Mark’s Gospel… Almost Through

WED., OCT. 8, 1997, 8:43 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

This study and discussion of My life, as Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel has been both informative and frustrating. Questions that you’ve had before from immersion in this story still go unanswered, which is a test of your spirit. I do sound often too harsh or too vague, but remember, also, My admonition to consider some of this as My sense of fun.

Let Me charge you now to introduce this perspective next week, as you finish this Gospel: In some of these stories and examples I was just having fun. Now I realize that there is a powerful imperative in Christianity to consider and deem everything in the Scriptures as completely serious. The fundamental message (isn’t it?) is how to live this life, sinning as seldom as possible, and how to die properly so that your eternal, everlasting life is with Me in heaven rather than with the devil in hell.

Now if this were so… just one earth life, nothing before and an either/or decision after… then it should be almost completely serious. But what if… this life is part of a longer, “journey”, from Me and, finally, back to Me… and all, well most, of this seriousness is just a maya… a good one, certainly, but a maya.

You should have been “tipped off” to this interpretation by the incident of My zapping the fig tree. Here I am, doing wonderful healing miracles… walking on water… calming a storm… and We pass a fig tree. It has no fruit, so I simply say it will never bear fruit again. There were no remembered incantations or accusations of sin. But as We came by later the tree was dead.

Remember satan’s temptation about turning stones into bread. I was not to do miracles of this kind. Yet I did. I had the power, and it was fun to use it. I found I could heal a very sick girl… or boy… just by saying “you are healed”, without even being present with the child. Yet another time I cured dumbness in a man by spitting on his tongue and cured deafness by spitting on My fingers and putting them in his ears. Why do it the same way each time? The hem of My robe had power, from Me, and a woman was healed of bleeding by merely touching it. And I acted so serious about the whole caper. I was yielding to a temptation in many… and creative… ways.

It was fun to make the ponderous statement, “Render unto Caesar…,” knowing that it sounded serious but had no clear application. If the story of the vineyard landlord, whose tenants kept killing his servants… and, finally, his beloved son, was to be interpreted as the Jews killing Me, then why did it end with My destroying them and giving the vineyard to others? It is a harsh “joke”, for the Jews are still among you. Have I forgiven them for the crucifixion or was this just an exaggeration, “for fun”? I’m urging you, this morning, to consider the latter (though I’ve also forgiven them for doing what I wanted… and needed… them to do.)

Another bit of humor should have been seen in the question I asked about David. How could I be David’s “son”, if I were his Lord? I even threw in an obscure quote from Isaiah, to give it “weight”. How could I, as Jesus, be conceived through Me, Holy Spirit, while We were both “from the beginning”? How could I be back, in bodily form, after dying on the cross and being entombed? (Yes, it would have been more sensational if I had arisen from a sealed casket, in a sealed vault, buried under several feet of dirt… embalmed!) How could I, as Spirit, come as a dove and then, later, as wind and fire?