Magnum were always an excellent group, flirting with progressive tendencies (their former greatest album: Kingdom of Madness). for a couple of albums in the business, they practically shifted their style towards a very well-composed and if you want, pompous, melodic rock style relative to the American AOR movement. The cover art is wonderfully done, some of the best of the entire '80s I've ever seen, rock and metal included. Bob Catley is a fantastic vocalist and the reliable guitars of Tony Clarkin combined with Mark Stanway's excellent keyboards are the backbones of the band. The songs are all excellent, with Catley's godly vocals being all over the place. The songs are carefully crafted and serve greatly as background music, too (due to the general softness). This is not hard and heavy rock music, but music for relax. Still, there are riffs and solos aplenty. But if you listen it to get absorbed by the music, then On a Storyteller's Night reveals it's real qualities. It's a real treasure, possibly Magnum's greatest ever. The song "How far Jerusalem" is one of the great songs of this album.
Ride against the wind, born to lose the fight
They fill the doorways, they come far
Holding what they bring, details on a card
And on a rainy night like this
Someone shuts the door, goodbye on their lips
They are the victims of the night
Ride against the wind, born to lose the fight
They fill the doorways, they come far
Holding what they bring, details on a card
And on a rainy night like this
Someone shuts the door, goodbye on their lips
There is no charity from where they come
There's nothing left to be
In stark reality thy will be done
For you, for them, for me
How far Jerusalem
Before the heart breaks down
No kings among them
Cold feet in London town
How far Jerusalem
Oh, broken hearted clown
We stand among them
Cold feet in London town
They are in search of liberty's trail
Equal in their eyes, faces drawn and pale
So many hearts have gone before
Probably ignored, crashing to the floor
They are the victims of the night
Ride against the wind, born to lose the fight
There is no charity from where they come
There's nothing left to be
In stark reality thy will be done
For you, for them, for me
How far Jerusalem
Before the heart breaks down
No kings among them
Cold feet in London town
How far Jerusalem
Oh, broken hearted clown
We stand among them
Cold feet in London town
How far Jerusalem
Before the heart breaks down
No kings among them
Cold feet in London town
How far Jerusalem
Oh, broken hearted clown
We stand among them
Cold feet in London town
How far Jerusalem
How far Jerusalem is a song about yearning and rejection. Victims of a broken world in which no-one hears their cries or cares about who they are or what they have gone through. These are those who are left to face the future on their own, Rejected and despised. Those that the world has rejected are all around us in the shadows and alleyways, in the parks and railway bankings in makeshift tent homes, with no care, no lives, no hope, no future. The lepers of our everyday society. The song "How far Jerusalem" reaches out it's lyrics and asks the simple question Where do people like this find sanctuary? Where does hope, life and a future come from in a broken world towards those on the margins. This morning we travel with Jesus in our devotions to Mark 1:40-45.
This is one of the those passages that we could easily pass over. It does not say much but on the the other hand says everything. Jesus sends the leper back to receive the certification of the priest as to his being made clean and able to re-enter his community. Like Peter's mother-in-law in the previous story, this former leper becomes a disciple by "spreading the word" about Jesus, announcing what Jesus had done for him. The problem with the man's discipleship is that Jesus had commanded him to remain silent about what had happened. In his disobedience to Jesus' command, whatever his motive may have been, the news he heralded made it impossible for Jesus to go openly into the towns of Galilee. As soon as Jesus appeared in these towns, the crowds became overwhelming. Jesus was eager to heal, but also to announce that God's reign was coming near. He was in a hurry, on a mission (cf. 1:33-34, 36-38). These are the same settlements that Jesus had determined to visit to his own heralding of the coming reign of God (verse 38).
We begin with the seeming simplicity of this story. There are a
number of problems with both the text and translation of these few verses,
probably because of the difficulties inherent in the story itself. First
note that verse 40 includes the idea that the leper gets down on his
knees although there is considerable doubt that the earliest texts of
Mark contained this phrase. Second and more importantly, in some
manuscripts of Mark's gospel, the word translated in verse 41 as "moved
by compassion" (see also Mark 6:34; 9:22) is in several manuscripts
"moved by anger" (see also Mark 9:19, 23). There is no manuscript doubt about the very strong language in verse
43 where Jesus is said to have "snorted" at the recently healed leper.
The word embrimaomai expresses great distaste or anger. It is
used in Mark only one other time (in 14:5) where the twelve scold the
woman who had "wasted" money on anointing Jesus. Why would Jesus be
angered at the leper? Many have wondered, many have speculated, and no
one has a convincing conclusion. To add to the puzzle of translating
this word in relation to Jesus, the verb in that sentence is "threw out,
cast out," the same verb used to describe the action of the Holy Spirit
with Jesus in Mark 1:12 and the action Jesus takes with demons in other
locations (see 2:34, 39). Jesus shakes his head in anger and throws the
leper out, demanding that he tell no one how he came to be healed.
Had Jesus been doing an exorcism, this kind of reaction would have
been expected. We also know that Jesus' reaction to Peter's "rebuke" of
him in 8:33 is also harsh. Mark's Jesus often surprises us with the
intensity of his emotion, not least his negative emotion. In 8:33,
Peter, though having made the right confession about Jesus is rebuked
for trying to impose his own understanding of "messiah" on Jesus. There
Peter's misconception is linked to Satan, as are those demons whom Jesus
"throws out" repeatedly. One sense of this angry verse is that it is not so much connected to
the leper personally, any more than Peter is personally attacked. Rather
it is Jesus' anger and determination are with the powers that hold
creation and its creatures in their power. These powers are expressed in all
sorts of ways -- through illness, of course, but in the systems and
manners and values that humans have developed to cope with a world
subject to powers other than God. Surely no preacher lacks for
illustrations of that kind of frustration, often expressed among us
toward people who themselves have no control over oppressive powers.
Of considerable interest is the reversal that takes place within this
story. The realities of the leper and Jesus are switched within five
verses. The leper who ought not enter a community without being freed
from his ailment returns to his village, his priest, and his role in
life. Jesus is suddenly unable to enter a village and is kept from his
role in life. Whether or not Jesus believed that he had come to heal
folks, people needed him to do just that, trusted that he could, and
managed to find him wherever he went (Mark 2:1-2). We know both from
history and from the story of John the Baptist that the development of
crowds around a central figure in the Galilee and in Jerusalem would be
dangerous to that figure. Whether people understood their leader as prophet, king, Messiah,
teacher, or rabble rouser (it all depends whom you ask!), such crowds
made the powers-that-be very nervous indeed. While no one has come up
with a way to interpret consistently the "Messianic secret" passages in
Mark's gospel, two things seem clear: 1) Jesus wants to temper
enthusiasm about the his own identity as the "Holy One of God" (1:24)
until he has endured the cross; and 2) the presence of crowds is a
threat to Jesus' own mission as herald of God's reign.
It is important for contemporary readers that not all types of
discipleship seem to be appropriate in every time and place. When the
Gadarene demoniac is healed in Mark 5:1-15, Jesus sends him home
precisely to proclaim what the Lord has done for him. The preacher may
be able to develop these stories with an eye to the quite distinctive
calls to discipleship that shape the lives of those whom Jesus has
healed. As part of this reversal, notice the "if" clause in verse 40. This
use of "if" in Greek suggests that the condition set up is very likely
indeed to be true. One could almost translate it as "since." The verb in
the condition is best translated by "wish" or "choose" (New Revised
Standard Version). The leper says something like, "If you want to (and
you do), you are able to cleanse me. Jesus confirms his willingness with
a simple. "I am willing." This seems to me to be central to the passage
and here's why.
At this still early point in Mark we are learning about Jesus and
what discipleship as one of Jesus' followers might be. Mark has shown us
a Jesus able and willing to heal all sorts of woes from illnesses to
possession. These healings, it is very clear, are signs of what God's
reign means for human beings -- a restoration to a condition of
blessedness or thriving or flourishing. Humankind will no longer be
oppressed by the powers of evil. We have seen Jesus' intense
interactions with the demons who know him. We have also heard Jesus
insist that it is his calling to destroy these powers hostile to God's
reign even as he must go about announcing it so that all may have the
opportunity to repent and trust God (cf. 1:15).
So Jesus must go where the people are. By the end of this story,
Jesus has shown us what it costs to go where the people are and it is a
cost he is "willing" to pay. He begins as the one free to wander and
proclaim, urgent in his message and successful in gathering crowds. By
the end of the story Jesus has traded places with the former leper who
is now wandering freely, proclaiming what the Lord has done and creating
widespread positive response, while Jesus has become isolated and
lonely. There is an exchange of roles, an exchange of realities between
Jesus and the man whom he has healed: this points long-range to the role
that Jesus is willing to take for humanity itself, giving up his life
of freedom for the loneliness of the one isolated on Golgotha, whose
"willingness" is a proclamation in its own right. He will use the
language of "willing" in 14:36, exchanging his own desires for what the
Father "wills." In the same way Jesus calls us to demonstrate what it means to be united with people, to stand with them against the powers that be. He calls us to Go like he did. Like in the Magnum lyrics "We Stand Among them"
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