"To be in relationship these brothers and sisters is to become a divided person, tied to the worlds of both the privileged and the oppressed." [xii]

     [This reflects our WUMFSA struggle. Keep reading, we may yet find our way through this common human condition of entitlement. ~ww]

Opening Meditation, p. 3

The pauper's cemetery in Rabinal, Guatemala . . . . At the far end of the plot is a large monument and a thirty-foot-long mound of dirt that serves as the mass grave for 101 children and 76 women massacred in the nearby village of Rio Negro in 1982. Names are inscribed on the monument and a brief description of three other massacres endured by the same small village in one year. Guatemala, with a population that is 70 percent indigenous, has long been ruled by a few very powerful and wealthy landowners and business people, and an even more powerful military, covertly supported by the United States. During the 1980s, these forces engineered the brutal elimination of more than 400 Mayan villages to perpetuate their economic, political, and cultural domination. . . . Located outside of the centers of political, economic, social, or cultural power, Rabinal represents the margins of our world, a wilderness place where the need for repentance is evident and a prophetic Word is possible. [3]

"...'sovereignty of God'....few have acknowledged its most obvious background: the anti-kingship traditions of early Israel." [8]

"While the margin has a primarily negative political connotation as a place of disenfranchisement, Mark ascribes to it a primarily positive theological value. It is the place where the sovereignty of God is made manifest, where the story of liberation is renewed, where God's intervention in history occurs." [12]

"The discipleship adventure beckons." [12]

"…gospel healings challenge the ordering of power. Because Jesus seeks the root causes of why people are marginalized, there is no case of healing and exorcism in Mark that does not also raise a larger question of social oppression." [14]

"In this 'minor' healing [of Peter's mother-in-law], Mark is serving notice that patriarchal theology and the devaluation of women will be overturned." [15]

"When Jesus engages in debate concerning scripture, he is involved in social criticism." [17]

"Jesus' presumptive forgiveness of sin . . . is the first of many references to the Levitical vision of Jubilee debt-release." [19]

"Jesus relentlessly critiqued the purity and debt system of his day because they tended to segregate and exclude rather than to integrate and restore. The symbol for his confrontation of these systems was public exorcism" [19]

[What "public exorcism" does WUMFSA need to join in 2009? ~ww]

Chapter 3, pp. 22-30

"This story endorses the Jubilee notion that hungry people have a right to food despite laws that restrict such access." [25]

"In the classic tradition of civil disobedience, Jesus is breaking the law in order to raise deeper issues about the moral health of the common life: Is justice legal? [27]

"In recent years we have witnessed dramatic confrontations with injustice at the table. In the 1960s . . . lunch counter sit-ins . . . . 1970s . . . grape boycott . . . . 1980s . . . marketing of baby formula in poor countries . . . ." [29]
   [Where are you seeing a Jubilee food issue today? Pantry, Soup Kitchen, Patented Seeds? Does this focus us in demonstrating our faith? ~ww]

"It is the predictable strategy of threatened political leaders: Neutralize the opposition by identifying them with the mythic arch-demon. In modern America this would be tantamount to calling Jesus a 'terrorist.' Jesus' deviant practice of exorcism, which liberates people for Jubilee and retribalization, must be dismissed as either lunatic or traitorous." [35]

"The social context reflected in Mark's narrative may be alien in form from our own, but not in substance. Our world is hardly free of systems of domination. Today the free market has become the strong man . . . . The strong man takes no prisoners and can exact a terrible price from impoverished countries, from countries once on the brink of 'success,' and even from the economies of wealthy industrialized countries." [35-36]
     [This is a key issue for WUMFSA - the economy - and we have long known its dark side without being able to exorcise it. It will be interesting to see how the free market might be better unmasked in this present time and what part we might play in such. ~ww]

[Another reflection on Mark 3:20-28 is the Michael Card song "God's Own Fool". ~cm]

"It would be no surprise to Jesus' audience that 75 percent of the seed sown would fail to yield." [40]

"'Thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold' thus represents enough surplus to shatter permanently the cycle of indebtedness for the farmer's entire extended family, perhaps even the whole village!" [40]

"The more a prophet speaks the truth about a problem, the less inclined the people will be to accept the diagnosis, because if they did they would have to 'turn and be healed' (Isaiah 6:10). It is repentance they resist, choosing illusions of innocence instead." [41]

"Jesus' audience is next warned to 'beware' of the anti-Jubilary ideologies they hear in the world, which counsel resignation in the face of injustice." [42]

"Against cynical economic 'determinism,' Jesus pits the patient hope of the farmer . . . ." [42]

Mark's prologue announces God's inbreaking at the margins of the world, far from the centers of power. The center / margins model is a useful way to look at our own lives and ministries. Choose one context of your life – church, neighborhood, political party, bioregion, etc. In your journal, diagram where you think the center and margins are. Where are you located? How do you feel about this "map" of your world? Now reflect on the following:

Can I choose to locate myself on or near the margins of my society? What would this mean concretely, given my present social and political realities?

Imagine taking a first step toward the margins.

If I were to cross boundaries in this way, how would it open the wilderness within me? What are my anxieties regarding that boundary crossing? What am I avoiding by not crossing over? [48]

Opening Meditation, pp. 53-54

"It is a Sunday morning in Advent in the year 1511. In a palm-roofed church in the New World, a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos ascends the pulpit. His text is, 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.'
    . . .
   "In the light of what the Dominicans were preaching and the harsh reality he say around him, Bartolomé de las Casas became convinced, as recorded in Gustavo Gutierrez's book Las Casa: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, that what was being done to the native peoples of the Indies was 'unjust and tyrannical.'
    . . .
   "Bartolomé de las Casas is the spiritual father of every person of faith in the Americas who has struggled to cross over to the other side of humanity. His is the story of a conversion that empowered him to cross over the deep divisions in the New World—divisions of race, class, and culture. Bartolomé is most assuredly one of that great cloud of witnesses who accompany us on this journey from the center to the margins." [53-54]

[Many more people have heard of Las Casas than have heard of Montesinos but Las Casas may have never turned around and worked for justice if it were not for Montesinos. ~cm]

"This unlikely story [of the Gerasene demoniac] offers a symbolic portrait of how Roman imperialism was destroying the hearts and minds of a colonized people. If the synagogue demoniac spoke 'under the influence' of the scribal establishment, then the Gerasene demoniac represents Rome's military occupation of the land and its people. That this episode is a kind of political cartoon critical of Roman imperialism is confirmed by the recurring military terminology that follows. Legion begs to be sent into a 'band' of pigs (5:11), a Greek term usually referring to a group of military recruits. Sarcasm is evident here, since the swine cult was popular among Roman soldiers.
   "Jesus 'dismisses' them, and the word describing the pigs' rush down the hill connotes troops charging into battle (5:13). The political humor finds its punchline as the Legion meets the same fate as old Pharaoh's army: they are swallowed into the sea (see Exodus 14). If Jesus' first exorcism served notice that he would challenge the Judean elite's control over the people, this episode extends the struggle for God's sovereignty toward the Empire itself!" [59] 

"Who better can attest to the possibility of liberation from oppression than someone who knows it 'from the inside out'?" [60]

"Is it possible that oppressive power brutalizes the oppressed and eventually also eats the children of the oppressors? '. . . Middle and rich class American modernity is now beginning to devour its own children just as it has long beat upon others,' says theologian Larry Rasmussen. In this country that has occupied so many, can it be that the forces driving our oppression of other lands is now come home; that we are not only possessor, but also in many ways the possessed?" [62] 

[I see the end of the story of the demoniac where the people ask Jesus to leave because of what happened to the pigs and therefore the profits.  This nutcase might be cured but you ruined our business. Don't disrupt the bottom line.  It was not "people before profits" but quite the reverse. ~cm]

"Only when the outcast woman is restored to true 'daughterhood' can the daughter of the synagogue be restored to true life. That is the faith the privileged must learn from the poor. This story thus shows a characteristic of the sovereignty of God that Jesus will later address: The 'last will be first' and the 'least will be greatest'. [66]

"Palestine in the first century was not exceptional in having a purity code that maintained stringent social boundaries and strata. The United States today is no less characterized by 'purity codes,' although our society fails to acknowledge them as such. They are the structures and belief systems that create 'insiders' and 'outsiders'; grant some people access to health care, education, housing, and food while others go without; and allow some to suffer while others prosper." [67]

"Jesus' response is blunt: 'You give them something to eat.' [74]
[A to-the-point call to discipleship. ~cm]

Chapter 9, pp. 79-86

"Jesus contends that the social boundaries constructed by the purity code are powerless to protect the integrity of the community. 'Contamination' can only arise from within the community." [81]

"Beginning to recognize privilege -- although unsettling -- is a necessary first step to overturning the systems and ideologies that marginalize." [84]

"Oppressed people often have a profound analysis of social situations, and know the paths to justice. People in positions of authority need to heed them." 85]

". . . Jesus warns disciples that they must be ever-vigilant about the ways in which, like leaven, the practice of exclusion and domination can subtly ruin the one loaf of community. Where has the church become infected by such leaven?
     "To understand the depth of this challenge to the contemporary church, we must grasp the profound shift that occurred in the year 313 C.E., when the Emperor Constantine reversed the Roman empire's policy of hostility toward Christianity. Once the church was made the official religion of the Roman empire, the perspective of the church began to shift from the bottom to the top, from the margins to the center, from those who had no power to those in power.
     "Since that time, this shift has shaped not only our interpretation of the scriptures but our understanding of such fundamental issues as violence, war, and social justice. What was once the dynamic core of the gospel message, the realm of God, was replaced by a different message, the defense of the status quo.
     . . . .
     ". . . . What does it mean that the church generally understands its public mission as charity, rather than as redistributive justice?" [89-90]

"These final four healings in Mark suggest that if Jesus can 'make the deaf hear and the dumb speak' (7:37) and help the blind to 'see clearly (8:25), then there is hope for disciples." [100]

"Jesus' predictions [about suffering] have been used by conservatives as proof of his divine clairvoyance and dismissed by liberals as later theological interpretation. Both miss Mark's point. By 'necessity' Mark means that those who pursue the justice of Jubilee will inevitably clash with the powers. Mark is also serving notice that Jesus will not enter Jerusalem as a triumphant military leader, but rather will be executed by the authorities. This subverts the expected Messianic 'script,' replacing it with what we might call a 'prophetic script.'" [101]

"Two conditions for discipleship are now stipulated: 'Deny yourself and take up your cross.'
     "The cross was not a religious icon in the first-century Palestine, nor was 'taking up the cross' a metaphor for personal anguish. Crucifixion had only one connotation: It was the vicious form of capital punishment reserved by imperial Rome for political dissidents. Crosses were a common sight when Mark wrote, since there was a Jewish insurrection under way. In contrast to Judean nationalists who were recruiting patriots to 'take up the sword' against Rome, Mark's Jesus invited disciples to 'take up the cross.' The rhetoric of 'self-denial,' in turn, should be understood not in terms of private asceticism but in the context of a political trial. Under interrogation by state security forces, admitting allegiance to 'Yahweh's sovereignty' would result in charges of subversion in a world where Caesar alone claimed lordship. Self-denial is about costly political choices." [102]

"The powers rule in our hearts and in the world through the despair that persuades us that genuine personal and political transformation is impossible, and we have been socialized into such resignation 'since childhood' (9:21). To pray is to re-center our consciousness around a faith that insists on the possibility and imperative of such transformation.
     "This episode suggests that prayer is the contemplative discipline of self-knowledge – an invitation to examine the roots of our impotence. If we wish to cast out this demon, we must engage in the difficult process of confronting the illusions that paralyze us and the unconscious power of repressed trauma that keeps us silenced." [112]

[What do you think would define a WUMFSA prayer? ~ww]

"The cross is more than nonviolent resistance to the powers; it is the struggle against patterns of domination in interpersonal and social relationships as well." [116]

"The church is not to be a power base for its members but a community that redistributes power to the excluded." [117]

Chapter 14, pp. 124-131

"Certainly in the culture and religion of capitalism any economic model that has been predicated upon redistributive justice has been considered high heresy." [127]
     "Surplus is created when 'private' wealth is restructured as a community asset." [128]
     [Imagine these two sentences being added to the current conversations of the propertied - including me and you. ~ww]

"Mark's portrait of the rich man seems to suggest that he is 'possessed by his possessions.' Today we would call this the addiction of affluence. Perhaps it is because economic greed is the most difficult and pervasive of human addictions that Mark emphasizes Jesus' love for the rich man. But love speaks the truth. 'Recovery' from this addiction must be expressed as reparation." [128]

Have I ever had the opportunity to choose:

• where I will live
• how I will earn a living
• where my children will go to school
• what I will wear today
• whether I will eat today
• where I will eat today
• where I will sleep tonight
• whether I will have central heating or air-conditioning
• whether I will buy medicines prescribed for me or my family
• whether I will make use of mental health or psychological care
• whether I will save money and how much I will save
• whether I will have a telephone
• whether I will have a television or cable television service
• where I will go on vacation
• how I will make my home or office more beautiful or more comfortable
• whether I will repair what is broken in my home or surroundings
• whether I will own a car
• what to do with my inheritance? [129]

"... leadership ... is summed up in the word "maturity." The true servant leader has the capacity to take risks, to try something new, not paralyzed by the fear of failure. The servant leader possesses the ability to listen well....
     "... someone who has turned a highly competitive spirit into an overriding passion for peace based on justice. This is a final quality of the servant leader--a capacity for anger. Unless there is some alienation from the world as it is, a sense that things can and should be better, no leadership can emerge." [135-136]

"We pray: Jesus, 'let us see again.' Let us see through your eyes of love, so that we might follow you on the Way." [139]

". . . as Congress gutted programs for the poor, homeless people and advocates for the homeless built a shanty town in the middle of a main street on Capitol Hill. At another moment of that campaign activists served a meal to poor children on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol building. Where will we find shelter? What will our children eat?"
     "We have grown accustomed to the symbolic arrangement of our churches. In most, the community listens to the Word proclaimed from a lectern and gathers around a table on which is share the Bread of Life. Jesus' entry into Jerusalem suggests that our liturgical actions may also at times belong in the public square. Have you ever participated in such a liturgical act?" [144]

Chapter 16, pp. 145-152

"The 'House of Prayer' now abandoned, Jesus concludes his homily by offering the community a new symbolic center. It is not an institutional site but a moral one: the practice of mutual forgiveness within the community (11:25). This citation of the central petition of what Matthew and Luke know as the 'Lord's Prayer' represents Jesus' final rejection of the Temple-based debt system." [149]

"Mark's story about Jesus entering the Temple, the center of Jewish society, and overturning the tables there might be interpreted in our own time as an invitation to transform the systems and structures that create wealth and poverty within our society or our world. The mountain Jesus called 'movable by faith' is a fitting metaphor for the global economy, which is increasingly intransigent despite the fact that it is not working for the majority of the world's inhabitants." [149-150]

Chapter 17, pp. 153-158

"Jesus' questions challenge the assumptions of both the dominant culture ('How can the scribes say…?' 12:35) and of his own disciples ('Do you not yet understand?' 8:21). Above all, they query our biblical literacy: 'Have you never read…?' (2:25; 12:10), and 'Is it not written…?' (9:12; 11:17). Even when in legal jeopardy and cornered in a public showdown, Jesus acts as prosecutor, not defendant: 'Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath?' (3:4). So skillful is he at turning the question around that in the end, Mark tells us, 'no one dared anymore to press questions to him' (12:34).
     "Jesus' pedagogical strategy is to break the spell of credulity that the social order casts over its subjects and so to force a crisis of faith. He engages the disciple-reader with disturbing and disrupting quandaries that animate toward change, rather than with logically satisfying answers that pacify. Might this suggest that the church's own theological discourse should be less declarative and more interrogatory?" [155-156]

Reflect on the questions on pp. 157 - 158.  How has Jesus been the question to your answers?

"If communism has been defeated by a better economic system, capitalism, why is there not a noticeable improvement in quality of life throughout the world?

Who gives the United States the right to 'police' the globe?

Why are powerful countries dismissive of the United Nations?

. . .

How do we account for the growing gap in the United States between very wealthy people and those with moderate incomes? And how do we account for the continued increase in domestic poverty?

With the United States facing such financial difficulties, why is spending on military personnel and weapons not cut severely?

Why is the United States the only industrialized country which imposes the death penalty? And why is it that it is imposed overwhelmingly on people of color?

. . .

Why do so many of our churches simply mirror the dominant culture?

Chapter 18, pp. 159-162

"Both Isaiah's and Jesus' parables of the vineyard protest the politics of land distribution in their time. Today millions of people around the world and in the United States continue to be displaced by the growing consolidation of land ownership in the hands of the rich and of corporate interests." [161]

"Even as God created us once out of nothing, so again shall God, in her mercy, reach into the nothingness of death and the entire world will be recreated. The no of divine judgment will give way finally, overwhelmingly, to the yes of divine grace and mercy that fills the cosmos with joy and laughter. This yes floods the universe with a healing and unifying light." [177]

Opening Meditation, pp. 181-182

"Jesus meanwhile is at table with a leper, practicing solidarity with the 'least' to the end (14:3). He is interrupted by yet another anonymous woman who, judging by her bold approach and the expensive perfume, probably was a prostitute. Once again those with Jesus object, this time out of concern for 'wasteful spending' (14:4f). It is of utmost irony that the same concern for cash will shortly lead Judas to defect to the authorities (14:10f)." [184]

"...another way of positioning ourselves vis-a-vis oppressed peoples has emerged, this time from those peoples themselves. 'Accompaniment' is the way this positioning is described, and it includes an entire range of attitudes and actions that bring to a certain fruition both of the earlier notions [of stepping aside so folks can carry out their own liberation and speaking and acting on behalf of the poor].... The poor choose whether or not they will be accompanied. And it seems that in the process of accompaniment, both those who ask it and those who respond move to a new place in human existence." [191]

"Each time we resort to such denial our humanity as individuals is distorted and our character as a nation is eroded. Denial can so disconnect us from reality that we call death life and life death. . . ."
     "The story of Peter's denial asks disciples to face up to the ways in which we have denied the suffering Christ who is present in the world. Where have I seen Christ and pretended that I did not know him? When have I broken faith with the Human One to save face, to stay safe, to guard my own life?" [198]

Chapter 24, pp. 199-204

[Here is a liberation oriented Stations of the Cross for your use and edification ~ww]

"'To see again' is Mark's master metaphor for a faith that looks more deeply into reality in order to see what could be." [209]

"Resurrection is gratuitous - a pure, unearned gift of God. It is the ultimate test of and the only hope for a disciple's faith. At the same time, we are called by the Spirit to eke out the resurrection bit by bit, step by step on the Way. Sometimes our experience of resurrection is glorious and clear. But most often it is the fruit of long, painful labor - birthed but needing nurture. [209]

[The book concludes with 4 appendixes giving detailed examples of the methodology that led to the book - mapping narrative; mapping history; mapping social, economic, and political contexts; and liturgy.
     These are very valuable additions to aid us in a "practice" of living into and beyond scripture. ~ww]