TRISTAN SHERWIN

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 1st September 2024), pressing play on a new series flicking through some of the epic scenes of Mark’s gospel.

You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).

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‘He is baptized by John that He might cleanse him who was defiled, that He might bring the Spirit from above, and exalt man to heaven, that he who had fallen might be raised up and he who had cast him down might be put to shame.’

—St. Gregory of Nyssa[i]

‘ flash, bang, wallop! what a picture…’

—Tommy Steele[ii]

READ: MARK 1:1-11 (NET)

DIRECTORIAL DEBUT

All stories have beginnings. The trick is knowing where to start.

Whenever I prepare to speak, I find the hardest part is figuring out how to begin. I don’t know why this is, but it sends my anxiety through the roof. I’m not naturally gifted at this—it’s hard, tiresome work.

I know, it sounds daft. It shouldn’t matter, should it?

And yet, a good start makes all the difference.

When I think about some of my favourite songs, many of them are those with the amazing intros that hook you: My Sharona, by The Knack; Stevie Wonder’s Superstition; Jailhouse Rock, by Elvis (just two chords, and pow!)

There’s nothing more engaging than a good start, and, if we are being honest, we like having our attention grabbed. We want to give our attention to something.

Right now, something has your attention. Maybe it’s me. Maybe a circumstance you’re facing. Maybe, in your head, it’s the opening chords of Jailhouse Rock. But something, someone or somewhere has you at this moment.

Great film directors grasp this. They know the opening visuals and sounds of their film are vital in luring your attention away from where it currently resides and into the story they are telling.

I think Mark would have made an excellent movie director.

As many have noted, Mark’s gospel is the fastest paced of all the gospels. It’s action-packed, never really slowing down long enough for you to catch your breath. His favourite phrases are immediately (euthys) along with ‘and then…’ (καί).[iii]

As Tim Keller noted, ‘There is relatively little of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel of Mark—mainly, we see Jesus doing.’ ‘… as a man of action, moving quickly and decisively from event to event (and place to place).’ Not only does Mark want us to see that Jesus is a decisive man of action, but that the coming of Jesus calls for decisive action, too. Wherever Jesus goes, no one can remain a neutral bystander; everyone forms an opinion. His presence summons an active response from us, grabbing our attention.[iv]

In Mark’s intro, our attention is grabbed.

If you will permit me, let me help you see this as the opening sequence of a film.

Imagine being sat in a cinema seat. The lights go out, the screen darkens, and then words appear:

            ‘Here begins the Good News about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.’

The words slowly fade, and an orange haze begins to fill the screen. Within the haze there is a blurry silhouette of a man. The air around him shimmers with the heat and there’s dust blowing about him in the hot winds. He stands in a remote wilderness, miles from civilisation. A blurry man in a blurry world. A nowhere man.

As the camera focuses in on him, the man’s features become clearer. He’s shabbily dressed, covered in tattered scraps of fur that have been botched together and pulled around him by a strip of leather acting as a belt.

He looks wild. His long hair is scraggy and unkempt, so is his beard, with clumps of it mattered together with traces of the honey he eats.

He acts wild. He’s shouting, crying out, and crying all at the same time. His eyes are red with tears, his voice hoarse with the racket he’s been making, and as he opens wide his mouth to speak, we see traces of the insects he has been eating stuck between his teeth.

He’s an untamed man, in a wild and arid place, and yet he’s dripping wet. Sodden and stained with the silt of the river he’s been standing in, and like this river, his words cut through the harsh wilderness. He is spluttering words about repentance, about turning to God, of the need of getting into the river with him, and of getting ready for someone who is coming very soon.

As a man who looks and acts crazy, we expect him to be stood alone in this wilderness, shunned and marginalized as he lives on the margins of society. Who could possibly be within earshot as he stands in the middle of nowhere?

But as the camera pans out and around, we see that there are crowds of people who have come to hear this strange, eccentric character, and they, too, are entering the water with him, sinking beneath the waves, rising back up, and then leaving, to go back to their homes covered in the silt, stench and staining of the river.

We’re curious, as we watch the footage; ‘Who is this?’ Is this the Jesus Mark mentioned?’ Then a caption appears on the lower left of the screen, telling us who he is, what he’s doing, where he is. The words read:

            ‘John, the baptizer, the River Jordan.’

PREQUELS

Some of us are watching the cinema screen, captivated by a burning question, wondering why Mark is doing this—why show us words introducing Jesus, with all his royal and divine titles, and then show us this soggy, crazy-looking, tatty, locust-eating fellow called John?

However, there are some of us sitting in the cinema having ‘aha’ moments.

We’re remembering some of the movies that came before this one, the other releases in the franchise. We have seen other films featuring hairy-looking and hair-razing characters, other films about people passing through water, other films featuring this same river.

There was that film entitled Exodus: about a rescue mission, where God saved people from the darkness and bondage of Egypt. We remember the people going through the water of a sea, how God made a road for them through the waves, of how a mighty wind blew and tore the sea apart, and of how the Egyptian army and the tyrant who led that army sank beneath the waves as that roadway collapsed.[v]

Then there was the sequel to that film: In which those rescued people, many years later come to the edge of the Promised Land—the place of God’s rest, a place of new beginning. And they had to pass through the waters again, the waters of the River Jordan, near a place called Jericho. In that film, this strange chest called the Ark of Covenant, a chest symbolising God’s presence with the people, enters the river before the people and the waters of the river begin to roll back upstream and pile up, revealing a dry riverbed for them to walk on once more.[vi]

Then there was a further sequel, set many generations after that Jordan crossing; set in a darker time, a time when the leaders of those rescued people had become just like the Egypt they had once left; oppressive, unmerciful, idolatrous. In this film, there was a man called Elijah—he had the same fashion sense as this John fellow. He too, wore hairy clothing and a leather belt.[vii]

Throughout the movie of his life, Elijah, too was a bit of an eccentric character—a voice from the margins, living his life challenging those at the centre (the leaders of Israel) to repent of being like Egypt and to turn back to worshipping God. But Elijah’s gotten older, and feels it’s time to hand on the baton. So, at the end of this film, Elijah travels, with a bald-headed man named Elisha (but don’t call him bald), to the River Jordon, at the place near Jericho—the very same place those rescued people had crossed over many years before.

As they approach the river, Elijah takes off his cloak and strikes the water with it. Suddenly, the water is torn in two, from one bank to the other, and dry land, a way through appears. On the other side of the river, Elijah is whisked away, Elisha picks up the ministry and re-enters the Promised Land the same way; striking the water, forming a dry path through the Jordan river. [viii] It’s the start of a new era.

In a sequel to this, in a movie about Elisha’s life, there’s a man called Naaman, who happens to be the military leader of an enemy nation. Naaman’s riddled with a horrible skin disease, and comes to Elisha asking to be cured. Elisha instructs him to go to the River Jordan and to dip himself in it seven times, promising that he’ll come out with skin as healthy as a new-born child. He takes some persuading, but Naaman eventually goes, plunges into the Jordan and comes out as if he’s been reborn.[ix]

In this same film, Elisha goes with some prophet mates to chop wood to build a ‘new place’. This ‘new place’ will be a place where God can speak to his people. So, they decide to go the banks of the River Jordan to build this ‘new place’. After all, the Jordan seems to mark new beginnings. Sadly, while they’re chopping wood, though, one of the axe heads comes flying off, splashes into the river, and sinks like the lead it is made off to the bottom of the water, like Pharaoh’s army did in the sea. So Elisha cuts a down a branch and throws it into the Jordan waters, and when this cut and wounded branch enters the water, it raises that which has been buried beneath the waves.[x]

All these prequel movies start buzzing through our head as we watch the opening footage of Mark. Not to mention the original film in the whole franchise: Genesis, where the Spirit of God is shown hovering over the waters of darkness and chaos. And into this watery darkness bursts divine words and light, the waters are torn apart, and land and life comes rising up.[xi]

As our memories flick through these films, we begin to see what Mark is telling us, and it begins to dawn on us that this John fellow isn’t mad at all. Rather, he’s a creative genius. An eccentric wild genius, to be sure. But a genius nonetheless.

In fact, it would only be true to describe in him as the greatest of all who are born of women.[xii]

John is taking all these prior movies and re-enacting the history, hopes and hunger of the people. The Jordan has become his stage, the wilderness his amphitheatre. He’s like Elijah 2.0. In the spirit and power of Elijah[xiii], John’s a challenge from the margins, grabbing people’s attention and crying out to them, from the wilderness, to start again and preparing the people for the beginning of whole new chapter.

Scott McKnight explains this well: ‘John is saying that if Israel wants to enjoy the blessings of God, they need to go back to the Jordan and begin again …’[xiv]

For those of us who are avid fans, as we watch this movie sequence play out, some dialogue from those older movies starts to come to mind. But, before we get chance to even utter the famous lines, Mark’s directorial skill gets in before us. A voiceover kicks in over the film, reciting some words of Malachi, who, in turn, was echoing some word from Exodus; words about a messenger who will prepare a way for the Lord.[xv]

Then the voiceover jumps to some words from Isaiah, talking about the one who cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming.’[xvi]

For those who recall such words, we know that they are pregnant, not merely with the expectation of a new leader, a Messiah, but pregnant also with an anticipation that, in some extraordinary way, God himself is coming to rescue and restore. As Isaiah says later in that passage, ‘Your God is coming!’

As the voiceover ends, we’re transfixed on the cinema screen. We realise, to use someone else’s words, that ‘what’s critical about John, what makes him so special, what makes him unique, what makes him singular, is that his life is utterly given over to the witness of Jesus, to directing attention to Jesus.’[xvii]

His life’s focus is on Jesus increasing while his own self decreases.[xviii] John embodies ‘this attention, this attentiveness, this adoration and expectation for Jesus.’[xix]

If we could be allowed an intermission in the film, maybe we, too, would ponder how much of our own lives where given over to this cause?

But Mark won’t take a break. He’s got us watching, waiting, wondering when this someone greater will appear. Wondering when and how God will show up.

Furthermore, because of the previous films in the franchise, we’re bursting with expectations about what is going to happen when God finally does appear.

SHOCK & AWE

Mark kicks in the cinematography.

We see time-lapses of people ebbing and flowing from this river. The sun rises and sets on a loop, as the footage cycles through the weeks. John is at this for some time. Day after day, the honey-bearded man, under the penetrating sun, cries and cries out to the crowds, ‘Get ready!’ Until, one day, the camera closes in on someone moving in and among the crowd towards the river bank, towards John.

As Mark’s camera closes in on this figure, another caption comes along the bottom left of the screen, reading:

                ‘Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee’

A few of us in the audience, gasp.

Some of us have heard of Nazareth. Let’s just say that it’s not got the best of reputations. We wouldn’t have expected this God-man to have come from a place like that.[xx]

We’re even wondering if this figure is even ‘it’ at all, or just another member of the crowd. He hardly stands out from anyone else. He looks too ‘average’, too typically human to be divine in anyway. Where is the stature, the radiance, the glow?[xxi]

Some of us gasp because we know a bit of geography; aware that it has been, at least, a three-day-long journey from Nazareth to here. We’re stunned by how determined this Jesus must be, impressed by the lengths that he would go to. There’s no distance he seems unwilling to travel for the sake of his mission.

Our minds move back to the movie screen, and we see this average-looking Jesus step into the shallows of the Jordan and wade out to where John is, with the water lapping in his wake. It’s a bizarre contrast to see them stand together; the stormy wildness of the blurry man is subdued by the calm, yet authoritative presence of this Nazarene. John falls silent. And as they meet, we get the sense that they are familiar with each other, like old friends, like kin. Jesus leans in, asking to be dunked into the Jordan.

In a later director’s cut of this film, by Matthew, we’ll see there’s a bit of tussle that goes on. John’s not happy, he doesn’t want to do this. He’s insisting with his hoarse voice and red eyes, slapping his hands against the water for effect, that Jesus should be one who’s plunging him under the water, not the other way around. But Jesus is adamant. It’s how it’s got to be. ‘If we’re going to do this right, if we are going to fulfil the meaning behind all of those previous movies, then I’m going under John. You can’t stop me.’[xxii]

So, John does as he is told.

Mark’s camera give us a close up of John placing his hand on Jesus’ head, as he tentatively proceeds to push Jesus down under the water; his upper body, his shoulders, and finally his head is lost beneath the surface, along with John’s hand, wrist and forearm. Here, Mark’s camera hovers, focused on the surface, watching the ripples and the bubbles.

And we, the audience, inhale. We were not expecting this.

The purists among the audience, those zealous protectors of the prequel trilogies are aghast at this moment. Some are even taking to social media to vent their frustration and begin a smear campaign against Mark’s storytelling ability.

‘What! Jesus goes down into the waters! Into the darkness, the chaos, the abyss! Under the waves, with the damned and the drowned of the flood; descending to the depths with Pharaoh and his army; buried in the silt and sediment at the bottom of the river, like that metal axe head! Mark’s messing up the whole storyline’, the critics wail.

‘Why doesn’t he go through the waters on dry land, like the people of the Exodus did?’

‘How come the waters of the Jordan don’t roll back and pile up, as it did when the Ark of the Covenant, that symbolised the very presence of God, entered into these same waters at this very same spot?’[xxiii]

‘Why is the river not torn in two and dried up when this Messiah strikes it. Surely this ‘Anointed One’ has got to be more powerful than the ragged cape Elijah and Elisha struck the waters with?’

Mark, we think, is telling this wrong.

But Jesus does go down, with the drowned, with you and me, into the chaos.

‘If you love those who love you, what have you done? You don’t deserve credit for that.’ Jesus will later teach. ‘But, if you love those who hate you, then you’re reflecting the very compassion of the Father and showing yourself to be his children.’[xxiv]

This is what Jesus embodies in his baptism (and his death). He loves those who hate him. He searches for those not seeking him. He’s giving his life for those who are estranged from him and at enmity with him. So in the language of Paul, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[xxv] Or, in the cinematic scenes of Mark’s gospel, Jesus goes under the waves. Like the wounded branch, Jesus enters the waters to raise and restore what has been laying lifeless and lost at the bottom. Jesus enters in order to bring us back from the depths.

This should put us in a state of shock and awe. The awesome lengths and depths God goes to!

The critics are right to be agitated, outraged and fuming. Maybe they understand the claim of this scene better than we do.

But Mark doesn’t stop there. The camera’s still rolling. Jesus, even though he has plunged to the depths, also rises up again. And immediately in Mark’s movie, at the exact moment when Jesus’ head breaks through the surface, ‘with his hair wet, his face streaked with mud and his soaking shoulders covered in weed’—at that moment, something shocking happens in the film.

We expected the waters to spilt, but instead, the heavens tear open[xxvi], from top to bottom, like the veil in the temple will do at the end of Mark’s movie.[xxvii]

We expected a wind to blow apart the waters, but the Holy Spirit descends like a Dove on Jesus. Please don’t expect a serene film clip here, full of artful stillness and pristine silence. When doves move, their wings pack a punch. There’s a noisy rushing wind and a heavy beating sound reverberating out of the cinema’s subwoofers and into our eardrums.

Then, using the full capability of the cinema’s surround sound, this voice of the Father breaks through Mark’s soundtrack, declaring, ‘You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.’

PAUSE

Mark’s movie will not let us rest, and we are pulled along by another ‘immediately’ right after this. But, if I may, I want to pause the movie here.

This is an important sequence in Mark. It’s a scene we can too easily skip over, and in doing so, when we retell the film afterwards, we tell it skewed for having missed the stunning visuals and sounds of Mark at this junction.

The whole of the Trinity is involved here. That’s what Mark is showing us.

It’s not, as some people may say, that God the Son separated from the rest of the Godhead and went out on his own to rescue us. It is not as if Jesus heads out alone, hoping he can bring a few friends around when he gets back.

The whole of the Triune God is involved in this saving act, with no part of God spilt in affection, no part that is trying to persuade the other parts to be in on this mission. The cascading voice of the Father, the plunging body of the Son, the descending power of the Spirit—all of God is involved and invested in this condescending, deep-delving, self-emptying mission to redeem and restore humanity.

As the Father and the Spirit turn up, they’re announcing, ‘This is what we are all about. We are the God who is all about coming down, all about saving, all about being numbered with the drowned, all about humbling ourselves, even to death on the cross, in order to win back what was lost and lifeless.’

As Paul, a later reviewer of this Jesus-story would word it, ‘God, [the fullness of God], was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…’[xxviii]

This jaw-dropping opening scene is all about the jaw-dropping mission of God.

Mark, at the beginning of his debut, shows us a sneak preview of the end. You don’t need to look to closely at this footage, to see that the cross and the resurrection is more than hinted at within this baptism of the senses.

Mark is telling us that God, in his passionate pursuit of us, is tearing apart everything, the heavens, the depths, the temple curtain, even death itself, in order to grab our attention, our adoration and to bring us back to himself, to bring us back to life.

Mark’s opening footage can’t leave us as neutral bystanders. It demands a verdict, an opinion. It summons our senses to an active response. Will we give its subject matter our attention; our mind, body, heart and soul?[xxix]

WRITTEN IN THE STARS WATERS

A number of days ago, I was reading some words by the American pastor and writer, Frederick Buechner.

Buechner was pondering a question many of us wrestle with at some time or another, and devised a thought experiment. It went something like this:

What if God just did something that would make his existence undeniably obvious, something to remove all doubt and uncertainty? Wouldn’t that be great, perfect, in fact?

Like, wouldn’t it be ideal if God, one night, decided to suddenly take his ‘finger’ and write in the stars of the sky like we do in the sand of the seashore. What if God just wrote, in galactic-scale sized letters, across the night sky: ‘Hi! I’m real. God xx’

Not just once, mind you. But night after night, in differing languages, with plenty of bursts of colour and flourishing calligraphy.

That would grab our attention. It would grab headlines worldwide.

How could anyone doubt it, or explain it away. ‘See,’ we’d say to our neighbours and friends, ‘God’s real.’

And yet, how long would it last? How long would the awe linger until someone turned around and commentated, ‘So what? God’s ‘out there’, so what?’

The truth is, most of us don’t really want to know if God is real or not. This is not the burning existential question that keeps us awake at night or that keeps us praying, or doubting for that matter. What we want to know is, if God is concerned about us, moved by our plight, with us; ‘that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives.’[xxx]

As Eugene Peterson put it, ‘The bare announcement that God exists doesn’t particularly qualify as news. Most people in most centuries have believed in the existence of God or gods. … But that God is here right now, and on our side, actively seeking to help us in the way we most need help—this qualifies as news.’[xxxi]

This is the Good News Mark announces. God has done more than graffiti his name in the stars; God has written his life into the very waters we’re drowning in.

God knows our sorrows, our suffering, seclusion, shame and sense of abandonment, because God has entered into our experience.[xxxii] God has torn apart everything to be with us, to seek us, to save us, to raise us to life.

I cannot begin to guess what holds your attention at this moment in life, whether by choice or against your will. Maybe it is your circumstances, and you feel overwhelmed by the waves of pain, failure, loneliness, or insecurity. But may I encourage you to shift your attention from the waves, and see that God is right there with you in the waters. God is present—present to seek and to save.

I’m not suggesting, and neither can I promise, that the waters will part for you, that the problems which flood you today will be over tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, they can and sometimes do miraculously dry up. But I do know this: One day all the waters will be torn apart, all that drowns will be ripped asunder, and God will raise us up. And that this God promises to be near until that happens.

This God doesn’t solely get my attention. This God gets my adoration, my life, my all.

May I encourage you—cry to you, even, like John the Baptist—to place your trust in this God. Embrace him in the waters and start again.

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 ‘If only you would tear apart the sky and come down!’

Isaiah 64:1 (NET)

‘I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. His baptism—a holy baptism of the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.’

John the Baptist, Mark 1:8 (MSG)

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ENDNOTES & REFERENCES:

[i] St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 AD), On the Baptism of Christ

[ii] ‘Flash, Bang, Wallop!’, sung by Tommy Steele, written by David William Heneker, from the musical, Half A Sixpence (1963, 1967)

[iii] Because of Mark’s repeated use of these terms (esp’ euthys) and his grammar, many have correctly pointed out that Mark’s use of the Greek language is unsophisticated and unrefined, a ‘common’ version of Greek. Possibly, this is not Mark’s native language and he speaks a ‘pigeon’ Greek, we could say. In other words, he is an unprofessional and clumsy writer in comparison to his culture. As Kay Higuera Smith notes, this is no bad thing in itself, but an encouragement, ‘Nonprofessional readers can take comfort in knowing that one was not required to be an elite or highly educated individual to tell [or hear] the story of the good news of Jesus Christ. Every eythys in Mark can remind us that the message is for all people.’ [Gospel of Mark, in The New Testament in Color: A Mutliethnic Bible Commentary (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2024), p. 107, brackets mine].

While I don’t disagree with this assessment or encouragement, could Mark’s repeated use of euthys be purposeful, and not a clumsy lack in his vernacular? Euthys can mean immediately or straightaway within certain contexts, denoting decisive action. But, it also carries the meaning of something being straight and level. Context dictates, of course. However, Mark’s quote of Isaiah’s prophecy (Isa. 40:3-5), infers mountains and valleys being made level and the straightening out of curves in the construction of the Lord’s ‘highway’ of redemption. As such, I suggest, Mark’s use of euthys throughout is an intentional double entendre, carrying both senses of the word; highlighting not only the temperament of Jesus’ activity but also the purpose of it. He is the One whose activity is both decisive (non-accidental or happenstance) and redemptive. As listeners, Mark wants us to hear that every flourish of Jesus’ immediate movement is decisively, somehow and in some way, levelling mountains, lifting up valleys and straightening the curves within the world of humanity. In the context of Jesus’ baptism, then, this act is not merely about a ceremonial occasion in Jesus’ life, but, with Mark’s use of euthys in Mk. 1:10, a decisive act in the redemption of humanity and the restoration of God’s creation.

[iv] Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Hodder & Stoughton, An Hachette UK Company, London, 2011), p. xiv

[v] We’ve just covered the book of Exodus, so please see my posts prior to this and MCC’s YouTube channel.

[vi] Joshua 3

[vii] 2 Kings 1:8

[viii] 2 Kings 2:1-18

[ix] 2 Kings 5:1-19

[x] 2 Kings 6:1-7

[xi] Genesis 1

[xii] Matthew 11:11

[xiii] Malachi 4:5; Matthew 11:7-15; Mark 9:2-13; Luke 1:17, 76-77

[xiv] Scott McKnight, The Jesus Creed (Paraclete Press, 2019), p. 67

[xv] Malachi 3:1 (and echo of Exodus 23:10)

[xvi] Isaiah 40:3-11

[xvii] Dr. Chris E. W. Green, From Sanctuary Tulsa Podcast: The Baptism of Jesus, the Baptism of John | Dr. Chris Green, 17 Jan 2021 (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sanctuary-tulsa-podcasts/id1530965422?i=1000505798828)

[xviii] John 3:30

[xix] Ibid xvii

[xx] John 1:46

[xxi] Isaiah 53:1-2

[xxii] Matthew 3:13-17

[xxiii] John 1:28 states that John was baptising in ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’. This Bethany is not the one near to Jerusalem, but is generally considered to be the town of Bethany, also called Bethabara in Perea, on the eastern bank of the Jordan river, near Jericho.

[xxiv] Luke 6:32-36

[xxv] Romans 5:8

[xxvi] As Tom Wright notes, this ‘doesn’t mean that Jesus saw a little door ajar miles up in the sky. ‘Heaven’ in the Bible often means God’s dimension behind the ordinary reality. It’s more as though an invisible curtain, right in front of us, was suddenly pulled back, so that instead of the trees and flowers and buildings, or in Jesus’ case the river, the sandy desert and the crowds, we are standing in the presence of a different reality altogether.’ [Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone (SPCK, London, 2012), p. 5]

[xxvii] The word Mark chooses to describe the heaven-splitting action is schizō—it’s an energetic word, denoting not merely something being ‘opened’, but something being torn apart. Mark will use the same word near the end of his gospel, in Mark 15:38, to describe the tearing of the veil in the temple, as Jesus utters his final cry on the cross and breathes his last.

[xxviii] 2 Corinthians 5:19, parenthesis from Colossians 1:19-20

[xxix] Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:29-31; Deuteronomy 6:5

[xxx] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat (HarperOne, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1985), pp. 44-47

[xxxi] Eugene Peterson, Introduction the Mark, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO, 2003),  p.1824

[xxxii] Hebrews 2:9-18; 4:14-16