Happy Thursday - weβre almost to the weekend, friends.
Here are some encouraging thoughts that I had over this morningβs βοΈ . I was reading Mark 1 and thinking about some things Iβve learned from my friend Alexander John Shaia and what it all has to do with the messes of our lives.
Hope it encourages you.
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Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
The Gospel of Mark is my favorite of the 4 Gospels. It's the earliest to be written likely around 67-ish AD and it was written to a group of Messianic Jews who were living in the wake of a mini-genocide where Emperor Nero sought to destroy the entire community.
History tells us that a fire blazed through Rome in 64AD and burned the city to the ground. Rumors began to swirl that Nero had started the fire because he had plans that he was trying to get approval for, plans to modernize the city and build it into something more massive than it already was.
I mean, what better way to get your plans approved, right? Just burn it to the ground so that the powers that be will have no choice but to let you build it back up into whatever you want!
Nero began to get nervous, though, as the rumors spread more and more rapidly and then he had an idea - because the Jewish quarters of the city were located on the other side river and on the outskirts of Rome, their dwelling spaced was untouched by the fire.
"And so that's what I'll do - I'll pin the blame on them!", he thought.
Just as he was drawing up his mental plan, someone from the city came and told him that the Jews weren't to blame, but a FRINGE group of Jews was to blame - a small sect of Jews, the Messianic Jews ... the Christ followers.
You can imagine what happened next. Nero ordered his soldiers into the small Messianic Jewish ghetto to knock on doors, drag the Christ followers out of their homes, and execute them in the streets. Reports say that soldiers would knock on the doors of homes and ask the head of the household if he was a Christ follower. If he said "YES", everyone in the house was executed and if he said "NO", he had to name someone in the town who was or else he, too, would be executed.
Families turned on families.
Friends turned on friends.
Other reports say that Nero had the leaders of the Messianic community lit on fire and used as human torches around the city.
The horrors of his rampage are unimaginable to the majority of us.
I tell you all of this because it's in the wake of this event that Mark (or whoever is the author) wrote his Gospel - not to give us a play by play historical narrative of Jesus' life, but to provide his terrified and defeated readers a source of encouragement and inspiration, and to help them discover the strength to move forward.
Mark's Gospel opens with these words ...
"The beginning of the Good News of Jesus the Christ, Son of God."
Can you imagine being one of the first readers of this letter? "Good News? That's how you're gonna start this letter? Good News? What's Good? Is anything Good? Our homes are destroyed. Families are destroyed. Friends are destroyed. Life has been destroyed. There is nothing GOOD about anything right now and nothing will ever be GOOD again. Take your Good News and shove it, Mark."
That's what I would have been thinking, anyways.
Even so, I think these words from Mark are the perfect set up for his gospel, and (more importantly) for the greater Gospel Message of Christ. Why? Because if there's one thing that the story of Jesus tell us it's that endless possibilities of ...
Meaning.
Purpose.
And new life.
... lie at the heart of our greatest disappointments, our greatest sufferings, and our most painful traumas. Just as Jesus The Christ was raised to NEW LIFE after a gruesome crucifixion, so these Messianic Jews would be raised to new life following the slaughter by Nero.
This was not the end.
And that's what I wanted to tell you today - this is not the end. Is there a Nero running rampant through your life today, causing death and destruction?
Health problems?
Financial problems?
Marriage problems?
Employment problems?
When you look around at the loss and destruction and the steaming piles of wreckage in your life, does it feel as if all hope has been lost?
I feel that.
Me too.
I've been there.
Some days I am there.
What I was reminded of this morning as I read the opening verses of Mark's Gospel and drank my morning coffee was that in those moments of destruction I will choose to look to the Good News of Jesus The Christ and trust that somehow and in some way, meaning and purpose and new life will be birthed from the suffering.
I will grieve what must be grieved.
I will feel the pain.
I will embrace the loss.
I will feel what I need to feel.
BUT.
I won't let go of hope.
Let's not let go of hope together, OK?
Much love to you this day.
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For more on this view of Mark's Gospel, check out the book "Radical Transformation" by my friend Alexander John Shaia - a resource every human being MUST HAVE.