Mennonite Weekly Review

In exploring the story of our redemption working out in the context of God’s covenant community, we’ve discovered “a deep thread of failure,” as Scot McKnight puts it in The Blue Parakeet. “Israel won’t get the job done until the job is done for them.”

Andres

Well, God is about to do just that. His redemptive plans kindled in that covenant community explode outward in Jesus — and with him, the kingdom of God and its new community are unleashed.

An open invitation

God’s people are suffering again, this time at the hands of the Romans and their own religious leaders. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus suddenly strides into their lives, declaring: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15, NRSV).

The kingdom is God’s rule. It carries the scents of that in-the-beginning garden and how we walked freely and connected with God and each other in “the wide-open spaces of God’s grace and glory” (Rom. 5:1, Message). It is the kind of life we were created for — and what God’s been working his people toward all along. And now Jesus proclaims it’s here, available now.

As he goes, Jesus lives and breathes the kingdom. He confronts and overcomes those things that leave us in, as McKnight puts it, “a cracked relationship of otherness with God, with self, with others and with the world.” Jesus is overcoming that thread of failure and bringing redemption of the deepest and fullest kind. And he invites people to repent and believe — to “review your plans for living and base your life on this remarkable new opportunity,” as Dallas Willard puts it in The Divine Conspiracy.

Some answer Jesus’ call — including a leper. An outcast and despised, he braves both religious and social barriers to reach Jesus. Kneeling before him, the leper says, “If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40, NRSV).

As David Garland notes in the NIV Application Commentary, the leper’s request (which strikingly foreshadows Jesus’ own in the Garden of Gethsemane) reveals not only a profound belief in Jesus’ power to heal him but also an acknowledgement and trust in God’s greater plans and purpose — which may or may not include his healing. Nevertheless, this man has reviewed his plans and decided to base his life on Jesus’ opportunity.

Jesus, deeply stirred, touches the man. Besides shattering religious and social boundaries, Jesus not only displays the power to overcome and heal broken bodies but also broken relationships. Consequently, Jesus commands the healed man to see a priest, which will publicly restore his relationship with others and the community.

Here we see how Jesus’ redemptive and loving touch radiates deep through all aspects of human life and relationships — and the good news of it can’t be contained.