Emptying

“Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” – John 12:3

Every time we see Mary, she’s at the feet of Jesus: learning (Luke 10:39), grieving (John 11:32), and here, worshipping. Mark tells us that the ointment of nard came in an alabaster flask, which Mary broke (Mark 14:3). Nard was exported from the Himalayans, and this amount would have been worth 300 days’ wages; it was likely their financial security. But the nature of the jar was all-or-nothing: she could not have given just part of it, even if she’d wanted to; she had to break it apart and give it all. 

One chapter later, we once again see someone tending to the feet of those gathered for a meal, under the shadow of Judas. This time, it’s Jesus, enacting Philippians 2 by taking off his robe (“did not consider equality with God a thing to be held on to”), tying a towel on (“taking on the form of a servant”), washing feet (“humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death”), putting his robe on and returning to his place (“God has highly exalted him”). This downward-shaped parabolic movement is often called the “kenosis,” from the Greek word for “emptied” found in Philippians 2:7. Emptied. Like the alabaster jar.

I read somewhere, “Judas is following Jesus because of what it gets him. Mary is following Jesus despite what it costs her.” I’ve always been struck by the radical beauty of Mary’s act, but really, it points to the beauty of what Jesus is about to do for her. He emptied himself, at great cost. Sometimes we forget that Jesus existed before he came into our world. While he was fully God on earth, there were things he gave up to take on human form. And every step on earth was a step towards the cross, where he emptied himself of life and poured out his blood for my sake. I think of the smell that must have filled the room when Mary broke open the jar, and I think of how Paul put it: “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). 

Chiasms In Mark

“And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.” – Mark 15:37

Eugene Peterson describes the chiastic structure of the latter half of the book of Mark, which he pictures as a pyramid leading up to the apex of four events:

A   Burial: Woman anoints Jesus’ body for burial (14:3-11)

B   Eucharist: Passover meal (14:12-25)

C   Cup/Prayer: Garden of Gethsemane (14:26-42)

D   Cross: Betrayal and arrest (14:43-52)

E   Trial: Jewish council trial before high priest (4:53-65)

F   Denial: Peter denies Jesus (14:66-72)

F’  Trial: Roman trial before Pilate (15:1-15)

E’  Mockery: Mock worship from Roman soldiers (15:16-20)

D’  Cross: Simon carries cross and the crucifixion (15:21-32)

C’  Cup/Prayer: Jesus dies (15:21-32)

B’  Eucharist: Women who stay (15:40-41)

A’  Burial: Joseph buries Jesus in tomb (15:42-47)

The first and last scenes are burial scenes, the preparation for burial and the burial itself. The next are gatherings for eucharist: the last supper, and the women gathered for the six-hour breaking of flesh and pouring out of blood on the cross. The next are scenes of Jesus’ prayers: that the cup might pass from him, then his prayer as he drinks the cup. The scenes of the cross contrast Judas, who brings Jesus to crucifixion by betraying him, and Simon of Cyrene, who brings Jesus to crucifixion by carrying his cross.

The central four scenes interrelate to form a capstone to the pyramid. E and F are sequential, occurring in the Jewish court and outside courtyard. E and F’ are both trials, Jewish and Roman. F and E’ are both mockeries or denials. F and F’ are both rejections, from the leader of the apostles (Peter) and the leader of the Romans (Pilate). “A double rejection,” Peterson writes, “the person closest to Jesus and the person most remote from Jesus rejecting him; the foreign outsider who hasn’t the slightest idea of who Jesus is or might be now paired with the apostolic insider who was the first to recognize and confess Jesus’ messianic identity, both teaming up to say ‘no’ to Jesus.” F’ and E’ are again sequential, but here in the Roman court and away inside the palace.

Peterson sums it up this way: “St. Mark’s death narrative is an intricately interwoven web of echoes, parallels, contrasts, allusions, and repetitions. The death of Jesus gathers everything into it and fashions the finished work of salvation. Everything that goes into the work of salvation is found in this death. And everything that goes into our involvement in salvation is found in this death.”

A Place For Solitude

“And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” – Mark 11:11

This verse strikes me as anticlimactic in the extreme. Jesus has just fulfilled ancient prophecy, the humble King entering the great city with much fanfare—and Mark says, he basically looked around a bit, then left. Bethany was a village about two miles east of Jerusalem, home to Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Simon. In this final week of his life, Jesus doesn’t stay in Jerusalem, where all the action is, but in a place away from the public eye, among those who loved him.

Do you have a place you can retreat to with regularity and ease? Thomas Merton writes in New Seeds of Contemplation, “Although it is true that this solitude is everywhere, there is a mechanism for finding it that has some reference to actual space, to geography, to physical isolation… There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men… Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be too quick to change it for another.”

We live so much of our lives in reference to other people and events that it is good to have a place for untethering. There’s a corner in our house I go to, near a window from which I can see an orange tree, in a room with a door that shuts. Jesus sought solitude, and here in the last week of his life he finds a place away from the action. Where is your place? 

Belief And Unbelief

“Immediately the father of the child cried out [with tears] and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’” – Mark 9:24

In a faint echo of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai, Jesus descends from the mountain here to find confusion and chaos: the scribes arguing, the disciples trying and failing to cast out a spirit due to lack of prayer. It’s difficult to have a child and not feel the pain of the father in this story, and when he first comes to Jesus, you get the sense he sees Jesus as another in a long line of attempts. His speech reminds me of what any patient walking into a clinic room would say. But in verse 24, there’s a shift of tone, focus, manner. He cries out from the heart. He believes. He doesn’t say, “I believe, help my child!” He sees that the issue is not Jesus’ willingness or ability, or even the situation his child is in: the issue is his own unbelief.

Spurgeon said, “Is it not a very singular thing that as soon as ever he had a little faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he discovers the great abyss of his unbelief? … Until a man gets faith, he may think he has got it; but when he has real faith in Jesus Christ, then he shudders as he thinks how long he has lived in unbelief, and realizes how much of unbelief is still mixed in with his belief.” It’s true: whenever I read this story, I realize how much my struggles stem from a lack of belief in God’s power. My diligence veers into anxiety because I don’t really believe God has the power to control every detail of every situation. I over-process with myself or others because I don’t actually believe that God has the power to hear and respond to every word of prayer. I complain because I don’t actually believe in the power of God’s sovereignty to work every situation for eternal good and Christlikeness. 

But despite the presence of some measure of unbelief, Jesus heals the child. This is a piercing encouragement to me: that Jesus works in my life despite and into my areas of unbelief. Faith is not a state of psychological certainty or complete lack of functional doubts. It is a confession, a decision to believe and obey despite doubts and fears. It is a willingness to bring ourselves and our situations before him. It is being an attentive witness.

In the end, the father’s quest to find healing for his child led to healing for himself. That’s another thing I love about this story. Lately, as I’ve been reciting the verses in Matthew 7 about the speck of dust and the log, I’ve been thinking about parenting. I’ve been asking myself, how do the issues my children struggle with point to similar areas God needs to work in me? How must I come to Jesus to find my own healing before I can see clearly to help my children? The father’s recounting of his child’s issues ultimately led to his own confession. And that led to watching as his child rose up to new life through the power of the word of Christ. That must have been something to see.

Ego Eimi

“He came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.’ And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded.” – Mark 6:48-51

One of the neat things about reading consecutively through the Old and New Testaments simultaneously is that you can draw interesting parallels. In this passage, the grammar of the Greek emphasizes Jesus’ intent to pass by his disciples. A remarkable idea, surely. Did he think to casually wave hello as he strode by? The word “terrified” here is the same one used to describe Jesus’ agitation in the Garden of Gethsemane—the disciples were deeply troubled and afraid. The words Jesus utters to them, through the dead-of-night dark, through their fear, are amazing: “ego eimi.” I Am.

When Moses asked for God’s name at the burning bush, God replied, “I Am Who I Am,” which was shorted to a verbal noun of four letters, YHWH, probably pronounced Yahweh, and translated in English “Lord.” This became the Jew’s primary term for God, used 6,700 times, compared with the 2,500 times the more generic semitic term for divinity, Elohim (translated “God”), is used. 

Jesus, passing by, utters the Greek translation of YHWH, ego eimi. Where have we seen this before? At the end of Exodus 33: “Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory.’ And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.”… and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.”

Moses longed to see God, but could not even glimpse his face. So many years later, God again chooses to reveal himself, in the person of Jesus, the I-Am passing by in glory. I wonder if the disciples recalled Job 9:8, describing God “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea,” or Psalm 77:19, “your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” I wonder if they recalled Moses, the shepherd leading his people through the Red Sea, as they saw Jesus, walking through this one. The same I-Am, creator-God, shepherd-God in Exodus, Job, Psalm, is here, in Mark. No wonder they were afraid and utterly astounded.

Framing the ego eimi are words of personal compassion. Take heart, tharseo, surely one of the most encouraging words in the Greek language, translated elsewhere “be of good courage; be of good cheer.” Don’t be afraid. The previously-unattainable Yahweh is present in a deeply personal way. And then Mark, whose paucity of words and focus on action serves us well here, describes two simple events: Jesus gets in the boat with them. The winds cease. That’s all we really need to know, isn’t it? The I-Am is here, and he gets into the boat with us. No longer must we struggle with the oars against the headlong winds.

Today I felt a bit jittery: I had just written up our November calendar. In addition to continuing family routines, we’re opening our home this month to the neighborhood, medical students, non-believing friends, communities within the church, kids’ school friends, work colleagues. Most of them for the first time, all of them unpredictable. I could feel myself starting to strain against the oars, and realized, no, what I need is to realize Jesus is in the boat with me. Jesus is showing me that the indefinable YHWH, the ego eimi, can be defined as God actively present with me. As Theodorus C. Vriezen writes, “ ‘I am who I am’ means, ‘I am there, wherever it may be… I am really there!” Take heart, I-Am, don’t be afraid.

Parenting: Never An Interruption

“And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’” – Mark 5:30-31

I was recently home alone with the kids, mollifying Eric out of a grumpy mood by folding paper airplanes with him in my office room, when Ellie came up wanting to show me a math strategy she’d invented. Earlier Emmy had said she was hungry; I’d sent her off to peel a clementine for herself. Now Elijah came up wanting one too, so I sent him off with the same instructions. I asked Ellie to show me, but she said I had to come sit down with her so I told her to go back out for now. I managed to supervise a few more folds of the airplane before I heard bawling from the kitchen. I left Eric, went out to find Elijah crying because he had asked Ellie whether a fruit in the fruit bowl was an orange or lemon? and she had refused to answer. I told Ellie she wasn’t being very kind, told Elijah it was an orange and wiped his tears on his blankie as Emmy calmly handed me all her clementine rind bits as Elijah happened to be obstructing her access to the trash can. I got Elijah a clementine only to turn around and find Ellie crying. I had just sat down with her when I heard Eric yelling in frustration from the other room because he couldn’t figure out how to fold his airplane.

Rachel Jankovic, a mother of five under five at the time, writes in her book Loving The Little Years about “the bulk effect,” when the collective level of stress is more than the sum of its parts. This is to be expected in big families, and it’s important not to blame one child when responding to the stress of the whole situation, or to see children as problems to be organized rather than individuals. “Christian childrearing,” Jankovic writes, “is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge. The more children you have, the more you need to be pastorally minded. Look to each of their souls and their needs… Study them. Seek them out. Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues. A lot of children from big families discover very early on that their parents simply do not have time for their problems.”

Jesus is surrounded here, we are told twice, by a great crowd, an immense throng of people. He is on a time-sensitive, public mission. The woman had already been physically healed. She obviously did not mean to interrupt him, touching only his garment, in secret, so he would not be delayed by loss of time or being publicly acknowledged as now ceremonially unclean. Why did he stop? Perhaps because he wanted to clarify that her healing came through faith, not some semi-superstitious touch of cloth. Perhaps to demonstrate the necessity of confession. Perhaps because as a poor, unclean outcast, as someone who had reached the desperate end of all else that could help her, she needed to be seen, to be called daughter, to receive peace. Even though she was already physically healed, it is only later in verse 34 that Jesus says, “be healed of your disease.”

But the point is, Jesus stops. He stops to address the gospel-need, the heart-need, of someone who to everyone else was an interruption. Isn’t this so much of what parenting is about? Sometimes moments I perceive as frustrating interruptions are actually opportunities God provides to help me see the heart- or gospel-need of one of my children. The point is not to vent my frustration, or take it personally, or merely manage them all into better outward behavior. The point is to be willing to let go of agendas and appearances to pause and ask as Jesus did, who touched me? To look at our children and ask, who are you? Are you reaching out to me? What is going on in your heart? How do you need the gospel in this moment? 

In that particular moment, I felt like Ellie, who tends to ask the least, needed me the most, so I stayed with her, and the others ended up being fine. But it might be different each time. I’m constantly reminding myself that when pressed upon by the crowds, when the bulk effect takes hold, it’s important not to lose my sense of presence or vision. Jesus’ interruption ended up being an opportunity to glorify God and embody the gospel more in the life of both the woman and Jairus’ daughter than he would perhaps have otherwise. May we see the people before us as he does.

Not-Knowing

“And he said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” – Mark 4:26-29

When I am honest with my longings before God, I often find that under them lie questions. How long will it be before I find a certain relationship or stop feeling lonely? Will my friend ever believe in Christ? Will I ever overcome this sin struggle in my life? Is my ministry making a difference in anyone’s life? Will my children truly love Jesus? 

Jesus’ followers must have had many questions, urgent and important questions, about the kingdom the Messiah would bring. In many ways the Jews still saw themselves as exiles, awaiting political liberation. Jesus answers with this enigmatic parable, the only one unique to Mark, and told in Mark’s characteristically perfunctory style. This is a parable about mystery that is itself ironically mysterious. Who is this man? Perhaps anyone who shares the Word, if one considers this a parallel to the earlier parable of the sower, but that doesn’t seem consistent with harvesting of the grain. Perhaps God then, but surely an omniscient God cannot be ignorant of how the seed is growing. 

The answer is unclear, but perhaps that’s the point. It’s not so much a puzzle to be fit together, as a picture to be gazed at: and when I do, the impression I receive is one of mystery. The mystery of germination—the inexorable yet invisible growth, seed to sprout to bud, that cannot be hurried nor prevented, that is produced but not controlled. The man does not know how it all happens, and perhaps, he does not need to know. He sleeps and rises: I love how repetitively unexceptional that is, how simple. And I hear God saying to me, Esther, be patient with yourself. Sit with your longings, wait with your questions. Keep getting up in the mornings, going to bed at nights. The kingdom of God works unknown sometimes.

As Rilke wrote, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

The Geography Of The Gospel

“But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places.” – Mark 1:45

One way to “beat the gospel into our heads continually” is to ask ourselves as we read, where do we see the it? In this passage, Jesus begins in one of the 240 towns in the rural area of Galilee, speaking in the synagogue in an early flush of popularity. The leper began outside the town, an utter outcast, physically and socially separated by Levitical law: “The leprous person who has the disease shall… cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Leviticus 13:45-46).

A series of remarkable verbs then occur. The leper “came” to Jesus: a man who by law had to warn people away nonetheless sought Jesus out. Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched.” The leper had come within arm’s reach, but no closer; Jesus is the one who reaches out, making himself ceremonially unclean. The healed leper does not obey all Jesus asks him to do, however. At the end of the story, we find the leper, restored into community, speaking freely, but we find Jesus out in desolate places. They have switched places.

That’s the heart of the gospel: Jesus takes our place. The cry of the leper is our own: “make me clean.” He didn’t say, “make me well.” He wasn’t asking primarily for physical healing as much as relational restoration, to be brought back into community. Isn’t that the cry of all of our hearts? We are defined by what we desire, not what we know, and as Brooks writes, “The ultimate heart’s desire—the love behind all the other loves—is the desire to lose yourself in something or someone… The ultimate desire is the desire for fusion with a beloved other, for an I-Thou bond, the wholehearted surrender of the whole being, the pure union, the intimacy beyond fear.” Jesus, knowing it would mean that he himself would suffer alienation, stretches out to touch us, to bear the cost of our uncleanliness so that we can experience the intimacy with God that He created us for, without fear.

This bears remembering. Remember, Paul writes. Remember that at one time, you were separated, alienated, “but now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). Too often, I see myself on my own merits. I forget that grace, while free, is costly. I lack deep humility and gratitude. I lose wonder. I forget that unity not only with God, but with others that I may feel different from, comes only from grace, and should be part of my experience of grace. I need to remember that the only way I came in was because of the One who died outside the city.

The Shape Of The Eucharist

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’” – Matthew 26:26

Four verbs that occur in this verse—took (lambano), bless (eulogeo), broke (klao), gave (didomi)—appear in the same sequence in the feeding of four thousand and five thousand (Mark 6:41, 14:22-24 and parallels), in the supper at Emmaus in Luke (Luke 24:30-31), and in how Paul describes taking communion (1 Cor 11:23-26; final verb not stated but clearly implied). Dom Gregory Dix is perhaps most known for exploring the implications of this in a piece he wrote in 1941 called “The Shape of the Liturgy”—I haven’t read it, but I like that phrase. These words trace out for us the essential movements of the eucharistic meal.

Take: Jesus takes what we offer, which in these passages is always something material, but represents what is personal as well. He does not find fault with what we bring: He receives us as we are. He does not force or coerce, but he extends an invitation.

Bless: “Eucharist” literally means thanksgiving. Jesus thanks God for what we have offered. Don’t we often neglect to do this? We rush from the taking to the doing. But Jesus pauses to bless, and when we follow him, we are present to what we have before us in a posture of thanksgiving.

Break: Jesus changes what we bring. Eugene Peterson writes, “At the Table we are not permitted to be self-enclosed. We are not permitted to be self-sufficient. The breaking of our pride and self-approval is not a bad thing; it opens us to new life, to saving action. We come crusted over, hardened into ourselves. We soon discover that God is working deep within us, beneath our surface lies and poses, to bring new life.”

Give: communion is a back and forth. Jesus takes what we give; then we receive what he gives. And he always gives back more lavishly than we gave.

The mysterious and beautiful thing about these words are that they apply to Jesus himself. He is both the priest who takes what we offer in sacrifice and blesses it, and the sacrifice itself, who was broken so that we can be given salvation. And we follow him by offering ourselves as living sacrifices, losing our lives so that we can receive and spread true life. All of it is done in the context of community, around the table together, in communion, back and forth, this rhythm of the supper, this shape of the eucharist and of the Christian life itself.

Hunger And Thirst

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” – Matthew 5:6

“To be hungry is not enough; I must be really starving to know what is in His heart towards me. … When the prodigal son was hungry he went to feed upon husks, but when he was starving, he turned to his father.” – J.N. Darby

What is righteousness? Unfortunately, in modern English that word often has the negative connotation of a condescending, rigid morality, a meaning almost synonymous with self-righteousness. But Biblically, the Greek word daikos has a relational side that the English word lacks: it means “to be right with”—as Keller puts it, “to be presentable,” “to pass inspection in the eyes of a significant other,” “to be found pleasing in the eyes of someone I want to please.” Righteousness here means wanting to be right with God: it encompasses both justification and sanctification. We receive righteousness by faith, but I think here too there’s a sense of the desire to be free from sin and its power, a longing to be positively holy.

What does it mean to “hunger and thirst”? Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “It means a consciousness of our need; it means a deep consciousness of our great need even to the point of pain. It means something that keeps on until it is satisfied. It does not mean just a passing feeling, a passing desire… Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied. It hurts, it is painful; it is like actual, physical hunger and thirst. It is something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate.”

That’s true, isn’t it? Ellie came back from farm one day when I picked her up from school (yeah, their school has a farm), cheeks red and hair plastered with sweat, and she pretty much couldn’t think or talk about anything except drinking a glass of water, which she did as soon as she got home. When you’re truly hungry or thirsty, it’s the top thing on your mind. It’s something we’re active about. And it doesn’t stop. Isn’t it odd that we are designed such that, no matter how much we eat or drink, we will inevitably become hungry or thirsty again? 

In fact, the more we are filled, the more we hunger and thirst for what filled us. Our appetites are malleable. My friend who weaned herself off sugar, for example, found that after a few weeks, foods she found normal before now seemed distastefully sweet. I think of my appetite as something valuable to me—it is coinage I can spend on some kind of intake; once satiated, the appetite is gone, and what I have chosen to intake has changed me, and changed what I will long for, in some way or other. If I really hunger and thirst for righteousness, I will not only avoid anything patently harmful or sinful, but I will avoid anything that dulls my spiritual appetites. If I knew we were going to an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ for dinner, would I go eat a bunch of snacks that afternoon? Of course not!

As Lloyd-Jones writes, “There are so many things… that are quite harmless in themselves and which are perfectly legitimate. Yet if you find that you are spending much of your time with them, and that you desire the things of God less, you must avoid them.”

What do my thoughts, feelings and actions say about what I am hungering and thirsting for? Jesus does not say, “hunger for happiness and you will find it,” but “hunger for righteousness and you will be happy.” Not only happy, but “satisfied”—Greek chortazo, which literally means “to gorge.” To feed in abundance, the same word used to describe the feeding of the four thousand, when there were seven full baskets of food left over (Mark 8), and the feeding of the five thousand, when there were twelve baskets left over (Luke 9). So much of what we hunger and thirst for leaves us unsatisfied: but deep longing for holiness, to be right before God, will leave us chortazo—fully satisfied, with more left over.