Thursday morning at 7H
Early these autumn mornings there's a boat, usually two boats, first one boat then another comes along immediately after, pausing just off 7H while the boater casts for mullet. I doubt these are sport fisherman, more likely catching mullet for a local restaurant or fish market.
My recollection from growing up working in my father's seafood business is that October is roe season, spawning Time, and I worry that too many red roe mullet will be taken and the fish will continue to grow more scarce.
Up early to work on Sunday morning's class study of Gospel Mark and Mark's gospel. We'll be starting in Chapter 12 right after the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard and charging headlong toward the end of the story (Mark 16:8), but unlikely to get all the way.
Folks who have known me for a while know that, living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at the Time, I attended two theological seminaries, the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (which my bishop arranged so I could do it as a drive-down day student, Gettysburg was right down the highway 38 miles straight south), and the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia (which my bishop insisted I study one course there a semester, saying he did not want me to come out of seminary a complete Lutheran! Plus, I did my final, most enjoyable and highly memorable semester in residence at Virginia.
At both seminaries, professors encouraged us to share with our future parishioners what we learned about the Bible in our seminary studies - - while also warning us that most ministers will not do this, being afraid they will be fired if they do, because so many parishioners hold on preciously to what they “KNOW” about the Bible from kindergarten-level Sunday school Bible lessons they were taught as children and were never interested to continue Bible study as adults, and that many are easily offended if their "KNOWLEDGE" - - their sure and comfortable certainty, is challenged.
But this is the Episcopal Church: we are not inerrantist literalists about the Bible, and I’ve always tried to share what I learned in seminary, including this “face the facts” approach to Bible study like we're doing with Mark, especially in classes like this one. Only a couple of Times over the years did it backfire on me - in fact, I only remember once - - which I told the class about:
years ago, discussing some gospel passage that we came upon, I suggested that in his retort to his enemies Jesus was being sarcastic. A parishioner looked up at me HORRIFIED and APPALLED and said, "Jesus would NEVER have been sarcastic."
oooookay
The same parishioner, leaving church one Sunday after I'd preached my best Lent sermon ever (!!), glared at me and said, "That's the worst sermon I ever heard in my life."
My mind strays off in her direction. There was also the Ash Wednesday event. She wasn't there for the service. In church the following Sunday morning, she told me in tears and anger how upset she was that I had not brought ashes to her house, that she had been sick Ash Wednesday and could not come to church for the service of imposition of ashes. I remember responding that I'd not known she was ill, but also that Imposition of Ashes is not a sacrament that clergy normally think to carry to sick people's homes.
As a pastoral matter, from that "lesson" foward, I would have done that anyway, and maybe some rectors do nowadays, IDK.
In the years that followed, she and I got along beautifully, "famously" as is said, though I was always mindful that the relationship was more fragile than most.
Anyway ...
As we read through Mark's gospel I try to comment on the various passages that we encounter. Here's one that'll come up in Mark chapter 13, which is called "the little apocalypse"
The Coming of the Son of Man
24 (Jesus said) “In the days after that time of trouble the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, 25 the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. 26 Then the Son of Man will appear, coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27 He will send the angels out to the four corners of the earth to gather God's chosen people from one end of the world to the other. (GNT)
In the first session, September 7th, we talked about the Son of Man, a figure prophesied at Daniel 7:13, “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. 14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” This was the Jewish expectation of what the Messiah would be at “the end of days,” the general resurrection, when God would overthrow earthly powers and institute the kingdom of God on earth (again, here on earth, not a place in the sky after death). Mark's thrust is Jesus trying to teach his uncomprehending followers that the coming Messiah would not be a royal king but first a suffering servant who would be put to death and rise again.
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Early morning is my thinking Time, in the past fifteen years was my blogging Time. Lately I've been using up my mind thinking about Mark and Mark's, and've not gotten round to writing what used to be my daily post on my +Time blog. No apologies or promises, that's just the way life is going for me as a new nonagenarian.
We have plans for the day, got to go get ready.
RSF&PTL
T90