Sermon from January 28, 2001
I have a question for you. Is your status at BVBC that of a spiritual refugee or that of a spiritual immigrant? Humor me. There may be something solid here. A refugee is fleeing from danger in his native land. A refugee, as the name implies, seeks refuge in another country. If all goes well, refugees may be able to return to their native land. America played host to a famous Russian refugee, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has since returned to his homeland.

An immigrant may or may not be fleeing danger, but his intentions are fundamentally different from those of a refugee. An immigrant intends to leave his country of birth and become a citizen of a new country. The new country offers safety or greater opportunitiees or reunion with loved ones. The United States is a nation of immigrants from all over the world, who call it home and have worked to make it great.

Now, a refugee might very easily take on immigrant status. When we lived in Portland, our church ministered to dozens of refugees from the former Soviet Union. When they fled the USSR, they ended up in a transit camp in Rome. From there they might go to any country that would grant them asylum. For the people we came to know the journey brought them to Portland.

The Social Security Administration provided relief for them in many forms for their first year in this country. It became an important next step for many of them, perhaps all of them, to apply for U.S. citizenship. They became immigrants.

Using this distinction, let me pose my question to you again. Is your status at BVBC that of a spiritual refugee or that of a spiritual immigrant? Have you come here to find refuge from a brutal personal situation or from the moral disintegration that has begun in our culture or from another church situation? Or have you come to make this your home?

About four years ago, a couple came to BVBC from another church where they faced a situation that had become unbearable for them. We took them in, ministered to them, and 18 months later they returned to their original church and are there today and very happy. And we rejoice with them. They were spiritual refugees.

During our first pastorate in New York, ten families from four different churches started our church outside Syracuse. Two families came from a church five or six miles away. The other eight came from churches that were ten or more miles away from where we planted the church. They came to stay. Today, three of those ten families still call that church home. They were spiritual immigrants.

Plenty of people have fled to a church for refuge, only to find a home there for the rest of their lives. Some of you here, I believe, would be glad to testify to that. The point of this cumbersome word picture is that immigrants come to stay. They make a home, make sacrifices to contribute to their new homeland, and endure the storms that assail their new homeland.

If you have found BVBC to be a place of refuge, we are glad you are here. You can stay as long as it takes to find personal healing or restoration with the church home you left. We also invite you to take on immigrant status. We hope you have come to stay. We are in fact a church of spiritual immigrants. Our text today in the Gospel of Mark presents us with an episode that shows why being in a church to stay matters so much.

It is important to remember the episodes immediately preceeding this one. The end of chapter seven tells the story of the healing of the deaf-mute. As with all Jesus' miracles, we have to ask, "What spiritual reality does this miracle point to?" In the case of this particular miracle it seems to say something about how people responded to Jesus.

For example, among disciples and detractors alike, you can make a case that Jesus' words and actions were falling on deaf ears. They did not understand. Their hearts were hard. We have all had that experience. We say, "I talked myself blue in the face, but that guy just didn't get it." We say about ourselves, "What was wrong with me? I heard the message over and over. Why did it take so long for me to get it?"

It seems to me to be a proper interpretation of this miracle to say that Mark included it here as an illustration in the flesh of the miracle needed in the human spirit in order for people to hear and take to heart what was going on in the words and deeds of Jesus. We saw how the unusual difficulty of the miracle illustrates how hard it can be for the message of Christ to get through to people.

We have seen the same difficulty several times with the shaky-faith, nerve-frayed, hard-hearted disciples. The confrontation with the Pharisees that we read about last Sunday showed the same difficulties among people who had high stakes in the spiritual integrity of Israel.

The next question we have to ask is: What was not getting through? What were people so dull about? That has to do with the driving question about the identity of Jeesus in Mark 5-8: Who is Jesus? The answer given so far is, Jesus is a prophet. He acts like one, He thought of Himself as a prophet, and others called Him a prophet. He spoke prophetic words like Isaiah of old, and like Elijah and Elisha of old He went outside Israel to minister to Gentiles.

With this context in mind we are ready to read about the disciples' third ride across the Sea of Galilee in Mark 8:14-21. Based on the first two rides, we should expect fireworks of one kind or the other. On the first ride Jesus had asked them, "Do you still have no faith?" On the second, Mark's assessment was that their hearts were hardened. Verse 14 starts out with a minor irritation. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat.

Jesus, perhaps reflecting on the confrontation He had just had with some Pharisees says in verse 15, "Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod." With yeast it is all or nothing. If you don't want it to affect what you are about to bake, you had better not put it in at all, because whatever you put in will permeate the whole batch. So, what was Jesus concerned about that might permeate or infect the disciples in a bad way?

Do you remember the desciption of Herod, when he visted John the Baptist in prison? He liked to listen to him, (Mk. 5:20). And what did he do about it? Not much, judging from the capricious way in which he beheaded him. Jesus was saying, "Don't let that unresponsive, cynical way of listening to me get a foothold in you. It will undermine everything I am working with you to accomplish."

And the Pharisees wanted a sign. It was as if they were saying, "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." Jesus came to show Israel to be a new way of being Israel. That involved rethinking time-hallowed ways of doing things. He did not want His disciples to be short-sighted, and most of all He did not want them to think of miracles as acts of God to change our present, unpleasant circumstances so that we can get on with leading the same kind of life we have always led.

Jesus might as well have been talking to the seagulls. He was talking spiritual danger; those disciples of His were hearing groceries. Verse 16 says, They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread." It pushed Jesus over the edge, and it made the disciples' third ride across the Sea of Galilee every bit as memorable as the first two. You can read the next five verses in a monotone, if you want to, but I think we will be more faithful to reality, if we read Jesus' words to be charged with frustration and perhaps anger.

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?

"Twelve," they replied.

"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"

They answered, "Seven."

He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"

This cataract of questions, eight of them in all, delivered without waiting for an answer, convey the passionate desire in the heart of Jesus Christ that His disciples grasp who He was and what He was all about, because He was preparing them to carry on someday what He was all about. They could not be hard-hearted about that. They had to understand. They had to hear. They had to see. Do you think it is irrelevant that Mark put next in his story of Jesus the healing of a blind man? Listen to the story and listen for similarities with the miracle of the deaf.

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?"

He looked up and said, "I see people, they look like trees walking around."

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."

Look at the following unique features of this story. First, before He healed the man, Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Nothing we have read up till now has given us any reason to think Jesus was shy about doing miracles in a crowd. Think of the crowds at Simon's front door in chapter one. Think of the time Jesus turned around in a crowd and singled out an embarrassed but very happy woman whom He had healed. Except for His mentoring the disciples, He tended to be very public about everything He did. So, it gets attention, when He deliberately avoids a crowd to do a miracle.

Second, we know the miracle worked, because verse 25 says, Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. The miracle worked, but look at the difficulty Jesus had to overcome. Verse 23 says, When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?"

Verse 24 says he did – sort of. He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." We have not seen anything like that in Mark. He took Jairus' little girl's hand, almost as an act of courtesy, and said, "Little girl, I say to you, 'Get up,'" and she woke from death as you wake up from a nap and eat. Even the deaf-mute heard and spoke clearly the first time. It took a second try here. Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Third, as with the deaf-mute, Jesus appears to ask for secrecy. Verse 26 says, Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village." Was Jesus stalling? What could He possibly hope to gain by this?

A fourth observation remains pertinent to every miracle in every Gospel. Miracles in the Bible are never an end in themselves. They always offer powerful material evidence of spiritual realities. So, what spiritual reality does this miracle point to?

Do you think it might be a proper interpretation of this miracle to say that Mark included it here as an illustration in the flesh of the miracle needed in the human spirit in order for Jesus' disciples (then and now) to see the true meaning of what was going on in the words and deeds of Jesus? The torrent of questions that Jesus aimed at the disciples highlighted their blindness to that true meaning.

If I got in your face with eight questions, delivered without waiting for an answer and conveying the frustration, the anger, and the passionate desire of my heart, it would not be easy for you to take that from me, even though I think we have a good relationship with each other. But I would be far more willing to risk it with immigrants than with refugees, because immigrants have come to stay. The twelve disciples offer a powerful model of what it means to come to stay. Think about what Jesus said to them and Mark said about them since the end of chapter four.

"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 today, we have read the rapid-fire questions by which Jesus again challenged the disciples to reach beyond themselves.

That was painful, and it got worse before it got better for them. But they didn't run. They took it. They had signed on to stay. Have you signed on to stay here? Are you a spiritual immigrant who has found a new home, or are you a refugee, who is looking for temporary shelter from the storm? Both are acceptable within this church family, but for the stability of the church and the deepening of your soul, you have to stop running when the shine wears off and put down some roots somewhere and take what comes.

That means you get baptized. You join this church. You tithe. You participate faithfully. You endure when someone disappoints you. You support the common good when you don't get your way. You take it and learn from it, when someone challenges your faith or integrity. You face your poverty of spirit, and let it spur you on to a greater hunger for Christ and faith and righteousness and patience and Christian unity.

The greatest human lesson of the Gospel of Mark may be the willingness of twelve pretty ordinary men, who committed theselves to the company of Jesus of Nazareth and stayed with him through thick and thin, and who became extraordinary men. You do the same. Commit yourself! Stay the course! Even become extraordinary for God.