You'll get insights from these studies that you won't find in any other—because you are using the other half of your brain! But—instead of spoon-feeding you 'right' answers, the materials ask penetrating questions that get you thinking with your heart. Ponder the questions in these examples for a minute or two, and you'll experience what reading the bible like a human being is like.
"And He summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs..." (Mark 6:12).
Imagine you are 16-year-old disciple John, going to an unfamiliar village to give your first sermon. It will be weeks or months til you rejoin Jesus, so you can't look to him for help. John would have spoken with no outline or notes—he probably couldn't write, and besides, hiring a scribe would be far too expensive. He had flunked out of the normal Rabbi track at age 13 to learn a trade, like the other disciples, so he had no academic credentials. Jesus told him to bring no money to live on, so if a village got offended and turned him out, he and his partner slept hungry on the ground—in winter! If you are John, how are you feeling when you get up to preach for the first time: excited, anxious, or what? What do you wish you had or knew that you didn't?
At: left: a reconstruction of the Magdala synagogue from Jesus' day.
"Who are my mother and my brothers?" (Mark 3:33)
Mary stands outside, leaning against a cold stone wall in a press of seekers and the sick. She can't even get in to see her son, the crowd is so tightly packed around him. And she is worried—this is too much for any man. He's not eating, barely getting any sleep! So she and her family are there to stage an intervention. Despairing of getting in, she finally scrawls a message on a potsherd and sends it from one hand to another, hoping it will get to Jesus. A few minutes later she hears a familiar voice over the wall: "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
How is Mary—a human being like you—feeling as she watches the boy she nursed and raised and sacrificed for tell others that they are his mother? If that was you, what would your conversation with God be like on the 25-mile walk home?
At right: reenactors at Nazareth village, in front of the reconstructed synagogue entrance.
"When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him..." (Mark 5:2)
The man of the tombs had been living in a cemetery, sleeping naked on on the ground. What did his demons let him eat? Grass? Slop that was given to the hogs? He seemed to be all skin and bones. It had been months since he had bathed. His skin stank, his hair was tangled, his beard matted with God-knows-what. Up and down his arms and legs was a patchwork of scars, scabs and dried blood from cutting himself. Some of his wounds oozed pus, while a few were infested with maggots. He would not live much longer.
Meanwhile, the disciples finally reach the safety of shore after a sleepless night where they nearly drowned in a storm. Traumatized, they sleepwalk through the motions of tying up the boat...when suddenly, a crazy, naked, filthy, violent man comes running at them screaming in the predawn twilight. If you were a disciple, how would you react? Would you want to give him the gospel or hide in the boat?
Left: A model of 'The Jesus Boat', a first-century fishing vessel discovered in the mud at the plain of Genessaret.
"...they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet..." (Mark 2:4).
Peter's house in Capernaum (archaeologists have found the actual place!) contains a large room where Jesus and his disciples likely slept, and where this healing story may have taken place. That day the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. It smelled of sweaty bodies, as the only ventilation was from a pair of foot-square windows. Suddenly, there's a scraping on the roof. The soot of 25 years wafts down from the rafters, then a shaft of light breaks through. Clay, twigs and plaster rain down on the crowd as the hole is ripped larger and larger. Dirt falls on the bedrolls of Jesus and his disciples, filters into their shirts, forms a grit between their teeth. Enraged, the crowd yells at the men to stop, as did Peter's mother-in-law—it was her roof that was being destroyed!
Picture yourself as a homeowner, with people sawing a hole in your roof to get to Jesus. What are you thinking as plaster rains down on you? Who do you think fixed the roof, or cleaned up the mess afterward?
Photo: a reconstructed roof of logs, branches and beaten clay. like those of Jesus' time.
