The Gospel of Mark (NRSV)

THE GOSPEL OF MARK


I have made available here, the location of the entire text of the Gospel of Mark which we will be studying. It is the shortest of the four Gospels and moves quickly through Jesus ministry. It does not contain a birth narrative. Jesus appears fully grown at the River Jordan seeking baptism at the hands of John the Baptist as the Gospel opens.

I recommend that you take the following actions to begin your study of this most powerful Gospel:

1. Copy the entire Gospel into a Word document format so that you can have it in a form that allows you to write your own notes about the text or questions you might have as you read it. This also allows you to have your own copy of the text to carry with you and to mark up as you see fit.

2. Begin reading the first chapter of the Gospel. Do not rush through this chapter. Read and re-read it. As you read, pay attention to things in the text that trouble you, amuse you, anger you, frighten you, confuse you, or make you want to read more or put the whole thing down and forget it altogether. The Gospel is intended to move you emotionally and to stir up the many feelings that are described above. Jesus' own disciples moved towards him and away from him during their time with him. Their final day with Jesus, they all left him.

3. Post comments about first chapter on this blog. You can do this anonymously or use your own true identity.

4. Pick a verse or two from the first chapter that you would like to memorize and make it part of your daily prayer life. Make a copy of these verses and carry them with you in your pocket, purse, or wallet. Make an effort to pull the verses out and repeat them over and over again until they are part of your memory. Post these verses on the blog under this entry.

Here is an example of a verse from Chapter One:


9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Why do this, you may ask.

To be a baptized and confirmed Christian means that we desire to be formed by the Gospel message. Formation happens as we embrace the message by memorizing verses that get our attention as we read; allowing the text to raise questions, hopes, doubts, fears, and love in our hearts and minds.

The message of the Gospel enters our souls as we repeat prayers, passages of scripture, hymns, and practice other forms of meditation. We come together each week to hear and receive the Word of God. We repeatedly put these words on our lips so that they can move to our minds on the way to our hearts. It is in the heart that we are truly and deeply formed by the Word, but it can not get into our hearts if it is not first on our lips and in our minds.

5. The formation of the heart changes the way we think, speak, and act towards ourselves, God, and others.

What changes might you expect to see in your life as a result of this time of study? Everyone is formed by some "word." What we will discover is how profoundly we have been already formed by a word or set of beliefs. These words and beliefs determine how we relate to one another.

As you read the Gospel of Mark, you will tend to read it and understand it according the beliefs you bring to the reading. These beliefs may be your best understanding of what you believe to be the Christian faith or they may be your sense of things you have learned from parents, teachers, the media, or other influences in our world.

6. Be prepared to have your ideas and beliefs challenged and changed.

God's Peace in the Word Made Flesh,
Bob+

A Photo of Samuel Seabury and a biography

American Episcopate
(From the Anglican Kalendar)

A crucial date for members of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America is the consecration of the first Bishop of the Anglican Communion in the United States. During the colonial era, there had been no Anglican bishops in the New World; and persons seeking to be ordained as clergy had had to travel to England for the purpose. After the achievement of American independence, it was important for the Church in the United States to have its own bishops, and an assembly of Connecticut clergy chose Samuel Seabury to go to England and there seek to be consecrated as a bishop.

However, the English bishops were forbidden by law to consecrate anyone who would not take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. He accordingly turned to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, which had no connection with the government (having originated around 1690 with the non-Jurors: those Anglicans who, having sworn allegiance to James Stuart, would not during his lifetime swear allegiance to William of Orange, and who were accordingly all but outlawed under the new dynasty), and was accordingly free to consecrate him without political complications.

In Aberdeen, 14 November 1784, Samuel Seabury was consecrated to the Episcopate by the Bishop and the Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen and the Bishop of Ross and Caithness. He thus became part of the unbroken chain of bishops that links the Church today with the Church of the Apostles.

In return, he promised them that he would do his best to persuade the American Church to use as its Prayer of Consecration (blessing of the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper) the Scottish prayer, taken largely unchanged from the 1549 Prayer Book, rather than the much shorter one in use in England. The aforesaid prayer, adopted by the American Church with a few modifications, has been widely regarded as one of the greatest treasures of the Church in this country.

PRAYER (traditional language)
We give thee thanks, O Lord our God, for thy goodness in bestowing Upon this Church the gift of the episcopate, which we celebrate in this remembrance of the consecration of Samuel Seabury; and we pray that, joined together in unity with our bishops, and nourished by thy holy Sacraments, we may proclaim the Gospel of redemption with apostolic zeal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

PRAYER (contemporary language)
We give you thanks, O Lord our God, for your goodness in bestowing Upon this Church the gift of the episcopate, which we celebrate in this remembrance of the consecration of Samuel Seabury; and we pray that, joined together in unity with our bishops, and nourished by your holy Sacraments, we may proclaim the Gospel of redemption with apostolic zeal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

An Interesting History of the Episcopal Church

NOTE TO GROUP: The article written below comes from an Episcopalian who is in orders.John-Julian is a member of the Order of Julian of Norwich which is an Episcopal order located in Wisconsin. Here is their web site http://www.orderofjulian.org/home.html. What John-Julian presents is more than just a commentary on the current debate within the Episcopal Church regarding sexual orientation. His presentation gives the average person in the pew an interesting overview of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. I look forward to any comments or questions this piece may inspire in you. Bob+


We have been told that the consecration of a partnered gay man as a bishop, and the occasional blessing ofsame sex unions in the Episcopal Church are drastic(and intolerable) departures from Anglican tradition. And yet, the Episcopal Church itself was founded ONLY because of a series of many "drastic changes in Anglican Tradition"! These changes arose then (as they do now) from the independent nature of the new national Episcopal Church and the national culture in which it found itself. Indeed, it can be truly maintained that the "secular culture" of the new United States actually shaped the entire character and polity of the Episcopal Church from the very beginning.

Back in the late 18th century, the Church of England in the American colonies by necessity underwent a cataclysmic transformation. It was a transformation that many could not, would not, and did not accept. During the Revolutionary War, a great many Anglican clergy in America simply closed the doors of their churches, rather than break their ordination vows by altering the Book of Common Prayer to remove the prayers for the King.

Some Anglican clergy simply packed up and fled to Canada or returned to England. Some clergy fled to the colonial wilderness and actually lived in caves in the forests. Some clergy were tarred and feathered and ridden out of their towns on a rail. Some were arrested by the patriots and imprisoned. Some were tortured and murdered. Some few abandoned their ordination vows, crossed out the offensive bits of the Book of Common Prayer, and became rebellious patriots. [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

Then when the gentlemanly and well-intentioned William White suggested the possibility of presbyteral ordination for American Anglicans (given the absence of an Anglican bishop), a tiny and secret rump conclave of Anglican clergy in Connecticut reacted in dread, and with no other external authorization than their own consciences, meeting secretly after their diocesan convention, they did what had never been donein the history of the Church of England: they elected a bishop. [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

Their first choice, Jeremiah Leaming, pleaded illhealth and opted out, but Samuel Seabury, Tory to the core, active loyalist during the War, chaplain to the King's regiments, once imprisoned by the patriots,accepted the election and braved the long sea voyage to England to seek consecration. . [A DRASTIC CHANGEIN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

Both English Archbishops gave Seabury very much the cold shoulder. A bishop elected by mere clergy? There was no such thing! A bishop without temporalities or endowment? No such thing existed! An Anglican bishop who had not pledged allegiance to the Crown? A canonical impossibility! A bishop for a cluster of colonies who for over a hundred years had purposely been refused a bishop by both Church and Crown?Ridiculous! A bishop not answerable to a secular parliament? Laughable! What was proposed by Seabury and his electors was an utterly impossible departure from Anglican tradition and polity! And both Archbishops rejected it out of hand. [A DRASTIC CHANGEIN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

The British generally thought so little of Seabury andhis project that the Prime Minister, Lord North, even lost (sic!) Seabury's credentials and the bishop-elect had to write (and wait) for replacement documents.Ambassador John Adams (who had been an outspoken foe of even the idea of a colonial Anglican bishop)actually negotiated an offer from the Danish Lutheran Church to consecrate Seabury but Seabury was cautioned against the Danish offer by the Rev. Dr. Martin Routh(soon to be President of Magdalen College, Oxford) and Robert Lowth, Bishop of London.

William Cartwright, a non-juring bishop in England offered to consecrate Seabury, but by then the second-generation non-juringorders were mildly suspect and Seabury chose not to accept the offer.Finally, with further permission from his constituents, Seabury headed off to the tiny Episcopal Church of Scotland (which was only barely legal by Scottish law and was not allowed even to have church buildings in Presbyterian Scotland), and there he received consecration by three Scottish bishops in an upstairs room of one of the bishops' home. [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

Seabury brought the episcopacy home to America(stopping in Newfoundland on the way to visit his Tory and Loyalist relations). Canterbury, York, the Crown,and Parliament THEN finally surrendered -- after Seabury had by-passed them -- and agreed to provide consecration for White and Provoost. (The latter was so opposed to Seabury's "irregular" consecration that he refused for five years even to be in the same room as Seabury!) [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

In 1790, the first official General Convention of the Episcopal Church was held. (Provoost fortuitously being ill, Seabury and White alone comprised the House of Bishops.) The Constitution and the Book of Common Prayer were approved, and the "Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America" came into being -- an ex-colonial church! [A DRASTIC CHANGE INANGLICAN TRADITION!]

And ALSO, since the Church of England was "incommunion" with this first province of the Church outside the British Isles, the "Anglican Communion" can be said to have come into being in 1790. And it came into being in an extremely revolutionary way which shocked any true Anglican of the day: governed by a democratic synod (including even laity!), with bishops freely elected by not only the clergy but also the laity, with financial support by voluntary offerings (or pew rent), and with mutual recognition and affection (but legitimate independence) from Canterbury and the Crown. [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION!]

That was -- and that is -- the Episcopal Church. It was(and had to be) its own authority and it had (and had to have) its own independence from the Church of England. The American Prayer Book was similar but with a few important differences. The Athanasian Creed had been omitted, and the Scottish Episcopal Church(through Seabury) had influenced the inclusion of an epiclesis in the American Communion service (there being no epiclesis in the British Book of Common Prayer at the time). [A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICANTRADITION!]

The Episcopal Church itself has been, since its very inception, A DRASTIC CHANGE IN ANGLICAN TRADITION! Then that Church began (finally) to ordain Black clergy; then that Church began to ordain women; then that Church began to ordain partnered homosexuals as priests; then that Church began to ordain partnered homosexuals as bishops. That Church never ceases to lead the rest of her brother and sister Anglican Churches as she did from the moment of her conception!

John-Julian, OJN