Sermon from April 2, 2000
The stories of our faith tell of Israel's golden age under David and Solomon. 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 the city of Jerusalem and destroyed it and deported the flower of the Jewish nation into captivity. The kings were gone; the nation was gone; Jerusalem was gone. There began a long and sometimes tragic succession of nations that ruled Israel.

During the long and terrible decline from Israel's golden age, voices spoke out that foretold the tragic conclusion to which the decline would lead. But those voices also prophesied a reversal of fortune, when the God of Israel would bring about a renewed, glorious age of Israel with worldwide blessing to follow. Such hopes came to be invested in a figure that did not yet exist. The Jews called him Mashiach, Messiah.

After five centuries of occupation, Israel had come 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 the Romans. Pretenders arose, who said they were Mashiach. Their failed attempts at liberation and the occasional, gruesome row of crosses that gave the lie to their pretensions only made Jewish hopes of deliverance more fervent.

In this violence-tinged, revolutionary atmosphere Jesus said, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. 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 the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

When the New Testament talks about the kingdom of God, what two words should we immediately think of? Yes, authority and love. The kingdom of God means the extension of God's 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 tells you that God's exercise of authority over human life is about to show itself in the public arena, the next thought in your mind should be, "Show me! Prove it!"

The function of each story in Mark 1:16-45 is to prove it. Jesus 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 illuminated the consciences of His listeners. He broke the power of irrational evil over a human personality by virtue of His command. By a touch He dismissed fever from a woman's body. 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. What happened there served as a model of what must happen everywhere else in Galilee at least.

Now, in an unthinkable act of love and authority, Jesus touches the untouchable dregs of Jewish society. Mark 1:40-45 tells the story. The beginning of the story brings out two spiritual realities. Verse 40 identifies the first. A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." "If you are willing..." "If you are willing, you can give a lot of money to the building program." "If you are willing, you can make the dean's list."

Where does the willing come from? It comes from deep within, out of sight and out of reach of all but the person who must choose to give or study or heal. We never really know another person until we know the intentions of that person's will. Perhaps we never really know ourselves until we know the intentions of our own will. But how do we know the intentions of anyone's will?

The opening words of verse 41 points to a second spiritual reality. Filled with compassion... Wonderful thing, compassion. It is easy to say, "I love people," only to have it become a hypocrisy. How does anyone know if a person has compassion toward other people? The power to choose and the power to love can change the world, but they are spiritual powers, and we need material evidence that those powers exist. That is why what happens next in verse 41 matters so much. Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" The hand on the leper's body signified both willingness and compassion.

In that touch compassion acted, regardless of who the person was, regardless of personal benefit, and regardless of personal cost. Kingdom love had touched an untouchable. That touch also had authority in it, as verse 42 makes clear. Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.

Such a man had authority where it counted – with people, all kinds of people. He demonstrated God's love and authority in ever-widening circles of human life. His actions bore witness to the love and authority you need to start a revolution. That in a nutshell is what Mark was driving at in Mark 1:16-45. Now an essential question for us.

What does Mark 1:16-45 teach us about God? What we believe about God affects the way we experience life more than we ever dream possible. The answer to our question comes from Jesus' message, which He preached everywhere He went. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news."

The kingdom, the love and authority that will some day govern all human life without opposition, comes from and belongs to God. The function of each story in Mark 1:16-45 is to demonstrate that love and authority in the public arena. To hear Jesus speak and to watch Jesus act was to hear God speak and to watch God act. Jesus gives us access to what the invisible God is like. That is why Jesus is overwhelmingly, indispensably, unarguably, inestimably, and preeminently important to the faith of the Church and to the beatitude of all humanity.

So, what does Jesus reveal to us about God in the events of Mark 1:16-45? First, God has passed judgment on human life. Human life as it exists today would be extruded from the kingdom of God as surely as Adam and Eve were extruded from the Garden of Eden. Our agreement with God's judgment is called repentance.

Second, God is powerful and compassionate. By compassion and power this God intends sooner or later to cleanse all human experience of the degrading, demonic forces and the ravages of human illness that mar human life and human happiness.

Finally, God summons some people without apology to abandon their sources of livelihood and expend their lives in this world by identifying themselves intimately with Jesus Christ and participating with joy and hope in the compassionate and powerful intentions and actions of this God toward all humanity.

At this point you might ask the most difficult question of all. If that is God's intention, why does He not do it? Why allow the accumulating miseries of humanity to continue? Why does a good God allow such terrible human suffering? I believe Mark will give us a viable way to address that question responsibly, but we have to let Mark give it to us in His own way. He begins by showing us frame by frame a picture of what God is like. He shows us in the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. Look at Jesus and you look at God. Read! Look! Absorb! Allow that shattering Presence to fill the horizon of your life! Let Him remake your mind and restore you to wholeness!