I am currently teaching through the final chapters of Mark's Gospel, and this week we find ourselves Mark 14 in the upper room with Jesus and the disciples.
Whenever I come to this passage (in preaching or at The Table) I feel a sense of inadequacy. I have yet to feel that I have ever carried my people to this text or the text to my people very well. It is too large. It is an unmistakable reality that what was unfolding around that table was in large measure the very hinge of history. The passions in the room (of both disciple and master) would be impossible to measure. Looking back and looking ahead the greatest movements in history were in view.
Yet I feel I do no better than awkwardly point and stumble without beginning to reveal all that is there. Sunday morning I will try again.
One thing that has caught me in this week of study was the disciples gathering in the Passover season with each other in the upper room. On this most family-centered of celebrations I wonder if their families missed them. Like that first Thanksgiving the kids don't come home from college, how strange did those tables feel without those disciples?
Sure the disciples, with their heads spinning and knees quaking, were hours away from faithless panic. But they had left father and mother to follow Christ. Imperfect as they were, they had put themselves in position to find redemption at their weakest hour.
I pray our service this Sunday will offer that same redemption to those who gather.
Whenever I come to this passage (in preaching or at The Table) I feel a sense of inadequacy. I have yet to feel that I have ever carried my people to this text or the text to my people very well. It is too large. It is an unmistakable reality that what was unfolding around that table was in large measure the very hinge of history. The passions in the room (of both disciple and master) would be impossible to measure. Looking back and looking ahead the greatest movements in history were in view.
Yet I feel I do no better than awkwardly point and stumble without beginning to reveal all that is there. Sunday morning I will try again.
One thing that has caught me in this week of study was the disciples gathering in the Passover season with each other in the upper room. On this most family-centered of celebrations I wonder if their families missed them. Like that first Thanksgiving the kids don't come home from college, how strange did those tables feel without those disciples?
Sure the disciples, with their heads spinning and knees quaking, were hours away from faithless panic. But they had left father and mother to follow Christ. Imperfect as they were, they had put themselves in position to find redemption at their weakest hour.
I pray our service this Sunday will offer that same redemption to those who gather.
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