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.
No comments:
Post a Comment