Who is this Man? (Mark 6:1-6)

We read here that Jesus’ home town did not believe in Him. But this is not quite as simple a statement as you might think. The people in Jesus’ region WERE astonished with Jesus. They saw great wisdom in His teaching. They witnesses miracles performed by Him. The big hang-up they could not overcome was that they knew Him as a person that they had seen growing up and doing “normal” things like go to school and work. They saw Him as a great teacher and miracle worker; they just couldn’t accept Him as Messiah or Lord. He was not Savior or God in their eyes.

Truth be told, even amongst “Christians” today, we have the same sort of problem. A plurality of people who go by His name see Jesus as anything but who He is. Some see a prophet, a role-model, an example to follow. Others see a baby in an inspiring story or a martyr who changed western culture for the better. Some see a good luck charm, or a god to whom they go for assistance in their own plans and desires; a magic man.

If we do not want to be like the people of Nazareth, we need to see Jesus for who He really is. He is Messiah, Savior, Lord and King. He is the person we surrender to, follow and obey. He is God. If He is anything less in your life, you may have a problem.

Medical Musings

Recently, I have lived through two completely unnecessary medical dramas. A coworker, and then a family member—in the span of a month—both got the word from their doctor that they had to rush to the hospital to be tested for cancer. In both cases they had symptoms that had them thinking they were sick with something non-life-threatening, and in both cases their own suspicions/self-diagnoses were accurate. It was the doctors who were wrong.

Now this is the sort of experience that can have terribly damaging repercussions. It is what leads people to investigate their symptoms online and hazard a guess instead of trusting the experts, but it is the experts that are causing the problem by (a) not doing a good job reading the problem and (b) causing a panic by using the “C” word before they have a good reason to do so.

And really, it is high time we adjusted our expectations and approaches to health issues in the information age we live in. If someone has a modicum of education and reputable places to go for information online, we should add our own judgment into our medical evaluation. I cannot count the amount of times when I have had to make a choice whether to take a kid to a doctor or wait out what appeared to be an untreatable sickness that simply had to run its course. In most cases I waited and was right; in others things seemed so bad I erred on the side of caution and merely got a confirmation of what I already knew in my gut.

Or, maybe I have simply been blessed with healthy kids.

But I have had more than one doctor complain to me in confidence that many parents are too quick to rush to the professional. Some simply because their kid won’t stop crying.

In any case, things are not helped when we encounter so much incompetence in the profession all around the world. It probably all amounts to a case of false expectations. We don’t see doctors as merely another set of professionals. We think of them as infallible sources of magical knowledge.

Two More Healings: Authority over death (Mark 5:21-43)

We come to the second (of seven) “sandwiched” stories in Mark. Mark likes to tell two stories where the action of one is framed around that of another—usually to highlight or comment on something in the inner story with what the framing story conveys. Here that doesn’t really seem to be the case. While both stories convey the same message (and share a lot of commonalities) this feels more like a case of the events simply occurring this way.

Jesus is approached by an important man with a hopelessly sick 12-year-old daughter. He believes that Jesus can save her if He simply will lay His hands on her. Along the way a woman with a 12-year-old helpless sickness touches Jesus, believing His touch will heal her. It does and Jesus notices the power of the healing and draws attention to her action. Jesus doesn’t just send her on her way healed of her illness. He tells her that her faith has “saved” her; she is to go in peace and be healed from her suffering. There is a larger picture here of healing from the suffering of being in rebellion against God. We see here in Mark again the message of faith leading to the Kingdom of God.

At this point, the servants of the important man, Jairus, arrive to tell him it is too late. His daughter has died. But Jesus tells him to keep on believing. When they arrive at the house full of mourners, Jesus sends them away and takes a small, private group into the child. There he simply takes her hand and tells her to arise. She was dead, but is now alive again.

The central point of these stories (similar to the friends in 2:1-12 and later to Bartimaeus in 10:46-52) is that faith is key to restored relationship with God. It is not as though faith is a key element in a magical process of miracle-working; nor is it important that people believed Jesus could perform miracles. (More on this in the very next story.) Trust in Jesus—that God is working through Him in our lives—is what is needed to be saved. The point here is not, “if you just believe ENOUGH or in the RIGHT way, you will not be sick.” It is if you trust God with your life—through all the circumstances and hardships—and you repent of your own attempts at running things and yield to Him and His plans, you can live life as He intends in His kingdom. You can “go in peace and be healed of your sufferings.”

2000s in Film

Any “best of” list on this blog is subjective, of course, but I have gone out of my way to make this one so. Here are my top 50 films of the 00s, but where more than one film could go together I list them so, with an estimation of where they would fall on a true top 50 in parenthesis:

1. “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) Jackson
  (2) The Return of the King (2003) Jackson
  (4) The Two Towers (2002) Jackson
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) Adamson
  (10) Prince Caspian (2008) Adamson
3. Minority Report (2002) Spielberg
4. Signs (2002) Shyamalon
  (17) The Village (2004) Shyamalon
5. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009) Yates
  (8) The Order of the Phoenix (2007) Yates
  (9) The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) Cuaron
  (11) The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) Columbus
  (12) The Chamber of Secrets (2002) Columbus
6. The Incredibles (2004) Bird
  (14) Ratatouille (2007) Bird
  (15) Up (2009) Doctor
  (16) Finding Nemo (2003) Stanton
  (22) Monsters Inc. (2001) Doctor
  (26) Wall-E (2008) Stanton
7. El Laberinto del Fauno (2006) Del Torro
8. Batman Begins (2005) Nolan
  (19) The Dark Knight (2008) Nolan
9. Brick (2005) Johnson
10. Big Fish (2003) Burton
11. Coraline (2009) Selick
12. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit (2005) Park
13. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Verbinski
14. Sherlock Holmes (2009) Richie
15. No Country for Old Men (2007) Coens
16. Gladiator (2000) Scott
17.Moulin Rouge! (2001) Luhrman
18. Munich (2005) Spielberg
19. The Pianist (2002) Polanski
20. Inglorious Basterds (2009) Tarantino
21. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) Coens
22. A Beautiful Mind (2001) Howard
23. Chicken Run (2000) Park
24. The End of the Spear (2006) Hanon
25. Casino Royale (2006) Campbell
26. Star Trek (2009) Abrams
27. Wo Hu Cang Long (2000) Lee
28. The Ninth Gate (2000) Polanski
29. Shaun of the Dead (2004) Wright
30. Chocolat (2000) Halström
31. Nanny McFee (2005) Jones
32. Children of Men (2006) Cuaron
33. The Bourne Identity (2002) Liman
34. Ocean’s Eleven (2001) Soderberg
35. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) Merhige
36. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) Jennings

Directors with Multiple Films: Peter Jackson (3); Alfonso Cuaron (2); Andrew Adamson (2); Andrew Stanton (2); Brad Bird (2); Chris Columbus (2); Christopher Nolan (2); The Coen Brothers (2); David Yates (2); M. Night Shyamalon (2); Nick Park (2); Pete Doctor (2); Roman Polanski (2); Steven Spielberg (2)

Number of films per year: 2000 (7); 2001 (6); 2002 (6); 2003 (4); 2004 (4); 2005 (7); 2006 (4); 2007 (3); 2008 (3); 2009 (6)

"The Worlds End" (2013)

The third of the “Cornetto Trilogy” is, like many third instalments in a series (even though this isn’t really that kind of trilogy), the least fulfilling of the bunch. Sure, it has the same look, style, sense of fun, and other commonalities. (It shares the same levels of harsh language and violence that prohibits its recommendation to the more “discerning” viewers I know. Although: the violence is less offensive since the blood is all blue and not really blood, and the language is, well… worse.)

However, the main reason “The Worlds End” is a letdown is the message. Each of these films has one. Either a call to live life more intentionally, or to balance society’s need for structure with the innate need for individuals to have freedom. Here the point seems to be a claim that humanity’s best value is their dogged self-determinism. Even when that means we are destined to be eternal screw-ups. At one point things look they are all merely going for irony, when the humans reject the “robot overlords” and the whole world falls into the Dark Ages, but not so much.

Perhaps one could even put a positive spin on things—there is still a stylish sense of fun to be had—but Simon Pegg’s character this time around is simply unlikable. And it’s not so that he can grow as a character in the course of the plot. He starts out and ends up as a self-absorbed jerk. Exactly the sort of self-absorbed, screw everything up, destroy every relationship he ever had kind of jerk that this films ends up glorifying and championing.