Sermon from August 26, 2001
A pattern of shocking facts marks the first 15 verses of Mark. They begin with an Old Testament quotation. Part of it comes from Isaiah and part from Malachi. The Isaiah quotation focuses on the splendor of the King. Malachi focuses on something unwelcome about the coming King of Israel. By putting this unexpected twist at the very beginning of his Gospel, Mark was preparing us for the tension of the story he was about to tell. We can see both sides at Jesus' baptism.

On one hand, the Spirit comes on Jesus, and the Father's voice calls Him my beloved son. On the other hand, what was Jesus doing at a sinner's baptism? Did He need to repent? Did He need forgiveness? It seems like a blunder to put Jesus in a setting that exposed Him to great misunderstanding. Including Jesus in a baptism for sinners had to be deliberate, but it gave an unwelcome twist to an otherwise splendid event.

The opening words of verse 12 express, if possible, something just as deliberate and just as unwelcome about Jesus. At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. It is the word sent that expresses deliberation, and what the Spirit sent Him there for completes our uneasiness. He sent Him to be tempted by Satan.

Then, John the Baptist, the divinely chosen forerunner of the Messiah, was arrested for unstated reasons. However, his imprisonment sent a signal to Jesus that it was time for Him to go public. He went public in Galilee with this inflammatory message: "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" The climactic moment in the life of Israel and in the life of humanity had arrived.

The word in Jesus' message that put the fat in the fire was the word near. If someone says that God's power to exercise authority over a nation's life is about to show itself in the public arena, the next thought in your mind should be, "Show me! Prove it!" Mark did so in a remarkable sequence of events that demonstrated Jesus' authority.

Chapter one reeals the splendor of His authority. He asked four fishermen to abandon their source of livelihood and become His disciples, and they did it. He persuaded and illumined the consciences of the congregation by His teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, and they were amazed. He broke the power of irratrional evil over a human personality by virture of His command, and his reputation spread like wildfire. By a touch He dismissed fever from a woman's body, and He got the undivided attention of an entire fishing village. He then declared that what He had done in Capernaum must not be confined to Capernaum; it served a model of what He had a mission to make happen elsewhere. In a great act of love and authority He touched and healed an unclean leper, who represented the dregs of Jewish society.

Beginning with the forgiveness of the paralytic in Mark 2, Mark crafted a sequence of five events that continued to demonstrate the splendor of Jesus' authority. However, in these five events conflict between Jesus and some of the religious authorities emerged and escalated dangerously. He forgave a paralytic his sins, and teachers of the law accused Him of blasphemy. After all, sins for God to forgive them had to be atoned for, and atonement took place in the temple with the appropriate sacrifices offered by the appropriate people in the prescribed way.

Then, they took Him to task for failing to keep a kosher table. When Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, He was defying what faithful and loyal Jews saw as an indispensable badge of Israel's unique relationship with God among the Gentiles.

Fasting also was part of an observant Jew's piety. More pointedly, John the Baptist and his disciples practiced fasting. Jesus and His disciples did not. Why not? Jesus responded that He had come to teach Israel a new and joyful way of being Israel.

Finally came accusations about Jesus and the Sabbath. In a world where pagan Romans constantly chipped away at the distinctiveness of Israel, a Jew could show himself faithful and loyal to Israel's unique calling by strict Sabbath observance. Along comes Jesus, and not only does He ignore the rules, He calls Himself Lord even of the Sabbath. Then, in the Capernaum synagogue, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and pushed some of His enemies over the edge. The Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

In chapter three matters come to a head. On one hand, huge crowds from all over Israel and even from outside Israel flocked to Him. He appointed twelve men to help Him organize His response to the crowds. Isaiah's splendor of the King could be seen all over, as His authority spread.

So could Malachi's unwelcome character of the King. Some religious authorities not only challenged Jesus' authority, they rejected it. Jesus for His part left the Capernaum synagogue, never to go there again. Antagonism toward Jesus expressed itself in His own family, who said He had lost His mind. No doubt they said that to protect Him from the official, Jerusalem verdict, which was that Jesus acted by the power of the devil. He warns the officials that by attributing His power to the devil, the Jerusalem delegation were not only not thinking straight, but they were also in danger of committing the unpardonable sin. He responds to His family's statement by saying that those who believe in Him do the will of God, and doing the will of God forms a family of faith that transcends the family of flesh and blood. Were the authorities right, or was Jesus right?

In this atmosphere of decision Jesus, like Jewish prophets of old, performs a symbolic act in chapter four. He tells the parable of the soils. Anyone hearing that parable for the first time would know every word He said and have no idea what He meant. The lack of understanding afflicts Jesus' closest followers as well as His severest detractors. Verse 10 says, When he was alone, the Twelve (His handpicked Apostles) and the others around him asked him about the parables. 

Jesus later explains that and two other parables, but first He explains why He spoke in parables in the first place. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"

Jesus was quoting Isaiah 6:9-10, which warned of judgment to come on the Israel of Isaiah's generation. By His authority He declares that for His generation to reject Him, as some offical Jewish leadership had done, would also bring judgment on them, as they were losing their power to discern what God was doing in Israel.

Chapter four ends with an event that serves as a kind of hinge that moves the story from issues of Jesus' authority to issues of His identity. The disciples' question in the terrible calm after the terrible storm at sea raises the question that occupies chapters 5-8: "Who is this?" 

Chapters 5-8 give the answer to that question. Chapter five points out that Jesus was a prophet, like the great prophets of Israel, doing the works of a prophet: He cleansed a demoniac, healed a woman by His touch, and raised a child from death. In chapter six at his hometown of Nazareth He called Himself a prophet. The murder of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas reminds readers that being a prophet could be hazardous to your health.

The miraculous feeding of the 5000 goes farther. It points to Jesus as the inexhaustible source of satisfaction for humanity's insatiable hunger for God and meaning and a hope that does not disappoint us. Jesus may have been a prophet, but He was more than any other prophet ever claimed to be.

Still, says chapter seven, Jesus spoke like a prophet. To show His continuity with the great Jewish prophets He again quotes Isaiah, and like Isaiah He makes a proper relationship with God an affair of the heart. Then, like Jewish prophets of old, He goes outside Israel and ministers to gentiles in the person of the Syro-Phoenician woman.

As the answer to the question, "Who is this?" moves toward its climax, Mark tells the story of the healing of the deaf-mute, and toward the end of chapter eight, the story of the healing of the blind man. As with all Jesus' miracles, we have to ask, "What purpose do these miracles serve?"

It is proper to say that Mark intended them as illustrations in the flesh of the miracle needed in the human spirit in order for people to see and hear and grasp the true identity of Jesus. The unusual difficulty of doing both miracles illustrates how hard it was for disciples and detractors alike to grasp His true identity.

The Pharisees asked for a sign, as if to say, "We really think you are disloyal to Israel's unique calling and are probably empowered by the devil, but you can prove us wrong by showing us a sign from heaven." What sign could possibly overcome their blind and deaf skepticism?

The disciples, who become more and more central in the events of Mark 5-8, seemed just as blind and deaf. "Do you still have no faith?" Jesus asked them after their harrowing escape from a deadly storm at sea. Mark says of them after Jesus walked to them on the water, They had no understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened. When the disciples failed to get the drift of Jesus' parable about the inside and the outside of a person, He said to them, "Are you so dull? ... Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean?'" And then, in a third ride across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus aimed eight rapid-fire questions to challenge the disciples' spiritual blindness and deafness.

In this context, Jesus Himself poses to them point blank the crucial qustion that has shaped Mark's entire narrative throughout chapters5-8: "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" "What, now, is your answer to the question you raised in the boat?"

Peter answered, "You are the Christ." "You are Mashiach." "You are the Messiah." They got it right at last. What Jesus said next must have stunned them. Verse 30 says, Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. How can Jesus be the Messiah, who is supposed to liberate Israel from her oppressors, and no one is supposed to know? Will He take care of the Roman problem in secret? Jesus' call for silence about His identity transitions Mark's story of Jesus to its third major section.

If chapters 1-4 focus on His authority, and chapters 5-8 focus on His identity, Mark 8:31-10:52 focus more narrowly on Jesus' true identity and on what that means for the identity of His followers. In verse 31 Mark gives the stunning reason for Jesus' call to silence, and we come to the great turning point in the Gospel of Mark. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

In Mark 8:31-10:53 Mark develops his theme of a suffering Messiah by repeating a threefold pattern three times in these chapters. Here is the pattern. Jesus' prediction of His suffering and death is always the first part of the pattern. We see it in 8:31, 9:31, and 10:33-34.

The second part of the pattern is always some inappropriate, uncomprehending response on the part of the disciples. In chapter eight Peter rebukes Jesus to His face for such a prediction. In chapter nine the disciples simply do not comprehend it and are afraid to ask Him about it; and in one of the great non sequiturs of Mark they discuss who among them will hold highest office when Jesus comes to political power. In chapter ten James and John continue that discussion, only they go behind the other disciples' backs and ask Jesus directly to give them places of highest honor.

The third part of the pattern is always Jesus' reply to the disciples' response in which He challenges, encourages, and teaches them what it means to be followers of a suffering Messiah. Then, a story or series of episodes follows, which reinforces what the disciples need to learn.

The key to the third part of the pattern comes in Mark 8:35. Jesus lays down there the radical principle of what it means to be a follower of a suffering Messiah. "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." In that statement He completely inverts the values of ordinary life. In chapters eight and nine, as we have seen, Jesus applies that inversion of values to specific areas of human experience. He continues to do so in chapter ten.

Conventional ways of thinking hit a wall when Jesus said He was a Messiah, who was doomed to die. In His replies to the disciples' inappropriate, uncomprehending responses to that prediction Jesus says in effect, "Now that I have your attention, let me remake your mind by showing you how the kingdom of God really works." Every inversion of values offers a bracing alternative to conventional ways of thinking.

Lose your life if you want to save it. Pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin. Be like a baby if you want to rule the world. Be poor if you want to be rich. Be last if you want to be great. People heard those words and wondered how they were going to rid Israel of the Romans. They did not quite see how Jesus' inversions of value were going to accomplish that. People still hear those words and wonder how they will cure our personal and social ills. Some hear those words and waken to a wonder they had missed only moments before.

In Mark 10:45 Jesus gives what may be the key to the interpretation of the Gospel. "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The fundamental idea in the word ransom is liberation. In some way not very clear to them or to us the rejection, suffering and death of Jesus would work for the liberation of many. Mark offers no comment on the meaning of these momentous words. In an act of great restraint he writes them and passes on, leaving us to take them into our heart and, like the Vigin Mary, to ponder them there as we pass into the final six chapters of Mark. There we read those events in Jerusalem that have forever changed the world. There we prepare ourselves to understand the climax of human existence and its significance for us as a congregation.