Sermon from March 5, 2000
At the beginning of this series on Mark I said that I loved and defended the little story of my journey in this world, as if I had been responsible for all of it. I said that at certain important points I needed to revise my story, because those who went before me and I had gotten part of the human story wrong.

I also kept making the curious discovery that I needed my story to be part of some larger story. Instead of seeing more and more of life as chapters in my little story, I needed to see my story as a chapter in a much larger story. Whenever that happened, paradoxically, my story did not get swallowed up by the larger story, but the larger story infused mine with deeper meaning. I somehow became smaller but my significance somehow became greater.

At many points the Gospel of Mark invites those who hear to merge the story of their journey with the much larger story of Jesus' journey through this strange, beautiful, and dangerous world to His final destination.

The point at which we pick up Mark's story of Jesus today issues that invitation to nations as well as to individuals. This point in the story introduces the dominant theme in biblical thought – the kingdom of God. As is often the case with Mark, he introduces this theme in a starkly understated manner. Part of my responsibility calls for me to help us listen attentively to what Mark wrote so as to hear perceptively how much Mark meant. Mark tells this episode in 34 English words, and I think every word carries weight. We pick up the story in Mark 1:14-15.

After John was put into prison, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

Verse 14 begins abrasively: After John was put in prison .... How did that happen? Why did that happen? Who arrested him? Here again Mark raises questions, which he answers later. We will have to wait for them until we reach chapter six. Here in a subordinate clause, Mark almost casually registers the shocking fact.

Have you noticed a pattern of shocking facts about the first 15 verses of this gospel? That pattern began with the quotation in verses 2-3 that began the gospel. Mark took part of it from Isaiah and part from Malachi, two Old Testament prophets.

The Isaiah passage focused on preparations of a way and on the splendor of the coming King of the Jews, Malachi put a face on the messenger who would make the preparations and on the possibly unwelcome nature of the King's coming. But how did that fit into the age-old dreams of the Jews? How could the coming of their King be unwelcome to the very people who so keenly anticipated Him?

By putting this unexpected twist at the very beginning of his gospel, was Mark preparing us gently, unobtrusively to grasp the meaning of the story he was about to tell? Is his story a story of how the long-expected King of the Jews had showed His hand right down in the jungle of life? Did Mark mean that Jesus was the long-expected King? If so, did Mark focus on the splendor of the King, like Isaiah, or was there something unwelcome about King Jesus, as in Malachi? Could it be both? We can see an unwelcome side at Jesus' baptism.

Verse 9 says, At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. It doesn't fit, does it? I mean, what was Jesus doing at a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? Did He need to repent? Did He need forgiveness? It seems like a blunder for all four gospels to put Jesus in a setting that exposed Him to great misunderstanding. But it cannot have been a blunder. The stories about Jesus that make up the gospels were told hundreds and thousands of times before they were written down. Including Jesus in a baptism meant for sinners had to be deliberate, but it gave an unwelcome, unexpected 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. Mark mentioned the Holy Spirit three times in the first 12 verses of his gospel. In verse 8 John the Baptist promises that Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit – an event of worldwide blessing which the Old Testament attributes only to God. Verse ten says the Holy Spirit came like a dove upon Jesus when He came up out of the waters of His baptism – an act we should interpret as His inauguration into public ministry.

Both those events seem overwhelmingly good. The event in verses 12 seems anything but good. It is the word sent that does the damage. You may have a translation that says the Spirit drove Him out into the desert. Actually, that is more accurate and more unsettling. It is what the Spirit sent Him there for that completes our uneasiness. He sent Him to be tempted by Satan.

So, the first thing we discover about the temptation of Jesus is that it was in some sense necessary. The Spirit would not have done that if it had not been necessary. Necessary or not, it gives another unwelcome, unexpected twist to the story.

And now, John the Baptist, the divinely-chosen forerunner of the Messiah, has been arrested for unstated reasons and perhaps for reasons that will only deepen our uneasiness when we learn what they were and whose they were.

It seems that John's imprisonment sent a signal to Jesus that it was time for Him to go public. He went public in Galilee. He went public with this inflammatory message (v. 15): "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" "The time has come," or, as we would say, "The time is ripe." We must understand that Mark sees the life of Jesus as the culminating moment for which God had brought Israel into existence.

Like John, whose public voice had now been silenced, Jesus preached repentance. Their call to repentance means first to agree with God that something in my life has gone seriously wrong; and second it means that I agree to change what has gone wrong; and third, I agree to this change, because my evil behavior has no place in the kingdom of God, which is near; and fourth, baptism in water is the sign that says publicly, "I have taken my place among those who are preparing for the kingdom of God by repentance."

"Repent and believe the good news!" What was the good news that Jesus preached? What was the time ripe for? "The kingdom of God is near." You and I have to remember something. When Mark says that Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, he did not mean that Jesus said this just once. This was the theme of Jesus' preaching, everywhere He went. He called it good news and said it over and over again. "The kingdom of God is near."

The word kingdom is a political word. We would say, "The government of God is near." It carries within it the idea and the practice of power over people's lives. For Jesus to use that word over and over picked right up where John the Baptist had left off. He tapped into something deep within the soul of Israel.

After five centuries of occupation, Jews believed more strongly than ever that the words of the great prophets were nearing fulfillment. God's kingdom and God's king were coming to vanquish the Romans. Pretenders arose, who said they were the promised Messiah.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.

Into this violence-tinged, revolutionary atmosphere spoke this Voice that said, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand." Jews knew the word kingdom had to do with power and governing – the power, they would say, to throw off Roman rule and become self-governing under God. Could the moment have arrived when the promise of the prophets had come to pass? Could Jesus 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 the story of Jesus of Nazareth have its full impact on us.

The Jews of Jesus' day were right to look for God to assert His authority over human life in very practical ways. Whether they were right in how they thought He would do it makes up a very important part of the story that Mark is telling us. They got one thing right that you and I must get right. When Scripture talks about the kingdom of God, it is talking about a massive power struggle. The issue of that power struggle is this: "Whose authority will hold sway over human life?"

If this talk about a massive power struggle and governing people makes us feel uncomfortable, so be it. Our discomfort would fit right in with everything else in these first 15 verses that seem abrasive, shocking, and unexpected. It is worth the discomfort, if it helps us see Jesus against the political and religious realities of His day. Remember, the authorites did not crucify Jesus because He went about telling people to be nice to each other. He roused religious and political passions. Those passions can turn people into mobs, and when mobs take to the streets, anything may happen.

Jesus had to know that when He said, "The kingdom of God is at hand," He was engaging in a dangerous course of action that would open Him up to misunderstanding. He might very well find Himself on a horse He could not ride. The question we must always keep in mind is whether Jesus shared the revolutionary aspiriations of some of his Jewish brethren. By what means did He think God was going to assert His authority over all human life, and how would that shape His public ministry?

I know this kind of talk may sound too political for many of us. I do not know how to avoid this. However, I think we can add another word to our understanding of God's kingdom that will modify our understanding. Whenever we hear about the kingdom of God, two words need to come at once to mind: authority and love. The kingdom of God means God's exercise of authority over all people in love. As His love and authority begin to hold sway over our lives, He begins to set right all that mars and threatens to destroy human life and human happiness. In doing so, He always causes conflict.

The Gospel of Mark has preserved Jesus' intentions in the dangerous course of action He chose. Our responsibility as readers of this gospel is to discover His intentions. At the same time we must see His actions and hear His words through the eyes and ears of the various groups of people who heard Him say, "The kingdom of God is at hand," and who then put their own interpretations on His words.

And do you know? We must put our own interpretation on His words. Do they help us understand the world we live in? I have found such help. Let me show you, and then you see if it helps you too. We Christians say that God's love and authority over human life broke into our world decisively and irrevocably in Jesus Christ, and He intends for His love and authority to hold sway ultimately over all human life.

That carries an immediate implication. Every other authority over human life, whether political or cultural, can only be provisional. That does not mean that I hold my country or my culture in contempt. It does mean that I hold back from my country and culture something of my essential self. I reserve that for Christ alone. Doing so gives us a vantage point from which to alienate ourselves from "the compulsions and automatic assumptions of an alienated world," (The Crucified God, 25). Christ becomes the lens through which we learn to see and interpret all of life in light of the kingdom of God.

Living like this will bring us conflict as surely as it brought conflict to Christ. For example, many people would profoundly take issue with what we are advocating during these two weeks of missions emphasis. They would say to us, "You have no right to impose your religion on someone else, whether it is across the street or in another culture." The word impose reveals their bias.

Whatever the Church may have done in the past, impose does not properly label what it does when it evangelizes the nations of the world. Islam imposes. Christianity proposes. We have at long last learned our lesson. Conversions at gunpoint violate the Spirit of Christ. Our methods, we may hope, are more in line with Christ's; but we still intend the conversion of the whole world to faith in Jesus Christ.

This note of love and authority that rings out at the beginning of the New Testament gospels rings out at the end of those gospels as well. Please look with me at Matthew 28:16-20. Verses 19-20 constitute what we call The Great Commission. I am interested just now in what precedes it.

When we hear about the kingdom of God, what two words need to come at once to mind? Authority and love. The kingdom of God means God's exercise of authority over all people in love. Look at what Jesus says about His authority in verses 16-18. Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

Now, what word begins verse 19? Therefore. In other words, Jesus is saying, "Because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, I have the right to command you to go and make disciples of all nations." The Church's authority to summon people in every culture to turn from the religion of their ancestors to Christ and to establish churches derives from Christ's authority, which is the exercise of God's authority and love over ever increasing circles of human life.

When persecuted Jewish Christians spread the gospel in Antioch; when Paul planted churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and Corinth, and then set his sights on Spain; when Christian missionaries spread the Christian faith among the tribes of Arabia and among the Scythians around the Black Sea; when Thomas took the gospel to India and Patrick to Ireland and Vladimir to Russia and Olaf to Norway; when the Jesuits took Christianity to the royal courts of China and Japan; when David Brainerd sacrificed himself to evangelize the Native Americans of Massachusetts – the story goes on and on and on – when all these prodigious efforts expended fortunes and lives, they were acting as agents of the kingdom of God, whatever a world alienated from God might think. So do we act.