Monthly Archives: February 2025

Scripture on Sunday – Mark 14: 22-25

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Mark’s Passion Narrative (5)

Mark’s story of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples is very brief. There is no reference here to the Passover itself, but that it is a Passover meal is surely significant. This memorial feast of Israel’s deliverance, of God’s action and revelation, of a new beginning within the story of the covenant people, of the rich symbolism of the Lamb’s blood and its sacrificial import: all this and more is in the background. You can read Mark’s account of the Last Supper here.

In Mark’s telling, there is no instruction to ‘do this in remembrance of me.’ There is, however, Jesus’ own statement that he will not again drink of the fruit of the vine “until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Jesus looks forward, beyond his death, to a new day in the coming kingdom. He—the one who will be betrayed and handed over, who will be executed—he will drink again. This foreshadows the resurrection. Albert Schweitzer speculated that Jesus thought that God would intervene to rescue him prior to his death. Within Mark’s story, however, Jesus clearly anticipates his death: “the Son of Man came . . . to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). In this text, too, his blood will be poured out for many. And yet, he will again drink it ‘new in the kingdom of God.’

Mark’s account includes both sign and saying. Jesus took the bread and having blessed (presumably, and in accordance with normal Jewish practice, he was blessing God rather than the bread), broke it and gave it to them, saying, “Take: this is my body.” The four verbs echo Jesus’ compassionate action in the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:41) and the four thousand (Mark 8:6). These miracles in the wilderness were kingdom signs, signs of his person and the universal nature of his mission (Senior, The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, 56-58). Now he indicates that he himself is the bread, the gift of the kingdom. In giving them the bread he is giving them his own ‘body,’ his own self. Mark’s focus is not on the breaking of the bread but on its distribution: each is to take it. Mark does not say that they ate the bread but it is surely assumed. In their taking, they receive Jesus’ gift of himself, and in their eating they participate in Jesus’ life and fellowship, kingdom and mission.

Jesus takes the cup and gives thanks and gives it to them and “they all drank from it.” Now he interprets this action: “The is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” This is my body. This is my blood. The signs and the sayings belong together. No doubt Jesus was speaking metaphorically of the bread and the wine, declared to ‘be’ his body and blood. That his blood will be poured out for many refers to his imminent death, and so the parallel saying about the bread now also be similarly understood.

The saying concerning the cup has an additional element: it is Jesus’ ‘blood of the covenant.’ The idea of blood as part of a covenant ceremony had ancient roots (cf. Genesis 15). In Exodus 12 the Israelites celebrated the first Passover by taking the blood of the Passover lamb and smearing it on the door posts and lintels of their homes. The blood thus smeared would be a sign for them: by it, divine judgement would ‘pass over’ their home and they would be spared (Exodus 12:12-13; cf. 21-23). The Levitical regulations and especially the Day of Atonement ritual (Leviticus 16), repeat and deepen the imagery, and the connection between sacrificial blood, God’s covenant promise, and the forgiveness of sins.

Further, this blood of the covenant is ‘poured out for many’: it is for others. Jesus’ death is sacrificial and substitutionary. The emphasis is on Jesus’ action in its intended outcome and purpose; that is, the provision and promise of the covenant rather than human response to the covenant as in Exodus 24:1-8 where the emphasis is on responsive obedience and covenant faithfulness.

This is beautifully portrayed in Lucas Cranach’s central altarpiece at St Mary’s (“City Church”) in Wittenberg. Although not nearly as famous as Leonardo da Vinci’s portrayal of the Last Supper, Cranach’s painting, as a piece of Reformation polemic, portrays Martin Luther as one of the twelve apostles seated around Jesus (being served the cup by a young knight – Lucas  Cranach Jnr!). Who is missing to make way for Luther? I don’t know. But the painting suggests a deeper point: we, too, who are followers of Christ are included at the table of the Last Supper, and included in its meaning and promise. More: even those who have not shown themselves the most devoted of followers might find some reason for hope. Cranach portrays Jesus feeding even Judas with the bread of his promise!

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (5)

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On the Mystery and Goodness of Humankind

What is man? Neither merely dust, nor merely animal, nor a god. As Brunner turns to the Bible to answer this question he finds that humanity is created being, so that whatever we are, we are because God has made us so. Brunner bats away the scientific question concerning the mechanism God used to create humanity: “it is not a critical question for faith” (38). Clearly God uses means as the instruments of his work—such as dust, or human parents—but the work done remains God’s work.

Humanity is created in God’s image which distinguishes the human from all other creatures and establishes a similarity of the human creature to God. “What distinguishes man from the rest of creation is the share he has in God’s thought, that is, reason as distinguished from perception, which the animal also possesses” (39). More fundamentally, humanity is not merely created,

by the Word of God but for and in his Word. That means, God created man in such a way that he can receive God’s Word. That is reason in its true sense. Man really becomes man when he perceives something of God. … Man has been so created by God that he can become man only by perceiving God, by receiving God’s Word and—like a soldier repeating a command—repeating God’s Word. … When he says that in his heart homo sapiens becomes humanus. … We are man to the extent that we let God’s Word echo in our hearts. We are not simply men as a fox is a fox. But we are men only when God’s Word finds an echo in us. To the degree that this fails to happen we are inhuman (39, original emphasis).

Two features of this exposition bear reflection. First, ‘reason,’ for Brunner, is true to the extent that it responds and corresponds to the Word of God. The instrumental use of reason which has so distinguished the human from the rest of creation must be supplemented or perhaps crowned with this additional use if humanity is to be truly human, to fulfil its destiny as the divine image.

This infers that, second, Brunner views human existence as a project of becoming. We are human but must become, as it were, what we truly are. What we truly are is what God has intended and created us to be rather than what we find ourselves as. Homo sapiens must ‘become’ humanus. The Latin term can simply mean ‘human’ but also carries the nuances of humane or cultured or refined. This ‘becoming’ is a matter of positive response to the Word of God addressed to us. The person must perceive God, receive God’s Word, and let it echo in their heart. “The freedom to say yes or no to God is the mystery of man” (40). We have this freedom only because we are addressed by God. In this way we become his image, corresponding to him in his Word.

Failure to answer God’s Word addressed to us leaves us ‘inhuman.’ I don’t think Brunner intends this pejoratively, though it is tempting, perhaps, to see here a reference to the developing political and social situation of Germany in the mid-1930s. Rather, we fail to realise our existence as ‘the image of God.’ We are still ‘human’ in terms of our species but now without God as it were, less than what God intends for his creation. We are still endowed with the remarkable capacities God has given us but they now function in ‘inhuman’ ways, warped perhaps by our selfishness. For Brunner as for Calvin, we can only truly see and know ourselves as we perceive God; we know ourselves in his light.

To know ourselves truly, however, is also to understand that we are sinners. From a human perspective there is no one who is wholly good or wholly bad for we are all a mixture of both, though some people tend more the one way and some the other. In a biblical perspective, however, ‘there is none that does good, no, not one…’ To be a sinner is to be “bad at heart, infected with evil at the core” (41).

Sin is a depravity which has laid hold on us all. It is a radical perversion from God, disloyalty to the Creator who has given us so much and remains so loyal, an insulting alienation from Him, in which all of us, without exception, have shared (42-43).

Brunner uses the image of two people on a train, one sensible and the other stupid. But the point is that they are both on the same train and both heading in the same direction—in this case, away from God. This perversity, this evil that has captured the human heart, is inexplicable. We cannot explain sin nor even perceive it until it is shown to us in the death of Christ:

It is not until we see how much it cost to remove the stone between us and Him, that we understand how great was the weight of sin’s guilt. Christ shows us how completely the whole movement of life is in the wrong direction (44).