Swimming Upstream

Mark 10

January 18, 2013

Swimming Upstream

I see it over and over in this chapter.  Jesus is speaking one radical word after another.  Just because we’ve heard His words over and over doesn’t change that reality.  Just because we live in a culture that has been far more influenced by Jesus than our PC driven gatekeepers want to admit, doesn’t change that reality.  The words of Jesus stood out.  They challenged conventional wisdom and accepted practices. They changed minds one at a time.  And in doing so they changed the world.

He challenged their view of marriage and divorce – at a time when the divorce laws didn’t just favor the male, but actually were dictated by the male-dominated society.  I really don’t mean to step on toes here and I know many of those who will read this have had marriages that have ended. I have seen it happen among those I love far too many times.  But I will tell you this in all honesty, it saddens me every time I see it.  My heart aches because it’s not the way it was supposed to be. And I pray that hearts will be softened in every one.

He speaks about bringing children to Him.  We often quote these words at the time of baptisms, but in reality, we have no idea how important those words were in that society.  (Side note – if you’ve secretly bought into the cultural myth that all Christianity has done is mess up things as it spread throughout the nations, I challenge you to read John Ortberg’s book, Who is this Man?  I do not deny that events like the crusades were horrible on more levels than we know, but that is not the whole story.)  In a culture that regularly practiced “exposure” (leaving children out in the woods to perish), these simple words of Jesus changed society to protect the lives of children.  They lived them out by carry for unwanted children.  We would do well to tattoo these words on our minds in our own society that has a split personality on our treatment of children born and unborn.

Jesus challenged the rich not to put their trust in riches.  He called for them to care for the poor. At that time when most believed the rich were especially blessed by God, look at the way He deals with the rich young man.  He pinpoints that for this wealthy twenty-something, his net worth has become his identity and his god.  So He calls him to give it up.

And we even pass by the story of the blind Bartimaeus – forgetting that at the time of Jesus, the blind and lame were considered to be blind and lame because they had somehow offended God.  But Jesus reached out to the blind, the lame, the deaf and the leper.  Every last person was loved by God and so loved by God’s Son.  He was headed to Jerusalem to prove how much God loved them. 

As I said, this is a chapter full of challenges to me.  Jesus challenged the thinking of those at that time, and Jesus challenges my assumptions every day I spend time listening to Him. 

How about yours?