October 30, 2025

The Passover Observance

Mark 14:12-25

The account of the arrangements for the celebration of Passover is fascinating to me.  Jesus has apparently set things up in advance, apart from what he has the disciples now do.  The large upstairs room, furnished, is ready for them.  And it is there that the disciples prepare the Passover meal.

There is speculation as to who exactly was invited to the meal.  Traditionally this was a family celebration, and so are there others present besides Jesus and the twelve apostles?  Did the disciples actually prepare the meal, or did they oversee the preparations being done by others?  Were there women present for the preparations and even for the meal?  Many of us depend in our minds on Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of the meal, but is that a factual depiction or just his own artistic depiction of the meal?  Leonardo certainly wasn’t there, and the possibilities for imagining the participants in the Passover celebration are many.  And, as Mark indicates, this was a large room, which sounds like more space than was required for just the thirteen men.

As for the account of the meal itself, we have the introduction of the theme of betrayal as they are eating.  As I have said elsewhere, I question how exactly Judas understood his role, and what exactly his motives were.  But, interestingly, the other disciples must have been aware of their own fallibility, for they seem to each ask if they are the one.

We are then told about the bread and the cup, and Jesus saying that they symbolically represent his body and blood.  Though it is uncertain what the meal looked like back then, traditional Passover meals have included four cups of wine, and from various sources it would appear that the cup here would have been the third cup in the meal, the significance of which was that it was a cup of redemption.  As with so much in the Gospels, assumptions are made about settings and traditions that would have been understood by early readers, but which leave gaps for us to try to fill in as best we can.

October 21, 2025

A Gift

Mark 14:1-11

The idea that some religious leaders wanted to get Jesus out of the way brackets these eleven verses.  We begin with Mark’s note about the motives of some of those leaders, and end with Judas playing into their hands through his actions.

The first note that I want to make is that although there may have been some religious leaders who were upset with Jesus, we should be careful to avoid classifying every leader in that way.  In addition, while some may have been upset, we should remember that dialogue on subjects was common among the religious leaders, and disagreements shouldn’t have led to death threats.  We need to consider whether or not such a description as Mark provides is influenced by a later situation and how that all figured in together.

Secondly, although both Judas and these religious leaders are portrayed as the villains in the story, I think that Judas also had much deeper motives in mind than money.  I seriously consider that Judas, who may have been more of a Zealot than Jesus, may have wished for an uprising of some sort, and wanted to press Jesus’ hand by meeting with the leaders, hoping that the conflict would get things started.

In between these brackets, we have the story of the woman who anoints Jesus.  Here too, one of the issues is the money.  In other accounts of this event, it is the woman herself whose life is questioned, but here the focus is on the waste of the ointment.  But Jesus defends her and her actions, and indeed says that what she did will always be remembered whenever the good news is proclaimed.  It is sort of sad that while we remember the stories about Judas and the religious leaders, we actually seldom tell this story.

Perhaps we need to reconsider how we tell the good news.

October 12, 2025

Signs 3

Mark 13:24-37

Jesus here delineates more specific things that will signal the end of times, as opposed to the more general comments about wars, rumors of wars, and more that we heard earlier in the chapter.  These more detailed comments suggest something beyond the many things that people and nations do to other people and nations, and instead add a more cataclysmic view of things beyond any person’s control.

Jesus again uses the fig tree and nature to help the people to see that these are signs of the nearness of the end.  However, he then clearly says that no one, not even himself, will ultimately know when the end is coming.  That time is known to God alone.  Which invites us to discretion and wisdom when we hear various predictions of the coming of the end.  People may indeed be sincere in trying to read the signs of the times, as Jesus suggests that we do, but none of them can tell the day and time of the end, for God alone knows those details.

Thus, Jesus’ warning is to watch, and to be alert, certainly to pray, since we do not know when the time will come.  Indeed, Jesus means for us to always be ready, and we do that by living lives each day that follow his lead, that orient our lives based on his teachings, that are based on love, care for others, and devotion to God.

October 4, 2025

Signs 2

Mark 13:14-23

The desolating sacrilege that is talked about may be a more general sense of the intrusion of the Gentiles into the temple of Jerusalem, or it may more specifically refer to the invasion of the Romans wherein they destroyed the temple in the year 70 CE.  In either case, this was such an incursion into Jerusalem, and an intrusion into the temple, that people were told to flee for their lives.  It was, or will be, a time of great distress and persecution.

While this certainly comes to us as words of warning from Jesus, we also should remember that the Gospel of Mark was written right around the year 70 CE, and so the actual events of the time may have been reflected in Mark’s telling of the account as he was writing his gospel.  Mark may have very naturally brought his own experiences of the destruction by the Romans into his remembrance of the words of Jesus.

There is also the warning to beware of false prophets and messiahs, so that the believers are not led astray.  Even today, these words encourage us to always be wise and discerning when people talk about the end times.  Indeed, as Jesus says, we are to be alert, and to be faithful to what we know from him.