September 24, 2024: Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 14:10-11
Good morning, dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
I hope that your day has had a good start, and that you are really ready to get into the study of these last chapters of Mark. We always need to remember that Mark's efficient use of words, which means that he by far the shortest when he describes what has begun to occur as the last days of Christ's life are now before Him. I know sometimes fewer words are better than more words. Did I really say that?! I better take a little time to make certain that my Sunday Sermons which would benefit from an economy of words are indeed the length that they are meant to be.
In Mark’s description of Christ being at Simon the leper's home, this is not the Passover meal in the upper room that is so carefully and fully described to us in the other Gospels. Here Jesus has just be blessed the woman's action of pouring expensive perfume over Christ's head, which in many ways makes it an anointing which Jesus can relish in, knowing that the next use of perfumes will be for His body after He is murdered. It is from this meal that Judas leaves and goes to make the arrangements to have Jesus apprehended, and also to get paid for doing so. This passage tells us little else, yet there are a number of things that you and I may posit if we choose to read between the lines.
There was covetousness in the heart of Judas. Other Gospels inform us about the amount of the ransom which Judas received to turn in Jesus. 30 pieces of silver. This was a great deal of money in Jesus’ time. John shows us that Judas was the group's treasurer and used his position to filter money off of the group's resources. Though Mark does not tell us this, from the other Gospel sources we can really believe that Judas had issues with money.
Perhaps Judas was jealous of Jesus. We are all too familiar with people filled with their own ego who never want anyone else to be the center of attention. This jealousy in Judas is not coming from a heart filled with the joy of faith, it instead comes into the heart through sin and evil. We need to remember that Jesus knew from the very start of His ministry that it would be Judas who would move to betray Him.
It may well be that Judas had really large ambitions for his own place in the world. That hardly fits with the teachings of the LORD, which are filled with every opportunity to be the humble servant of the Truth of God.
Maybe we are the kind of person who feels sorry for Judas, and in our Christian Compassion struggle to understand how God could choose one such as Judas to walk into darkness in his life for the sake of the forgiveness of our sin. Is it possible that Judas did not really want Jesus to die. After all, in the other Gospels Judas takes his own life due to his extreme grief and guilt over what Christ had to face. Two of the Gospel writers believed that evil incarnate entered into Judas' life and he succumbed to the lure that so often drags people of faith away from walking ever day with Christ.
Today we have two simply written verses that are so loaded with complexity and possibility that they push and pull us around as we move ever closer to our Lord's murder at the hands of those who fear Him and His power.
I will be back with you Thursday, but it may be after lunch due to my mid-morning urologist appointment.
With Love in the Word, Pastor Kim
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