Although Men's Marching and Marching Society didn't seem to go with the experience. I had a wonderful experience, monks visited one another. Well, this is simply a visit, but thanks God for this. I know of one of the deities here of Sun Tree. He said the best introduction he ever received was with the Quakers one time when the man in charge looked at him in the eye and said, we're ready, are you Rick? We're kind of ready, are you kind of ready? I'm kind of, perhaps, maybe. It's good to be here. I've not ever been here before. Heard lots about Mount Savior. You have to be coming here. I know that. You just don't pass through. My background, some people ask, because I usually don't say.

[01:04]

I have a background in biblical studies. I did a doctorate in New Testament years and years ago, thinking that naively thinking I'd end up teaching. And I taught for a couple years and then got put immediately into administration and did that for 15 long, long years. And taught at the same time, but you know when you're doing administration you don't do anything else at the same time. And then finally finished that And I've been doing retreats and workshops and decided not to go back into the classroom full time because in the meantime, being a faculty member is far more work than I'm willing at this age to put out. So I have the best of all possible worlds. I kind of am an itinerant preacher. People say, well, is that very monastic? And I spend 30 weeks a year in retreat.

[02:05]

So you figure, You know, I guess it could be more, but... All right, here's what I have in mind. I don't know what you have in mind, but... Liturgically, this is the year of Mark's Gospel. Since we finally got back to ordinary time, we've been getting into bits and pieces of it. It's generally not everyone's favorite gospel. It's a little stark for many people. A lot of folks and a whole history in our church of being enamored with Matthew's gospel, very prevalent. St. Augustine said, you know, well, Matthew's got it all, and he thought Mark was simply an abbreviation of Matthew, so why in God's name would you want to read an abbreviation when you've got the full thing? And that kind of set the tone for many, many centuries.

[03:07]

We know a little differently than that today. But we're used to reading these Gospels in snippets. I'm very prejudiced against snippet theology and I'll probably make snide remarks about that all along unless I catch myself. So if you're one of those who likes to do snippets and lectionary things, I'll have to be careful. These are documents that are written to tell us a story. They're written by different people, different occasions, different times. They have their own context. They're not factual historical documents by intent, even though they do have history in them. And oftentimes, because we are so intent on getting to what really happened, or making them into this wonderful biographical story with a wonderful beginning, a middle, and an end, that we don't really remember one story from the other.

[04:19]

We don't even know how they differ, let alone how they agree. What I'd like us to do for this retreat is let Mark tell us his story. It is his story, his peculiar story about Jesus. And to do this, to listen to Mark, you're going to have to be heroic and try to forget a little bit about Matthew and John and Luke, although you won't. But at least you have to pretend that you are not going to listen to Mark's story. through those other sets of ears. Good little practice for retreat is to take the Gospel of Mark and read it from beginning to end as a story. It's only 16 little chapters. You can read it between when you leave here and arrive at your room. It's real simple. It's written in Greek.

[05:21]

It's about the level of a fourth grader, it appears. So people think, because all the sentences are connected with and, like little people talk. But it's a little more sophisticated than that. So we want to hear what Mark has to say to us. I want to make an emphasis during these days on that notion of hearing. In our own life, in all the literature we are used to from a monastic background, from the opening sentence of the Rule of Benedict through all other kinds of ancient and more modern monastic people, we're always held to a level of accountability that sometimes goes by the name obedience, but probably more accurately ought to be talked about as listening, you know, because obedience ends up being nothing more than an intensified form of listening.

[06:24]

Really being able to hear, you know, like Benedict says, with the funny little ears of your heart, not just with your head bone. And Mark is very interested in that same thing. Mark is very interested in listening. Having us really hear. Because what Mark's gospel calls us to is, in a very radical sense, a life of obedience. Although Mark won't call it that. He'll call it a life of discipleship. And he's going to set out his story in a very intriguing way. He really is going to set it out posing us with a question. Why do so many disciples fail? Why do they fail? Why do you suppose they start out really all right? You know, I'm here, let me go, I'll do it. And then they flop. And to get your attention, He's going to hold up some guys as examples of people who failed.

[07:35]

And they're not going to be people you've not heard of. Peter, James, John, those folks. In Mark's Gospel, they fail. By chapter 15, verse 42, they exit stage left. They don't see him die and they don't hear that he was raised up. Now, we don't like that, you see, and that's when we turn over, oh, let's see how Matthew did that. I think Matthew did that a little better, you know. If you don't like Matthew, you can say, well, John, I mean, they're great in John. Well, we don't need Mark. Let's just, we want this to be a happy story. Well, we ain't reading those others. We're reading Mark, you see, because Mark's asking a specific question. He, interestingly, structures this gospel around two stories. Two simple stories are the real pivot points.

[08:37]

First story is the story of the sower. Absolutely essential to the entire Gospel of Mark. If you understand the story of the sower, you understand Mark. And you also understand that even though it says, the sower went out to sow his seeds, you know that story isn't anything at all about seed, is it? Of course not. We all know that. It's about ground. And Mark, contrary to what many scholars say, Mark makes it an allegory. It is a terrifically large, important allegory. And he is going to use the various forms of ground to address the question why people fail. Ground is also going to be very essential in Mark's understanding of what is the kingdom of God. Mark is not ethereal about this. Mark doesn't say, well, jeez, let me think. If you take the unmoved mover and then you do it over, you know, pretty soon, is it what is?

[09:44]

He's very clear. It's ground. Kingdom of God is ground. It is fertile ground. That's what it is. He'll tell you that. Well, he puts that first half of the gospel all on this parable. Things lead up to it, things move away. And that'll take you up to chapter 11. In chapter 11, he's going to say, OK, I've done that first part now. We're going to switch gears. And he's going to do it with another interesting little parable about the guy who owns a vineyard. has some tenants who are less than what we would call hospitable, and the guy tries to get his little reward, or not his reward, it's his earnings from the vineyard, send some people, and these tenants just do them all in until finally the guy says, well, I'll send my son. Surely, they'll respect my son. Huh, surely not. And they kill him. And That parable becomes the paradigm for the second half of the gospel.

[10:49]

That parable is to tell us not only what's going to happen to Jesus, but also what is going to happen to those who follow Jesus, what's in store for us. So it's an interesting little story that most of us have not really heard. I mean, this is the mark that most of us have not heard. It's a challenging story, but it is certainly not without hope. I like it because I like realism. And Mark is real, as far as I'm concerned. And Mark doesn't pull punches. And Mark has a portrait of Jesus that I find rather attractive. It's a very human portrait, you see. Mark is absolutely convinced of the Incarnation. and he's not going to let us off the hook because he is so convinced he's going to say, I know what everybody wants to do.

[11:51]

Everybody wants to make him so divine that he won't hurt you. Everybody wants to put him way up beyond anybody's reach because he is divine. But you see, that's not the mystery of the incarnation. The mystery of the incarnation is not that a human person became a god. that move that direction. It's the opposite way. God became a human person. How human? Well, watch it in Mark. He pictures us a Jesus who struggles with his vocation, who he is, who gets alienated from all those people, institutions that you would expect support from. His family thinks he's nuts. His hometown thinks he's arrogant. His disciples think he's nothing. And then he gets angry at God, and there's no letting up.

[12:52]

And yet throughout all of that, and the reason I like this picture is because I can relate to this, this is the way life is as far as where I live anyway, you know, frustration, anger, people disappoint you, you feel alienated, and you wake up in the morning and you say, I don't know if I'm going to do this again. I did this yesterday and last week and last month and last year. I'm getting a little tired of this, you know? Where's the payoff? Well, we're not supposed to say that, but we do to ourselves. Don't kid yourself. Well, see, Mark knows those questions. And Mark doesn't just sit back and say, I'll ask them for you. He has Jesus. When Jesus goes into the Garden of Gethsemane, you know why he goes in there, and you're going to say, well, he goes in to suffer. Well, that's what happens. He goes in to negotiate. If you can think of, find out, or come up with any other possibility, let's talk about that. I'm open to that.

[13:54]

I'd like to see some other way to move out of this. Of course, there isn't. There isn't. And he accepts that. So it's a powerful story, I think. It's a powerful story. It begins pretty simply. We're used to, just have come out of a long season of infancy narratives. Well, Mark doesn't want much to do with infancy narratives. Mark, let's get right to it. See, so he starts out like this. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And you can say, well, all right, that's a sentence, big deal. So, it's not as nice as the infancy narratives. I could stand a little more about the baby Jesus and so forth. Well, this is Mark's profession of faith, you see. He begins by telling us in the first sentence, you want to know what I believe? Here's what I believe.

[14:55]

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. You know what my story is? My story is the good news about this Jesus who I believe is the Son of God. And we might wonder now, why would you start out like that? Because as you read it and you get into it, you're going to have to remind yourself now, who does he think Jesus is? And he's going to remind us. Because he's going to, you know, think, well, you could question what I'm doing here. So it's a faith statement and lays out all kinds of interesting things. What is the good news? We all ought to be able to say that. What is it when we're talking here about good news? What are they talking about? Do we know what that is? Now, you really want to get people shuffling around, you know. I think we'll go around the room and everybody will have to say a statement or two.

[15:59]

You watch Feats turn around and heads go down, you know. I'm sure he wouldn't do that, you know. Of course I wouldn't, but nobody knows that at first. But it's kind of nervous, isn't it? What would I say? Well, I'd talk around it. Well, it's kind of, you know, news. Well, that's something that's new and good. Well, that means it's not bad. So it's kind of like good news. As you're reading this document, ask yourself, what is good news? Do you have any good news? Have you heard any good news? Have you received any good news? Does this life bring us any good news? What is it? I think we need to be specific. I want to know. Why is this good news? I don't want an ethereal answer. I can go anywhere for that. I want to know. If I'm going to give my life to this, if I'm going to be a disciple, what is good news?

[17:01]

Well, he gets right into it, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah. Moves right back to that great old testament prophet. Here he is operating not with the first book of Isaiah, which as you remember is chapters 1 to 39, but this is the second Isaiah. Person who came a little later. Chapters 40, 55. Since it came after first Isaiah, this chapter, this Isaiah is creatively called second Isaiah. So he quotes this opening verse. See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Now don't try to find that passage because it ain't. You can go back and you can look in the Greek version of the Old Testament and you'll discover, well, he had some of it right.

[18:07]

If you'd call him up and say, Mr. Mark, we're reading your book here and you really screwed up your first quote, you know. You need a new editor or something. And he would say, oh, get a life. I don't care how that, you know, I have these things in my mind, and I don't care if it was this or... Did you get the point? Did you get the point? If Isaiah didn't say it this way, he certainly could have, and so... I mean, that's the kind of way those folks would operate. But what most people miss here, you see, is they think this verse talks about John the Baptist. And the reason most people think that is because in Matthew it does talk about John the Baptist, and in Luke it does talk about John the Baptist, but in Mark it doesn't. And you miss a real important point right off the bat. When Mark is using Isaiah to make his point, he is having Isaiah say, see, I am sending my messenger ahead of you.

[19:10]

Well, you see, in all those other Gospels, they've already talked about John the Baptist. There ain't no John the Baptist showed up yet. The only person that this phrase can be referring to in terms of who is the messenger of Mark's Gospel is Jesus Himself. So you see, Mark is already telling us some important things. Jesus is the messenger. He is the bringer of the good news. His life will encompass the good news. And if we're going to be His disciples, He's got a lot of stuff to tell us. But we are the ones who follow Him. He leads the way. He is the one to prepare your way, meaning our way. Meaning, for Mark, Jesus is literally understood to be a model for us. If you'd ask Mark now, you're kind of being metaphorical, aren't you, Mark? I mean, you're kind of sort of setting out some guidelines, interesting sort of things to do, but I mean, you don't mean follow him like follow him, do you?

[20:16]

And Mark would say, yes I mean follow him like follow him, like go right behind him, like do what he does, that's what I mean. So this is a way. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, and this is a misquote too, at least grammatically, certainly from the Hebrew and also from the Old Testament Greek, because it's switched in the Greek and Old Testament, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, blah, blah, blah. Well, here he's changed it all around because Mark wants us to know that the theme he's emphasizing here is wilderness. This is where all this is. When Jesus gets tempted, wilderness. Christian life, wilderness. Remember, for Mark, as for many of these biblical greats, there is no such thing as going from bondage to freedom.

[21:20]

The Israelites spent 40 years trying to learn that simple little lesson. There is no direct route from Egypt to the Promised Land. If you want to go from Egypt to the Promised Land, symbolically, from bondage to freedom, the only way you go is through the desert. And so, Jesus has to go through the desert. Monastic literature has tons of thematic about the desert, the wilderness, as a time of cleansing, as a time of growth. Why? Because that's the way you go when you're following the Lord. And then he finally brings John the Baptist on the scene, who doesn't have a big role. A little precursor, John the Baptist. Baptizer appeared in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

[22:25]

And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to Him. And were baptized by Him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And if you got out your demographic maps, statistics, you'd say, the Jordan River couldn't have held all the people of Judea, all the people of Jerusalem. And so you call Him up again and say, now what is this? And he'll say, I like lots of people, I like crowds. Read my book, there's crowds everywhere. There'll be nobody there and all of a sudden, Jesus, come on, a large crowd. And then he says, while you're on your little nitpicky stuff, I'll tell you another thing. I like the word immediately. I use it every opportunity I can because I like to know and I like you to know there's urgency about this, so don't ask me this again. Everything in my book is immediate. All crowds are large. because this is the good news. And so you start underlining all those immediates and all those crowns.

[23:32]

You say, well, he sure was onto something. He fulfilled it. So he has John the Baptist do that. John the Baptist comes what? As an image of Elijah. Why? Because we know from our Old Testament studies, Elijah was considered by many to be the precursor of the Messiah. So we're already being told. But that's not so much interesting as why Mark wants us to hurry up and get to the baptism. You see, these first 11 verses are nothing more than his introduction to his book. And so we get this odd scene. Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist is so strange, it's one of the few things biblical scholars agree on in New Testament studies. You get them all together and you say, John the Baptist really baptized Jesus? And you got them all over the board here, but they'll come up and say, oh yeah. And if you say, why do you think that?

[24:34]

They'll basically all say the same thing. It makes absolutely no sense, and so there's no reason why it would be put in here unless it really happened. And in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth, remember, a nothing town. First time I visited Nazareth, I got to town walking down a street. Been in town not 10 minutes. Walked by a butcher shop. The guy opened the door, threw five goat heads out, splattered me with blood, and said, good morning. And I thought, well, I can understand why there was a prejudice against Nazareth. It's not my favorite place either. And was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just, now here's Mark's point, see, and just, As he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.

[25:39]

What's that voice for? Who hears that voice? Well, a voice for us, no doubt about it. It's not for Jesus or John. There's no indication that any of them hear it. That voice is so you and I don't make any mistakes about who this person really is. He told us in the first verse, but we might have read that real quick. So now here at the baptism scene, he's got this voice. It's the voice of God coming out, clearly telling us who this Jesus is. Chapter 9, Transfiguration. He's going to have this voice again come right out and tell us. Now, on the one hand, you can say, wouldn't that nice? That's really considerate how he lets us know. Well, there's a couple of things we have to always keep in mind here. One is, see, we know more than anybody in the story. We know more than any of these characters. But, remember, to those who have been given more, more will be expected.

[26:48]

And that's going to be one of Mark's little hooks that he has. You know, he'll kind of drag you in. I'll tell you more. You want to know a little bit more? Yeah, I'll tell you some stuff. I won't tell them. You know, just between you and I, it goes on and on. Before you know it, we're in there. He's going to turn that table before the story ends. We're going to have to pay a little bit for all that we know. Well, he has Jesus baptized and then he puts him into the wilderness there. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. The Spirit is very active in the Gospel of Mark. The word drove is a very interesting word. is a violent word. It's not led him out, as some translations have. It, uh, cast is a good one. The word is ephbalo. And if you said, we've had enough of what you've been saying already.

[27:52]

You've kind of droned on. Let's, we, Somebody picked me up and heaved me out this window, you know, just right through the thing. And you want to figure out, now how do we say that in Greek? You know, well, ekmalo would be the word that would capture that. We threw his hind end right out the window and he knew that he wasn't wanted here. So it's not a real kind, gentle, prodding word. It's got some violence to it. He was in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. Matthew, Luke, drag this out and give you the three major temptations that Jesus probably suffered from all his life with authority and power. Based on the so-called temptations that Israel was faced with and failed, Jesus was faced with them and succeeded. But Matthew doesn't or Mark doesn't do that. He just gets right to the point of being tested

[28:54]

being tested. And then he says his opening line, and this is the opening line of Jesus. Now after John was arrested, and for Mark, Jesus doesn't begin His ministry until John's off the scene. Now see, we already know from other sources where John is, but the Gospel here doesn't tell. He's just been arrested. Chapter 6, we're going to find out more about what that is. Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying... Now scholars say this next verse is the programmatic text for Mark. That's a fancy phrase meaning this is the key summary statement. If you understand this verse, you understand the whole of the Gospel of Mark. It sort of sets out the program that the rest of the Gospel is going to fulfill.

[29:58]

And so it's a very important verse. It sort of captures everything. And so here's what he says. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news. That's one of the most important statements in the gospel. And you can tell how impressed we were by the way we just moved down on the edge of our chairs when we heard it. How it just kind of grabbed us, didn't it? I mean, you know, kind of... Yeah, well, now what? I heard all, what's so great about it? Time is fulfilled. Yeah, all right, now what? The kingdom of God has come near. All right, I'll repent and believe in a good... There's got to be more to it than that. I mean, that has no emotion, does it? I mean, that doesn't grab anybody, does it? Well, we're going to watch these verses unfold. What time is fulfilled? And remember, this is all present, present tense, the way it is here.

[31:06]

Kingdom of God has come near. Mark says the Kingdom of God is here. Now, somebody would ask us, when was the last time you ran into the kingdom of God? As people can naively do. No, they were smarter than that. I mean, somebody, a visitor comes up, you know, had an interesting book they read. Hey, where is the kingdom of God, you know? Tell me where that is. Well, read that book. It'll be, they'll tell you a little later. walk away and hope they never come back. Where is the kingdom of God? Where is that? What is our experience of that? We ought to be able to have something to say about that. It is near. Our response, repent and believe, two things the disciples won't be able to do.

[32:10]

Well, that's how this little story begins. You know, not overly dramatic, but within those 15 verses, the whole story's been told, really. We know everything's going to happen, basically. We know who Jesus is. We do. Nobody in the story does yet, but we do. It's going to be a combination of divine and human, and that's what Mark has done so far. He's put Jesus within a divine realm with His voice talking to us, and then within a human realm, the interaction with John the Baptist, so forth. He's had to be tested, and He has succeeded. He had to be baptized, and we're not sure what all that means, except in some way that being baptized put him in alliance with that message that John the Baptist was proclaiming, a message which most people think he probably found being proclaimed already by the Essenes, those interesting guys that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[33:16]

Some think John might have been a member. I don't think that. I don't think there's any evidence for that. But he certainly knew their theology and he radicalized it. John the Baptist taught a radicalized version of some of the main tenets that you can read in the theology of the Scrolls of Qumran. And we know that Jesus, once John got off the scene, took the message of John and radicalized it even further. Qumran monks says we got to go out into the desert and prepare for the coming of the Lord. They use that same verse that's in here. Isaiah chapter 40. Go out into the desert and there make straight the paths so that when the Lord comes, He won't have to go up any mountains or any valley. It'll be straight. And purify yourself. And so that's what the Qumran monks did. And if you've ever been to their little monastery, it's nothing but a

[34:17]

connecting little bathtubs, basically, for their purificatory rites. And they lived a very ascetic way of life, waiting, preparing for, in prayer and purity, the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist comes along and says, it is more urgent now. It's really coming. Jesus comes along and says, it's here. Well, we'll see how this starts to unfold because next thing he's going to do is call some disciples and we'll see how that works. But I encourage you to read this little gospel and try to get inside it. Let it challenge you. Really listen to this gospel, not any of the others, but listen to this and let it get inside. And if you do, you're in for an interesting ride because this is a subtle but powerful little piece of revelation.

[35:22]

Once you really listen to it as it was meant to be heard, it can really change your life. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Okay. I'd say it was, right, it was part of a pause that, uh, it really didn't feel like, that there's just ourselves here, that we're all sitting in conditions and silence, except for breakfast conditions. It's always nice to talk to somebody, just to go with silence, even if you can't sleep. Well, time is quiet, not just for the quiet, but an opportunity for us to listen to ourselves, you know. And after lunch and supper, we just do everything in silence. I appreciate that we need to talk, but just one side of the room for questions.

[36:31]

I use the new revised standard version because I bought it for two dollars. I think it's probably one of the better English translations out simply because it uses, it has available more of the more recent manuscript evidence. It pedals around a little bit with Some of the language tries to be a bit inclusive and it manages that. But it doesn't mess around with the God language at all. So I think it's pretty accurate. There's a lot of good ones available, but this is the one I use. The next thing is Compton.

[37:42]

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