Friday, August 6
2 Peter 1.10-21: After they have been initially catechized, it is imperative that believers be repeatedly instructed in the foundations of the faith, considering its various aspects in their mutually interpretive connections (what is called the “analogy of faith” in Romans 12:6), and more profoundly reflecting on its implications in their lives (traditionally called the moral sense or tropology).
In the Holy Scriptures this ongoing endeavor of the Christian experience is known as “reminding,” in the sense of a renewal of mind. It is also known as “remembering,” in the sense of “putting the members back together again,” seeing the diverse parts of the faith afresh, in relationship to the whole.
This repeated pedagogical exercise of “calling to mind” is not an optional extra in the Christian life. (The only recognized “graduation ceremony” from Sunday School in the Christian Church is called the Rite of Burial.) It is, rather, an essential exercise of loving God with the whole mind, and the Bible often speaks of such remembrance (cf. 2 Peter 3:1-2; John 2:22; 12:16; Jude 3,5,17; 1 Corinthians 11:2,24).
The present text represents such an exercise (verses 12,13,15), in order to bring Peter’s readers more consciously into what he calls “the present truth,” or, if you will, the truth as presence.
By way of pursuing this living remembrance, Peter narrates for them a story they must have heard many times, the account of the Lord’s Transfiguration (also told in Mark 9, Matthew 17, and Luke 9), and he does this to serve, as it were, as a final testimony to them before his death (literally exodus in verse 15). Peter himself, that is to say, conscious that he will be outlived by one or more generations of Christians, writes this text as a legacy.
This perspective is quite different from the earlier epistles preserved in the New Testament (Paul’s, for instance), all of them composed, not with a direct view to the future generations of the Church, but in order to address concrete questions of the hour. In this respect, the Second Epistle of Peter more closely resembles the four canonical gospels, which also bear the more explicit mark of “legacy.”
Finally, verse 11 identifies eternal life as “the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” an idea rare in early Christian literature (cf. Ephesians 5:5), which more often refers to the “kingdom of God.” The expression here in 2 Peter forms the biblical basis for that line of the Nicene Creed that says of Jesus, “of whose kingdom there shall be no end.”
Saturday, August 7
Mark 14.32-42: Perhaps no part of the Gospel narrative of the Lord’s Passion manifests more dramatically what St. Paul called “the weakness of God” (1 Corinthians 1:25) than the account of Jesus’ trial in the garden. Indeed, when the pagan Celsus, late in the second century, wrote the first formal treatise against the Christian faith, he cited that Gospel scene in order to assault the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity: “Why does he shriek and lament and pray to escape the fear of destruction, speaking thus: ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me’?”
Celsus greatly oversimplified the story of course. Refuting him in the following century, Origen remarked that the Gospels do not claim that Jesus “lamented” (oduretai) His coming death. Also, Origen continued, Celsus failed to note that the foregoing prayer of Jesus was immediately followed by the words, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done,” a sentiment demonstrating our Lord’s “piety and greatness of soul,” His “firmness,” and His “willingness to suffer” (Contra Celsum 2.24).
2 Peter 2:1-11: Like the apostle Paul taking leave of the Asian churches for the last time (Acts 20:29-30), part of Peter’s final legacy here consists in a warning against false teachers who will arise from within the congregation after his departure. These will carry on the deceptive work of the false prophets, begun in Old Testament times and frequently spoken of in Holy Writ (for example, Deuteronomy 13, Jeremiah 28).
Peter proceeds to provide biblical illustrations of this road to perdition. He cites, first of all, the fallen angels, those original tempters of our race (verse 4; Jude 6), and then goes on to speak of the destruction of sinners in the Deluge and the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. Just as God spared Noah in the former instance, He spared Lot in the latter. Peter’s picture of Noah as a “preacher of righteousness” is paralleled in his contemporary, Josephus (Antiquities 1.3.1), and in Clement of Rome’s letter to the Corinthians a generation later (7.6). Likewise, Peter’s very positive attitude toward Lot, which contrasts somewhat with the less flattering image in Genesis 19, reflects the picture of Lot in Wisdom 10:6 (“When the ungodly perished, [Wisdom] delivered the righteous man, who fled from the fire which fell down on the five cities”) and will likewise appear again in Clement of Rome (11.1).
The false teachers, by way of contrast, are said to introduce “heresies of damnation” (haireseis apoleias — verse 1), driven by fleshly lust (verses 2,10,13,14, 18) and rebellion (verses 1,10). Peter appreciates the moral “underground” of heresy. It is not simply false and unsound teaching, but a teaching prompted by lust and sustained by rebellion. If a person “loses the faith,” he has usually lost something else first, such as chastity, or patience, or sobriety. Heresy, that is to say, is normally a cover for some deeper vice. This is one of the reasons that the Bible takes such a dim view of false teachers.
Sunday, August 8
Mark 14.43-52: Our earliest story about St. Mark is found in his Gospel, where he describes what he was doing on the night Jesus was arrested in the Garden: “Now a certain young man followed Him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the young men laid hold of him, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked” (14:51–52). Mark describes himself here as a “young man,” hardly more than a boy, who was apparently eavesdropping on our Lord’s arrest in the Garden.
It is the sort of picture attractive in children’s literature. Boys like to spy on things. It is what boys do. One thinks of young Jim Hawkins, sitting in the apple-barrel, listening to the plot of the pirates. We recall young Jack, who climbed the beanstalk and hid himself in the castle of the giant. There was Tom Sawyer, absconding himself in the home of his Aunt Polly and listening to a discussion about himself. In short, boys like to watch and listen from some secret place. That is to say, boys appreciate the merits of espionage.
2 Peter 2:12-22: Of the two Old Testament accounts given of Balaam (Numbers 22-24 [cf. Joshua 24:9-10; Micah 6:5; Deuteronomy 23:3-6] and Numbers 31), only the second portrays him in a bad light, as responsible for tempting the Israelites into lust and apostasy in their encounter with the Midianites. For this sin he is killed in Israel’s war with Midian (cf. Numbers 31:8; Joshua 13:22).
Peter’s negative comments on Balaam in the present text are similar to those found in rabbinical sources and in the Jewish philosopher Philo. His foul counsel to the Midianites, whereby young Israelite men were brought to their spiritual peril, was taken by early Christian writers as symbolic of the deceptions of false teachers. One finds this perspective expressed, not only here in Peter, but also in Jude 11 and Revelation 2:14. Balaam is the very image of the deceitful teacher, and hardly any other group is criticized more often or more severely in Holy Scripture than the false teacher. One finds this condemnation in Peter, Jude, James, Paul, and John.
In the present chapter the false teachers are singled out for deceiving the newly converted (verses 2,14,20-22), an especially vulnerable group of believers, who are not yet mature in solid doctrine. These latter, in the very fervor of their conversion, are often seduced by unreliable teachers who prey on their inexperience. In the mouths of false teachers, little distinction is made between liberty and libertinism (verse 19; 1 Peter 2:16; Romans 6:16; John 8:34), and they use the enthusiasm of the newcomer to change conversion to subversion.
Monday, August 9
Mark 14.53-65: Even before the charges against Jesus are stated, the Sanhedrin is seeking the death penalty. Indeed, Jesus’ enemies made this determination some time ago. The charge they want to sustain, if they can find witnesses for it, is blasphemy, one of their earliest accusations against Jesus. Jesus knows exactly what they are up to, and they know that he knows it. The Sanhedrin is specifically accused of suborning perjury.
By not answering these interrogations, Jesus fulfills the prophecies about the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. Frustrated by Jesus’ silence, the high priest adjures Jesus directly to declare whether He is God’s Son and Messiah.
Jesus answers positively to this question, affirming that He is the Messiah and the Son of God, but He goes on to identify Himself further by reference to another figure in prophetic literature, Daniel’s Son of Man (Daniel 7:13-14). This claim, from Jesus’ own lips, is taken as evidence adequate to sustain the charge of blasphemy, a crime for which capital punishment is prescribed (Leviticus 24:16). This is the sentence Jesus will be given later, toward the morning.
2 Peter 3:1-9: Peter begins this chapter with an oblique reference to his earlier epistle. In verse 2, read “your apostles” instead of “us apostles.” The singular significance of this verse is its juxtaposition of the New Testament apostles with the Old Testament prophets, an important step in recognizing the apostolic writings as inspired Holy Scripture. In 3:16, indeed, Peter does give such recognition to the letters of the apostle Paul. Both groups of men, Peter says, are being disregarded by those who scoff at the doctrine of the Lord’s return (verse 4).
Since so many of the earliest Christians were of the opinion that the Lord would return during their own lifetime, His not doing so became for some an excuse for unbelief. It was only an excuse, however, not a justification, and Peter judged such unbelief to be prompted, not by what are called “sincere intellectual difficulties,” but by the lustful desires of those who wanted an excuse for unbelief (verse 3). Later in the century, Clement of Rome would address that same problem when he wrote to the Corinthians (23.3).
That heresy, which asserted that the “integrity” of the natural order precluded its being invaded from without by divine influences, rather curiously resembles the modern ideology of Naturalism, with which contemporary apologists must contend.
Such a misinterpretation of the world, Peter wrote, is willful (verse 5); it is deliberately chosen, not on the basis of evidence, but in order to loose those who hold it from accounting to a final judgment by God. That misinterpretation was also based, Peter went on to say, on a misunderstanding of what is meant by “last times.” This designation “last” is qualitative, not quantitative. It is not concerned with “how much,” but “of what sort.” The “last times” are not quantified; their limit is not known to us, but that limit is irrelevant to their quality. The last times are always the last times, no matter how long they last. Since the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are always within the eleventh hour, and this designation means only that it is the hour before the twelfth; it can last as long as God intends it to.
Tuesday, August 10
2 Peter 3:10-18: Since only God knows the length of the eleventh hour, the Lord’s return will confound all human calculations of its timing. The simile of the thief in the night, for instance, must not be taken literally, because it is never nighttime everywhere at the same time, and the Bible contains no hint that the Lord will return to the earth by following the sequence of its appointed time zones!
This comparison with the thief’s nocturnal entrance was doubtless common among the early Christians (Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; Revelation 3:3; 16:5). It will all happen with a “rush,” this onomatopoeia corresponding to the Greek verb rhoizedon in verse 10. Watchfulness, therefore, and a holy life are the proper responses to our true situation in this world (verse 11; Matthew 24:42-51; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). Both heaven and earth will be renewed (verse 13; Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; Revelation 21:1; cf. Romans 8:19-22).
The expression “without spot and without blame” in verse 14 (aspiloi kai amometoi) contains the negative forms of the adjectives describing the false teachers in 2: 13 (spiloi kai momoi). Peter’s reference to Paul indicates his familiarity with more than one Pauline epistle and probably suggests that Paul’s letters were already being gathered into collections and copied. Peter likewise testifies to the difficulties attendant on the understanding of Paul’s message. Christian history bears a similar witness, alas, in the modern divisions that have arisen among Christians over their differing interpretations of Paul. Paul himself was aware, even then, that some Christians were distorting his thought (Romans 3:8).
Psalms 102 (Greek & Latin 101): The God addressed in this pslm is Christ our Lord, a point made clear in Hebrews 1, which quotes this psalm as a prayer to Christ. The author had just quoted Psalm 45 about the permanence of Christ’s throne (“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever . . .”), a verse strikingly similar to a verse in Psalm 102 (“But You, O Lord, are enthroned forever . . .”). Quoting the other psalm seems to lead naturally to quoting this one, and the author of Hebrews proceeds to do so, still addressing it to Christ: “You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, / And the heavens are the work of Your hands. / They will perish, but You remain; / And they will all grow old like a garment; / Like a cloak You will fold them up, / And they will be changed. / But You are the same, / And Your years will not fail” (Heb. 1:10–12).
In Psalm 102, then, as read through New Testament eyes, the God who made the heavens is Christ our Lord. This idea is thematic in the first chapter of Hebrews, which begins by affirming that “God . . . has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” To the impermanence of the heavens, then, is contrasted the permanence, and therefore complete dependability, of Christ: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away.
We Christians acknowledge no divinity apart from the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The universe is without explanation except in Him. He is the very coherence of all creation. The world has no center apart from Him, “for by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible . . . and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Col. 1:16, 17). The permanent, the creating God addressed all through Psalm 101 is the very one revealed in the Gospel.
Wednesday, August 11
Mark 15.1-20: Crucifixion was a Roman form of punishment, and Pilate represented Rome. The Jewish punishment for blasphemy, which was, after all, the charge brought against Jesus before the Sanhedrin, was stoning to death. We see this punishment exemplified in the death of Stephen, who also was condemned for blasphemy. It was the Romans, however, not the Jews, who crucified Jesus.
No matter, then, how much water touched Pilate’s hands, the decision to execute Jesus was his to make, and he made it. Consequently, his protestation of innocence was hypocritical; he could have saved the life of an innocent man unjustly accused, exercising the justice that the Roman government had sent him to Judea to exercise. In handing Jesus over to death, then, Pilate violated man’s law as well as God’s.
One fancies that Pilate may have spent the rest of his days remarking, “Yes, it was the most difficult and painful decision I ever had to make.” Such references to the difficulties of a moral choice are often invoked by way of excusing a bad moral decision. Such appeals are invariably self-serving, and in no case do they excuse the person from the moral evil of his choice. A sinful decision is still a sinful decision, no matter how difficult it is to make.
There is no narrative perspective, consequently, in which Pilate can be viewed as anything but a moral coward in condemning an innocent man to a terrible death in order to placate the demands of a mob. It was the whole boast of Rome that it imposed justice over mob rule.
Acts 27.1-12: The trip to Rome, which will fill the two final chapters of the book, is the point to which the literary tension of the Acts of the Apostles has been building. This is the journey that matches the Aeneid of Vergil, for Rome is the goal of both books. Paul’s going to Rome is a matter of his destiny (cf. 19:21). Accordingly, Luke’s inclusion of so many nautical details obliges the reader to slow down and savor the significance of the event.
In this final voyage Paul will be accompanied by Aristarchus and Luke (verses 2-3), who had helped him bring the alms to Jerusalem over two years earlier (20:4,6), and who have been with him at Caesarea since that time (Colossians 4:10,14; Philemon 24).
They board a ship whose homeport is Adramyttium, just south of Troas, or Troy, from where Aeneas had set sail for Rome. Luke’s inclusion of this detail is thus significant. Leaving Phoenicia, they cruise along the east and north sides of Cyprus, against strong head winds (verse 4), and then go north to Asia Minor. The ship is obviously returning to its home port. At the city of Myra, on the south coast of Asia Minor, they change to an Alexandrian ship bound for Italy. It was perhaps a grain cargo ship, so many of which brought wheat to Rome at a fraction of the cost of transporting grain overland to Rome from elsewhere in Italy. Still fighting contrary winds, they make their way to Salmone on the northeastern tip of Crete, a port well known to ancient navigators (cf. Strabo, Geography 10.3.20; Pliny, Natural History 4.58.71).
The “Fair Havens” they reach on the south coast of Crete is still known by that name in Greek, Kali Limenes. In verse 9 Luke informs us that the Feast of the Atonement, or Yom Kippur, had already passed. If, as we are justified in suspecting, this was the year 59, then the Day of Atonement was October 5. That is to say, they were approaching the winter season when sailing on the Mediterranean was considered unsafe (November 11 to February 8 [Pliny] or March 10 [Josephus]). Phoenix, where they hope to winter, lies some forty miles further west on the south side of Crete (verse 12).
Thursday, August 12
Mark 15.21-41: This anguished cry of the Savior has variously interpreted. In particular, there has arisen, in recent times, the notion that God the Father actually did forsake His Son hanging on the Cross. Jesus’ abandonment by his Father—his experience of damnation—is sometimes understood, indeed, to be the very price of salvation.
This theory is to be interpreted with a certain measure of caution, I believe. I suggest that the following points should be considered with respect to this caution.
First, the Christian faith firmly holds—as a doctrine not subject to contradiction—that the true God never abandons those who call upon Him in faith.
Second, whatever Jesus’ experience was—as expressed in this cry—it was still an experience. That is to say, it was existential; it pertained to Jesus’ existence, not his being, or essence. In being, or essence, Jesus remained God’s eternal and beloved Son. Consequently, it was not possible that his cry of dereliction declared, as a fact, that God had abandoned him.
For those who, like myself, follow the doctrinal guidance of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, it was not possible for God the Father to forsake His Son in any real—factual—sense, because the Father and the Son are of “one being.” The godhead is indivisible. Therefore, Jesus’ cry conveyed, not an objective, reified condition of his, but, rather, his human experience of distance from God. The abandonment was psychological, not ontological.
God does not abandon His friends and loyal servants—much less His Son. Nonetheless, it often happens that God’s friends and servants feel abandoned, and they feel it very keenly. And when they do, they often enough have recourse to the Book of Psalms . . . . as Jesus does in the present case.
When the Savior expressed this painful experience in prayer, the opening line of Psalm 22 arose to his lips—in Hebrew, ’Eli, ’Eli, lamah ‘azavtani—“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” He could hardly have prayed this line of the Psalter unless he knew the Father was still “my God.”
In making this prayer his own, Jesus was hardly expressing a sentiment unique to himself. He was, rather, identifying himself with every human being who has ever felt alienated from God, abandoned by God, estranged from God. Perhaps this prayer best expresses what we mean when we speak of “the days of his flesh” (Hebrews 5:7). It was in this deep sense of dereliction that we perceive, most truly, that “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14).
Friday, August 13
Mark 15.42-47: Old Testament Joseph was confident that his original burial in Genesis 50:26 was a temporary arrangement, for he knew that his body would eventually leave Egypt and go to the Promised Land. In holding such a confidence, he is well regarded as a symbol and type of the Christian hope.
Theologically speaking, after all, we Christians do not “own” our sepulchers; we borrow them from Christ, somewhat as he borrowed his from Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus holds the very mortgage on our tombs. Our sanctified bodies are not cast out from his presence; they are laid to rest in Hakeldama, the burial ground of strangers, “the field of the Blood,” that sacred plot purchased at so high a price.
Contrary to the assertions of countless preachers, then, it is not the function of a Christian funeral to put someone in his “final resting place.” On the contrary, the very wording of a Christian funeral should go out of its way to emphasize that burial itself is a purely temporary housing arrangement.
This theology is reenforced by today’s reading about the man who loaned his grave to the Son of God. We do not know where Joseph of Arimathea lies buried, but we know that his body is not in the tomb that he had prepared for himself.
Acts 27.30-44: At midnight on the fourteenth day, still unable to see or navigate, they think they hear breakers pounding on a shore to the west and realize that they may be coming to land. This impression is confirmed when they take repeated soundings of their depth. Not knowing where they are, but fearing that the ship may crash onto rocks that they cannot see, some panicking sailors rather imprudently plot to escape in the ship’s dinghy, which they lower off the bow. At Paul’s warning, however, the centurion orders the boat cut loose to float away into the night.
Meanwhile the crew, to prevent the ship’s continuing progress toward the unknown land, drop four poop anchors from the stern to hold it back. The situation during the rest of the night is tense, and no one has eaten very much during the past two weeks of storm. Finally it begins to grow light, and Paul suggests that breakfast would be a capital idea. Accordingly, he says grace. Everyone takes heart and begins to eat. Afterwards they throw the rest of the ship’s cargo overboard in order to make the ship ride higher in the waves as it approaches land. (That is to say, a lighter ship can be beached closer to the land.) They cut away the four anchors at the stern and endeavor, under foresail, to beach the ship on the shore of a bay. (This inlet, on the northeast coast of Malta, is still known locally as St. Paul’s Bay.) The ship, once its bow runs aground on a spar, begins to break up from the violence of the pooping waves. They all scramble for shore as best they can, and everyone arrives safely. It has been a very rough two weeks, and no one is sad that it is over.