Mark III

9:1 The only possible sense in which this came true is in the sense of the resurrection and ascension. "The Kingdom" then, does not seem to refer to a kingdom at all. Having cleared up, to my satisfaction, anyway, the other mysteries of Mark, this one remains: what is this Kingdom to which we are continually pointed?

9:2 Oh. I forgot about this. But my comment stands.

9:4 This is in part an answer to the "Is he Elijah?" question.

9:5 I don't know that I would have had the balls to say anything at all, let alone something relevant.

9:19 another puzzle: who is the generation? In this case, it could be the scribes (which fits with the earlier usage), the disciples, or the crowd.

9:23 There is a definite shift in tone after the transfiguration, noticeable here and in v. 19

9:29 This kind? The kind that is not actually a spirit but a disease? This one did not speak, after all. No wonder the authority given the disciples over the demons was useless.

9:39 Jesus is foreseeing the need to protect his legacy.

9:40 This verse goes completely unnoticed by most religions. I have never seen a better interfaith scripture.

9:42 I had always thought this referred to people in general, but in context it clearly refers to the non-disciple followers of Jesus, the undisciplined, so to speak.

9:42-48 Again with the darker, more aggressive tone.

10:1 At one point, his custom was to perform miracles, and not so much on the teaching.

10:2 And the religious leaders didn't take this much of an interest when he was only performing miracles.

10:14 Funny story about this verse: When I was a teenager, my family preached in Central America for about six months. At one hut my Mother visited, there ten children, and they were so poor that they only had one chair in the house. They offered the chair to my mother, who observed that the mother only had a few teeth, in spite of being around the same age as she was. The rule of thumb down there was a woman could expect to lose around one tooth for every child she bore due to lack of nutrients. She commented to the father that he certainly had a lot of children. "You know what the Bible says," he returned. "Let the little children come, and do not try to stop them!"

10:21 Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said . . . this is an interesting way of describing Jesus' powers of observation.

10:52 this seems to be a rather untrue, if instructive statement. Jesus by no means uses faith as a test for healing. Furthermore, it is not his faith at all that has made him well. Also, the phrasing here leads one to believe that Bartimaeus was not blind from birth, and that he was already a disciple of Jesus.

11:9 This just doesn't seem like the sort of thing Jesus would really do. It seems more likely that something resembling this really happened, but that it was not premeditated as Mark indicates.

11:10 although this crowd is not the most reputable source of information, let's take a moment and review the clues in our little kingdom mystery. Whatever the kingdom is, it:

• Is not yet present at the time of the entrance to Jerusalem or the transfiguration
• It arrives by the time the last of the apostles dies
• it is something present in peoples hearts
  
• it is something that grows
• or does not depending on the person

11:12-21 This, combined with statements in ch.9, paint a rather less than serene picture of Jesus. In this case, the stress of his coming death made him petulant, he was going against his nature and message to make a point, his nature and message were never all that serene to begin with, or this section of Mark is written by someone who had a different image of Jesus.

11:27-33 Rather a roundabout way of avoiding the Messiah question.

Before embarking on this next chapter, I have a thought on the mystery of the Kingdom. The Chinese parable of the Blind men and the elephant shows how something can be many things, a wall, a sword, a rope etc. at the same time. All of the blind men's descriptions are equally accurate, and equally incomplete. I have often thought of God in this light: a regular, solid of infinite sides. As long as you remain on one side, you will never see anything but a reflection of the other aspects. Why would the Kingdom not be similar? Jesus consistently refers to the Kingdom as a seed, but what is the literal interpretation? For Saint Teresa of Avila, the prayer is that seed, while for Baha'Ullah, the person him or herself is the seed, and correspondiingly the kingdom. Perhaps Jesus is capturing the mystery in the contradiction. The Kingdom, as he illustrates in various and conflicting parables, is all of these things and none of them.

12:6 Here Jesus seems to hint at some superhuman relationship with God. Heretofore, he sued the term Son of God in a way that left it open to a humanist interpretation. Here, though, he clearly is saying that he is special to God, more special than John and the other analogues. He doesn't quite indicate a prehuman life, but this is close.

12:12 That's hella dum. They were being chastised in front of the multitude for plotting against him. What better way to fall into Jesus' argument than to arrest him right there.
"I'm being represseed!"
"No you're not. I'm arresting you for even saying that!"

12:23 What resurrection? Was this some part of Jewish teaching? It's not in the Hebrew Scriptures really. Or was it something Jesus was teaching? He never talks about it either. when did this idea enter the dialogue?

12:26-27 These two seem to contradict each other. When this was said, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were looooong dead. Still it's a nice sentiment, compatible with that of Confucius: You can't even get this life right. Why worry about the next one?

12:34 in this context, this aspect, the kingdom of God is some sort of understanding. Actually, might that not fit with all his other mentions? Understanding=seed that is planted, something that comes in full by the time of the Apostles death, etc.? It surely does . . . this also fits in perfectly with the other question: why not reveal your identity? Because the whole mystery, the kingdom, is not arrived yet.

12:35 and now he actually is revealing the kingdom, his Messiahship.