It's hardly consoling at all to hear that one has lived through one of the coldest winters in recorded history. But in some way, it makes the minimally positive temperatures forecast for the near future all that more welcome.
Mark 15
verse 1 - Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
In the version I read on my iPod, the NET bible, it says that the elders and chief priests "formed a plan" instead of "reached a decision". I'm not sure which is a better translation, but if the NET bible is right, then I think it explains well what is going on. These leaders had to figure out their plan of attack. They went on to bring Jesus to Pilate, early in the morning. That way they could get it done before too many people became aware of what was going on. The crowd is so easily swayed to call for Jesus' death that I think they must have been more or less hand picked by these leaders as a part of their plan (that's just conjecture, however). It is in some ways appalling how coldly they have planned the death of Jesus. How could these religious leaders so easily revert to this kind of action?
verse 38 - The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
I've heard it said that Mark is the gospel that's written for people who weren't Jews. His intended audience didn't have the background to help them understand what was going in some of the stories, and you can see here and there where he makes an effort to explain the significance of what's going on. Like in the first part of this chapter, when he is mentioning about the custom of one prisoner being released, etc. Here, though, with the verse, "The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom", you'd have to know something of Jewish culture to know what was going on. The curtain in the temple divided off the place where God dwelt, referred to as "the place His Glory dwells". No one was allowed in there, except the High Priest, and he could only go in once per year. He had to make sure He was squeaky clean, both literally and figuratively, and if I'm not mistaken, they even tied a rope around him so they could pull him out if he did something wrong and died in there. The significance of the curtain being torn is that division between God and us was removed with the death of Jesus on the cross. The way was made for Him to truly dwell among us. And the fact that it was torn from top to bottom showed that it was His doing, and not ours. All this to say, that if you didn't know some background, you would just gloss over this important fact. That leads me to believe that even though Mark made an extra effort to explain himself, he still intended his book to be used in the context of a community of people where this sort of information could be passed on alongside it. This Bible is best used in community, where we can grow and learn together, from each other. That is what my dream church would look like, and I've had shadows of that in the past. But wouldn't it be great to be a part of something where we all encouraged, shared, struggled, taught, learned from, debated each other, etc.? That's what I hope for in a church.
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