WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert October 16, 2005

Mark 6:1-56 Crime And Compassion

In Mark 6 we are approaching the peak of Jesus’ ministry, at least in terms of popular appeal. The feeding of 5000 men, and probably as many more women and children, is regarded by all the gospel writers as one of Jesus’ great miracles. But by the end of his teachings to this crowd, as John tells us in his gospel, people begin to turn away from following Jesus, and the opposition to him begins to grow. In Mark’s narrative, it is also the best of times and the worst of times. Jesus serves the needs of thousands, but he does it against a darkening background of family and hometown rejection, corruption and violence in the highest ranks of civil society, and the irritation, incomprehension, fear, and hard-heartedness of even his closest followers, the Twelve.

1) Good Things and Bad

The good things are obvious. The crowds are huge – indeed given what we can guess of the population of the small Galilean villages and towns, a large fraction of the people are coming out to hear Jesus, and many are finding healing and deliverance. To assist him in this massive task, Jesus sends out the Twelve on their own missions of preaching the gospel, healing the sick and delivering the possessed. They are now, we imagine, equipped for the task by the time they have spent with Jesus, and the authority and power he has passed on to them. They will come back rejoicing in the fruits of their mission: many people healed, the gospel preached as never before. To get a more modern American parallel on Jesus’ ministry at this point, we might picture the impact in the 1700s of George Whitefield’s open-air preaching, when it’s said that he was heard by 25,000 or more people at a time, or by the vast crowds that came to hear Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement.

But in the midst of this popular movement, there are signs of opposition and trouble. You sense it even in the sending out of the Twelve, because they are not only told to travel light and rely on the traditions of hospitality in each town, but they are warned they may (or will?) experience rejection, and will have to “shake the dust off their feet” as they leave the town – a symbolism well known to Jews who “shook the dust” of pagan soil off their feet whenever they returned home to Israel from a journey. It’s as though, in Jesus’ vision, some towns will place themselves “outside the true Israel” by rejecting his message.

Then there is the trouble in Nazareth. The people there remember Jesus as “the carpenter,” and while they don’t deny his wisdom or his power, they can’t imagine where he gets it from! They “take offense at him” and he can do few miracles there. Like his family, the townspeople probably think he is “out of his mind,” or even -like the Scribes - that he is himself “demon-possessed.” There is no mistaking either the slur implied by calling him “Mary’s son;” everyone else was called by their father’s name, even if he was dead, so the story that Jesus was Mary’s illegitimate son had evidently stayed with him all his life in his home town. “Who does he think he is?” – you can almost hear the questions; very typical of societies where your birthplace and your family are supposed to dictate your future and your possibilities. “A prophet without honor in your home town” remains as true for many today as it did in the 1^st C.

Then there was the death of John. He and Jesus were cousins, had known each other all their lives, had been together in the beginning; John had “opened the way” for Jesus’ ministry, had baptized him, had pointed people to him and called him the Son of God. Now John was dead at the hands of a corrupt, weak, fearful member of the infamous Herod family. He has been imprisoned for daring to rebuke Herod Antipas for divorcing his wife and marrying Herodias, his niece and the divorced wife of his half-brother Philip. The Herods were a famously corrupt family, put in power by the Romans, not even Jews but Idumeans (from what in OT times was called Edom). Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple and the Antonia fortress, and tried to kill the baby Jesus, left his kingdom in 4AD to his sons, of whom Antipas had inherited Galilee and Peraea. Rome deposed his half-brother Archelaus from Judea for incompetence and corruption, and instituted direct rule by procurators like Pontius Pilate. Antipas would be deposed in 39AD by the paranoid Caligula for demanding the title “king,” so there is some irony in Mark’s referring to him here as “King Herod” Antipas.

He holds a party in his palace in the city of Tiberias, which he had built and dedicated to the Emperor (and which Jesus apparently never set foot in, although it was by far the biggest town in Galilee). His decision to execute John on a whim to please his alluring step-daughter and her vicious mother, and not to lose face before his friends and courtiers, stamps him as a weak man who acted against his own conviction that John was not only innocent but a “holy man.” There is little doubt why Mark recounts the story of John’s death in detail: it foreshadows Jesus’ death at the hands of weak and fearful civil leaders who know his innocence but are manipulated by others. Even the end of John’s tragic story evokes other memories: “his disciples came and took his body and buried him in a tomb.” As one commentator rightly says, “the cross looms in the background from this point on” in Mark’s narrative (Witherington).

2) Jesus Serves

How then does Jesus minister in the midst of all this disbelief and violence, not to mention the huge demands the crowds are putting on him? Notice that he often endeavors to get away, to rest, and to pray. You cannot serve the needs of others if you do not find refreshment yourself. Even the Son of God needed time to pray!

He also needed the help of his friends, the Twelve. To be sure, they were green, they did not always know what they were doing, at times they said outrageous things and got hold of the wrong end of the stick. At times they were fearful, disbelieving, and left as astonished and amazed as the crowds were at what Jesus said and did. Yet he did not give up on them; he did not say “Oh leave it, I will do it myself!” He used them, he challenged them, and he taught them by word and by example.

When they had all tried to get away after John’s death – perhaps they were themselves now under threat as Herod Antipas entertained the idea that Jesus was John resurrected! – when the Twelve had returned from their mission and needed to report on it; in short, when everyone needed to take a break; they find the crowds have guessed where they are going and reach there first. What the Twelve thought of this is shown in their attitude when the subject of feeding 5000 people out on the hills comes up. “You surely don’t expect us to feed them...!?” they tell Jesus. The note of irritation is clear.

But Jesus, of course, sees the situation in a very different light. He sees crowds of people hungry not just for bread but for the word of God and for leadership. He sees “sheep without a shepherd,” and he has compassion on people in that situation. He teaches them about faith, and he takes the little food that is available, thanks God and blesses it, and suddenly he is the new Moses, feeding the people with manna in the desert. Everyone eats their fill and there is bread to spare - even the manna was only enough for one day at a time. Someone even greater than Moses is here to feed and teach people on this mountain. The miracle is not just about Jesus’ compassion, and the disciples’ lack of vision or faith, but about who Jesus is. He is in command of nature, disease, demons and death; he is the one “like Moses” whom the prophets had dreamed would come. He is himself “the bread from heaven, the bread of life, the bread that if you eat you will never be hungry again” (John 6). The miracle of the loaves and fishes points to Jesus as the one to have faith in, the one who gives eternal life to those who follow him.

But many do not get the point, even among his close disciples. The crowds are astonished at the miracle, but many soon turn away as Jesus increasingly spells out what faith in him will demand of his followers. Even when Jesus comes to the Twelve at 3am, walking on the water of the lake, they are only frightened and astonished – even “hard of heart” – not wanting to believe what they are learning about him.

3) Being A Disciple

What then does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus, then or now? It means having a heart that is softened by the needs of others, and not hardened. It means accepting the challenges that Jesus throws us to use what we have in his service and to help others. It means putting aside our own grief, our own fear, our own lack of understanding, our own fatigue, in order to do what he asks us in serving other people.

It means learning from him that at times there are more important things than home and family. It means getting over the rejection we sometimes suffer at the hands of people who know us well. It means going out to do what we are not sure we are equipped to do, but doing it in God’s way and God’s strength and God’s time, and leaving the results to him. If we witness by word and deed about Christ to others, some will reject him - and us - and we must simply shake the dust off our feet and move on. That can be hard to do, especially if our home and family and kin are concerned. But even there, Jesus is our example: his family at this stage could not deal with what he had become, but later his mother becomes one of his most devoted disciples, and his brother James becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem in the years after Pentecost. Even family can come around to faith. With God all things are possible!

To be Jesus’ disciple also means learning to function in a society where we cannot always trust “the authorities.” Power corrupts most of its holders; they become addicted to simply holding onto it, forgetting that it is meant to be used for the common good. Immoral lives, deceit, revenge, weakness, violence are still all around us today, even in the best of governments. Followers of Jesus are called to stand against such things, to rebuke them, but also to pay the price of opposing power. Our call is to do what is right, even as we grieve over the outrageous wrongs that are done.

Jesus is not only our example in all this, but he is the one who ultimately bore the weight of violence that has its roots in disbelief. In doing that, he broke its power for all time in the lives of people who trust him, because he proves that not even the Herods or the Herodias’ of this world have the last word. “King Jesus” will fully triumph over “King Herod” in his time, and people who follow Jesus will be victorious. But in the meantime they must not only suffer, but do good; they must face crimes with compassion and caring; they must get past their own needs for rest and quiet when the needs of others cry out to be served.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to follow the one who took all the rejection that home and family and town and government could heap upon him, and never gave up on any of them; who never lost compassion, never failed to respond to lost sheep who needed a shepherd, who at the end prayed “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” May our Lord give us grace to trust him, and strength to follow him as good disciples.

Let us pray...