GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 7:1
Impressive credentials
Impressive credentials.
Tradition insists that auspicious occasions have a guest or speaker larger than the occasion. On Thursday, May 1, 2025, for example, President Trump delivered a speech during graduation weekend at the University of Alabama encouraging graduates to: “Find your limits and smash through everything. Think big.” For my last graduation from Southern Illinois University in 1981, the speaker was Governor James Thompson—“Big Jim.” I do not remember a word he said, but I do remember that he towered above all the other platform party guests. He was the longest-serving governor of Illinois, serving four consecutive terms. Impressive credentials.
After the disciples made the difficult boat trip across the Sea of Galilee that Mark described in chapter 6, verses 45-52—which took place around Passover season—Jesus continued his ministry, starting in Gennesaret, then likely moving northward into the region of Galilee near Capernaum. “And the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him.” (Mark 7:1) These were not local celebrities; no, these were punctilious visitors from the center of Judaism. They must have stood out in the crowd of ordinary people who usually surrounded Jesus, for their clothes would be spotless and arrayed perfectly, their beards carefully trimmed, well perfumed, and haughty in their bearing. They made the six-day trip of nearly one hundred miles to gather around Jesus. Scribes—a vocation that arose about 400 years earlier—spent their lives carefully studying the scriptures, especially the Pentateuch, distilling the moral law to hundreds of necessary behavioral requirements. Impressive credentials.
But wait a minute. Let’s see if the impressive credentials of the Pharisees and scribes translate into impressive behavior. The two—impressive credentials and impressive behavior—do not always correlate.
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