Mark 13

November 15, 20015 - Last Day for Donuts

Mark 13. The first eight verses are this week’s lectionary passage. I don’t know how many sermons I’ve heard on it – a dozen maybe, or the same sermon a dozen times! We don’t know when the end is coming; no one knows; but we should be ready every day.

Last Day for Donuts

I have taken even more liberties with rendering the passage than I usually do. What the heck: I’m not a scholar, though it’s not as if scholars don’t take liberties, as if they don’t (also) try to make passages – and even particularly this passage - say what they want it to mean.

          Don’t we all know just what Jesus all about? Really! And we know, however he warns us about not being so damn sure and smug about it. How can we know, if he isn’t always entirely sure. That’s what makes him human, incidentally, even if we may think he is also divine (all that hypostatic union stuff): God may be sure, but he, Jesus, is not.

          Jesus does seem to have a pretty good idea, though, about what he wants his followers to do. He tells them in the sermon on the mount, references to which I’ve borrowed into this passage, though I know I shouldn’t have.  (I know that much.)I also get him to quote Lucan, which has to be way, way out of bounds. But so what? This is the TRV – the Ted Riich version; it’s not something God wrote on gold tablets and I simply transcribed.

          So, don’t blame God for it – not that you would. And don’t anyone else for it. I did it, and there’s no committee of scholars brave and true or misguided wretches craven and blue I can hide behind. I’m not hiding. Selah.

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For links to more stories from the TRV, click here.