Resistance Is Futile

"Resistance Is Futile"

Mark 2:14-28

If you are a fan of the show, "Star Trek," like Benton Stull is, you know who The Borg are.  The Borg are a collection of humanoid species that have been captured from all over the universe and made to serve the collective.  The collective is like a hive mind.  When a person is captured by The Borg, they are injected with nanobots that immediately begins transforming the person into a part human, part robot.  Once transformed, the now Borg, is assimilated into the collective, no longer an individual.  The Borg, who fly around space in this huge mechanical cube, are nearly impossible to stop.  They are probably one of the scariest and most powerful species--if you want to call them that--that Captain Picard and crew encounter.  The main mantra of the Borg was, "We are Borg; resistance is futile."

The Borg, in Jesus' day, was the religious "collective", made up of at least three main groups:  the Jewish priests; secondly, the Scribes--who were like the theology professors of the day;  and, lastly, the Pharisees--who were the self-appointed keepers of the law, trying to make sure everyone else did the same.  The organization--the religious system--behind these three groups formed the "hive mind" like the Borg.  This religious establishment was so powerful, just about everyone who got in their way was either made a part of that collective religious mind, or eliminated.  "We are the Jewish religious establishment; resistance is futile."

So, what we have here in the second half of the second chapter of Mark, is the beginning of that collective religious mind being exerted against Jesus and the new disciples.  Right after Jesus begins organizing, and recruiting disciples, the Jewish religious Borg swoop in, in an attempt to inject Jesus and the disciples with their collective way of thinking, and derail any attempt to do something different.  Right after the disciples have become disciples, and they are full of the heady excitement of being a follower of Jesus, the sabotage of the collective Jewish mind is unleashed upon them.  "Resistance is futile."

We know how this is all going to end for Jesus.  It appeared resistance was futile.  But for the moment, let us see how it begins.

The first story is about Levi-Matthew becoming a disciple.  Levi was a tax collector.  That means he was Jewish, but he was working for the Roman occupation forces.  The people in Israel had to pay a tax to the Romans for being a part of the Roman Empire.  The Romans recruited local Jewish businessmen to collect the taxes.

The way it worked was, the Roman government had a meeting with the tax collectors at the start of the year.  The Roman authorities had already assessed how many people there were in Israel at the time.  Do you remember the birth story of Jesus and why Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem?  Because the Roman government had dictated a census be taken, to find out how many people there actually were in Israel, so the Romans could figure out how much taxes they needed.

That amount was passed down to the tax collectors to collect from the people.  But the Jewish people hated the tax collectors.  It seemed to everyone that the tax collectors were in cahoots with the Romans and were therefore traitors to the Jewish nation.

Plus, how the tax collectors got their money was by charging more than the taxable amount.  The Roman government allowed them to charge whatever they wanted, just as long as they Romans got what was their due.  A lot of tax collectors were charging an exorbitant amount for taxes, and pocketing a lot of it.  They were some of the wealthiest people--and, as I mentioned before--some of the most hated.

Levi-Matthew was one of those.  And Jesus asked him to be a disciple.  What is surprising is that none of the other disciples ever questioned Jesus' choice of Levi.  When Jesus and the disciples were eating supper with Levi and some of his tax collector associates, the disciples--to their credit--sat right down at the table with them.  The disciples may have been muttering under their breath.  Or thinking ill of all the tax collectors sitting around the table.  But we aren't told anything like that in the story.

You have to understand, in Jewish culture and hospitality ethics, if you sat at table and ate a meal with someone, you were telling that person that you accept them whole-heartedly.  You weren't just being civil.  You were completely embracing them as a person, by sharing a meal together.  By eating a meal with someone you were promising their protection and your friendship.

That's what the religious collective was upset about.  Jesus was showing this embracing hospitality to hated tax collectors.  Notice, they didn't go to Jesus with their complaint.  They went to the disciples and tried to divide and conquer.  If the religious Borg could get the disciples to question what was going on, they could divide them from Jesus and cut off his following right from the start.

So, in this first encounter, what we find out is that with Jesus, no one is excluded from the table.  But the religious collective's beliefs were that there are people who are in, and there are people who are out.  They were telling the disciples that if you want to be like us, if you want to think right, if you want to be part of the religious establishment, you have to know who's in and who's out.  You have to make judgements.  You have to be exclusive, because you don't want the riffraff, tax collector types to be part of the collective.

Jesus and the disciples established a different standard.  Everyone is welcome to come to the table, because it is by the grace of the one at the head of the table that everyone is there, anyway.  It isn't your social standing, or what you may have done or refused to do.  It is by the grace of Christ that you are in.  And everyone is in.

The second attack by the Jewish version of the Borg had to do with fasting.  This time they come at Jesus instead of the disciples.  They tried criticizing Jesus to the disciples, but Jesus stepped in and answered the Pharisees directly.  Jesus wouldn’t let the Pharisees create contention between him and the disciples.  So the Pharisees and religion scholars aim their next attack at Jesus.  They make it sound like they are criticizing the disciples for not fasting, but that kind of mentoring would fall on Jesus’ shoulders.  So they are ultimately criticizing Jesus.

From time-to-time I get a question about fasting—what it is, what it is all about, why should they fast for other than dieting reasons. The Jewish religion views three essential purposes of fasting.  All of these have been carried over into Christian practices of fasting.  One purpose in fasting is for atonement of sins and for the times you were supposed to show your faithfulness to God, but didn’t. Fasting is not considered the primary means of acquiring forgiveness from God.  Instead, fasting is the demonstration of the believers sincere regret for doing wrong and wanting to set things right.  It was the believers way to demonstrate your repentance by fasting. 

The second purpose in fasting is commemorative mourning.  Most communal fast days that are set permanently in the Jewish calendar fulfill this purpose. The purpose of a fast of mourning is to mark the anniversary of some great event of loss either in your personal history or the history of your people. For a country it might be a day like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor Day.  In your personal life it may be the anniversary of the death of a parent or of a child. These fast days become a part of your grieving identity.

The third purpose in fasting is a sign of a person's gratitude. Since food and drink are physical needs, not eating serves to provide a unique opportunity for believers to focus on the spiritual side of gratitude.  By refraining from such a basic activity as eating and drinking, each believer can more greatly appreciate their dependence on God, leading to appreciation of God's benefits in taking care of His people.

But Jesus knew that even though fasting was an important religious rite, there was one situation that overrides the rules about fasting.  It had to do with what happens as part of the wedding ceremony.  After a Jewish wedding the couple did not go away for a honeymoon.  They stayed at home.  For seven to ten days, the newlyweds held an open house.  There was continual feasting and rejoicing.  It was the happiest week in a man and woman’s life.

There was a rule of the rabbis which said, “All in attendance of the bride and bridegroom are relieved of all religious observances which would decrease their joy.”  All wedding guests, for the whole open house time, were exempt from fasting; joy was more important than the ritual importance of fasting.  That is what was important about Jesus’ parable here about the bridegroom.

The Jewish religious collective was trying to get Jesus to be about following the rules—that religion was about serious business like repentance and fasting.  Jesus and his disciples resistance to this Borg-like mechanical view of the religious life, was seen as a threat.  And futile.  For Jesus, the religious life was about joy and celebration, like the joy and celebration of a wedding, and he used the rabbis teaching against the religious collective.

Jesus follows that up with his parables about the new cloth and the old garment, the new wine and the old wineskins.  The religious collective was trying to pull Jesus back into the old ways of doing things.  That true religion is about old things done the old way, no matter how tattered or useless they are.  But for Jesus, there is something new that is happening—new wine into new skins, and, new cloth for a new garment.  The religious Borg of Jesus day wanted to pull Jesus back into the old ways.  Jesus resisted that and said, basically, “Sorry, the Kingdom of God is about new things done in new ways.”

The last incidence of Jesus being hounded by the religious Borg is almost spooky.  Here’s what happened.  Jesus is walking from one town to another with his disciples.  They are cutting cross country through a field of wheat.  As they are walking, they get hungry and pick some heads of wheat, rub them between their hands, pick out the grain, and eat it.  No big deal, right.

But, and here’s the almost spooky part, the Pharisees—the people who were the self-appointed follow-all-the-rules police, were walking a few paces behind Jesus and the disciples, just waiting for them to break one of the religious rules.  It had to be kind of freaky.  How would you like it if you had someone following you around just waiting to slap you on the wrist every time you broke one of their rules?  That’s why the Pharisees, like the Borg in Star Trek, could say, “Resistance is futile.”  The Pharisees just wore the people down with all their rules.  And they were following Jesus around trying to do the same thing to him.

The other thing was, that particular day was the Sabbath--Saturday--the day when people were supposed to rest.  On the Sabbath day, no faithful Jew was supposed to do any work.  But the Pharisees—the rules guys—had to come up with the answer to the question, “What is and is not work?”  Well, one of the rules, in answer to that question, was you can’t harvest on the Sabbath.  Harvesting is work.   But how much grain can you pick or cut before you are really harvesting?  Three stalks?  Ten stalks?  Evidently Jesus and the disciples picked one too many wheat stalks and were instantly reprimanded by the Pharisees.

What was two-faced about the Pharisees was, one of their own rules about working on the Sabbath had to do with how many steps you could take on the Sabbath.  Jesus and the disciples, by walking quite a distance on the Sabbath were breaking that rule.  But so were the Pharisees by following Jesus around.  The very guys who made all the silly rules and tried to get everyone else to follow them, were breaking their own rules themselves!  And they were breaking their own rules in order to slap Jesus and the disciples if they broke a rule.  It was craziness!!

So when the Pharisees jumped all over Jesus and the disciples for rubbing the heads of wheat between their hands to eat a few grains of wheat, Jesus replied, “Look, here’s the thing.  All those rules you guys make up are silly and some are down right stupid.  To my Father God, life isn’t about rules—it is about people.  People and their basic needs are more important than your rules.  You guys overlook the people and what they need, and tell everyone your silly rules are what life is all about.  Sorry, it’s people first, rules second.”

We don’t get to see how the Pharisees responded.  We know how they ultimately respond to Jesus.  They demonstrated, by eventually killing Jesus, that “Resistance is futile.”  This was the start of Jesus’ resistance to the Jewish Borg-like system that sought to diminish his identity, or enfold it into the collective way of being, so Jesus would be just like them.  But Jesus begins to resist that diminishment with these three incidents.  And it is important for us to learn from him about what true resistance is all about.  Because any resistance we put up, as Jesus did it, putting people before rules, is not ultimately futile.

Raising The Roof

"Raising the Roof"

Mark 2:1-12

There are some funny things about this story.  One of those funny things has to do with the question, “Whose house was it?”  We don’t know, entirely, but there is a good chance it was Jesus’ home.

The story starts out telling us that Jesus was back in Capernaum.  He had been with the disciples traveling around to some neighboring towns preaching the gospel.  Now they were back in Capernaum on the north shore of Galilee lake.  This town seems to have been Jesus’ home base.  Some of the disciples were from there, so it just stands to reason.

So when the story says that Jesus was “at home” it could simply mean he was back in town.  But the word that is used for home means a dwelling, a house.  Jesus was a carpenter, so it is not too far of a reach to think that he built his own home there in Capernaum where he could have his own space.  You can imagine the Son of God building his own home—everything must have been perfect.  Maybe he didn’t even have to, like good carpenters do, measure anything.  He just knew.  He would lay a board down, know how long it was supposed to be and just cut it.  Take it over to the wall—perfect fit.

So let us imagine Jesus is in his perfectly built home, teaching and healing.  His home is packed with people and along comes four guys with a fifth on a mattress.  Not a fifth of booze, I mean.  A fifth person. (Kind of like the old joke, “Why is it whenever you get four Episcopalians together there is always a fifth?”)  But who knows, maybe there was some alcohol involved in this story.

These guys can not get in because there are so many people, they come up with plan B.  They get up on the roof—which wasn’t hard since most homes used the flat roof as a second, open air room any way.  And they dug through the stucco roof right above Jesus’ head.  They dig a hole through Jesus’ perfect home.  They destroy a section of the home built by the Son of God.  And imagine this is no small hole.  The paralyzed man is lowered down on a mattress.  So we are talking at least a mattress-sized hole in the Son of God’s perfect roof.

Can you imagine what Jesus is thinking?  Can you imagine the thunder clouds forming over these four guys who are totally messing with the Son of God’s personally built home!!  That’s why I think there may have been alcohol involved because certainly if these guys were thinking right, they would not have jack-hammered through the roof of the Son of God’s home.  If they were sober, that would not have ever come up as a plausible idea.  Kind of humorous, no?  But then again, maybe Jesus wasn’t that concerned.  He could just heal the hole in his roof.

Well let us move on to some of the more serious elements in this healing of the paralyzed man.  Once the guy (whose name we do not know, nor the names of the four buddies who brought him) is laying on his mattress in front of Jesus, Jesus looks up at the guys peaking through the hole in his roof.  He is staring at them.  He sees something in the look on their faces.

The story says when Jesus saw “their faith,” he then turned and talked to the paralytic.  This is important because the faith here is in the four friends up on the roof, not the paralyzed man.  When Jesus looked up into those four men’s faces, what did he see in their eyes?

And what was it that Jesus saw that he called “faith”? “When Jesus saw their faith…”?  Was it the friends determination to get the paralytic in front of Jesus no matter what?  They saw obstacles:  people crowded inside the tiny home; people crowded outside the doors and windows; a roof made out of timbers and stucco.  But they were determined to get their friend in front of Jesus.  They were determined.  Is that what faith is?  

Or was it the love of the friends for the paralytic to make sure they tried everything to get him to walk again?  Love will cause you to do drastic and sometimes funny things for the ones you love.  Maybe they were all five brothers, and that family love drove them to get the best for their brother.

Or was it their belief that Jesus was the Son of God, and could do this miracle?  The word “faith” in Greek means total persuasion or conviction.  As Jesus looked up at those four faces with whatever looks they had on them, did he see their total conviction that they knew he was the Son of God?  Did he see that they were totally persuaded that Jesus had the very power of God to heal.  Is that what he called “faith.”

John Calvin said the friends faith was shown “by the laboriousness of that attempt”.  Calvin’s rationale is that they would never have gone through all that trouble and overcome all the roadblocks if they “…had not derived courage from entire confidence of success.”  I like Calvin’s phrase there:  “…entire confidence of success.”  Like Alan Luttrell’s question put to me a year or so ago, “If you knew you would succeed no matter what, how would you live your life different?”  If you had the “confidence of success” what would you do with your faith?  How would your life be different?

Imagine those four guys.  Failure was not in their vocabulary.  They were going to succeed with their intentions.  They just knew it.  Because they had that confidence, they got their friend in front of Jesus, Jesus called their “confidence of success”, faith; and their friend was healed.

Whatever it was, the paralyzed man reaps the benefit of the other four guys faith.  How much do we derive advantage from the faith—the confidence of success—of others?  We could start with Paul, preaching to the Gentiles.  If Saul had not taken the gospel to the Gentiles—the non-Jews—the Christian faith would have probably become just a Jewish sect under the leadership of James and Peter in Jerusalem.  Because Paul had the larger vision of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, we got included in that.

Or there is William Tyndale, one of the men who was influenced by the Reformation.  He saw the need to get the Bible translated into the English language from the Latin version that the Catholic church was reading.  For translating Scripture into English, Tyndale was imprisoned by the Catholic church, strangled to death, and then burned at the stake.  But if it wasn’t for him, we would not be enjoying reading the Bible in the English language.

St. Augustine came to the faith by the prayers of his mother.  Also, his conversion happened because he chanced to hear a little girl in a nearby garden reading from the Bible.  When you think about it, each new generation must learn the faith from a Godly parent or grandparent.  In other words, if it was not for the faith of others who have gone before us, we may not have come to the faith we hold.  And then you must think about where you are in that chain of faith, and what groundwork you are laying so that someone else, like the paralytic, might reap the benefit of your faith.

And what do we know about the paralytic, anyway?  How did he get paralyzed?  Has he been paralyzed since birth, the innocent victim of some birth defect?  Or was he doing something foolish like camel tipping while drunk? Or riding his skateboard off the roof of his house into a hay stack and missed?  Even if we knew him and the reason for his paralysis, and it was all because of his own stupidity, would we judge him and say he deserves to be paralyzed for doing something stupid?

Did the paralyzed man have faith also, like his friends?  Was he a religious person, or was he a godless cuss?  Did it matter to Jesus?  Did it matter what the reason for his paralysis was to Jesus?  Did Jesus first grill the guy about the 14 tenants of evangelical Christian doctrine?  And then we have to ask, “Does it matter to us whom Jesus chooses to heal and who he doesn’t?”  And what he calls faith, and what he doesn’t?

Jesus does a somewhat strange thing first.  He tells the paralyzed man his sins are forgiven.  What Jesus is letting the man know is that his problem goes much deeper than his paralysis.  The man’s heart is paralyzed as well, by his sin and broken relationship with the Father God.

One of the words for forgiveness literally means to be let out into a wide open place.  And the corresponding word for sin means to be cramped and hemmed in, to be in a tight place.  Imagine the small world the paralyzed man has available to him.  He sees there is a big, wide world out there, but it is not available to him because of his paralysis.  Jesus is telling the man, the same is true for what sin has done to his heart.  It has kept him from living a life of wide open freedom before God.  Jesus took care of that first, by forgiving his sin and freeing his heart to really experience God’s full life.

Then the Scribes enter this story.  They have a dialogue with Jesus about forgiving sins. Notice that every part of the initial dialogue between the Scribes and Jesus was in their minds and thoughts.  The Scribes were thinking their doubts.  Jesus was reading their minds, and answers not their spoken questions, but the questions they had in their minds.  That may be a little spooky to you, that Jesus can read your mind—that Jesus knows your thoughts—that nothing of your thought world is private.

There was an ad, once, in the newspaper that simply read: “Help wanted: Mind Reader; you know where to apply.”  What do you think about being able to listen in on other people’s thoughts?  I used to wonder what it would be like to read people’s minds.  Then, when I first got on Facebook, I didn’t wonder any more.

So, what the Scribes are thinking in their minds is a question:  “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  OK, so you are a Scribe.  You are looking at Jesus when you are thinking that question.  As you look at Jesus you have two possible ways to go with it.  The standard answer, and the correct answer is, only God can forgive sins.  If Jesus just forgave the paralytic his sins, that means Jesus is saying he is God.  At least, claiming to be God.

Here is your dilemma if you are a Scribe looking on at this scene.  If Jesus is claiming to be God, but only God can be God, then Jesus is who he says he is, or he is a deluded lunatic.   As C.S. Lewis once said, Jesus is who he claims to be or he is on the same level as a man who claims he is a poached egg.  Jesus is either who he claims he is—the Son of God—or he is a crazy man who needs to be locked up in the rubber room at the local looney bin.

There is no middle ground.  Jesus isn’t claiming to be a nice teacher, or a prophet, or someone we can admire from a distance.  Jesus either is or he isn’t the Son of God who can forgive sins.

Remember I said that in Mark’s Gospel, every story is forcing you to look at Jesus and decide who he is—Is he the Savior, or not? The Son of God or not?

The fast one that Jesus pulls on the Scribes here is that Jesus gives another sign of his divinity by reading the Scribes thoughts.  Jesus is making their private musings about Jesus out loud and public.  Their thoughts are that they are ultimately rejecting God in Jesus, because they can’t allow for the fact that God can come at them in the person of Jesus—that God has to come in some prescribed way—but not this way.  Now the Scribes have to decide if they have been wrong about Jesus.

Mark wrote that everyone was “amazed”.  The Greek word is existemi, where we get our word ecstasy.  Now put out of your mind this word as the name for a currently popular drug.  Think of ecstatic!  Knock your socks off, WOW!  Mind blowing powerful!  So amazing you are not sure even you believe it!  So amazing it is almost even scary.  They have just witnessed something higher than they can humanly imagine.  They saw something that the only proper response is to fall on your knees and worship God.

Makes you wonder who made the comment, “We have never seen anything like this…” at the end of the story.  Was it the people about the healing of the paralytic?  Or was it the Scribes about how they had just had their thoughts picked?  Whichever you choose, the statement remains:  You have never seen anything like this—and you will see more.

A Day In The Life Of Jesus

"A Day In The Life Of Jesus"

Mark 1:16-45

(As I go through this material in a verse-by-verse manner, if you have any questions or comments, just raise up a hand or speak it out.)

In football they have a huddle, the goal of the huddle is to give you thirty seconds to call the play.  At a football game there may be sixty thousand people watching you huddle, they don’t mind you taking thirty seconds to call the play. People understand the ends need to know where they are going to go, the quarterback needs to know where he is going to go, the backs need to know where they are going to go. A huddle is a necessary part of playing the game. But sixty thousand people do not pay $100+ a ticket to watch you huddle.  They want to see if their team can overcome the opposition who is daring them to snap the ball and move down the field and score.

—Now what Christians often do is concentrate on their huddles. We gather together on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights and committee meeting week and we go nuts over the huddle! We say, “Boy did we have a huddle!! The quarterback can really run a great huddle. And boy do we have a great time in the huddle.  I wonder why more people don't want to join our huddle?”  But the huddle isn’t the game.

—What we will see with Jesus is that he huddles up with God in prayer, and the rest of the time he is out there, on the field, where the fans don’t stay in the stands and watch, but get out on the field and want a piece of him.

—That’s part of what I want you to think about as we go through these opening days of Jesus’ ministry.  There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of organization to what Jesus does.  Just some huddling with God and out you go.  The overall scheme of his ministry might be a good way to “organize” our days--even our ministry and how we are as a church.

16  ....for they were fishermen.  (As opposed to carpenters or glass blowers who just happened to be fishing.)

17  Follow me.  Not follow my doctrine; not follow how I worship; not follow my teachings.  But follow me.  We follow a person.  Not just a historical person who lived a long time ago and is now dead--but a person who still lives and will live eternally.  We don't follow a written set of rules like the Jews did with all their volumes of rules and their meanings.  We follow a person, which means following is a lot more dynamic, even messy, than following rules, laws, doctrine.  You can have all the theological arguments you want about correct doctrine and beliefs and religious laws.  You can play around with words and meaning and intentions.  Like the Constitution and the arguments about what were the "intentions" of the founding fathers about certain lines in the Constitution.

—And after Jesus, we follow the Holy Spirit.  Paul used the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of Jesus interchangeably.  It means we really have to pay attention to the person of Jesus.  We have to pay attention to the Holy Spirit.  We have to understand the man if we are going to follow him.

—As I said, it is a lot messier than following a written code.  Certainly history has produced too many charlatans who said, in one way or another, "Jesus told me...so follow me."  We have witnessed too many drink the kool aid in order to follow someone who says they are following Jesus.  We follow Jesus.

—Even in the earliest church, there was disagreement about what following Jesus meant.  Did it mean preaching to and seeking converts from the non-Jewish people.  Or was following Jesus only for seeking out followers from Israel and the Jews?

—I’m not saying it is easy.  All we have at this point in Jesus' story is his brief recruiting message:  "Follow me."  There is a nuance to this word in the Greek in which Jesus wasn't just saying "Follow me,"  but "Follow me, now."  There is a sense of immediacy to Jesus invitation.  Don't wait.  Don't think about it.  Don't go chat about it at the local fisherman's pub with all your fishing cronies.  Don't go home and talk it over with your father.  Follow me, NOW!  And maybe that is what Jesus was putting his emphasis on, the NOW rather than the follow.  Because that is what the fishermen did.  They stopped and dropped everything--including family--and followed NOW!

—There is a sense of immediacy in Mark's Gospel.  We will run across this word, "immediately" often in the Gospel (vs. 18, 20, 21, 23, 28, 29, 30, 42).  "Immediately they left their nets and followed him."  Jesus goes down the beach a bit further and "immediately" calls two more fishermen to be disciples.  "Immediately" they left their father and other hired men to follow Jesus.

—The word in Greek for immediately means straight.  That is, "straightaway."  The quickest way between two points is a straight line, as the saying goes.  There is a straight line that Jesus seems to be asking us to follow when he asks us to do something.  “When I ask you to do something,” says Jesus, “take the straight line route.  Now.  Immediately.”  Our tendency is to take a lot of side angles from that straight line, think about it, send it back to committee, over think.  What we have to assume is if Jesus asked us to do something, he is not asking arbitrarily.  He has already done all the thinking for us.  He knows we can do what he asks, because he knows us; else he wouldn't have asked.  If Jesus says, "Follow me," he already knows we could.  We just have to have faith that what Jesus (as the Son of God) has already figured everything out for us.  All we need to do is respond, in faith, in a straight line, immediate way.  Follow me.  Get up and go.  Now.

22, 27  ...as one who had authority.  The Greek has the meaning of "delegated authority."  In other words, they saw some other power in his teaching than his own.  It was like he was speaking with someone else's voice.

—There were times, when I was a kid, I’d be at a friends house.  One of my brothers, or my sister would call over there and say, “You need to come home now.”  I would say, “Why?” or “Says who?”  Then my brother would say, “Because mom said so.”  Now I was suddenly dealing with a whole other level of authority.  It wasn’t just my brother talking.  It was my mother talking through him.  So I would go home.

—So, that Voice of course, behind the voice of Jesus, is God's, since we know from the beginning of Mark's Gospel, Jesus is the Son of God.   

—The other part of the meaning of the word authority is mastery.  It was clear Jesus knew what he was talking about.  Mastery has to do with doing what you are talking about.  Jesus' behavior and lifestyle was in synch with what he taught. There was no gap or dissonance between who Jesus was and what Jesus taught.

—Also, the Scribes would always begin their teaching with the statement:  “There is a teaching that…” and then they would quote all the authorities, Rabbi’s, and Jewish theologians.  The Scribes would never give a personal or independent thought.  But not Jesus.  When Jesus spoke he didn’t need to quote a pocket full of theologians, authorities or experts.  He spoke with the personal authority of himself, of God in him.

21-28  recognition of who Jesus was.  Synagogue = to gather together.  Had to have a minimum of 10 Jewish men to be able to form a synagogue.

—Very simple worship:  something from the law—the first five books of the Old Testament—was read; then someone stood to give a message about what was read, or to teach about what was read; then closed with prayer.  Very simple, clean worship.  No sacrifices like in the temple.  No high priests or any priests for that matter.  No drop down projection screens.  No performance oriented worship.  Very simple, and centered around Scripture.

—Early Christian worship took on the same format of a simple gathering of people, who were taught by one of the apostles, prayer, and occasionally the singing of a song.  That simplicity is what attracted a lot of people to the faith.  Think about the contrast of that with modern worship, especially in mega churches where it is all performance and music and little, if anything, to do with Scripture.  Sermons are more pop psychology of me-feel-goodism, than anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

—The main theme of this story seems to be the substantiation of Jesus’ authority—an authority that came through his teaching.  Even the casting out of the evil spirit was tied into Jesus’ teaching in the people’s minds.  But for Jesus, the main point of the story is not just his authority, but who he is, what his identity is.  Notice what the evil spirit calls Jesus:  “the Holy One of God.”  The evil spirit confirms how Mark started out in the first line of the Gospel that Jesus is the Son of God.

—The evil spirit recognized that, but the people in the synagogue are still perplexed about Jesus’ identity:  “…they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘What is this?’”  The sad contrast between who gets who Jesus is and who does not.

—One of the main things Mark’s Gospel is trying to do is convince us about who Jesus is.  Every story is leading us towards that question.  “Do you get it?” Mark is asking.  “Do you get him?”  The evil spirits get it.  But people question.  As we study through Mark’s gospel, Mark wants to convince you of who Jesus is.  He doesn’t want you to delay.  Immediately!!  Understand who Jesus is, NOW!  Follow him now!!  Don’t let the evil spirits get a jump on you.  Understand Jesus’ divinity, “immediately.”

29-34  healing.  sick = Gk = badly or miserably—with whatever it was.  Didn’t have to be a physical illness, necessarily.  They were just miserable.  Like Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables (The Miserables), the down and out, the oppressed, the depressed, the ill, the harrassed.  People with all kinds of misery were attracted to Jesus.

—They came to Jesus to be healed.  The Greek word is therapeuo, where we get our word therapy from.  The word, literally means to wait upon someone else in a menial way.  That was part of Jesus’ style of healing people—to take a menial stance towards people, not as one above them, but below them who is available to render menial service in any way he can.  In his menial service, Jesus then relieved people of their misery.  He served them, and by that service brought them back to health and healing.

—This may have been what the people recognized in Jesus when they said he was one with “authority.”  It was an authority based in service, based in servileness, in which he approached people with humility and service rather than an uppity authority in which he saw everyone as a lesser-than.

35-39  lonely place in preparation for crowded places.  I wonder if Jesus went out like this every morning, early in the morning, to pray.  If that was his habit.  That this was his "huddle up" time with God, in order to prepare himself for each day.  It seems so, since the disciples knew, kind of, where to look to find him.

—The word in the ESV, desolate, literally means lonely, or uninhabited.

—Jesus’ prayer habits capture my attention.  Prayer in the Jewish worship was communal.  When people prayed in Jewish worship, and they only prayed in worship services, they stood up in the midst of everyone and spoke their prayer out loud. At the same time.  Imagine if our prayer time at the start of worship was like that?  Everyone could hear it.  Everyone could see who it was who was praying.

—Prayer was a very visible act.  But not so with Jesus.  It was his habit to be alone.  Jesus even taught, in the sermon on the mount, not to pray on street corners where everyone could see you.  He certainly would have been making reference to Temple worship in that statement.  Instead, said Jesus, go in to your closet and close the door, then say your prayers to God who sees you in secret.  That prayer is a matter between you and God.

—Jesus acted the same things he taught about prayer.  He put himself in a place where he was utterly alone (until the insecure disciples show up).

—I think there is a distinction about being in a lonely place that I have discovered.  I think there is a difference between loneliness and solitude.  I used to be a miserably lonely person.  Let’s bring misery from the healing part of Jesus’ ministry and combine it with the loneliness here.  Loneliness is misery.

—At some point in my ministry I came across an author named Henri Nouwen.  He was, prior to his death, a prolific writer about the Christian Spiritual life.  He was a Catholic monk who lived an amazing life of service, especially to the miserables.  He constantly made the distinction between loneliness and solitude.  Solitude is a strength that comes from being in the continual presence of God through prayer and contemplation.  The more I immersed myself in prayer, the more the loneliness went away and the more I discovered the truth of Nouwen’s words.

—Prayer creates solitude which is a secret, individual strength that one gains through that praying.  I think that is what Jesus was doing by pulling himself away on a regular basis, and for good amounts of time in solitude, in order to build the spiritual strength he needed to face all the crowded places, the reaching arms, the anxious faces, the longing misery.  You can not meet that much misery out of your own emptiness or loneliness.  The depth of misery in so many people’s lives has to met with strength, and the way Jesus strengthened himself was through prayer in places where he could find that kind of solitude.

“Everyone is looking for you.”  I have mentioned before, there are two words in Greek for every or all.  If I wanted to describe everyone in this sanctuary, I would use one word.  But if I wanted to describe everyone, everywhere, I would use the Greek word pan.  That is the word the disciples used when they finally found Jesus in his prayer place.  Everyone in the whole world is looking for you.  Not just everyone in town, or even everyone in the region.  Everyone!  Isn’t that an interesting use of the word, by Mark.

—Everyone in the world is looking for Jesus, whether they know it or not.  I think we need to imbed that perspective in our minds and hearts as we think about our own individual witness.  The whole population of the whole world is in misery, and they are reaching out for, they are grasping for you, Jesus.  What a huge need.  A huge need that Jesus is being asked singly to address and take care of.  No wonder Jesus spent time in solitude to pray in order to strengthen himself to meet such need.

40-45  curing a leper.  The leper, the story tells us, was “imploring” Jesus.  The word in Greek means to ask someone to come near.  The leper was asking Jesus to come near to him, which is exactly what a person was not supposed to do.  The leper was supposed to keep himself away from others as much and as far as possible.  If a leper came close to others they were supposed to shout, “Unclean, unclean, unclean” so everyone knew.

—Imagine what that would be like to have to shout out your malady to everyone as you walked around.  Most of us would be shouting something, wouldn’t we.  Maybe that’s a healthier way to be, to recognize—and proclaim—that we are all “unclean” or have some sort of disorder or ailment so everyone knows.  “A little sad today, a little sad today,” or, “sore knee, sore knee”, or “angry, angry, angry” etc. etc.  Instead, we do the opposite—we lie and say we are “fine” whatever that means.  “Fine, fine, fine.”

—But, at least at first, it is all about getting the Lord’s attention.  In the Psalm I am reading this week, Psalm 41, the psalmist prays that God will “be gracious to me”.  The word in Hebrew for gracious literally means “to stoop in kindness to.”   To bend down to.  To pay attention to in an intimate and caring and intentional way.  That’s what the leper is asking Jesus to do—bend to him in loving attention.

—When Jesus comes near, the man with leprosy kneels before Jesus and said, “If you will, you can make me clean.”  The word, clean, in Greek means to cleanse, but it is more extensive than that.  It means to purge or purify.  “If you can, Jesus, you can purge me of everything that is wrong with me.  You can purify me.”  Certainly the man was asking to be purged of his disease.  To have the disease totally, once and for all, eradicated from his body.  He was tired of body parts sloughing and falling off: fingers, toes, nose, ears, eye brows.

—Imagine if Jesus stooped in kindness to you, what would you ask him to purge from your life?  Of what would you want to be purified?  To the leper, Jesus said, “I will; be purged/purified.”  All the man had to do was ask.  And Jesus responded.  All you have to do is ask.  To know what you need purging from, and ask for that.  Let Jesus respond with stooping kindness and graciousness.

Good Repentance

"Good Repentance"

Mark 1:4-15

Last week, from the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark, I talked about who we are, what our task is, and who Jesus is.  We are the ones who are sent out.  We are not the ones who are called in, to huddle and hide out within the church walls.  We are those who are sent out.  Sent out with Good News.  Sent out to be heralds of that Good News, no matter how contrary and violent the world is to us and our Good News.

We found out that Jesus is not only the Messiah, the Savior, but that Jesus is the Son of God.  Jesus is our Good News.  We are sent out to tell the Good News that there is a Savior who is also the Son of God.

That's who we are.  That's who Jesus is.  That's what we are to be about.  Pretty simple.  We learn all that in the first three verses.

As Mark goes on, we find out we, as the sent out ones, need to prepare ourselves before we go out.  There is something about us that we have to take care of before we get sent out by God with the Good News about Jesus.

We need to repent.  This word shows up twice in the opening of Mark's Gospel.  John the baptizer tells the people they need to repent and be baptized.  And then Mark tells us that when Jesus started his ministry, his one main message was, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Good News."  So, between John the baptizer and Jesus, we find out that repentance is all mixed together with baptism, the kingdom of God, and the good news.

Repentance is pivotal to who we are and what we are about as believers and kingdom people.  It is an interesting word, repentance.  You may have heard that repentance has to do with making a 180 degree turn in your life, to do an about-face, and go in the opposite direction from where you were headed.

But mainly this word, from its Greek origins, means a couple of things, both very similar.  To repent really means to think differently.  And along with that, it means to change your choices.  Think differently.  Change your choices.  That's what John the baptizer and Jesus are telling people (us) what we need to do if we really want to "get it", if we really want to know what their preaching is all about.

Think about it.  You are the sum total of all your choices so far. Life is about choice--about the choices we make.  And then dealing with the consequences, good and bad, that come about from those choices.  As we face those consequences we must make new choices based on those consequences that will take us either along the path we are going or divert us to another path, leading to more choices.

Now the choices we make are products of the way we think.  James Allen has written a classic book titled, As A Man Thinketh.  The title of the book is taken from Proverbs, "As a man thinketh, so he is" (Proverbs 23:7).  Allen says in his book that, "A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts."  It makes sense, doesn't it, that how we think and our character are one?

Allen also wrote in his book, "Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit..."  In other words, your thoughts become the habits and outward behavior and character that everyone sees.  This has to do with the good and the bad, the godly and the ungodly ways of thinking.

I am going to stand here and make a bold statement.  Some of you are not going to like it.  But here it is:  The way that all of you think, myself included, is messed up.  The way you make choices is messed up.  Because your thinking is messed up, because your choices are messed up, that means your character is messed up.  All of us.  I know, I know, not something you wanted to come to church to hear this morning.

The good news is, there is something we can do about it.  We can repent.  We can change the way we think.  We can change the way we make choices, which will change the choices themselves.  We can repent.  And when we repent, when we change our thinking and choices, our character is enlarged.

Repent and be baptized.  Repent, "the kingdom of God is at hand."  Repent!  Change the way you think!  Finally and ultimately let the Holy Spirit take control of your thinking.

Here are 10 ways you can have a good repentance.  10 aspects of a good repentance.  (I’ve listed them in the bulletin for you if you want to take notes.)

Number one, lean in to your repentance.  Do not make repenting more painful or more difficult by resisting.

You know what the number one reason is for resisting repentance?  Ego.  Your whole ego defense system that is probably screaming in your ears right now, "I am not that bad!"  Your whole ego inflation system with all its red lights flashing on your mother board, "God likes me a lot better than most of these other people."

The key to not resisting repentance because of your ego is not to kill your ego, but to bring it under subjection of the Holy Spirit.  Don't resist.  Give in.  Let go.  Lean in.  Embrace the new way of thinking with the Holy Spirit in your head and heart rather than your ego maniacal selves.

Number two is expect fear.  Repentance is a fear-full thing.  Mainly because changing the way you think, changing the choices you make is fear producing.  The operative word in that sentence is "changing."  That's what's scary about thinking differently.  You have to change.  Leaving the comfort of the familiar, even though it is a sick familiar, makes you afraid.

It is kind of the same dynamic as people who are abused.  People who are being abused would rather stay with an abuser because it is familiar, even though destructive, rather than move into the unknown and be free of abuse.  We don't want to think differently--repent--because it means moving into the unknown.

Number three, plan for your repentance.   What I'm getting at here is that change is the definition of life.  None of us can stop changes from happening.  The people who are not enjoying life are the ones who are digging in their heels and resisting change.  So plan on changing at strategic times in your life--plan for it before it hits you and you are forced to change.  Step back from the way you are presently thinking and plan on making changes in the choices you have made.

Number four, allow for grief.  Repentance means letting go of the old ways of thinking.  Repentance means letting go of bad choices we have made.  That means embracing loss, feeling grief.  Changing your thinking means admitting you have been wrong, you have made mistakes, a lot of which you have been reluctant to admit.  Looking at those wrongs and mistakes in the face and changing your thinking so you can move on creates a lot of personal sadness.  Realize that is going to wash over you when you repent.  Be ready for it.

Number five, follows number four:  get excited!  Free of those sick ways of thinking, imagine what your life is going to be like.  Imagine the directions God can now take you!!

Repentance is an adventure!!  It means getting to move forward, getting unstuck.  Repentance means the Holy Spirit is giving you a new destination--get excited about that new destination and what it means for your life.  Jesus says that repentance is about the kingdom of God.  That is your new destination.  Get excited about that!  Because that kingdom of God has to do not just with heaven after you die, but with life right now.  About having a great experience in life right now.  Get excited about your new kingdom life right here, right now when your thinking is changed.

Number six is get support in your repentance.  It seems like repentance is an individual journey.  Nothing is further from the truth.  That is what the church is at its best--a company of the repentant helping each other when we are grieving our repentance, when we are needing excitement about our repentance, when we are afraid and the change of thinking seems just to difficult.  That is why we are here.  We are all in this together.

Number seven is communicate well. Understand that you changing your way of thinking--your repentance--will impact others.  It is a basic systems understanding of how things work.  If one part of a social system changes, then all the other parts of that system have to adapt and change, too.

So, think of your family as a social system.  If you have been acting in a certain way within that family, if you have been demonstrating a peculiar way of thinking, and you suddenly decide to repent--to change your choices, to change your way of thinking--all the other people in your family will have to decide how they are going to react to your repentance.  (Certainly all of Bruce Jenner's family and friends are having to react to the changes he has made over the last few months.  But, sadly, those changes have nothing to do with a healthy repentance.)  Maybe it will cause the others in your social system to repent as well.  Or maybe it will cause them to try and sabotage your repentance so you will keep acting and thinking in the same old way, or be the same old person.

Thus, repentance, and changing the way you think, will challenge you to communicate with all those around you in clear ways so they know what is happening in your life.  Communicating well with others is strategic when going through a time of repentance.

Number eight is to expect detours.  Repentance involves being changed by the Holy Spirit.  God's Spirit, when you repent and change your choices, is going to take you in an entirely different direction.  Repenting and making new choices is going to force you onto some detours so you can travel on different roads.  The Spirit is going to take you where the Spirit wants you to go.  Expect the journey of thinking differently to shift as God adjusts your direction and the path you are on.

Number nine is to expect backsliding.  Changing the way you think and changing the choices you have made and the consequences of all that is going to be hard.  Repentance is hard work.

We were talking in Men's Bible Study this week about the part in the Sermon on the Mount about the two paths: one narrow and hard with few people on it, and one wide and easy with crowds of people on it.  We talked about this image of the wide and narrow roads with the question, "What if the two roads are side by side?"  You can look over and see the other road and the people on it.

So, let us say you are on the wide, easy road.  This road is smooth.  It is paved.  Maybe even carpeted.  There is plenty of room for everyone.  Walking on it is pleasurable.  You see your wide, smooth, populated road is heading for some mountains, but your road cuts right through the mountains.  No climb.  No effort.  No problems.

Now, let us say you decide to repent of your easy, wide road thinking.  You jump over to the narrow hard road.  Your new way of thinking is hard.  You are not only heading in the opposite direction, but the road is made up of loose scree gravel that you slip on all the time—like trying to walk on thousands of marbles; or there are boulders you have to jump from one to another; or fallen trees and debris you have to climb through and over where the road is lost for a while and you don't even know if you are on the road anymore.  You look ahead, you are coming up on some mountains, and your narrow, hard road does not have a nice cut through the mountains, but climbs in successive switch backs up the mountain.

You stop and think, "What am I doing?  Why am I on this harder road?  Even though I have repented, changed my thinking, and changed the choices I've been making, look what it has got me?  That other road I was on--that other way of thinking I was caught up in--was certainly easier.  And even though it was heading in the opposite direction, it was so much more comfortable and pleasurable."

Those are the thoughts of backsliding.  Because changing the way you think is not easy at all, you will be tempted to just go back to your old way of thinking--the way of misguided, ultimately destructive thinking--simply because it is more comfortable.  Be ready for it--the backsliding--once you have repented.

And lastly, number ten, have fun.  This goes along with number five, get excited.   Because repenting, changing the way you think is hard, there is more to celebrate along the way.  When the path you are on is easy and there are no worries, no difficulties, no challenges, there is also nothing to celebrate.  No victories of one way of thinking over another.  No joy in seeing the adventure of making new choices.  No smile because you know that your new way of thinking that your repentance has afforded you has the sense of rightness about it.  So have fun with all that, once you have repented.

You may be thinking that you have already repented and become a Christian.  That you don’t need to do much more with this whole repentance stuff because you already believe. And once you believed you were baptized and all that has been taken care of.

Repentance is certainly that—the one big thing you do to get yourself on the road with Christ.  But repentance is also what we do as a daily discipline when our thinking and choices get messed up and they need changing.  They need the Holy Spirit to come in and give us a check-up from the neck-up.  That’s the daily discipline of repentance.

The Beginning

"The Beginning"

Mark 1:1-3

In the hot early-morning hours of July 19 in a.d. 64, the city of Rome was preparing to celebrate a religious festival dedicated to Caesar as God. The climax of the festival would be a series of chariot races at the Circus Maximus, an arena featuring the largest wooden structure ever built. It was perched atop massive arcades of stone and could comfortably seat more than two hundred thousand people. Later it would be expanded to hold three hundred thousand.

From the northeast corner of the stadium, a column of smoke began to slowly rise from underneath the wooden superstructure. Fanned by an unusually strong wind, the fire quickly spread, engulfing the entire arena and quickly spreading to the surrounding tumbledown houses.

At first the authorities tried to battle the blaze with buckets of water, but they soon gave up. The first day the fire spread throughout the flat portion of the city. On the second day the wind shifted, driving the flames up into the hills. For five days the fire burned out of control until it reached the surrounding fields and firebreaks—buildings knocked down by Roman soldiers to hem in the fire.

Later that day the fire mysteriously broke out again and spread into previously untouched areas of the city. The second fire seemed to have been deliberately set on the property of Tigellinus, the captain of the Praetorian Guard. People became suspicious. The fire burned for two more days until finally it was exhausted.

Of the fourteen regions of the city of Rome, three were laid flat by the flames and seven more were virtually destroyed. Only four were untouched. The flames had been so hot they melted the marble of the temples. Scientists have since determined that the temperature of the firestorm reached eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

In the refugee camps surrounding the city, stories began to circulate about mysterious groups of men who were seen moving through the city, tossing lit torches into open doorways. When townspeople tried to stop them they replied, “We are under orders to allow the flames to spread.” The suspicions of the public quickly focused on Nero.

In the days following the fire he did his best to appear benevolent and supportive, lowering the price of grain and volunteering to clear the rubble at the city’s expense, but he was not able to shift the blame away from himself. Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all determined that Nero had ordered the city burned to make room for a personal building project. Though the tradition that he fiddled while Rome burned cannot be true (the fiddle had not yet been invented!), it is true that he was in Antium, his hometown, singing a song about the destruction of Troy when the fire broke out. Two days later, when he finally sailed back to his burning city, people overheard him commenting on the beauty of the flames.

--from Mark: The Gospel of Passion, Michael Card

This historical background is important to know, because it was happening while Mark wrote his gospel.  Mark was writing to the Christians in Rome, who were under tremendous persecution because of Nero's craziness.  In any kind of writing, you need to know the author, and you need to know the author's audience.  We will get to know more about Mark as we go along, but now you know to whom he was writing, and the kind of stress they were under.

So, let's get started.  My style will be to go verse by verse, looking at the text in detail, giving some Greek language background, and some of my own thoughts as we go along.

Verse One.  "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

John Mark (which was his full first name) was Jewish before following Christ.  So, any Jewish Christian people in Rome would have recognized the opening of this gospel:  "the beginning..."  It is how the book of Genesis starts out.  Mark does not have a birth story as Matthew and Luke does.  He just starts right in.  "This is the beginning...this is where it all starts out..."

You have to begin somewhere.  All great journeys begin with the first step.  All great novels begin with the first word.  All great voyages begin with that first push out into open waters.  If you want to accomplish anything, you can't just think about it, you have to do it.  You have to start.  Like our Bible reading plan.  Begin!  Tomorrow.  This is the beginning.

"Gospel" is a word that all the Roman readers would have known and understood.  Gospel is a word that means "glad tidings" or "good news."  It was news that was heralded throughout the empire.  The good news was sent by herald to all the corners of the Roman Empire.

Mark quotes from the Old Testament in verse 3 and uses the word "messenger."  Both the word "messenger" and "gospel" come from the same word.  Gospel is euangellion, and messenger is anngelos.  Anngelos is where we get our word "angel" from.  An anngelos is literally "one who is sent out."  An anngelos is sent with an euangellion--a messenger with an announcement of "glad tidings" and "good news."

An anngelos became a description of what it means to be a follower of Jesus--we are those whom Jesus has sent out.  If you've read the Gospel of John, this is one of the major themes.  Jesus is one who is sent by God.  And Jesus' followers are those who are sent by Jesus out into the world.

We are ones who are sent out.  What you need to remember about that is that you were not meant to hide out in a church, but are sent out into the world.  Your primary work as a follower of Christ is "out there."  And what you do when you go out there is to share glad tidings and good news.  Think about the situation I described in Rome.  It would have been natural for the believers to hide out, to stay out of sight.  But Mark is saying, No!  The task of the Christian is to move out, be sent, and spread the gospel, even when it is scary and dangerous to do so.  Isn't it great to be a carrier of good news.  You don't have to say, "I have some good news and some bad news."

A guy is in the hospital with two broken legs. The nurse comes in and tells him that there's good news and bad news.

The guy asks for the bad news first.

The nurse says, "We're going to have to amputate your legs."

Then the guy asks for the good news.

The nurse says, "The guy in the next bed over wants to buy your shoes."

No good news, bad news.  As one who is sent out by Christ you get to say, "I have some great news!"

Mark tells us that this good news is about "Jesus Christ, the Son of God."  Christ, of course, is not Jesus' last name.  It is a title.  It means Savior or Messiah.  By giving his readers these two titles for Jesus at the start, Mark is letting us know, this is what this story is about.  Mark split his Gospel in two parts.  The first half is about Jesus as the Christ.  This first part ends with chapter 8 where Jesus asked the disciples who people were saying who he was.  Then he asked the disciples who they say he is.  Peter makes his confession at that point saying, "You are the Christ."  The second part of Mark's story comes to the high point at the Cross where the Centurion says, "Truly this was the Son of God."

So, in the very first verse of Mark's story we find out who we are as believers, and who Jesus was as the one we follow:  We are the sent out ones, carrying only good news, and that good news is about Jesus who is the Messiah and who is the Son of God.  Pretty simple, right!?

Then Mark quotes scripture.  It's from Malachi 2 and 3.  From Mark's quote, the verse sounds positive.  But not in the prophet Malachi.  In Malachi the messenger is sent from God, presumably an angel, who will come like a "refiner's fire" who will refine like gold and silver is refined.   The messenger will come like a bleaching soap that takes out all stains and makes colors brilliant again.

And what will be refined and cleansed according to the context in Malachi?:  worship.  From the priests role in worship that has become lazy and uninspired; to the people who offer the bare minimum of themselves and their treasure; to the preaching that was calling bad, good, and good, bad; and all that made worship of the Almighty God seem trivial and unnecessary.  That's the context of the verse from Malachi that Mark uses at the start of his gospel.

Part of the reason this is important is because of what I described at the outset of this message--the whole attack upon Christianity by the Roman state led by Nero.  All that was false, all the destructive forces being brought down on the church, had to be purified away.  Mark is sounding the horn that, with the coming of Jesus, all that evil that is seeking to trivialize the work of God is about to be cleansed and burned away.

"...the voice of one crying in the wilderness..."  What is more of a wilderness at that time than the city of Rome?  Especially since most of it--10 of 14 districts--had been literally burned away.  The "voice" in Greek is an interesting word.  It can mean a clear, piercing tone.  Think of a singer holding one clear resonant note above all the music of the other singers or instruments.  Think of the piercing siren of the fire engine, that no matter how much more traffic noise there is, the siren can be heard above it all.  That's what the Greek means--that one tonal voice that cuts through all else and is heard above all else.  And what voice needed to be heard over all the insanity that was Rome at the time?  What voice needs to be heard above all the insanity that is our time in history?

"...crying..."  The Greek literally means to shout for help in a frantic way.  Someone asked the great preacher William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, why he shouted so much, and was so emotional while he preached.  He replied, "If I'm standing by the edge of a lake and someone is drowning out on the water, should I not shout so he can be saved?"

This is the voice, this is the crying, that Mark is trying to get our attention about at the very start of his gospel.  The world is a wilderness.  There are too many paths that are crooked that need to be straightened out.  There are too many roads filled with potholes and covered with debris, making them virtually untravelable.  Somebody needs to do something!  Something has to happen, and it has to happen now!

Mark is letting us know, that Somebody is coming.  That something is about to happen.  The paths that are needing straightening are not just in political situations like Rome.  The debris that is strewn across the road is not just twisted Roman morality in the society at large.  That crookedness and that debris is in every human life.  Every person needs to prepare themselves for who and what is about to come.

This is just the beginning, says Mark.  The Messiah of God, the very Son of God is on the way.  Mark doesn't present the meek and mild Jesus.  Mark portrays the coming Jesus as irritated, indignant, impatient, and angry.  In Mark, Jesus is someone who shocks us and may not meet our expectations as to how we think Jesus should be.  So be ready.  Have you made the way clear?

I'll tell you how, next week.