Marcus opens with a comic piece on “9 reasons why beer is better than religion”. Then Marcus explains his vocational passion to be adult theological reeducation at the congregational or parish level. He explains that is why he travels and writes his books. His intent is not to tell you new information you don’t already know but instead to speak as clearly as possible in order to equip listeners to educate or have conversations with others.
To begin Marcus opens with a brief prayer from St. Agustin from around the year 400 from a Christian Bishop in North Africa. “Oh God, from who to be turned is to fall, to whom to be turned is to rise, and in whom to stand is to abide forever, grant us in all our duties your help, in all our perplexities your guidance, in all our dangers your protection, and in all our sorrows your peace, through Jesus Christ our lord, our body and our blood, our life and our nourishment, amen”
Beginning
Marcus poses the question “What is the Gospel? What is the heart of the Christian message?” Reflecting on his youth Marcus recalls his answer would have been ‘Jesus died for our sins so that we can be forgiven and go to heaven if we believe in him’. This answer is very afterlife centered and without an afterlife there is very little reason to be Christian. This interpretation is also centered around sin and forgiveness, almost every liturgical church has a confessional in it insinuating that people are doing bad things that need to be confessed. Jesus dying in our place indicates that God requires some kind of sacrifice and must be satisfied and that Christianity is the only way.
Part 1 The World of Jesus
One cannot understand a person without taking their context seriously for example Martin Luther King Jr. is easier to understand given the context of 20th century racism or Gandhi with British imperialism. Jesus lived under Roman imperial rule, in the pre-modern domination system. The way of organizing society that extends virtually from Egyptian Pharaohs up until the democratic revolutions in the 1800s. Marcus believes if everyone understood the society contemporary to Jesus it would revolutionize Christianity and that not knowing it means we miss up to half of the meaning in the Bible. Domination societies were ruled by a few and their families, the aristocracy or monarchy. Economically the top two percent structured the system in their own self interest and typically acquired half to two thirds of the production of wealth for themselves most of which came from agriculture and other manual labor. Life expectancy for peasants was about half that for the aristocracy due to poor nutrition, shelter and sanitation. These systems were chronically violent rulers to their subjects and wars in which one ruler wanted to take over the wealth of another ruler. Religion was used to justify rulers, rulers could point to God saying ‘we didn’t structure the world in this way, God did’. This is the world of the Bible.
In the time of Jesus under Roman imperial rule there were several ways to be a follow Judaism. There were the elites, they had retainers, which were paid mediators of their control. There were resistance Jews who practiced separation by creating spacial or social boundaries. There was also resistance through violence resulting in uprisings and wars, one of which resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem. There was also resigned acceptance marked by powerlessness. Jesus was a notable but not exclusive example of non-violent resistance. It is this backdrop of many ways to be a Jew under Roman imperial rule that we see Jesus’s passion for non-violent resistance.
Part 2 The Passion of Jesus, God, The Way, and the Kingdom of God
God
God was the central reality of Jesus life and passion, Jesus was a Jewish mystic. Mystics being people who have vivid and typically frequent experiences of the sacred. For them, God is experienced not a strong form of belief. For people that have experienced God especially if that is frequently, he becomes the central passion of your life. Mystics are people who know God and those experiences are often among the most transformative of your life, this is seen in Jesus when he is asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” to which he responds “To love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” This is also at the core of Judaism and part of the prayer offered three times a day. Again, God was a central part of Jesus’s passion.
The Way
At the center of Jesus’s teachings was the way. An early name for the followers of Jesus after Easter was ‘the followers of the way’ the word Christianity doesn’t even appear in the new testament. The way or the path is common through many global religions, it is a path to personal transformation. Marcus quotes a textbook from the 1970s “Religions are means of ultimate transformation.” Transformations that are deeper than psychological. For Jesus the way was open to the marginalized, for those who didn’t live up to the religious or social conventions of the day. In the bible they are the tax collectors and sinners, these are the people that found themselves on the other side of the sharp social boundary between the good and the not so good people. Jesus is regularly criticized for his associations with the outcasts, but Jesus through his experiences of God knew that the way was open apart from institution and convention. This is why organized church is generally skeptical of mystics, because they know the church doesn’t have a monopoly on God. Marcus then turns our attention to Jesus’s journey from Galilee to Jerusalem and his final week there, but the journey is a metaphor for what it means to follow Jesus and the way. During the journey Jesus mentions three times what will happen to him once he reaches Jerusalem. His three warnings say that he will go to Jerusalem to confront the authorities and he will be killed. Footnote: He does not say he is going to Jerusalem to die for the sins of man. Jesus says that those who would be his disciples should take up their cross and follow him. In that time a cross was a symbol of execution and death not our current understanding of difficulty and discomfort to bear. To follow Jesus to Jerusalem was to take part in the challenge of the status quo. Jerusalem has a two fold meaning, one, it’s political significance as a place where Jesus will confront the authorities both religious and political Roman. The second meaning is that it is the place of death and resurrection. This image of death and resurrection itself has a two fold meaning. On the one hand, it’s a metaphor for radical internal transformation, this is seen in the writings of Paul, in which he says “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”. Paul has undergone an internal crucifixion, the old Paul has died and a new Paul has been born whose life is now in Christ. Marcus laments that the phrasing “Born again” has been given over to some factions of Christianity and invites us to appreciate the beautiful image of radical transformation it portrays. The other meaning of death and resurrection has to do with the authorities killing Jesus and God saying not to the authorities and yes to Jesus. Following Jesus on this journey to Jerusalem is the heart of the season of Lent and in Holy week we arrive there.
The Kingdom of God
This is so central to Jesus’s view that if asked Jesus would say the Kingdom of God is most central to the Gospels, its highlighted in Jesus’s opening words to his ministry after his mentor John is arrested by the authorities. The time is ripe,”the kingdom of God is at hand” the heart of Jesus’s message is about the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus continues “therefore repent” Marcus digs into the roots and meanings of repent and looks at the Jewish historical meaning of a return journey of Jews after their exile and that here Jesus’s meaning was ‘to go beyond the mind that you have’. Going beyond the mind that you have means to go beyond the culture of valuations that you already have.
The Kingdom of God is about God, it is about centering in God as Lord and not centering in the kings and lords in this world and culture. The word kingdom had a very political meaning at the time and had to be deliberate. Using the word kingdom makes his meaning a religious-political metaphor talking about this world. Marcus explains that the use of “kingdom of heaven” is a Greek convention showing respect to God by not over using his name and the “kingdom of heaven” really means kingdom of God which is for the earth and is not talking about an afterlife. This is reflected in the Lord’s Prayer “your kingdom come… on earth”, Marcus borrows a quote from his co-author Dominic Crossan “Heaven is in great shape, earth is where the problems are.” The kingdom of God is what the world would be like if God were king and the kings and rulers of the contemporary domination system were not, this is talking about the absence of the domination system not a world ruled by religion. Marcus borrows a definition from a book “The Dream of God”. ‘The dream of God is Gods passion for this world.’ God is passionate about justice, here justice means distributive justice, fair distribution of wealth not the punitive or retributive justice we see in our criminal justice system. The system should be set up so that everyone has enough and that instead of war people should be employed in agriculture. Jesus taught non-violent resistance to the domination system and for the first three centuries the followers of Jesus were committed to non-violence. Around the year 400 Just War Theory was developed, its intent was not to justify war but to limit the circumstances under which violence was justified.
To return to God, Jesus is the ultimate authority on God’s character and what God is like. In Luke 36, Jesus distills the character of God down, he says “be compassionate as God is compassionate” God’s central quality is compassion which was historically the same word used for what a mother feels for her children. Marcus explores the metaphor and all the roles and emotions that mothers feel for their children throughout the different stages of life. Marcus laments that many English translations use the word ‘merciful’ instead of the word compassionate because merciful feeds the idea that God is a punitive law giver. Merciful limits and narrows the meaning of that passage. Marcus asks the audience to reflect on how many times in a year you are called on to be merciful; how often someone is so bad to you that you are entitled to punish them and can choose to let them off the hook. You have many more opportunities to care for the world and show compassion than be merciful.
Conclusion
Both the Kingdom of God and the Way center in God, both are personal and political and seeking change in the world. Both are about seeking transformation of ourselves and of our humanly constructed world. Jesus’s underlying message might be ‘love God and change the world’. Marcus closes with a quote from Desmond Tutu who was paraphrasing St. Agustin’s statement “God made you without you, God will not save you without you” here ‘save’ meaning ‘transform’. Mr. Tutu’s quote is “God without us will not, we without God will not” when he is speaking of the changes that need to be made withing his own country. Marcus also puts this in terms of environmental disaster, we will not go to the edge of environmental disaster and then have some divine intervention turn it all back.