Steve’s Blog

Hey High Schoolers, remember when I freaked out a couple months ago because I had a divine experience watching Daniel Lanois and Black Dub perform “the maker?”  Well here is the video of that performance! (and if you look close enough you can see me grooving in the crowd!)

(these are my thoughts as I read through the first two chapters of Mark… listening to Teen Dream by Beach House)

The gospel of Mark doesn’t start out like we are expecting the story of Jesus to being.  There are no angels talking to Mary, no manger, not even the story of his birth.  Instead we are dropped into this weird place with John the Baptist that leaves us scratching our heads and asking “wait, how’d we get here?”  The thing that really stood out to me in these first chapters is how much mystery there is surrounding the story  of Jesus.  Very little is explained in Mark… How did Jesus get here?  What happens during the temptation?  How is he performing all of these healings?  It’s like we’re in an episode of Lost…we are in a weird place where a bunch of crazy things are happening and we have no idea why or how.  But we do know that Jesus is taken very seriously by all those around him.

There are so many cool things that happen in these two chapters but I am always drawn to the healing of the man with leprosy in 1:40-45.  We already have seen Jesus do a couple healings so we know he has the ability help this guy, but it’s their conversation that is a window into the heart of God.  The guy asks Jesus if he is willing to heal him which implies a whole lot about this guy’s faith.  He must have had the faith and confidence that Jesus CAN heal him but didn’t know him enough to know if he would. His plea is one that comes from extreme faith and the answer he gets comes from Jesus’ immense compassion; I am willing, be clean.  One of the hardest hurdles in faith is approaching God with the confidence that this guy did.  How much do we really trust that God has the power to pull off the miraculous?  In the midst of the mystery and difficult situations in life we have a God who is capable and willing to help and guide us.

(here is a video of a gorilla picking the super bowl winner)

hey everyone.  The oscar nominations came out today and (in an effort to drive people to spend more money at the box office) this year they have nominated 10 movies for best picture.  So far I have seen 7 of the 10 nominees which means I have a little more than a month to see The Blind Side, An Education and Precious… none of which were high on my list this year to see but I guess I’ll give them a shot. 

Of the 7 that I have seen I would rank them in this order.
1. A Serious Man
2. The Hurt Locker
3. District 9
4. Up in the Air
5. Inglorious Basterds
6. Up
7. Avatar

What I think is really cool about this year’s group of nominees is that many of them invite the audience into an imaginative world that works.  District 9, Up and Avatar in particular create an alternate reality that allows the audience to wrestle with  issues such as racism, death and environmental abuse in a way that may have been too much for us to handle in a more familiar setting.  I chose A Serious Man as the best film of the year primarily for it’s theological undertones and how it portrays the human search for divine understanding as the world you know comes crashing down.  It’s a great film that shows the absurdity of life in a way that makes you appreciate what is most often overlooked and mundane or routine. 

I was sad to see that Where The Wild Things Are was pretty much ignored, it was easily my favorite film of the past year.  Oh well… what do you think?  Have you seen any of the 10 films?  What should win?

Hey everyone, here are the things we used in our discussion last Sunday.  These next 8 weeks leading up to Easter we are going to be walking through the Gospel of Mark, inspired by Nick Cave and his unique take on how we can come to know Jesus through his humanity.  If you want to read the intro he wrote for the Gospel of Mark you can find it here… this is my favorite little bit of it:

“The Christ that emerges from Mark, tramping through the haphazard events of His life, had a ringing intensity about him that I could not resist. Christ spoke to me through His isolation, through the burden of His death, through His rage at the mundane, through His sorrow. Christ, it seemed to me was the victim of humanity’s lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity.”