment of the kingdom, since it is his death that saves us. This is immediately followed by today’s Gospel reading.

So in today’s Gospel it is the two apostles James and John, two brothers and two of the first to follow Jesus, who come to Jesus with a request. They know that Jesus has been talking about this kingdom that he is going to establish and they want to make sure that they get a good place in the new kingdom. After all, they gave up everything to follow Jesus, so it seems only fair to them that they should get a good position – one on his left and one on his right. The very request that they make shows that they haven’t been understanding what the kingdom Jesus has been preaching is all about. Their question has no tact, especially when Jesus has just been talking about his own suffering and death, while all they can think of is their own glory. Their approach in asking the question is interesting. It is like when we go up to someone and say: I have something I want you to do. Please tell me you will do it.” We try to get them to agree even before we tell them what is it we want. Jesus doesn’t let them get away with it – he just asks back: “What is it you want me to do for you?” So James and John tell him that they want to have some prestige in the new kingdom – they want to be Jesus’ right and left hand men.

Jesus’ reply indicates a little disappointment in them. “You do not know what you are asking,” he says. And so he gives them a condition – that if this is what they really want, this is what is going to happen. You are going to have to share my cup. I know that today we immediately think of Jesus’ cup as the Eucharist, but it was actually an expression or metaphor for what God has in store for a person. Jesus’ use of the expression means that they will have to be united with him and suffer with him in whatever redemptive act was going to take place. Since James and John had obviously not picked up on this whole ‘suffering and death’ idea earlier, they probably don’t get it even yet.

Jesus continues with a description of baptism, but used more in the sense of baptism as a drowning, a death. Jesus ‘ own baptism on the Jordan has always been seen by the church as a foreshadowing of Jesus ‘ own death. That is why the early church saw baptism as joining with Christ in his death, dying to one’s old self, and rising out of the water in new life with Christ. In any case, we have the use of two of the earliest sacraments – Baptism and Eucharist – as ways to understand what is going to happen to Jesus and the results of it. When James and John eagerly say that they can share the cup, they really don’t yet understand what that is to mean for them. That will unfold in the next few weeks. And it is ironic that ones who are on his right and left when he dies are not James and John, but two thieves. Jesus is serious when he talks about their willingness to do this with him, though he knows they don’t really understand. He says that they will drink the cup with him, but he doesn’t promise the status that they want. He says it is up to God the Father alone to make such decisions.

The other apostles were a bit miffed when they heard what James and John had been asking. Obviously there had been some vying for Jesus ‘ attention and love. So Jesus uses it as yet another moment to teach the Apostles and let them understand that in the new kingdom status and power are not like they are in the old world order. In this new kingdom the Apostles will be the reverse of what they expect. The leadership they seem to so want so badly will be one of service and not of power, and that the only way to become great is to imitate Jesus in his humble, servant-like love for others, willing to give up one’s life for others.

This seems to me to be a clear direction for all Church authority: church leaders are to be servants or slaves to others, putting their own needs last, and taking care of the humblest needs of the most needy of men and women. They are to be “the slave to all!” This is an amazingly difficult concept and an even more difficult act to follow.

The Gospel closes with what could be called the mission statement of Jesus: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” This is the whole theological message of the Gospel of Mark in a nutshell, and words that we need to meditate on often. It is like the suffering servant of Isaiah that we read in the first reading: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin….” Jesus is the embodiment of this suffering servant who dies for our sins. He became man, lowered himself, humbled himself, so that we could find salvation through him. In the Letter to the Hebrews today we see how the early Church understood this: “We do not have a high priest who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin”. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.” In other words, if Jesus has become our servant and is so wiling to help us, let us not be afraid to go to him for help and to trust in his great Wisdom.

Today’s readings give us the mandate to go to Jesus with our problems and to ask his help, but also to treat others in the same way, becoming helpers for them as well. What a world this would be if we could all feel that we can be helped and our own work was to help others in need!

St. Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Lord, What Can I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?

The 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

Mark 10:17-30

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother."

He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." At that statement his face fell, and he went awaysad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God." Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come."

Last week, if the entire Gospel was read instead of the shortened version, you might remember that there seemed to be a story tacked on to the end of Jesus’ teaching on divorce. It was the story of the Apostles who rebuked the parents who brought children to Jesus to be touched. Jesus got very upset with the disciples and told them that “whoever does not accept the kingdom of heaven like a child will not enter into it.” What Jesus meant by that directly relates to the Gospel we hear today. What qualities was Jesus talking about that make us ‘accept the kingdom like a child’? The answer is that children are so young that they have done nothing to merit the kingdom. They haven’t tried to earn God’s favor, and, especially in Jesus’ time, they had no status at all. What Jesus is indicating is that we cannot really do anything to merit or be worthy of the kingdom. He is saying that the kingdom is God’s gift to us – our riches, our status, our power – mean nothing to God.

This directly relates to today’s reading. The young man we hear about today is shown to be really quite the opposite of what Jesus had been saying about children because this young man was trying to use his own efforts to pursue the kingdom of God. He couldn’t understand that it was nothing he could do to merit that kingdom, but that it was God’s gift to those who understand their own neediness. He lacked the “Wisdom” that we hear about in the first reading.

The young man was a good person. He showed respect to Jesus, kneeling when addressing him, and asked a question which showed that he wanted to do things that would lead to life after death. He was already doing the things that he was supposed to. He was observing the Jewish laws. To ask Jesus this question, though, he must have felt that there was something more. He wasn’t satisfied with what he was already doing.

 He calls Jesus ‘good’, and Jesus’ reply is an odd one. There has been a lot of speculation on Jesus’ reply that ‘no-one is good but God alone’. Perhaps the young man is basing Jesus’ ‘goodness’ on the things Jesus has done – the healings, for example – and not on the goodness in him which is a reflection of God’s goodness. The young man is again associating goodness with following the law, or doing good things rather than God’s innate goodness.

Jesus tells the young man what the Mosaic law asks him to do – follow the commandments. We should note, however, that Jesus doesn’t list all the ten commandments but only those that relate to human social interactions. So, did Jesus just forget about the first commandments that refer to a person’s relationship with God? Of course not, and we shall see that relationship in what follows.

What happens next is very important to the understanding of the story. “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” Nowhere else in the Gospels does this happen – that Jesus looks on someone with love. The word used is agapao which is the same word that is used in the early church for the type of love that God and Jesus had for us – a love that is divine. But the young man does not seem to notice the look of love – the look which may have been his answer, the look which would have freed him from his earthly social commandments and bring him to love of God. Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied with his own needs to notice.

Jesus immediately sees the problem – the young man is too attached to his possessions. posessions which in his mind gave him his independence – the very thing that Jesus had just told the Apostles was what children had, that we needed to get. Feelings of independence negate the childlike dependency that Christ says we need to have to enter the kingdom. What the young man has to do then is get rid of all those things that make him feel independent and become dependent on Jesus and God. Jesus says: Sell all your things and give them to the poor and then follow me. This summarizes the first three commandments which is our relationship with God. Only, Jesus here replaces God – since he is God.

Unfortunately the young man is unable to lose his independence. It is the first time we see someone not accepting the call of Jesus. And he is such a good man! And Jesus really loved him! What this means for us is that we need detachment from our material goods. This is especially hard, I think, in our American society in which our own worth seems based on material things. It is not that we can’t have material things – Peter seems to have kept his fishing boat, for example, but that we cannot be attached to things. Material things and money cannot rule our lives. We cannot be dependent on them. We must develop our dependence on God.

This dependence is so hard. The Apostles knew it was so hard! They were ‘amazed’ at Christ’s words. Jesus himself admits that it is hard. But harder still is it, Jesus says, for someone who is wealthy and dependent on material things to get into heaven. Wealth stops a person from having what he or she needs to get there. This is a radical statement, by the way, for Jews felt that wealth was a gift from God and meant that God favored one.

Jesus then uses a metaphor to describe how hard it would be for a dependent wealthy person to attain heaven. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” This is a strange metaphor, but one theologian explained that the eye of the needle was the term used for the small passageways or holes in the wall that lead into the temple. A camel would be too big to fit through this passageway. The Apostles wonder then who can be saved? Who can ever enter eternal life if it is that hard to do?

 Jesus answer is the most wonderful answer he could give to us: “All things are possible with God.” God presents us with eternal life, with our salvation as a free gift. He sent his only Son to give that gift to all of us – all of us, whether we merit it or not – it is a gift. That does not mean that we can stop doing things, that we can acquire riches, do anything we want and still attain heaven. We still have to accept that gift – and that means becoming like a little child – dependent on God.


The young man today was a good man. Jesus loved him. But he could not do it. Can we? Can we spend a little more time each week on our relationship with God? Can we try to put more faith and trust in God, leaving ourselves more in his hands? Can we find a little more time to pray each week, to do things which allow us to see God in others more?

 St. Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor
sueprovost056@aol.com
www.stvalentinefaithcommunity.org
www.womensordination.org


"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Become like little children.

The 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

Mark 10:2-16

The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" They were testing him. He said to them in reply, "What did Moses command you?" They replied, "Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her."
But Jesus told them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.

 Today we continue to read from the Gospel according to Mark. For the past three Sundays, we have been hearing Mark's reports of conversations between Jesus and his disciples. Recall that in Mark's Gospel, Jesus uses these private moments to teach his disciples in greater detail about the Kingdom of God. Beginning with today's Gospel, Jesus returns to Judea, Jewish territory, and resumes his public ministry.

The first verse of chapter 10 of Mark's Gospel tells us that crowds gathered around Jesus, and he taught them, as was his custom. Immediately, the Pharisees approach Jesus to test him. The Pharisees question Jesus about the lawfulness of divorce. Under specific conditions, divorce was an accepted practice among the Jewish people during the time of Jesus. It was regulated by the Law of Moses, as found in Deuteronomy 24:1-5. This law only permits that a husband may divorce his wife if he finds her to be indecent. This is the justification that the Pharisees reference when Jesus inquires about the commandment of Moses.

In reply, Jesus quotes from the Book of Genesis and counters that God's original intention was that men and women would become one flesh in marriage. Jesus describes the teaching of Moses as a concession made to God's original intention because of human stubbornness. In private, Jesus' disciples question him further about this teaching on divorce. It is to his disciples that Jesus lays out the implications of his teaching by explaining that remarriage after divorce is adultery.

Jesus' teaching was more restrictive than the teaching of the Pharisees, which permitted remarriage. Jesus further distinguished his teaching from the cultural norms of his time by applying his words equally to men and women. Jewish culture permitted only that a husband may divorce his wife. Wives were not permitted to divorce their husband for any reason, including adultery. At first glance, the final part of today's Gospel seems unconnected to the previous teaching about divorce.

When read together, however, these passages present a strong picture of Jesus' emphasis on the importance of family. God intended for women and men to be joined together in marriage. Among the purposes of marriage is the raising of children. By welcoming children and fostering their relationship with God, parents and families bear witness to the Kingdom of God.

At the end of today's Gospel, the people were bringing their children to Jesus, and again Jesus' disciples show that they just don't get it. Recall that in the Gospel for each of the past two Sundays, Jesus has taught his disciples the value and importance of these “little ones” in the Kingdom of God. Yet in today's Gospel, the disciples try to prevent people from bringing their children to Jesus. Jesus reprimands his disciples and welcomes these children.

Again Jesus offers these children as an example of the kind of complete trust and dependence upon God that ought to be the attitude of all believers. We must all become like little children in our trust and love for our God who loves us very much.

 St. Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)