Does It Work?

"Does It Work?"

Mark 4:26-34

What, of all your things, is completely trustworthy?

Who, of all the people you know, is completely trustworthy?

What possession do you have that has lived up to all of its promise and potential?

Who, of all the people you have known, has lived up to all their promise and potential?

Answer:  Nothing in this world and no one is completely trustworthy.  Nothing and no one has, or ever will, live up to their promise and potential.  Including yourself.  If you think otherwise, you are destined to be constantly disappointed.  At best, we are only partially trustworthy.  At best we will live up to only a portion of our promise and potential.  And so will everyone and everything else.

Sorry to have to tell you that.  But you already knew it. 

The problem is, we have to go through our daily lives having to at least act like we trust in the stuff and people around us.  Every time we sit in a chair, we have to trust it will hold us and not break apart.  Every time we get in our vehicles and turn the key, we are trusting the engine will roar to life and not go, errr, errr, errr, or make no sound at all.  Every person we relate to in our business dealings each day has to be trusted to not attempt to take advantage of us.  Every person we tell a secret to, or share something personal we have to trust they will keep it and honor it.

One of the Wichita TV stations had that segment during their news, called “Does It Work?”  Since I don’t have TV, I don’t know if they do that anymore.  They check out products that are advertised, sometimes with outlandish claims.  Are the products trustworthy?  Do they live up to their advertised potential and promise?  I’d like to know what the percentage of products they find that don’t.

It’s all enough to make you wonder if you can fully trust anything in this life.  If part of being a human means developing a healthy skepticism.  So when something reliable and trustworthy comes along, would we actually recognize it?  If there was promise and potential, would we think to ourselves, This actually looks like something real with real power in it that I can trust!

I think that is what Jesus is trying to get the disciples to do by telling them this parable about the real and mysterious power of the seed.  We saw last week in Jesus’ other parable about the sower, the seed, and the different soils, the seed represents the Word.  The Word of God—the Gospel.

The disciples have to learn to trust the power of the message they are going to be taking out and spreading.  The disciples have to believe in the power of God’s Words, and that those Words will yield results in time.  Will they trust the very nature of the gospel they are preaching?  That’s what people will be looking for as they listen to the disciples.  People will be looking into the faces of the disciples, not hearing the message as much as they are trying to see if the disciples really believe it themselves.

That is the main thing people will be looking for as we share our witness of God’s Word.  Has the apparent power of the seed—God’s Words—been planted in our lives and have we given those seeds adequate time, so their mysterious power is really in us?  Do we trust the seed—the self-contained power of the Word?  Can others see it in our faces and hear it in our voices?

Yet, yet, even when we realize the potency and reliability of the seed—God’s Word—the parable also tells us we have very little control over what happens with that seed.  There are only two parts of the growth of the Word in another's life that we participate in:  the planting and the harvesting.  The rest that is expected of us is just letting God work, and trusting that God will make it work.  We plant, we watch and wait. We have patience and trust because it is mostly God’s work--it's not anything we do.  There isn’t anything we can do to speed it up or slow it down.  Everything happens in God’s own timing and by God’s own accord.  And God is wholly trustworthy.

One of the points Jesus is making in the parable, also, is there's a progression to the planting and growth of the Word.

First, there is the planting.  You have to plant something if you want anything to grow.  It sounds fairly obvious.  It’s like the people who hope they would win the lottery but never buy a ticket.  First things first:  You have to put the seed in the ground.  You have to share God's word in the people and situations close to you.

There's faith involved in planting.  I’ve seen it in so many farmers.  No matter what happened last year, or for many bad years in a row, farmers still plant when it’s time to plant.  The faith comes in because if you plant the seed, you expect something to grow.  Do you believe in the hidden power of the seed in the soil?

The second stage, according to Jesus’ parable is the waiting.  This is the time of unspoken anticipation.  Will it be a good or bad year?

I’ve already talked in the past about my son’s spiritual journey.  As I mentioned, he is currently outside the church.  I know I planted the seed in him as he was growing up and going to church every Sunday.  He knows what it’s all about.  He has year after year of experience.

In the anticipation stage, the farmer/gardner wonders if, once the seed is planted, anything will come up.  I have wondered that at times about Ryan.  I know the seed is in there.  He has heard God’s word.  He has even responded to it when younger.  I have seen the growth.  And I have seen how he pulled the plant out by the roots and tossed it aside.  So I continue to wait with anticipation.  I have seen a little green tip poking out of the disrupted soil.  He is open to God.  But he detests anyone who is arrogant enough to think they speak for God and know exactly what God is thinking and wants for everyone else.  We will see.  I don't have any control over that, says Jesus.  I must be content and patient to let God work, and trust that God is working.

The third stage is the appearing of the blade.  That appearance brings the initial relief, because something is happening.  The mystery and power of the seed in the soil is working.  Life is breaking forth and appearing.

As the plant grows and matures it produces a head.  Hope comes with the appearance of the head.  It is the hope that there will be some kind of production.  Something will be gained.  The soil and the plant have done their work.  There is grain in the head.  There will be a return on your investment.  But hope and anticipation are juggled with the hard lessons of life:  hail, wheat rust, corn smut, green bugs, and on and on.  You hope for the best while silently preparing for the worse, if it happens.

Then comes the harvest.  There is an end, a culmination, a consummation.  The seed of God’s Word is moving towards that end—the end which Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.  Remember, at the start of the parable, Jesus said this whole seed planting process is like the Kingdom of God.  That we will find out what the Kingdom of God is and is all about if we pay attention to how things grow.

There is also the element of mystery in the parable as to how all this works:  "...the seed sprouts and grows--he (the farmer) doesn't know how,” said Jesus.

In the Kingdom of God, things happen but we won't be able to understand it.  We will have more questions than answers.  There will be more that we don't know than know--even when it's happening right in front of us.  We will see it happening.  But it will be a complete mystery.

Thus our comfortability with the things of God will depend on our comfortability with mystery and the unknown.  Like I said, we have two parts in the process.  We get to plant the seed.  We get to help harvest what has grown.  But everything in-between, that God will do, we will have nothing to do with, because it’s beyond us.  Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.”  That’s a great way to look at the whole mystery of what is needed to make things grow.  That is all that God has created and provided, so that when we do our little job of planting the seed, all has been prepared and made ready for growth to happen.

That is the trustworthiness God has created into the world, when God created the world.  It is the only aspect of this life that is trustworthy and reliable, where promise, potential, and God’s power all come together, and life happens.  What a great mystery.

Jesus didn't come, therefore, to bring answers and make everything known and easy.  Our relationship with God can grow--but we won't know how that happens.  If we don't know how it happens, we won't be able to explain it very well other than "put a seed in the ground and watch what happens."

What Happened Between The Questions?

"What Happened Between The Questions?"

Mark 4:1-20

Turn in your Bibles to verse 13.  (Don't just stare at me; grab a pew Bible if you didn't bring yours and look up Mark 4:13.)

OK.  There are two questions in verse 13.  First question:  "Don't you understand this parable?"

Jesus is talking to the 12 disciples.  We looked at that story last week--the choosing of the 12 disciples from the 70 who were following him.  There are a bunch of other people standing around listening in, but mainly this question is being asked to the 12 specially chosen, sharp, on top of it disciples.  "The few; The brave; The strong."

Jesus had just told them a parable.  A story with a point.  We will get to that parable in a few moments.  After telling the parable, Jesus asked these 12 chosen apostles if they understood the parable.  Did they get it?

Then comes the second question:  "How, then, will you understand any parable?"  Something happened between those questions.  What do you guess it was?  Based on the second question, what did all of these 12 sharp disciples answer to the first question?

To a man, they must have all shook their heads NO.  No! Jesus, we do not understand your story.  We do not get it.  We are sorry but it just went right over our heads.  Because, if they had all shook their heads YES, that they did understand the parable, Jesus wouldn't have had to ask the second question.

What would you assume was the tone of voice Jesus used when asking these questions?  Yes, you might assume angry, frustrated, exasperated.  You might think it was the kind of tone Jesus would use that made it sound like he was wondering if they were ever going to get it.

But we are going to have to pay attention to detail here to answer that question.  Look back at verse 1.  Where does it say they are when this parable was told?  "...beside Lake Galilee."  What kinds of people, and what kinds of professions of people would you expect to find beside the lake?  Fishing people!  Not farmers.  What was the profession of most of the disciples?  Fishermen!  Not farmers.

It looks to me that Jesus is messing with the disciples.  And they better get used to it, because all the rest of the parables coming their way in quick succession in this chapter are about farming.   Therefore, I think Jesus' tone of voice is more playful with a rye smile.

Remember last week I told how Jesus was going to train the apostles how to teach and preach.  By telling these parables, these stories, he is not only teaching them what to preach, but how to preach.  How to stretch their listeners minds--to make them think for themselves.  The Pharisees spoon fed all the answers of the great questions to the people.  People didn't have to think when listening to the Scribes and Pharisees.  The people just had to memorize the answers.

But Jesus wanted the apostles to teach with a twinkle in their eye, and leave their listeners with a sense of mystery and a sense of humor.  Again, make people use their brains, so they can come to that "aha!" moment with an understanding smile on their faces.

OK?  Let's get to the parable itself.  Put yourself in the crowd, or as one of the apostles.  Jesus just sat in the boat to teach, because all Jewish teachers sat when they taught.  As you are preparing to listen, what are you expecting to hear?  Something really religious!  Some good words full of religious meat and potatoes!  Some hard rules and regulations that are going to be impossible to follow.  That is what almost everyone is expecting.

By teaching this way, one of the first things you learn about Jesus is that he is not going to meet your expectations.  Jesus isn't going to teach, or speak to people like all the other Bible teachers did.  If the people had some idea of how they thought Jesus was going to preach and teach, those ideas quickly went out the window.

Jesus opened his mouth and told about a farmer tossing seed on farm land.  He tells about what happens to that seed.  He finishes up his little agricultural lesson with, "Listen, then, if you have ears."  Then he just sat there in the boat smiling.  He was apparently done.  Look at the next line in the story.  Verse 10:  "When Jesus was alone, some of those who had heard him came to him with the twelve disciples and asked him to explain the parable."  Why did they ask him about the parable?  They did not get it!

Look at the parable.  It starts at verse three.  Does it start out like other parables where Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is like..."  Nope.  Is God mentioned at all?  Nope.  Is there anything theological or religious in this parable.  Nope.  Is the law of Moses or the Ten Commandments mentioned?  Nope.  For all intents and purposes it is a story about a farmer who flung his grain seed all over the place, and what happened to it after it landed and began to grow.  That's it!  What are you supposed to do with that?

So let's not be too judgmental towards the twelve and the other dense listeners.  If we are honest, we would be right there scratching our heads with them.  Between those two questions of Jesus I drew your attention too at the start, you would also be shaking your heads, Nope, when Jesus asked the disciples his first question.

It is one of the hardest things I wrestle with when I write my children's stories.  I want to write them like parables.  Like Jesus' parables.  Not overtly religious.  But then I worry that you all, especially parents of the children will think, "What did that have to do with anything religious?"  And, "What if my kid asks what Pastor Steve's story meant, and I don't know how to answer?"

So I have been making them more overtly religious, so you have no questions.  But I think I am going to stop that.  By telling parables like this, Jesus was giving his listeners responsibility to figure them out.  Jesus gave them ownership of his parables so they would have to use their heads and figure it out themselves.  Jesus makes his listeners, partners with the parable, without telling them what it was all about.  Or, I suppose, they could let the parable go in one ear and out the other and choose not think.  We could all choose that.

So what does this parable about scattered seed on different soils mean?  Fortunately, Jesus told the 12 disciples what it meant.  And why did Jesus do that?  (Because they didn't get it!)  This is one of the only parables that Jesus told the 12, or anyone, what he intended his listeners to figure out on their own.

I think Jesus told the disciples, this time, what the parable meant, because he wanted them to know how he thought.  Jesus thinks in pictures.  Jesus' mind works by way of simile and metaphor.  Jesus makes connections between the images he draws with his words and God's truth.  So if you are going to get Jesus, you are going to have to understand simile:  This is like that.  But you are going to have to use your brain to figure that out.

Once the disciples understand that, then when they hear Jesus speak in parables, they can start trying to make the connections in their own mind.   If you are a very literal, black and white person, like some of the disciples were, you are going to have a hard time understanding Jesus and his teaching.

Jesus starts in on the explanation of the parable at verse 14:  "The sower sows the word."   OK, what does Jesus mean by "the word"?  In Greek, it is the logos.

It is the same word John used at the start of his gospel:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  In the way John is using logos, he is referring to Jesus.

But Jesus is using logos differently, I think.  In the parable I think Jesus means words or thoughts.  The sower is sowing words and thoughts.  But whose words and thoughts?  I would assume God's.  The sower is sowing God's words and thoughts.  The sower may be Jesus himself.

Where is the sower sowing God's words and thoughts:  into the soil.  Into different kinds of soil.  Soil has to do with the world.  Into all the actual situations where people live in the world.  Into all the conditions of humankind.  Into the very people who must live life in those conditions.  As God's words and thoughts are sown into each of those conditions, there are very different ways those God words and God thoughts are received.

And if you were listening well, you realized one of the main points of the parable is the seed--God's words, God's thoughts, God's message--will fail to take in more people than it succeeds in.  There are more ways to resist God than there are to embrace God.  It's kind of like the narrow road and the wide road that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew.  Just a few get it.  And a whole lot of others don't.  I'd like to say you can't resist God.  ("Resistance is futile.")  But you can.  It's the one power you have over God.  You can say "no" to God.  You can say "no" to the words and the message God is trying to plant in you.  And this parable is telling the disciples (and us) there are lots of ways we use to do that. That is a sad and sobering thought.

Let's look at the ways we resist God.

The first human condition into which God's thoughts are sown is the life where Satan's evil is active.  Peter warned the believers in his first letter about the tactics of the devil:  "Keep alert.  Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).  The word "devour" in Greek literally means "to eat in one bite."

Combining Jesus' and Peter's picture here, Satan isn't just trying to eat up the words and thoughts of God so they can't implant themselves into a person's life.  Satan is also trying to devour you.  By eating up God's words and thoughts, Satan has got you, and you will be eaten.  It is an either/or picture here.  You are either letting God's words and thoughts take root in your life; or, you are letting Satan devour those words and thoughts, and you as well.

The second type of life into which the sower sows God's words and thoughts is the rocky soil, or the life of turmoil.  There are those whose lives are hard.  It feels like they are constantly walking on sharp gravel with bare feet.  Some people are.  They are dealing with hard situations, and no one really knows or understands.

There are also some who interpret their life circumstances as gravel-ly and difficult, but they aren't interpreting the events in their lives clearly and correctly.  As long as they can keep interpreting life as being hard, unfair, and the deck is stacked against them, "woe is me," then they can arouse people's sympathy, and play the victim.

Into both of these kinds of human conditions, God words and God thoughts are sown.  The problem those God words and God thoughts encounter is shallowness.  No depth.  Both the realities of a hard life, and the victim mentality, makes everything feel like it is on on the surface.  There is very little for God's words and thoughts to grab hold of because of over sensitivity.  Then, when one more bad thing happens, or one more assumed bad thing, that's it.  They are done with whatever God is really trying to do by getting some of his words into their thin soiled lives.

Thirdly, are the thorns.  Growing up in Seattle, blackberries grow wild everywhere. I miss them this time of year, because now is when they are ripening.

But, now no more!  A couple of years ago I bought two small blackberry bushes and planted them in the backyard.  They started out as two little vines sticking out of the ground.  Now, they are all over the place.  I'm going to have a bumper crop of berries!!  I won't have to pay three bucks at Dillons for a little container of 10 or 15 berries!

The berry vines are all over my clothes line.  New vines are literally popping out of the ground everywhere.  They are quickly getting out of control.   That's what Jesus is describing by calling the thorn bushes worries and desires.  You plant one little desire, one little worry in your life and soon it's taken over everything about your life.  Even God's Message doesn't stand a chance against that kind of blackberry bush, over grown worries or desires.

Lastly, there are "good soil" people, where God's message thrives.  The thing to notice here, and with the other types of soil, is that the seed that is sown in good soil not only grows, but it produces more.  That's the purpose of the seed. You know God's word is having it's effect, because, once planted, it is making more.  It is fruitful.  It is productive.  It's all about what you do with what God has planted in you.  And how you allow it to be productive in you.

The other types of soil don't work because nothing is ever produced from the seed.  It doesn't grow and make more seed.  It doesn't yield anything in the lives into which it is planted.  Is there too much evil in your life that devours God's message?  Are you too shallow and obstructed to allow God's message to really, effectively take root?  Are you letting too much other stuff grow up in your life, and God's message just isn't given room?  Or are you making sure you are giving God the best place for his message to take root and be productive?  Is the seed (God's words and thoughts) making more seeds?

"Do you understand this parable?"

A Good Day To Do Good

"A Good Day to Do Good"

Mark 3

It must have been so hard to be Jesus.  Think about what it must have been like.  If Jesus were just the promised Messiah, without all the Son of God stuff, he would still have a hard road to travel.  There were all kinds of people claiming they were the long awaited Messiah.  Jesus was just one among many.  He would have had to do something to make his voice distinct to rise above all the other lunatic voices making the same claim.

Reading the gospels, especially as we are here with Mark, there is no mention of other people claiming to be the Messiah.  But because of historical records we know there were quite a few others.  And some of them were fairly popular.

I wonder if some of the other Messiah wannabes had a group of religious leaders following them around like Jesus had.  Were there some of the other candidates for Messiah more popular with the religious leaders.

It’s kind of like all the Republican candidates who have announced they are running for President.  This week, amongst all the contenders, Donald Trump and that thing he has on his head, surged to second most popular in the field.  All the news feeds were trying to figure out why his sudden popularity.  So was I.

Maybe the same thing was going on with Jesus amongst all the other Messiah contenders.  Jesus was one of the more popular Messiah claimants.  But with popularity comes scrutiny.  Imagine Jesus trying to get first his nation’s attention, and from there, the world’s attention.  Jesus has a transforming message, a galvanizing mission.  He is trying to change the world.

But all anyone in authority wants to do is argue with him, scrutinize him, and call into question everything he does.  How frustrating.  In this chapter we have stories about how those religious authorities begin plotting to kill Jesus because he healed a man’s withered arm.  We will look at a story about how, in contrast to the religious leaders, the people and even some demons get who Jesus is.  We will see how Jesus begins to adjust his training of the disciples.  We will find out that Jesus’ own family, including his mother, Mary, think he is “out of his mind.”  And how some of the religious teachers think Jesus is the devil himself.

As I quickly take us through these stories, I want you to imagine what Jesus is feeling, having to deal with all this misinformation and total lack of understanding of who he is.  OK?

First, the healing of the man with the withered hand.  This is one of those shady instances where something doesn’t quite smell right.  Jesus is back in Capernaum.  It is worship day—Sabbath services.  The religious law experts are there.  And there just happens to be a guy with a withered arm there.  Hmmmm.  And Mark’s story says the religious law guys “…were watching to see whether Jesus would heal him on the sabbath, so that they could bring a charge against him.”

Because the Pharisees wanted to “bring a charge against him (Jesus)“ it is not a stretch to think that the Pharisees brought the man with the withered (Greek = shriveled, growth stunted) arm.  The Pharisees most likely enticed the man, and told him that Jesus would heal him.  Which of us would turn down the possibility to have a long time birth defect, shriveled arm, be healed and finally have two good arms and hands?  We wouldn’t know that we were just being used in a plot of the religious law guys.  Doing the healing is exactly what they wanted Jesus to do in order to break the sabbath law.  The Pharisees set Jesus up with the withered hand man.

Jesus sees through the flimsy plot.  In the previous chapter we saw how Jesus read the Pharisee’s minds.  Didn’t they learn a lesson from that.  So Jesus tells them exactly why he is going to heal the man’s arm.  Jesus’ reason for healing the man with the withered hand, on the Sabbath, was that evil never takes a day off.  Evil doesn't care if there is a whole slough of Sabbath laws or not.  Evil is going to just keep on pressing itself on people's lives.  So, does that mean good has to take a holiday, just because of a bunch of man made rules?  In Jesus’ estimation, it is always a good day to do good, and it doesn't matter if it is the Sabbath or not.

None of the Sabbath laws that Jesus had pushed in his face were in the Bible.  There is just the general law in the 10 Commandmants about keeping the Sabbath holy.  That's all that is in the Bible.  All the Sabbath laws that were pushed at Jesus were in the Halakah (Mishnah) which were informative teachings, compiled by the Rabbi's, about the 10 Commandments.

In the Halakah or Mishnah the only kind of healing that could be done on the Sabbath was that which would save a person or animal's life.  All else was prohibited.  So Jesus could have waited until the next day when the Sabbath was over to heal the man.  But Jesus went ahead and did it any way, flaunting the healing in the face of the Pharisees present, who set it all up in the first place.

Also, a huge percentage of the regular Jews in the Pews didn't follow any of the Sabbath laws either.  So why weren't the Pharisees going after all them?  Why this intensity of hate leveled at Jesus?  Especially at the end of the story where they "right away started making plans to kill Jesus."  For healing a man's hand!!  Why?

Jesus was angry at their “stubbornness”,(“obstinate stupidity” REB) a word in Greek which means "covered with a callous".  You only get a callous in a place where there is constant rubbing and pressure.  To create a callused heart would be to constantly rub it up against some kind of pressure.  So what is that in the Pharisees heart?  What is that in our hearts that we keep rubbing up against causing an unnatural hardness towards God?

The next story has to do with the large crowds following Jesus.     Maybe this is the answer to the question we raised in the previous story about why the Pharisees wanted to find some way to kill Jesus.

Huge crowds are pressing in upon Jesus to the point that he has to have a boat standing by for him to get in, just in case.  Jesus is popular.  "All these crowds came because they had heard what Jesus was doing" (vs. 8).  These people's hearts were not callused.  They were open, pliable, desiring, not fighting against anything, but embracing Jesus and what he was about.  Certainly the Pharisees never had that kind of response to their teaching.  No crowds were thronging to hear them, nor could any of them do what Jesus was doing.

If they were going to keep their foothold on the people's religiosity, they would have to get Jesus out of the way by either discrediting him in the people's eyes, or physically eliminating him.

The other contrast in this part of the story is that the demons recognize who Jesus really is ("You are the Son of God!"), but the religious guys, the Pharisees don't get that, don't see that.  Mark is very intentional in putting these two stories side-by-side to make sure we get what is going on.  Some get it (the ones who shouldn't but do) and some don't (the ones who should but don't).

At this point in Jesus' ministry there about 70 disciples--according to Matthew's gospel.  Some of those Jesus chose personally, and some would have chosen Jesus because they were attracted by his teaching and miracles.  Imagine having 70 people following you around wherever you went, just waiting for the show to start, hanging on every word, and some of those thinking you were going to throw the Romans out of the region.  There were probably as many reasons people had for following Jesus as there were people following him.

Out of that 70, Jesus shifted his own ministry direction, and chose 12.  Before, Jesus had that large group of disciples, tromping up the countryside behind him, going, listening, learning.  But now that Jesus is back, his strategy of ministry is shifting.  He picked out 12 from the 70.  From here on out, most of his time will be concentrated on the 12, because they are the ones who will have to carry on his work when his life is ended.

I have known ministers who use this model for ministry as well.  These Pastors spend their whole time training and equipping the Elders and Deacons to do all the ministry of the church.  These kinds of Pastors don't do much with the people in the congregation, making sure the Elders and Deacons are trained to do that.  How many of you would sign up to be an Elder or Deacon, knowing so much more would be expected of you?

Especially when you notice what Jesus was training the 12 to do:  preach, and cast demons out of people.   The preaching isn't all that bad.  A number of you have tried it.  Even though public speaking is the number one social fear, you who have tried it have done admirably well.

It is the demon stuff that would be scary to me.  I'd rather sing the National Anthem at the NCAA championship basketball game, or the Super Bowl, than try my hand at an exorcism.   I'd like to know how Jesus trained the 12 to do an exorcism.  Like I said, learning to preach Jesus-style would be easy.  You think up a few fun story-parables, throw them out there to people, and leave them scratching their heads wondering what it was all about.  If an exorcism goes wrong, you could get seriously hurt.

Then there is the little side story, that will have another piece to it at the end of this chapter.  Jesus' family shows up.  They want to haul him out of there because they think Jesus is not just rowing the boat with one oar, but that he is pretending to row the boat with no oars.  They think he's totally nuts.  Looney.  We don't know who from his family has come, at this point.  We find out at the end of this chapter that his mother and his brothers are there.

So much for Mary "treasuring all these things in her heart" like she did during the birth story.  Now she thinks Jesus is riding his camel right for the cliffs and she's trying to pull him off before he totally goes over the edge.

I felt that when I knew I was heading for the ministry.  My father wanted none of it.  His accountant mind couldn't make sense of someone getting one of the hardest Master's Degrees there is, and then getting paid a pittance for all that education.  Plus he never really got the whole Jesus thing anyway.

And it's like the whole family relaxes when one of the kids goes into the ministry--"Ahhh, Steve's gone and done it; I don't have to be the one to become a priest, minister, chaplain.  I won't have to be the one who sacrifices myself.  Steve's done it for us; good for Steve.”

But there's a limit.  I can be religious, but I can't be too religious, or then I'm no longer the sacrificial son, but the looney bin son who has let all that religion go to my head.  No one in my family understood why I was going into the ministry.  To some extent, I didn’t either.  I didn’t have a choice.  God got a hold of me when I was in 7th grade and said, “This is what I want you to do.”  What do you say to that.  And if you are a parent, what do you say to your seventh grade son who tells you God told him he was supposed to be a minister?  I know what it is like for me and some of my fellow pastors.  I can't imagine what it was like for the Savior of the world.

What is sad and a little tragic, in the long line of people who just don't get who Jesus is, at this early point in his ministry, you can put his family right up there with them.

Then comes this story that there were some Scribes also there, scrutinizing Jesus.  As I said last week, the Scribes were like the seminary professors in the Jewish religious system.  And these Scribes are telling people that Jesus is really the “prince of demons.”  That Jesus is able to do everything he does because he is in charge of all the demons.

Jesus turns their logic against them:  “Why would I be casting out demons if I was the prince of demons?  Wouldn’t I want the demons to stay in people?  If I was Satan, why would I work against myself?”

Like I said at the start, It must have been so hard to be Jesus.  The religious leaders want to have him killed.  His family thinks his biscuit isn’t quite done.  And the religious teachers think he is the prince of darkness in the flesh.  But the demons know exactly who he is:  “You are the Son of God.”  I wonder if Jesus was thinking, “This is going to be a lot harder than I expected.”

And the question we need to ask is, What group would we have been in?  We are looking at Jesus from this side of the Cross and Resurrection and our own coming to faith in Christ.  But what if we were on the other side of all that?  Who would Jesus be to us then?

As I’ve said all along in this series, Mark is going to keep asking us to deal with that question:  Who is Jesus, and what am I to think of him?