Sermon from September 24, 2000
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 forcuses 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 to grasp the meaning 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. But it cannot have been a blunder. The stories about Him that make up the Gospels were told thousands of times before they were written down. 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 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!" Jesus saw His life as the climactic moment for which God had brought Israel into existence.

Whenever we hear about the kingdom of God, two words need to come at once to mind: authorityand love. The kingdom of God means God's exercise of authority over ever-increasing circles of human life in love.

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 has told his story of Jesus in such a way as to demonstrate the presence of God's kingdom in the daily affairs of Israel.

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 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 presence of God's love and authority 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 the 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 distincitiveness 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 parbles 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 the power to discern what God was doing in Israel.

The authority of Jesus dominates the first four chapters of Mark. Chapter one presents a demonstration of His authority, chapter two the challenge to His authority, chapter three the rejection of His authority, and chapter four His authority to judge.

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. The event at the end of chapter four swings our attention from one to the other. Look at Mark 4:35-41.

We have gone nearly a quarter of the way through Mark, and we know very little about Jesus' twelve disciples. We know He appointed them to have a special relationship with Him. Nearly every episode has mentioned them, but in four chapters Mark has given us only one direct quotation of what one of them said. While not seeming to say or do much, they had resisted the official verdict against Jesus and remained true to Him.

With lines drawn, Jesus will now turn His attention more exclusively to those disciples; not because they were all He wanted them to be, but in order to make them into all He wanted them to be. They had no idea of the hurdles ahead.

For the moment they must have had an enourmous sense of self-satisfaction. Look at verse 33-34. With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

You know what gives that last sentence power, don't you? It is the words when he was alone with them. It gave them the feeling of being on the inside, part of the Inner Circle, while others were on the outside. It is an old and very human habit.

And now, verse 35. That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." Put yourself in the disciples' shoes. Their Leader had once again drawn tremendous crowds, but He had surprised everyone with His new teaching in parables. No one had understood. Murmurs of discontent had marred the enthusiasm.

But privately, those who sided with Jesus had learned the meaning of the parables. As dusk came on, it had become obvious that they were in the know. Accusatory Pharisee was on the outside; they were on the inside. All of this and now a ride across the Sea of Galilee. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.

A sudden and short-lived regatta surrounded Him. There were also other boats with him. All who love the sea and sailing will cherish this nautical scene. There was the familiar sound of oar in lock and of crying bird in search of fish, the water-wind-and-boat smells, the feel of the wind in their hair. Best of all, Jesus was there, alone with them, the privileged few. No doubt about it. They had fallen on their feet. Life was good.

At last they were alone on the open water. Some of them, like Andrew, Peter, James and John were at home in their natural habitat, for they were fishermen. All of them, including Judas, chewed on their glad memories of that day.

Human emotion is like the wind; it blows itself out rather quickly. Jesus was tired, and the wind had picked up and night was falling. Perhaps night had fallen. It would have been dark in any case when the weather changed. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. A landlubber like me can think of nothing as terrifying as being caught in such a sea at night.

It does not seem to have bothered Jesus. Verse 38 says, Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion, the still center of that wild, wave-swirling world. It does seem to have bothered the disciples. Verse 38 continues and expresses their almost terminal agitation. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" What exactly did they want Him to do: grab a bucket, bail and hope like all the rest? There is something just a little odd about their question. But then, there is something odd about a man sleeping through a storm like that. But not nearly as odd as what happened next.

He got up, says verse 39, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Queit! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He had once acted and diseases of a moment like that of Peter's mother-in-law and diseases of a lifetime like leprosy disappeared. Now, He acts, and the wind and waves obey Him. Fear of death at sea by night served only as the prologue to what came next in verse 40.

He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" No faith!? These are men who had bucked official Judaism to follow Him. These are men in whom His message had taken root and begun to grow. These are the ones made privy to the meaning of His parables. If it seems bizarre for Jesus to question their faith, wait till you hear what the disciples in their fear say next. They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"

What do you mean, "Who is this?" You bucked official Judaism to follow Him. His message had taken root and begun to grow in you. You are the ones made privy to the meaning of His parables. And now you say, "Who is this?" Don't you know?

That question haunts the next four chapters of the Gospel of Mark: Who is Jesus Christ? Perhaps those men could never be disciples in the fullest sense until first in the fullest sense they knew that they did not know the true identity of Jesus. To put it another way they could never be fully His disciples until they were sufficiently confused.

Demons obey. Diseases obey. Wind and sea obey. It is only the God-image-bearing beast that goes down to the sea in ships and writes poetry and breaks the genetic code, who disobeys the will of Jesus. How deep does the darkness within us go? What does Jesus know about us that we don't know about ourselves?

Believing in Him involves us in a breath-taking process, not only of learning the true identity of Jesus, but also of learning our own true identity. If it was a shock to those twelve men to hear Him say, "Do you still have no faith?", might it not be a shock for Him to say that to us here? I am not talking about people who do not yet believe in Him. I mean faithful churchgoers: pastoral staff and deacons and trustees and teachers and small group leaders. I mean people who have been in church for a lifetime. I mean students in Christian schools and their teachers. Do we still have no faith?

We can and do confess our faith in Jesus, and thank God that we do; but has our confession been tested for authenticity? The storm at sea provided a crucible in which reality threatened to disembowel all the Twelve had been so sure of, and in which they were forced to see Jesus, as they had never seen Him before.

Have you ever opened an old scrapbook, and there before you lay the pressed flowers from your high school prom or your wedding day, or some photograph from an important day gone by? Left to ourselves, our faith in Jesus can become like pressed flowers and old photographs – occasions for notalgia but unconnected with present reality. Even Jesus can seem a distant memory. The Lord of the Church will not allow His people to live long on nostalgic faith. Unsympathetic reality will come crashing into our little boat, and we may be sure the Lord of the sea is waiting for us to call on Him.