"Make Straight a Highway for Our God"

What is the Gospel of St. Mark about? This question, for some people, sets much machinery into motion, both theological machinery and Scriptural. But let us wipe the slate clean, for the most widespread Christian theologies are barely mentioned. The brief and few passages in St. Mark do not set out clear "jumping off" places for our theologies. Certainly, the Apostles were not familiar with our theological categories. And other Scriptures are barely cited. Let us read St. Mark's Gospel as if we had never read it, which is the case for most people. What are the Gospel's major events? What are its primary themes?

A standout feature of this literary work is its brevity. Our Gospel lesson this morning, which relates the calling of the Twelve, is a case in point.

.... followed by names.

Mark's Gospel proceeds at a headlong pace. It is, in fact, the shortest-most-important book in the world. The Evangelist Matthew makes this point formally as he includes 97% of the material found in St. Mark's Gospel then goes on to compose a Gospel that is more than twice as long (measured in words).

Have you committed to the sacred responsibility of reading the Gospel of St. Mark? (I don't mean being exposed to passages ..... but reading.) Then hold on to your hat, for it will all be over in 45 minutes! And the Evangelist's itinerary could scarcely be more expansive. From the Forerunner's startling fiat, "Make straight!" which carries the meaning in the Greek, "Do this instantly!" to the appearance of God and the reordering of the entire lifeworld of Israel, we are in for a whirlwind .... and of epic proportions.

Let us summarize:

1. The never-before-seen entrance of God into His Creation. That He is God is announced in the first sentence and will be attested throughout by the demons who "fell down before Him and cried out, saying, 'You are the Son of God!'" (Mk 3:11)
   
   
2. As God, He decrees that He will rip the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Jacob's children, off their present foundation and then He makes another foundation, which was modeled after its original ordained for the Patriarchs.
   
   
3. He has a new name for it, never-before heard: "the Kingdom of God."
   
   
4. He appoints Twelve new leaders for this renewed lifeworld.
   
   
5. He repeatedly brushes aside the claims of the previous regime with terse phrases like "'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath'" (Mk 2:27) or "'Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?'" (Mk 2:19) Concise, pithy, and dismissive.
   
   
6. The "giving of the Holy Spirit" ..... we know what that is: Pentecost. It is monumental. Consider the Book of Acts. This is grand opera. Or consider the Gospel of St. John. Jesus breathes on the Apostles, founding the Church. The giving of the Holy Spirit in St. Mark's Gospel? .... accomplished in two sentences.
   
   
7. He announces that He will destroy the cultic center of the present, invented religion, literally razing to the ground the foundations of this cult. (He has already taught that the rules of the cult can be disregarded.)
   
   
8. For this offense (and for this offense only), He will be executed.
   
   
9. The mocking and Crucifixion of God is all over in twenty verses.
   
   
10. The Resurrection and the Ascension is covered in another twenty.
    
    
11. There is no section for "the teachings of the Risen Christ." As quickly as He came onto the scene (no birth in Bethlehem), so quickly He departed.

You see? A headlong pace.

Not let envision Israel. The scenes are set beginning in the historical Northern Kingdom, where ancient Hebrew beliefs remained strong. And the Master progresses toward the south and finally to Jerusalem, where Judah-ism (literally the cult of Judah) dominates. Significantly, the Gospel ends with a return to Galilee following the Resurrection, according to the instructions of an angel. You see, He brings the religion of the Patriarchs south to Judah. He destroys the hybrid-religious cult He finds there. And then He returns to the north.

As we have learned in recent decades, the Persians oversaw the indoctrination of the Hebrew people with the construction of the Second Temple and the rewriting of the Hebrew Scriptures, all overseen by Nehemiah, the Persian governor of Hebrew descent. And we learned in recent years, that Judah-ism did not become a significant influence until the century of so before the birth of Jesus. Perhaps this explains the timing of the Incarnation of God, for what could render a people more lost than fastening themselves upon the wrong god?

May I say in passing that the greatest of all sins, and the principal sin of our time, is the abandonment of God. And I mean God, not an invented confection to pacify ourselves. This cannot be. What does Jesus say He has come for? He has come for the lost sheep of Israel.

Study any passage, and you will see that the Gospel of St. Mark is carved from granite. No words are wasted. Each passage is jewel-like in its chiseled elegance.

We begin with golden sentences that would have comforted the Hebrews — Scripture hearkening back to the time before Judah-ism:

Who is speaking here? "My messenger?" "I send?" Why, it is God! This is in keeping with the announcement made in the previous sentences: "The beginning of Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." "The Son of God?" At the beginning of the first century, angels were understood to be the sons of God ..... but this is the Son of God. Uttermost urgency is conveyed in these two sentences. Behold calls us to attention. Then immediately, we hear none-less-than God speak. As I say, urgency.

Consider how different this is from the first-century conceptions of God. St. Mark overturns all expectations. Their god is the one depicted in Deuteronomy, which had taken center place during the years before Jesus birth. The God revealed in Mark's Gospel is not the distant figure we find in Deuteronomy. He has not set a holy mountain down before us as a boundary that no one may touch lest he die.

Indeed, as Mark's Gospel opens, God speaks to us, to everyone. And we are introduced to a new concept: the Divine as Family, Father and Son. In time, we will understand that we are to enter into this Family. You know that word family .... it means familiar, even most familiar. It is scaled to us. This is not a distant and dangerous god conceived to intimidate. No longer is this true.

I know that it is fashionable among exegetes to gloss the phrase "Your way" and "Your face" as referring to Jesus. But aside from the low view of Jesus this implies — suggesting a disconnection between the Father and Son, that Jesus needed someone else to show Him the Father's Will — I am guided by the Evangelist's invocation of Isaiah:

Isn't this God stooping down and with great tenderness speaking to His people. We might respond, God is coming to us! The Day of the Lord is upon us! There must be a reckoning, therefore, which explains the nominal meaning of straight. God must not be presented with a crooked path. He must not see an out-of-joint world. The false way must be cast aside that God may be embraced. This is Jesus' task: casting aside a false world.

We know that even as the Gospel of Mark was being committed to paper (i.e., papyrus) in 65-70 A.D., the false foundation — the temple had been the center of the Persian-Judah-ite cult — was being utterly annihilated. Are we all familiar with this great historical landmark? In 70 A.D. the Romans completely razed to the ground the Judah-ite lifeworld. And find in the Gospel of Mark the Son of God saying,

and

Yes, God is coming, but instead of a general judgment, He is effecting an exodus, an exodus from Jerusalem and Judah, an exodus from Judah-ism. And as with the Red Sea experience, He is closes the path from behind His people even as they tread it. The false foundation laid by the Persians is being reduced to rubble even as God's people effect their return to Him by a Way paved by the twelve new tribal leaders, the Twelve Apostles.

God's Way has always been to begin again. And He begins here by re-establishing the lifeworld of the Patriarchs, overseen by new patriarchs who will sit on twelve thrones, St. Matthew will later clarify (Mt 19:28).

God has entered their lives in the form of living relationship — as a Friend, if you will. After all, this was the Patriarchal model — not as a distant, unknowable god to whom sacrifices must be offered. And the fruits of God's teaching are heard in the words of a Judah-ite scribe following the roaming instruction of Jesus:

That's it! You see, this man is not far from the Kingdom of God.

Love, not sacrifice — this was the way of the Patriarchs. And it is the old-Way-made-new now ordained by the Son of God. Isn't this the heart of the story that we read in this masterpiece of chiseled concision?

Whatever became of the Persian-inspired blood-sacrifice religion practiced in Jerusalem so long ago? This cult, God literally wiped off the map of the world in 70 A.D. and turned it into field of rubble, once overseen by Sadducees, who rejected Heaven and the angels. They were never heard from again. Their world was reduced to dust and carried off by the four winds. Many Pharisees converted to the new Way (which had been the original Way). Remember Stephen who had given his defence on the point of martyrdom, which is the primary set-piece in the Book of Acts and its longest section: He pointed to Abraham. The Way is all about Abraham.

Those Pharisees who did not convert and who escaped the general destruction of Judah took with them a kernel of their faith world. This was a small minority of a minority. They would become the Rabbinic Judaism we know today.

But the mainstream — the thousands and tens of thousands — who followed the Apostles would prosper. The Gospel According to St. Mark closes with God's success in hand:

Yes, God succeeded. He succeeded then as He succeeds now. And the Way of the Patriarchs, the Way of relationship and conversation with God, the Way of Bread and Wine in the tradition of Abraham's priest, Melchizedek, the Way of God's own visitation to His beloved humans as at the Oaks of Mamre — all of this was to continue. This was the religion God had set on the earth.

But whatever became of the Way of the ancient Hebrews? Who are the modern-day descendants of these people?

They are us. We are those people. And we might say tersely after the style of St. Mark's Gospel, We are God's victory.

Now that the story has been told, let us speak of theology. The meaning of the Incarnation is that the Lord of Life has come to make whole a broken world and to shepherd His people Who were profoundly lost. To be near to Him is to drink from ever-yielding fountains of Goodness and Life as He originally intended it.

And now God has come to His people contaminated by the traditions of Babylon, first by the Neo-Babylonians and then by their conquerors, the Persians.

As St. Mark related, He healed the lame. He healed the paralyzed. He healed lepers.

He is the Lord of Life.

This is what the Early Church believed. He is the Logos Who created the Universe from His Own Divinity (St. John the Theologian). He is Life Itself, Who has come to show us what the course of life looks like (St. Irenaeus). He is God Who has come to Heal the world's curse (St. Athanasius). He is the Solitary Example of the Fullness of Humanity (Origen). So we follow Him as He has repeatedly commanded. We raise ourselves up. We dust ourselves off, by the grace of God. And we follow Him. We follow Him midst struggles and strivings. We follow Him through high mountain passes. We follow Him unfailingly for years and decades until at length He has become our own Second Nature. And then we follow Him into the Kingdom of God, the Place par excellence of Life, which He created to replace the bloody charnel house of death and eternal death set on a Persian foundation. For virtue, not blood-sacrifice, was to be our natural mind. Was this the point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And Heaven, not earth, was to be our natural Home.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.