WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert September 11, 2005

Mark 1:1-45 “My Son”

Who was, or is, Jesus? What does it mean to be his disciple? We sometimes act as if we know the answers, but at another level we are well aware that we are poor disciples, and it may help us to hear what Mark has to say. His was, we think, the first written “gospel,” probably composed in the early 60s AD for Christians in Rome who were being persecuted under Nero. Paul was already writing letters to churches, and Mark had probably read some of them and also traveled with Paul, but the greatest influence on him is what he had learned in Rome from Peter (we don’t think Mark himself knew Jesus).

Mark focuses on the broad flow of Jesus’ life, and especially his death; he records little of Jesus’ teaching, and much more of his actions and people’s responses to him. He is like many of us who remember vividly the personality and impact of a teacher we knew years ago, but can recall very little of what they taught us. Mark’s pace is breathless: in the opening chapter he whisks us through seven different topics with only a few sentences each. He aims to teach two main themes: who Jesus was (and, in his view and that of all NT writers, who Jesus still is – because they are all convinced that Jesus is still alive), and what it means to be his disciple. We will ask those questions too as we whisk through “the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark,” as well as asking the crucial question: what about us? How does this impact your life and mine here and now in New York in 2005?

1) Who Is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? He is the ”promised one” whom Israel had waited for. He is the Christ, the Messiah (equivalent words in Greek and Hebrew), he is “the Lord” for whom John the Baptist prepares the way by calling people to repentance. He is marked from the start as a man in whom or on whom the Holy Spirit is present in a mighty way. He will “baptize with the Holy Spirit,” says John, and when Jesus himself is baptized to identify with the “true Israel,” the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus in the form of a dove. You may say that is very confusing for my understanding of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Yes indeed: but that is just how his disciples had to wrestle with who Jesus is from the beginning.

With the coming of the Spirit in power to equip him for his ministry – that is, with his “anointing” in just the way OT prophets, priests and kings were prepared for their callings – Jesus also hears the words of commission from God the Father: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” His authority and his calling are immediately clear: he has come to bring in the Kingdom of God; his arrival marks the crisis, the turning point, the moment of decision. Nothing will ever be the same: Jesus has brought in the Kingdom, and it is open to all who will repent and believe. Jesus himself stands at the gate of the Kingdom, and how you respond to him will determine whether you are admitted or not.

Jesus’ authority and power are immediately put to the test. The Spirit who anoints him for service also drives him out into the wilderness - the place where people wrestle with God and evil, and which to this day stands as a metaphor for the crisis moments of life when we must confront ourselves, Satan, and God’s call. What kind of Messiah will Jesus be? We know that he wrestles with over-dependence on the physical, with testing God by foolhardiness, with selling his soul for power over the world. He confronts personified evil in Satan, and in a crucial battle defeats him by the Word and the Spirit of God, and with the help of ministering angels.

Jesus enters a ministry of preaching, healing and exorcism, in the villages of Galilee. But he also starts very slowly to build a new community, the new “people of God,” citizens of the new Kingdom. He begins with four fishermen; two brothers – Simon, later called Peter, and Andrew – who are poorish, casting their hand nets from the shore; and two – John and James – who are better off, with a family boat and hired men. Had they heard Jesus speak already, seen him heal? We don’t know; all we learn is that they immediately respond to the power of Jesus’ personality and call, and willingly leave their livelihood to follow him.

His preaching attracts immediate comment: it is not like that of the torah scholars, who love to debate minutiae or argue about what Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Shammai said. Jesus speaks with authority, and some people are immediately drawn to that, even as some are offended. And Jesus quickly confronts the needs of people for healing and deliverance. Even in the synagogue on a Sabbath, a man who is ritually unclean confronts him, a man clearly possessed, and Jesus shows his power over evil by silencing and driving out the demon. The crowds are amazed, and want more; the division between being a curious onlooker and a disciple is already being established. Amazement is not faith.

No sooner has Jesus returned from the synagogue to Simon’s house for the Sabbath meal than he confronts two more enemies: sickness and prejudice. Ignoring Jewish traditions that forbade even speaking to a woman you are not related to, let alone touching them, especially when they are sick, and even more so on the Sabbath (!), Jesus immediately relieves Simon’s mother-in-law of a fever and she rises to serve them the meal. The word about the healer spreads so fast that soon the whole of Capernaum is at Simon’s door, and Jesus spends the evening and half the night in healings and exorcisms. Before dawn he tries to get away to the desert to pray, but is soon tracked down. He tells his four disciples that he needs to move on; there are more people in need in Galilee than just the sick in Capernaum, and he must preach the gospel of the Kingdom to them. But in the other villages too he is met as a healer, and news that he has reached out to touch and heal another unclean man, a leper, spreads so quickly that Jesus can hardly get away from the crowds.

Jesus is powerful, Jesus is authoritative, but he is also compassionate and gentle. He cares about sickness, about family members, about those possessed by evil. He is moved – even outraged – by the outcast condition of the leper, who was supposed to live at the edge of society and call out “unclean” to warn other people away from him. But Jesus ignores tradition, prejudice, fear, the risk of infection, the fact that he will be called “unclean” in order to meet the needs of people who come to him. Jesus is a man with a mission, a “driven man” as we might say, but he is ready to stop and listen, to stoop and help.

He is aware of his own needs, physically and spiritually – he is not afraid to rest, and he knows he needs to pray. He knows he will need the help of the little band of disciples he is drawing to him, even though it will take a very long time for them to understand him or their role. For all the time they will spend with him, for all his teachings that they will hear, it will take direct revelations from his Father before they grasp even the most basic things about Jesus, and it will not be until his death and resurrection that the light will truly dawn for them. Jesus will always in some ways be a “secret Messiah.”

2) What Are Disciples?

What about his disciples? We have heard only a little of them to this point; Mark’s introduction is mainly about who Jesus is! But we know this: that to be a disciple is much more than to be a part of the crowd that wants to see what Jesus will do next, perhaps for them. To be a disciple is to hear Jesus call your name, and know you have to respond to him personally. It is to be confronted with a choice, and one that will be costly either way. To reject Jesus’ call is to miss the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, perhaps to lose the most important thing you will ever be offered.

To accept his call may mean leaving what is familiar, to step out in faith - not knowing where you are going, but knowing enough about this man who calls you to know that you are willing to follow him. Would we have followed him? Perhaps! Jesus’ call carries its own compulsion, its own power, and yet there is a choice to be made: how to respond. There will be plenty of people who will decide they would rather melt back into the crowd than become Jesus’ disciples.

3) And Us?

What of us? Do we know Jesus? Have we seen and heard enough of him to catch something of his power, his authority? Do we sense that the Spirit that was within him is still at work today, making plain to us that Jesus is a living presence and not a character in an old book?

Do we realize that his words and his call carry weight? That when God says “This is my Son” that we are supposed to listen? It’s been said a thousand times that Christianity in our world is too often a mile wide and an inch deep, and that we who call ourselves Christians don’t look much like disciples of Jesus in the way we speak act, think, spend, live... Every one of us feels the weight of this; we know we none of us are what we should be, that we rarely (to use biblical language) “live lives worthy of our calling.”

Whether your calling today is as a father or a mother, a clerk or a manager, a scientist or an electrician; whether you are retired or you are ordained; your calling and mine is to Jesus himself, and then to be his disciple. But too often we are too busy, too tired, too sick, too anxious, too preoccupied with our family or our work; and discipleship is very far down on our list of life’s priorities.

What we all need from time to time – or perhaps for the first time – is a direct encounter with the Jesus of the gospels: the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, who has defeated Satan, who overcomes evil spirits and heals diseases, who ignores tradition and prejudice and reaches out to unclean people in need; who calls us by name to acknowledge who he is, and to walk with him from now on. If he calls your name, don’t turn your back; don’t say “I’m too busy, I have fish to catch...” Take up your courage, put your faith in him, and say “I’ll go with you.”

You can never be sure where Jesus will take you, but you can be sure that he has the power to protect you and the wisdom to guide you to places better than you ever dreamed of. Has he called your name? Is he calling you back again, and saying “where have you been?” If your answer is “I went back to fishing,” then be prepared to turn around and go with him again. Some of his early disciples did just that, but he never gave up on them – especially Simon whom he called Peter. Jesus won’t give up on you, either.

Let us pray...