Les Miserables 78: Enchantments and Desolations

Before we ease back into the story, I would like to leave you with one quote from the section on argot:

Let us have compassion for the chastened.  Who, alas! are we ourselves?  Who am I who speak to you?  Who are you who listen to me?  Whence do we come?  And is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born?  The earth is not without resemblance to a jail.  Who knows whether man is a prisoner of Divine Justice?

Look closely at life.  It is so constituted that we feel punishment everywhere.

Are you what is called a lucky man?  Well, you are sad every day.  Each day has its great grief or its little care.  Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own, tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend, then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs.  Not to mention heartaches.  And so on.  One cloud is dissipated, another gathers.  Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine.  And you are of that small number who are lucky!  As for other men, stagnant night is upon them.

Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression; the happy and the unhappy.  In this world, clearly the vestibule of another, no one is happy.

Here we see a couple of essential truths from the Christian foundation of Les Miserables laid out clearly:  that there is another world coming, and that this world is broken and fallen.  Why else would everyone, even the luckiest among us, endure a life where every day is filled with some great trouble or little care?

After the section on argot, Victor Hugo eases us back into the story:

The reader will remember that Eponine, having recognized through the grating the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet, to which Magnon had sent her, had begun by diverting the bandits from the Rue Plumet, had then taken Marius there, and that after several days of ecstasy in front of that iron gate, Marius, drawn by the force that propels iron toward the magnet and the lover toward the stones of his loved one’s house, had finally entered Cosette’s garden as Romeo did Juliet’s.  It had even been easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to slightly push aside one of the bars of the decrepit gate, which was loose in its rusty socket, like the teeth of old people.  Marius was slender and easily slipped through.

This led to Marius’s first meeting with Cosette.  He then visited her in the garden every night for several weeks.  They talked of anything and everything except for anything and everything.  They were so enraptured with each other that they lost all awareness of anything else, including an outbreak of cholera that swept through the city during that month.  Hugo describes all of this in full detail.

Hugo bookends this section of the story with Eponine.  Eponine led Marius to Cosette, and in a poignant scene Marius meets Eponine again one night as he is on his way to Cosette’s garden:

He looked up and recognized Eponine.

This produced a strange effect on him.  He had not thought even once of this girl since the day she brought him to the Rue Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had completely gone out of his mind.  He had grounds for gratitude toward her; he owed his present happiness to her, and yet it annoyed him to meet her.

It is a mistake to suppose that passion, when it is fortunate and pure, leads man to a state of perfection; it leads him simply as we have said, to a state of forgetfulness.  In this situation man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets to be good.  Gratitude, duty, necessary and troublesome memories, vanish.  At any other time Marius would have felt very differently toward Eponine.  Absorbed in Cosette, he had not even clearly realized that this Eponine’s name was Eponine Thenardier, and that she bore a name written in his father’s will, that name to which he would have been, a few months earlier, so ardently devoted.  We show Marius just as he was.  Even his father was disappearing somewhat from his soul beneath the splendor of his love.

With some embarrassment. he answered, “Ah, you, Eponine!”

“Why do you speak to me so sternly?  Have I done anything to you?”

“No,” he answered.

Certainly, he had nothing against her.  Far from it.  Except, he felt that he could not do otherwise, now that he had whispered to Cosette, than speak coldly to Eponine.

As he was silent, she exclaimed, “So tell me–”

Then she stopped.  It seemed as if words failed this creature, once so reckless and bold.  She attempted to smile and could not.  She began again, “Well?”

Then she was silent again, and stood with her eyes cast down.

“Good evening, Monsieur Marius,” she said all at once abruptly, and she went off.

Marius’s love for Cosette had a dark side.  In this poignant scene, Eponine caught the full brunt of it.

But note that Marius’s character flaws are not due to moral failings, as is the case with Thenardier and the other villains in this story.  Rather, his flaws are due to youth and inexperience.  This is the first time that Marius has ever experienced the state of being in love, and he doesn’t yet know how to do it right.  He thinks that faithfulness to Cosette requires him to be cold toward Eponine.  Worse still, he is unaware that he is under any sort of obligation toward Eponine, or that Eponine is tied to the will of his father whom he had earlier idolized.  This is all because he allowed his first experience of being in love to wash over him and push him to the point of forgetfulness.  Also, recall that in his first love letter to Cosette, he displayed views of love that were informed by youthful naivete, namely that love was such a pure passion that no corruption could taint it, any more than a nettle could grow up on a glacier.

Even so, we are not yet done with Eponine.  Stay tuned to see what she will do for Marius.

Pat Robertson: Adultery Is Natural For Men

Another one to file under “He didn’t just say that, did he?  Oh snap, he did”.

Honestly, if I can just set up some kind of Google feed on Pat Robertson, this blog would write itself.

So what did Robertson say this time?

Seems a female viewer of Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club” was having some trouble with the fact that her husband cheated on her.  Robertson’s response:  “…Stop talking about the cheating.  He cheated on you.  Well, he’s a man.  OK.”  He then went on to suggest that she focus on why she married her husband in the first place and ask herself if he provided for her needs and those of her children.  “Is he handsome?  Start focusing on these things and essentially fall in love all over again….Males have a tendency to wander a little bit.  And what you want to do is make a home so wonderful he won’t want to wander.”

You can read all about it here on CNN’s religion blog.  They also run down a handful of Robertson’s more memorable quotes from the past decade.

And in case you just can’t believe Robertson actually said that (understandable), here is the video evidence:

Les Miserables 77: Argot

Last time Victor Hugo showed us Gavroche up close and personal.  We saw him unknowingly care for his two younger brothers, and then we saw him unknowingly care for his father by helping him out of a jam as he was trying to escape from prison.  Hugo left us on a cliffhanger, with Thenardier and his gang fresh out of prison and plotting possible criminal mayhem against the place on the Rue Plumet.  (We know that this is the place where Valjean and Cosette are presently staying.)

And now, Hugo breaks off into another aside.  Get used to it; this is the pattern of the story.  Hugo takes us right up to a climactic or semiclimactic moment, and then breaks off and heads in a different direction.

A few rules about the nonfiction asides in Les Miserables:  First, remember that this is part of the pattern of the story.  Hugo will bring us right up to a climactic moment, then break off and launch into a nonfictional aside, then ease us gently back into the story.

Next, remember that Les Miserables is more than just a high-action thriller about Jean Valjean and friends attempting to negotiate the Parisian underworld.  Victor Hugo is one of the finest plot fiction writers ever to walk the face of the earth, and even if that was all there was to the story, it would still have a lot to recommend it.  But Les Miserables is much more than that.  It is an attempt by one of France’s leading citizens to speak prophetic truth to his country at a pivotal time in its history by shining a light on people whom his country’s society had forgotten and the horrific conditions under which they lived.  Argot, the subject of this aside, is a significant part of these people’s lives.

Finally, remember that Victor Hugo is one of the finest plot writers ever to walk the face of the earth.  If he includes something in his story, then we can rest assured that there is a reason for it.  We may not know the reason right away, but we will see as the story progresses.  For example:  The story begins with several chapters describing the bishop Monseigneur Bienvenu, whom we never see again after those early chapters.  Why?  Because Monseigneur Bienvenu makes such a huge investment in Valjean in their encounter that it is important for us to know who he was and how he got to be who he was before we continue with the story.  His act of grace toward Valjean becomes much more powerful because we have the context that leads up to it.

Other examples:  The Waterloo aside.  In spending several chapters describing the Battle of Waterloo for apparently no reason, Victor Hugo sets the mood for what will happen on the battlefield that night.  He also provides us with examples of true heroism at Waterloo to contrast with the actions of Thenardier, who claimed to be a hero at Waterloo.  Later on, Hugo takes several chapters to describe the history of the convent at Petit-Picpus and monasticism in general, because this place is where Valjean and Cosette would spend the next several years of their lives.  Later, Hugo takes several chapters to describe the July Revolution of 1830, because this event and its aftermath would impact the world in which the characters of the story lived and drive them, each in his or her own way, toward the story’s ultimate climax.

This brings us to the section on argot.  What do we do with this?

Argot can be loosely defined as the in-house language of any trade, profession, sport, hobby, activity, or other field of human endeavor used by those who are insiders in that particular field.  No doubt you have heard the term used this way before.  But that is not what Victor Hugo is talking about here.  What he is talking about here is much more specific: it is the semi-distorted French used daily by criminals and others living in the Parisian underworld.  The closest present-day equivalent to this would be ebonics.

Hugo begins with a brief defense of the use of argot (as he defines it) in literature and the arts.  Argot is a fact of life in the Parisian underworld.  Those who lived in polite French society did not want to have to deal with characters who spoke argot in their books or plays, because they considered it impolite.  But Hugo shows no shame about taking his readers right up to this particular aspect of French life, unseemly though it may be, and shining a light on it.

Here are some phrases Hugo uses to describe the argot of the Parisian underworld:

Argot is nothing more nor less than a wardrobe in which language, having some bad deed to do, disguises itself.  It puts on word-masks and metaphoric rags.

In this way it becomes horrible.

…Argot is the language of the dark.

…Each syllable looks branded.  The words of the common language here appear as if wrinkled and shriveled under the red-hot iron of the executioner.  Some seem to be still smoking.  A phrase affects you like the branded shoulder of a robber suddenly laid bare.  Ideas almost refuse to be expressed by these substantives condemned by justice.  Its metaphor is sometimes so shameless we feel it has worn the iron collar.

…Being the idiom of corruption, argot is easily corrupted.  Moreover, as it always seeks disguise as soon as it feels understood, it transforms itself.  Unlike all other vegetation, every ray of light on it kills what it touches.  Thus argot goes on decomposing and recomposing incessantly; an obscure and rapid process that never ceases.  It changes more in ten years than the language in ten centuries.

Hugo then goes on to wax eloquently about how society is evolving toward progress and enlightenment.  All up to the eighteenth century there were the rumblings of a possible revolt of the under classes, but the French Revolution released the tension.  Now (that is, at the time at which Les Miserables was written), the ignorance of the past appears to be resurfacing, but let us not give heed to that for it is a powerless monster.

Here Hugo shows himself to be an idealist, who sees society as automatically and of necessity evolving toward a better state.  All of history is a progression from ignorance to enlightenment, from corruption to virtue, from hatred to love for all.  We who live on the other side of World War I, World War II, the Cold War, etc. would heartily take issue with this, but remember that this way of looking at things was quite common back in Hugo’s day.  They had not lived through World War I, World War II, the Cold War, etc., so we can’t totally blame them for their unguarded optimism about humanity’s capacity to create a better world.

Now, what purpose might Hugo’s little discourse on argot serve in the story?

In all probability, this indicates that there is a significant event coming up in the story in which argot will play a part.  We got a hint of this with Thenardier and his gang’s discussion of a possible attack on the Rue Plumet house.  We will have to wait and see what transpires.

Les Miserables 76: Little Gavroche

Last time we saw Marius and Cosette meet for the first time in a powerful love scene, in which they finally learned each other’s names.  True to the pattern of the story that we have seen so far, Victor Hugo brings us right up to a climactic moment and then breaks off to something completely different.

In this section of the story he deals with the character of Gavroche.  We have already met Gavroche and seen him in action on a couple of earlier occasions.  Now we are about to see him up close and personal.

We start with the Thenardiers.  We learn that they had two boys who were born after Gavroche.  Madame Thenardier despised all three of her boys.  Gavroche left of his own accord; later the Thenardiers devised a scheme to get rid of the other two boys and even make a profit.

This scheme involved Magnon, whom we have met earlier.  She had had two boys, and had succeeded in getting Gillenormand (Marius’s grandfather) to spring for their support.  But then there was a plague in the city and both boys died.  Losing them would mean losing Gillenormand’s support.  (This goes to show what kind of mother Magnon was–she cared more for the money she got from Gillenormand for her boys than for the boys.)  Somehow Magnon and the Thenardiers got connected.  They agreed that Magnon would take the two youngest Thenardier boys and raise them (Gillenormand would never know the difference), and give the Thenardiers a cut of the money she received from Gillenormand.

The two boys were well provided for under Magnon’s care, better than they had been by the Thenardiers.  But then a stroke of ill fortune fell.  Somehow Magnon was implicated in the police raid on the Jondrettes’ garret at Gorbeau House, and there was a later raid on Magnon’s house.  The boys were out playing in the backyard when this happened.  They didn’t find out until they went inside and found the house closed and empty.  Victor Hugo comments thus:

A mass arrest of malefactors like that at the Jondrette garret, necessarily complicated with subsequent searches and seizures, is truly a disaster for this hideous occult counter-society living beneath the public society; an event like this brings on all manner of collapse in that gloomy world.  The catastrophe of the Thenardiers produced the catastrophe of Magnon.

A neighbor across the street saw the whole thing go down.  Magnon gave him a note with an address where the boys were to go, and he gave it to the boys when he saw them trying to get into their house.  But as they were heading out, a gust of wind caught the paper and blew it away from them.  And now they were orphans.

This is how it is in the lowest levels of society.  Family structures are very flimsy, so flimsy that police raids can tear whole families apart and an inopportune gust of wind can instantaneously turn well cared-for children into orphans forced to live on the street.

It was at this point that they met Gavroche.  Gavroche took them under his wing and sought to show them the ropes of living on the street.  He bought bread for them at a bakery, and took them to spend the night at an elephant monument in an abandoned corner of a city park where he lived as a squatter.

Along the way, we see several instances of Gavroche’s character.  As they were passing a fourteen-year-old girl who had no warm clothes, Gavroche pulled off his muffler and gave it to her with hardly any thought at all.  At the baker’s, he gave the largest piece of bread to the older boy, saying “Pop that in your gun”, and kept the smallest piece for himself.  This despite the fact that the boys had eaten that morning while he had not eaten for three days.

Here we see Gavroche as something of a Christ figure, a character who models certain traits of Jesus Christ.  Like Jesus (during his ministry years), Gavroche had next to nothing and roamed the streets freely.  Though he had next to nothing, he was very generous with what he did have, always finding ways to bless others who were worse off than he was.

To Gavroche, these boys were just random strangers.  At no point in the story does he realize that these boys are his younger brothers.

This section of the story closes with a high-action segment describing Thenardier’s and the Patron-Minette principals’ escape from prison.  Gavroche is awakened very early in the morning and called upon to assist.  This he does in dramatic fashion, climbing three stories up a gutter pipe to rescue his father Thenardier who is stuck on top of a high wall.

In the moment when Thenardier is rescued, we see his character in gruesome detail:

As soon as he had touched the pavement, as soon as he felt himself out of danger, he was no longer either fatigued, benumbed, or trembling; the terrible things he had undergone vanished like a whiff of smoke, all that strange and ferocious intellect awoke, and found itself breathing and free, ready to march on.  The man’s first words were these: “Now, who’re we going to eat?”

It is needless to explain the meaning of this frightfully transparent word, which signifies all together to kill, assassinate, and plunder.  Eat, real meaning: devour.

Thenardier has just narrowly escaped death, and the very first thing he can think of is who he can bring death upon.

His cohorts discuss the Rue Plumet.  Eponine had brought back the biscuit, signifying that that was a no-go.  But they still wanted to check it out for themselves.  An ominous portent of things to come.

Another instance of Thenardier’s character:  At the end, as everyone is leaving, Babet pulls Thenardier aside and says that the child who rescued him looks an awful lot like his son.  Thenardier responds with shock and indifference, “What?…You think so?”, and leaves.  Thenardier’s son has just saved him from almost certain death, and the most he can feel for him is indifference.  Some kind of father.

How Radical is Radical Enough?

Today I would like to direct your attention to a growing trend in evangelicalism.  Within the past half-decade or thereabouts, we have seen several books from well-known evangelical leaders that attempt to shake us out of what they see as comfortable, middle-class, Americanized Christianity.  These books include Radical by David Platt, Crazy Love by Francis Chan, Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman, and others.  Perhaps you have read one or more of these.

These books dominated the Christian bestseller lists when they came out, and they still do.  This speaks to a growing sense in evangelicalism that our pursuit of a comfortable middle-class existence and the American dream is causing us to miss something in our Christian life.  In response, these authors attempt to jar us out of our perceived lethargy.

This is not just limited to books; a growing number of preachers are taking up the message as well.  Here is a quote from Matt Chandler’s Easter message:

So let me translate this in a way that I think probably some of you won’t like but I’m gonna love you enough to say. That believing in Jesus means that you’ve declared war on the sin in your life and that you’re serious about growing in your knowledge with God. Look at me, and if those things are not true about you, you do not believe in Jesus. You hear me? If there’s no seriousness about sin in your life and no desire for you to grow in an understanding of who God is and who Jesus is, you don’t believe in Him. You believe in Jesus like you believe in some sort of historic figure but you do not believe in Him in regards to eternal life.

In other words, it is not enough to believe in Jesus unless such belief is accompanied by visible and lasting life change.  Whether it be getting serious about fighting sin in your own life, getting serious about spreading the Gospel in other parts of the world, or getting serious about fighting poverty and brokenness in our own communities, the message is clear:  The Gospel’s demands of life change are real and far too many believers fail to satisfy these demands.

Matthew Lee Anderson has written a feature piece at Christianity Today entitled “Here Come the Radicals!“  In this piece Anderson notes the rise of the radical message and offers his own critique of where this message is lacking.  He notes that there is a lot of emphasis on what it “really” means to follow Jesus.  Most Christians don’t need to be told that they fall short of the mark in Christian discipleship.  But no one is talking about what sort of belief actually counts.  In other words, we don’t know how radical is radical enough.

The language of the radicals is filled with intensifiers; it is no longer enough to “trust and obey, for there’s no other way”.  Instead we must now really trust and truly obey.  But regardless of how you slice it, the problem is still the same because the burden of Christian discipleship lies squarely upon our own will.  It is up to us and our own efforts to move the ball forward.  Whether our decision is to receive Christ or to get serious about growing in the knowledge of Christ, at the end of the day we still have to make a decision.

There is no room in the “radical” message for the the common and the mundane.  There is no room for the possibility that a single mom working ten hours a day to provide for her family is honoring God in her vocation.  Instead it seems that being “radical” is a luxury that is only for those who can sacrifice their upper-middle-class status because–duh–they already have it!  Neither is there room for failure.  The whole point of sacrificing it all for the sake of the Gospel is for the sake of the Gospel success that will inevitably follow during your lifetime.  There is no room for the idea that God is doing something that the person who sacrifices it all for the sake of the Gospel will not see the fruits of during his or her lifetime.

Anderson then goes on to compare the present “radical” movement with prior holiness movements in evangelicalism.  The present “radical” movement is not directly connected with any of those past movements, but there is nothing new under the sun.  He closes by noting a critical irony in the “radical” message–that the call to forsake a comfortable middle-class existence and engage radically with the cause of Christ is given in the context of a community that is conformed to middle-class American culture in its worship and community practices.  For instance, it comes to us through the Christian media/conference/book industry, a lucrative culture that by its very nature is forced to think and act with profits in mind.  He closes by noting that for us, growing in Christian discipleship is not about giving up everything and moving across the world or to a poorer part of town, but in doing whatever good you can as you go through your normal life, wherever that may be.

Because I am not afraid to shamelessly pimp my own material, here is something I wrote a few months back about Francis Chan’s Crazy Love and its view of Christian discipleship.

Easter: Mark’s Lost Ending

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.  (Mark 16:1-8)

If you are like most people, your Bible has a note saying that the earliest manuscripts do not have verses 9-20 before the rest of the chapter.  What do you do with this?

There are two possibilities here.  The first is that Mark intended his Gospel to end at verse 8.  The additional verses are the attempt of later writers to correct what they saw as an abrupt and awkward ending.  This is possible; he may have intended to send a message to his audience.  “This is how these women reacted to the news that Jesus had risen.  What will you do with it?  Will you be afraid like them, or will you believe?”

Still, such an ending would have been a massive cliffhanger.  The Gospel would have ended without any appearance from the resurrected Jesus.  Considering the audience that Mark was addressing–a community of believers facing serious persecution for their faith–would Mark have really intended to end his Gospel that way, when seeing the resurrected Jesus, seeing that even death itself could not defeat Him, would have given them confidence to go out and face whatever may befall them.

The more likely possibility is that there is more to Mark’s Gospel, but this got lost over time and the additional verses are the attempt of later writers to reconstruct this lost ending.

But such a possibility would drive proponents of Biblical inerrancy completely and totally out of their minds.  What–you mean that a whole section of the Bible has dropped completely and totally off the face of the earth?  That would make the Bible a flawed book.  And we know that a perfect God cannot and would not give us anything less than a perfect Book.  If we cannot trust that the Bible is perfect, then we cannot trust anything that it says.  More to the point, we cannot trust that Jesus rose from the dead.

Wrong, people.

The whole point of the Bible is to point us to Jesus Christ.  Jesus said so himself:  “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”  (John 5:39-40)

We don’t have a perfect Book because we don’t need a perfect Book.  What we have is exactly what we need–a book that points us to a perfect Savior.

Good Friday: Mark Goes Minimalist

A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.

It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS.

They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.  (Mark 15:21-41)

Mark’s account of the death of Jesus starts with Simon of Cyrene assisting him with the cross.  All four of the Gospel accounts include this, but Mark adds one detail that the others pass over:  Simon of Cyrene is the father of Alexander and Rufus.

Why does Mark add this detail?  Because Alexander and Rufus were well-known in the community of believers to whom his Gospel was addressed.  More than likely, this Rufus is the same Rufus that Paul gives a shout-out to at the end of Romans (16:13).  Seeing the names of these two well-known members of their community in this scene would have put Mark’s audience right there in the middle of this story of Jesus’ suffering and death.  Recall that Mark’s audience is a community of believers in or near Rome that was facing intense persecution from the Roman empire for their faith.

When it comes to describing the death of Jesus, Mark only devotes four short sentences to it.  He does not go into any detail about what crucifixion is or what it means.  Mark has filled his Gospel account with seemingly insignificant details that establish its veracity, but here he goes all minimalist.

Why?  Because crucifixion is an excruciatingly ghastly affair.  (As a matter of fact, our word “excruciating” comes from the idea of crucifixion.)  If you’ve seen one crucifixion, you’ve seen the most horrible thing you will ever see for as long as you live, and you will wish to God that you had never seen it.

Crucifixion started at the time of Alexander the Great.  The Greeks of that time figured out that if you attach a person’s arms to a cross and let him hang there, he will be unable to breathe (because his legs will be hanging down, stretching his diaphragm and weighing it down) and he will be dead within an hour.  Attach weights to the person’s legs and he will be dead within fifteen minutes.

Along came the Romans, who figured out that if you nail the person’s ankles to the cross or put a wedge under his feet, he will be able to push up and breathe–not very well, but passably.  This stretches out the time of death to several hours, even days.  Days of sheer agony as he hangs there, immobilized as the sun beats down on him and his life drains away slowly  but surely.

Rome used crucifixion as a means to keep the message of its power in front of its people at all times.  Crucifixion was reserved only for the worst criminals and for rebels against Rome.  Crucifixions were held on well-traveled highways and at well-traveled bridges.  The message was clear:  Just try and do what these people did and see if you don’t end up like them.  People living in Roman occupied territories knew all the places in their area where crucifixions were held, and would go out of their way to avoid them.  Because once you’ve seen one crucifixion, you’ll wish to God you had never seen it.

Several centuries later, after the Roman empire–and with it, crucifixion–had passed out of existence, theologians would begin to talk about the Cross, about Jesus’ death and what it all meant.  But not Mark.  For him and anyone else living in that era, the pain was just too fresh.  So when Mark describes Jesus’ death, it is as if he says “They crucified him.  You’ve seen one of these before.  Let’s just not go there.”

Finally, note how Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”.  Many have built a theology around this phrase, that in that moment God actually, literally forsook Jesus and turned His back on him.  It is as if the Trinity was literally ripped asunder in that moment.  It makes sense, kinda, sorta.  If Jesus had in that moment taken on all the sin in the world, then God in His holiness can’t stand to look at sin and He would have to turn His back on Jesus.  But what a view of God this leads to.  If God would turn His back on His own Son, then how much more should we who are so much less than him expect Him to turn His back on us if it suits Him.

Think about this.  If God had actually, literally forsaken Jesus when he was on the cross, then how could Jesus say a few minutes later, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46)?

Remember that in first century Israel every devout Jew knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards.  And they didn’t have chapters and verses–those are a relatively modern invention–so if they wanted to reference a familiar psalm they would say the first line.  That is what Jesus was doing here.  All he had to do was say the first line, and the rest of the psalm would come flooding back to the memory of any devout Jew who happened to be within earshot.  It is just like, in our day, saying “I have a dream”, or “I am not a crook”, or “We are the knights who say Ni”.

So any devout Jew who happened to hear Jesus say “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” would have immediately begun to recite the rest of Psalm 22 mentally, if not out loud.  For Jesus, this was his way of saying, “Look.  I am the fulfillment of this psalm.  I am the one to whom all of this points.”

Palm Sunday: Jesus Enters Jerusalem

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples,saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.  (Mark 11:1-11)

Those of you who are of a liturgical bent, or who grew up in churches of a liturgical bent, probably know all about Palm Sunday.  In many places it is a very celebratory affair, as people wave palm branches during the service in honor of the palm branches that were spread before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.

Palm Sunday is something of an anomaly.  For five weeks we have been moving through Lent, a somber, reflective season of repentance and preparation to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But from out of nowhere we get this festive celebration to break the mood.

Except that it doesn’t break the mood entirely.  At least not for us, who with the benefit of hindsight know what lies ahead in the days to come.  And not for Jesus, who knew exactly what he was heading into when he entered Jerusalem.

On some level Jesus must have reveled in the moment.  Part of him was probably soaking it all up, drinking in all of the adulation from the crowd who had gathered to see him in this moment.  And yet part of him was probably thinking, “These people just don’t get it.”

Because when all those people cried out “Hosanna!” (which translates into “Save”), they weren’t thinking “Save us from our sins.”  They were thinking “Save us from Rome!”

And yet Jesus had completely and totally different ideas about what he was going to do in Jerusalem.  He wasn’t coming to start a revolution.  He was coming to die.

There is a tie-in here, in that many liturgical churches burn the branches from Palm Sunday and use the ashes for the next year’s Ash Wednesday service.  These ashes serve to remind us of our mortality as we begin the Lenten journey.

Palm Sunday is great.  But we know that the story is about to take some very unexpected turns, and some very dark turns.  No one that day could have foreseen that in just a few days’ time the Messiah to whom they were singing praises would be hanging dead on a Roman cross.

Recommended Reading: Tim Gombis on Evangelicals and the Bible

Today I would like to direct your attention to a series of posts which is currently in progress at the blog of Tim Gombis.  Gombis is a professor of New Testament studies at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and he blogs at “Faith Improvised”.

In his current series of posts, he is taking a long, hard look at a recurring comment that he gets from students in his classes.  His big idea is that this comment indicates something that is warped in how evangelicals approach the Bible, and in this series he attempts to get at it and what its implications are.  The comment is “I’ve never heard this before!” and it comes in several variations.  One variant is “I’ve never heard this before.  What you’re saying isn’t biblical.”  This seldom comes from a posture of challenge, but rather from a sense of bewilderment and betrayal.  In the introductory post, Gombis speaks of his excitement at discovering new things in the study of Scripture and how this led him to become a New Testament professor, and reflects on the difference between this attitude and the attitude of bewilderment towards seeing new things in Scripture that he sees in so much of evangelicalism.

When I began teaching evangelical undergraduates, it wasn’t long before I heard a student say, “I’ve never heard this before.”  My first response was, “I know, and there’s so much more to discover!”

But then I heard another variation: “I’ve never heard this before.  What you’re saying isn’t biblical.”

I asked for clarification.  The student responded by saying, “well, I think there’s a verse somewhere that says something like . . . ,” proceeding to blend together three different passages with the chorus of a praise song.

I figured this sort of thing was just the arrogance of youth, but it began to happen regularly.  Just about three weeks into every semester, a student would raise his or her hand and say, “I’ve never heard this stuff before.”

I began to respond by saying, “you’re welcome!  You or your parents are paying me thousands of dollars to tell you things that you don’t know.  This is what we call ‘education’ and it sounds like I’m doing my job.”

It began to dawn on me, however, that there was something about evangelical culture that was making these students assume that if something was unfamiliar, it was unbiblical.

In the last few years, though, I’ve heard this comment from other evangelicals in other settings.  It seldom comes from a posture of challenge, but from some sense of betrayal.  A person lamented to me recently, “I’ve never heard this before.  I’ve been in an evangelical church my whole life and this has never been taught.”

I’m currently teaching a course in a non-evangelical setting.  The responses I’ve gotten have been telling.  I’ve heard, “this is so interesting,” and “thank you, I’m really enjoying this and learning a lot.”

Only one person has said to me, “I’ve never heard this before.”  You guessed it—an evangelical.

What strikes me as odd is that the very thing I have come to associate with studying the Bible—the excitement of discovery—is the very thing that somehow frustrates the evangelicals I’ve been teaching.

Like I said, I think this indicates that there’s something warped about how evangelicals regard the Bible.

In the second post, Gombis reflects on the evangelical posture of attentive submission to Scripture, and how this posture has been corrupted by misplaced priorities in contemporary evangelicalism, especially the culture wars.  When you take on a culture war mindset, it is easy to slip into a posture where it’s us against all those godless liberals out there.  We have the truth, and they don’t.  They are attacking the Bible, and it is up to us to defend it and expose their nefarious schemes.  It is then easy to fool yourself into thinking that you already know the Bible and that no further learning is necessary.  Such a posture is inappropriate, because the Bible was never intended to be used as a weapon against others.  Instead, we are the objects of its exposing and transforming work.  We are to love others as we sit under Scripture and allow ourselves to be transformed by it.

In the third post, Gombis uses a comment from a student who felt badly about not being more conversant on what the Bible says about Jesus’ humanity as a jumping-off point.  The attitude toward Bible study that is prevalent in evangelicalism today is that you must learn all you can about Scripture in order to get equipped to make an impact in the world.  This means getting all the knowledge you can, mastering all the facts so that you are prepared to respond to every argument with all the right answers.  If that is our attitude toward Scripture, then it is no surprise that people are uneasy when they find out that there are things they do not know.  The implication is that their preparation is lacking and that they will therefore be ineffective in facing the world’s challenges.  But learning the Bible is a lifelong process.  We never attain complete mastery of the subject matter.  That is not the point–the point instead is that the process of lifelong learning from Scripture transforms us into a different kind of people who know God more faithfully and love and serve others more creatively.  This only happens over time.

More posts are coming next week, so be sure to keep tracking with him.

Lent Week 4: The Healing of a Boy With an Evil Spirit

When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them.  As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.

“What are you arguing with them about?” he asked.

A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech.  Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground.  He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid.  I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.”

“O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you?  How long shall I put up with you?  Bring the boy to me.”

So they brought him.  When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion.  He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.

Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”

“From childhood,” he answered.  “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him.  But if you can do something, take pity on us and help us.”

” ‘If you can’?” said Jesus.  “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe: help me overcome my unbelief!”

When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit.  “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out.  The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.

After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

–Mark 9:14-29

Here we have an example of Jesus casting out a demon.  Whereas Matthew emphasized Jesus’ teachings and Luke emphasized Jesus’ healings, Mark emphasized the casting out of demons.  This is because he was concerned with showing Jesus as establishing the Kingdom of God.  By casting out demons Jesus was visibly demonstrating his authority over all spiritual forces, showing that the kingdom of this world was over and a new kingdom was beginning.  Such an emphasis would surely have had traction with the believers in Mark’s community, presumably in and around Rome, who were dealing with intense persecution for their non-acceptance of the claims of Roman power and who would be buoyed by the news that the evil powers of this world were defeated in Christ.

A point to notice here:  Every time Jesus performs a healing or exorcism, he always places the people who witness it under strict orders to not tell anyone about it.  This is largely because he does not want to attract attention for the wrong reasons.  At this point in the story he is already having to take a detour to avoid a region where the people were determined to make him king by force and where others were just as strongly opposed to him.  Jesus is determined to not be the Messiah that everyone thinks he should be, and no one thinks that the Messiah should die on a cross.  Yet Jesus is intentionally moving toward that, and he is resolutely avoiding any path to glory that bypasses the cross.  For this reason, he remains hush-hush about his identity as the Son of God until the time for the cross has come.  So here, when it becomes clear that a crowd is gathering to see what is going on, he goes on and heals the boy and gets out of there.

Another point here:  In verse 19 Jesus laments “O unbelieving generation…how long shall I stay with you?  How long shall I put up with you?”  Notice the exasperation with the disciples’ lack of faith that drips through here.  We believe in a Jesus who is fully human and fully divine, but does our view of Jesus have room for a Jesus who feels this level of exasperation at not being fully understood by those closest to him?