Ep 16 - Two Paths

In this final episode of Season 2, we highlight some of the key differences between the two ways of understanding the words of Jesus in Mark 13. How well we will listen may determine not just our interpretation, but the shape of our lives and communities as well.

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Willing Fool S2E8

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Willing Fool. I'm your host and lead fool, Paul Trimble. Today we're gonna wrap up season two. This is episode eight of season two, and in the last two episodes, we've done a pretty deep dive into this long speech of Jesus's and Mark 13, and I've done my best to make the case that this passage in Jesus' speech is not about the end of the world.

and Jesus coming to judge people at the end of times, and salvation and all that it is actually about what happened immediately preceding the crucifixion, which is the resurrection and the enthronement of Jesus, the vindication of Jesus and the enthronement of Jesus as king overall creation. . We talked last episode about how one might say, well, what's the difference?

Can I just interpret it my way? You interpret it your way, and of course we can. But I think this serves as really a, a microcosm of [00:01:00] the way we might look at the gospel, the good news that is present in the scriptures as a whole, and in fact, most. Churchy entity. Christianity, I will say for a while across a broad swath of churches anyway, have tended to focus on the sort of, all about how to get to heaven and what is the procedure and everything else is secondary or peripheral to that.

Um, versus is that really where Jesus' emphasis was and. , you can land where you need to land on how to interpret Mark 13. But I think it is a good little microcosm and maybe test case of how we can look at the gospels, look at the scriptures, and really just see our own reflection. Because if you're going in thinking and expecting that, that's what you're gonna find.

Then of course that is what you find . And then [00:02:00] your conclusions become your assumptions and your assumptions become your conclusions, and it's hard to get out of that sort of. . But in this last episode, I wanna talk for a minute about how these messages differ. How does the standard message of the scriptures are about how to go to heaven?

Everything else is subservient or peripheral to that versus the core of the message. The enthronement of Jesus as king and the beginning of God's work of new creation, beginning with Jesus. That is the good news for all of humanity. And those two really, they do have, I would say, practically speaking, a very different flavor.

And it's not just a matter of flavor and preference, but they really have some important outworkings that when it comes to. , how do we try to live a Christian life? What do our communities of faith look like? That sort of thing. So on the one hand, I, I think that [00:03:00] the message as I find it in Jesus as I find this passage in Mark 13 focusing on what is taking place after the resurrection, the enthronement of Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father, presiding over.

Newly begun restoration of creation that is to be continued and to be finalized at a later date. But that message, I would say is cosmic. It is. It's about reality changing at a fundamental nature Now. that applies to you and me, but it, it would be true. It would be what it is, regardless of you and I, and our response is, this is just reality changing at a fundamental nature.

And of course that's good news. It's, it's about something really tremendous and fundamental taking place that is accessible and available to everybody. It's grounded in history. It has to do with. Events in space time and on [00:04:00] earth among humans in a real community. And then it applies to everything.

There's no part of life, there's no part of reality where this doesn't have relevance, where it doesn't give meaning. I think A person can live an integrated life full of meaning where. choice every way of spending time and money, every moment of loving or working or creating art is infused with the meaning that is brought to bear by this reality that we're talking about.

And lastly, this reality is very here and now. And I think you saw that if you were in the last episode with the focus of the message of the early Christians. It was, it was about what's happening here and now, I, I. at one point asking, a small group of Christians, just what do you think this whole thing is about?

I just was curious as what they would say and the, the first answer that came back was sort of what I expected. It was, well, it's all about saving souls, [00:05:00] getting people to heaven. Right? And I remember thinking in reading Romans one and Romans 16, where Paul bookends his letter to the Romans with talking about how he's preaching this message.

to bring about the obedience of the nations to Christ. And you might think, wasn't that the same thing? And I would say, well, no. Do you hear the difference in the flavor? What's the obedience of the nations? That's about right here and right now. And I think the reason is because the way that early Christians looked at this message was very, grounded in here and now.

And of course it also looked to the future, but what had taken place was the anchor and the core of everything. It's what gave shape to the hope for the future. It's what made reasonable, the hope for the future. Not a fear, primarily, but of of hopeful expectation because of what they believed God [00:06:00] had done in history through Jesus.

and that's ways I would characterize this message and the way I've often heard the message, the way I've often received the alternative, the one that's is very, different in flavor. It's, it's focused on me as an individual. , and it might not be in theory, but it is in practice because when it comes down to it, the message is, Hey, you, there's something you are doing wrong and you need to do differently.

And of course that is true. I would not argue with that. But that isn't the focus, that isn't the beginning point of the message. But that message always seems to have this deep flavor of what's wrong with me. And people cringe at that and, and recoil and, and I don't know that that necessarily means there's something wrong or in spiritual with them.

You don't want the ultimate truth about reality to be a message about what's wrong with you. I think people many times know that there's something wrong with them, but they don't. Maybe, maybe you don't want somebody coming at them. [00:07:00] And, and that is their focal point. That is where the microscope is aimed from the beginning.

And, and it really doesn't feel like good news. You, you might say, well, it is good news because you, you deserve this, but you're gonna get that. But it, it doesn't come on. Who are you kidding? It doesn't really seem like good news. It doesn't feel like good news. The other thing that I notice about this, Flavor of the message is it's so spiritual that it makes almost all of the rest of life or all of life almost irrelevant.

You know, you go to work for eight hours a day, everything you do there, guess what? It's pretty much meaningless. . I had a friend in church who had a habit of saying, well, you know, it's all gonna burn anyway, and that was his way of talking about the end of time and the everything's just gonna be burned up, which is very different than the flavor I get from Paul writing in first Corinthians 50.

Saying that whatever you do give all, all of your heart to the work of the Lord, knowing that nothing that you do will be in vain. That everything will be retained, restored, the [00:08:00] goodness will be restored, and, and the badness will be hopefully transformed into what it should have been all along.

But this view that is all about the future, and it's all about the quote, spiritual, it leaves out broad swaths of life like hobbies. The arts, the environment, what we build in our families and communities. And of course, like I mentioned, our work and our careers, it, it's all, all the reality is about somewhere else that is heaven and some win else.

That is the future. And so it just makes all of life this kind of embarrassing, holding time until the real thing gets, gets going in the future and somewhere else. And I, I know that isn't anybody's intention, but that is how it actually gets worked out in reality. And why settle for that? Why settle for that when there is something that is so much better, so much more integrated, more whole, so much more, I think wholesome and healthy and actually [00:09:00] acknowledging, uh, of all of us as all of our humanity and all of, our experie.

Not only that, but I mean there's something about the purity of not wanting to misrepresent God's message, God's character, and God's story. I would think that for those people who, have a belief in God and would say they love God, there should be part of us that just doesn't want to drastically misrepresent God's message or God's.

Regardless of, well, it's all gonna be okay in the end as long as we get these one or two things right. You know, I'm, I'm thinking right now about the passage in Matthew 28 where Jesus, after the resurrection is appearing to his disciples and he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, and therefore go and make disciples of all nations.

[00:10:00] And as many times as I've heard that so frequent, , the meaning of the all authority and heaven and earth has been given to me is used as a blunt tool to say, see what Jesus says, you better go make disciples. You better go do this. And now as I'm listening to this and thinking and meditating on what Mark 13, what is Jesus talking about with respect to what he was going to do on and after the cross to be en.

as the authority over all of creation that God is planning to bring all things in creation unto Christ. That statement, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. I'm thinking that's what that's about. That is the gospel message. That is the crux of the what was spread as good news and caught on like wild.[00:11:00] 

It wasn't a means to an end. It wasn't, something to be used as a wedge or a tool or a blunt instrument to get people to do something to do, whatever uh, a preacher wanted them to do. This is the message, and how sad would it be to run out as disciples training other disciples, or thinking that we're teaching.

And we're missing the very core of what Jesus himself and the early Christians pointed to as the core of the message.

That passage is not about telling people how to methodically and formulaically go to heaven. That's not what that is about. It's, it's much better. It's much. . Of course that message does make sense. If this message is all about the future, if the cross is just a [00:12:00] means to an end a way that Jesus had to make it possible for individual people to, to do this private salvation transaction so that they could lock up their insurance to go to heaven, it would make sense.

But, Salvation is joining in God's new creation program and what he has begun and continued to do in Jesus as the king and the prototype of bringing forth new creation. And I think this misplaced emphasis in the story, this misplaced emphasis and the message.

It's resulted in all kinds of

less than totally wholesome, holy, what God would want type things. All kinds of spiritual bypassing where we ignore things that we should [00:13:00] pay attention to, where we minimize things that we should acknowledge and deal with effectively because it isn't the. that everything is about trying to get souls to heaven in the future.

There's the formation of Christ here and now there's participating in new creation. There's that passage I mentioned in first Corinthians 15, that everything you do work at it with all your heart because none of it will be in vain when we have this misplaced emphasis or this distorted story. It's all too easy to just not deal with things appropriately, to whitewash, uh, problems, to whitewash things that are actually destructive or harmful to even tolerate abuses, to allow distorted value systems and practices to continue.

It even makes it easy to [00:14:00] accept or exonerate or tolerate. weird leadership practices or cultural practices and, and, and people not conforming to the character of Christ because, well, you know, it's all about getting these souls from this position to that position and all of that. If we didn't have a better option, all that might be more understandable, but that's what this season has all been about.

If we listen, if we listen with all of our heart, all of our mind, if we pay attention, if we don't shirk it off and say, well, it shouldn't require me to think, it shouldn't require me to think in any way that's uncomfortable. It shouldn't require me to put myself in a different cultural situation than my own.

It shouldn't require me to look at things in a way that I'm not used to or I'm uncomfortable with, or it's not what I've heard before.

[00:15:00] Jesus' warning stands to anybody that's willing to listen to it, but the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

How generously do you listen?

We started the season talking about Peter and that great moment where he says, you are the mess. and Jesus acknowledges Peter and, and then not, more than a few sentences later, Peter's trying to stop Jesus from going and doing what Jesus has determined that he needs to do. And Jesus says, get behind me.

Satan. You did not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men. And I know that Peter was well-intentioned, he wanted to. Jesus. He wanted to protect the reputation of Jesus. He wanted to protect the reputation of God. He wanted to protect [00:16:00] the reputation of the one he considered and believed to be the Messiah, and good for him for wanting to protect and to honor guard.

But I'll repeat that. The problem with honor guarding is that you may not be listening to the one that you love and. You may in fact be preventing the one that you love and serve from doing what he's trying to do.

I know Peter wasn't trying to do that, but that's what we can read on the page and know sometimes when we think perhaps we're protecting the honor of the one we love and. I, I wonder, I wonder if it isn't the case that we may in fact be trying to protect

[00:17:00] ourselves. Not too many pages later in that story, Peter actually is close to being in the mix in the danger zone with Jesus as Jesus. slowly approaching the cross and he's close, but he's, he's got a little bit of distance with Jesus and he's questioned about his proximity to Jesus and aren't you affiliated with him?

And he says, no, I don't know. I don't know him.

And in that moment,

maybe we can see a little bit of ourselves in Peter, or even when we. supposedly protecting and guarding the honor of the one we love and serve. If that's what we're doing. Maybe we're really just protecting ourselves, trying to shield [00:18:00] ourselves from that danger, that mix, that trouble, the mud and the blood and the.

 If you take anything away from this season, I hope it's that we will, we'll do our best to listen. We'll do our best to listen. Knowing that is a way to love you. Can't go wrong. I wanna thank you so much for joining the journey on this season. I've really enjoyed it. I hope you have too.

I hope you've learned something or heard something new that made you think or feel in a different way. Really appreciate it. We'll continue trying to be willing to look or feel like fools so we can become wise. That's it for the season. See you next time.