Sermon from March 25, 2001
We know the early history of Israel from the inside by the stories that have come down generation by generation. They are our stories too. They tell of David and Solomon and Israel's golden age. They tell of a long and terrible decline from that golden age. They tell of a day when the Babylonian armies of King Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem and destroyed it and deported the flower of Jewish citizenry into captivity. The kings were gone; the nation was gone; Jerusalem was gone. A long and sometimes tragic succession of nations began to rule Israel, even after Jews returned and rebuilt Jerusalem.

During the long and terrible decline from Israel's golden age, voices had spoken out that foretold the tragic history to which the decline would lead. But those voices had also prophesied a reversal of fortune and the return of a glorious age of Israeli ascendancy and worldwide blessing to follow. Such hopes came to be invested in a figure that did not yet exist. The Jews called him Mashiach, Messiah.

As those five centuries of occupation neared completion, Israel came to believe more strongly than ever that the words of the prophets were nearing fulfillment. God's kingdom and God's king were coming to vanquish, first the Greeks, then the Romans. Pretenders arose, who said they were Mashiach. But their failed attempts at liberation and the occasional, gruesome rows of crosses that gave the lie to their pretensions only made Jewish hopes of deliverance more fervent.

In this violence-tinged, revolutionary atmosphere John the Baptist's 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!" Could the moment have come when the promise of the prophets came to pass? Could this be the Man who would bring it to pass? Only if we read the Gospels against this background of revolutionary fervor and national hope can we appreciate more fully the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

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.

He asked four fishermen, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, to abandon their source of livelihood and attach themselves to Him as 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 irrational 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 as 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 another sequence of five events that continued to demonstrate the presence of God's kingdom in the daily affairs of Israel. 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.

Matters had come to a head. Some religious authorities not only challenged Jesus' authority, they rejected it. Jesus for His part left the Capernaum synagogue, never to go there again. However, 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.

So could Malachi's unwelcome character of the King. 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.

Jesus warned the Jerusalem delegation that by attributing His power to the devil, they were not only not thinking straight, but they were also in danger of committing the unpardonable sin. Far from being Satan's servant, He was Satan's superior. He responded 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, performed a symbolic act. He told 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 afflicted 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 explained the parable, but first He explained 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. To reject Jesus, as some official Jewish leadership had done, would also bring judgment on the Israel of Jesus' generation that was losing its power to discern what God was doing in Israel.

Chapter four ends with an event that serves as a kind of hinge for the story Mark has told. If the first four chapters have to do with the authority of Jesus, the next four have to do with His identity. I am sure you remember the disciples' question in the terrible calm after a terrible storm, when they asked of Jesus, "Who is this?"

Chapters 5-8 give the answer to that question. Jesus was a prophet, like the great prophets of Israel. First, He did the works of a prophet: He calmed the storm, cleansed a demoniac, healed a woman by His touch, and raised a child from death. Second, He thought of Himself as a prophet. 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.

Then, 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 ever claimed to be.

Still, Jesus spoke like a prophet. In fact, to show His solidarity with the great Jewish prophets He quoted Isaiah and applied His words to the Israel of His own day. Then, like Jewish prophets of old, He went outside Israel and ministered to gentiles.

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 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 not 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 question that has shaped Mark's entire narrative throughout chapters 5-8: "But what about you? Who do you say that I am?"

Peter answered, "You are the Christ." I do not suppose we will ever be able to have a widely accepted English version that will translate Peter's answer so that we can feel something of its original power. We would only have to change one word. Peter answered, "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. "You have to be kidding! You are the Messiah, who is supposed to liberate Israel from her oppressors, and no one is supposed to know? You are going to take care of the Roman problem in secret?" Mark gives the stunning reason for Jesus' call for silence about His identity in verse 31, 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.

Peter's response to Jesus just makes sense. "No, no, no! There must be some mistake! It has taken all this time and effort to get us to recognize your true identity. How can there be in the very next breath talk of death! How can you be the Messiah of Israel and be refused by the leaders of Israel? And what is this talk about rising again after three days?" The exchange between them here is rapid and raw.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Do you remember the Old Testatment quotation that opens the Gospel of Mark? Part of it comes from Isaiah and part from Malachi. The Isaiah quotation focuses on the splendor of the coming King. Malachi focuses on something unwelcome about Him; so unwelcome, to hear Jesus tell it, that it would lead to His death.

Also, calling Peter Satan recalls the forty days when the devil tempted Jesus. In light of His rebuke to Peter we have reason to believe the devil's aim all along was to deflect Jesus from death, although we are not told why. Peter, unwittingly, took the devil's side within Jesus' inner circle.

With Jesus' prediction of death, there comes back to mind His enigmatic saying in Mark 2:19-20: "How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? ... But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them." And we remember the sinister meeting when the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus," (Mark 3:6).

Jesus' prediction of rejection, torture and death pulled the disparate strands of Mark's story together with unexpected force. We now have a powerful clue to Jesus' frequent, odd attempts to silence people, when they wanted to talk about Him. At least half a dozen times He has told people not to say anything about Him.

I am satisfied that He did that, because nothing they could say would do justice to the mystery of His suffering. How can anyone even guess that the central burden of His soul was His own necessary rejection, suffering and death? Every well-meaning burst of public praise, every demonic confession of His power would only make it harder, when the time came to disclose His true identity.

And that brings us back to the question that has filled Mark 5-8. "Who is this?" Only this time we ask the question with this weird prediction of death hanging like a cloud over everything the disciples knew about Jesus. "What kind of man would claim to be the Messiah and then turn around and predict abject failure?"

Beginning with this final episode in chapter eight and throughout chapters 9-10, Mark tells His story so as to answer more fully that question. "Who is this?" This is Jesus the Messiah, but He is to be a suffering Messiah.

Nothing about all this falls on our souls with such mystery as the unmistakable implication of Jesus' last statement to Peter. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." If it seems confusing for Jesus to style Himself as a Messiah who is doomed to die, how are people going to understand when He says that His suffering is God's idea? What is going on in the mind of God?

Jesus' message that underlies everything in Mark proclaimed: "The kingdom of God is near." As we saw many months ago, that means: "If you want to see what God is like, watch Jesus." So long as that meant brilliant teaching and miracle working power, it was okay. But how does the prediction of suffering and death reveal God to us? This is the mystery of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This, I suspect touches the mystery that lies at the heart of humanity.