Jesus Christ By: Rev. Karla Wubbenhorst, September 18, Mark 1.1 and

Transcription

1 Mark 1.1 and The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. 16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, Follow me and I will make you fish for people. 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. 21 They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be silent, and come out of him! 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. Page 1 of 6

2 For the last two weeks we have been inching our way through the first verse of Mark s gospel. Mark chapter 1 verse 1 reads: the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. On September 4 th we thought about beginnings. The kind of beginning God makes when he sets about his work of redemption, and the kind of beginning that we are making now that is to say, you and your newly inducted minister as we try together to find our bearings in God s work, which is already underway here. I called this kind of beginning, a beginning in the middle. Last Sunday we thought about the good news this peculiar name, which the early Christians used to refer to their message about Jesus Christ. We thought about what it meant, as Christ s disciples, to be called to a ministry of good news casting, in a world that is dominated by bad news media. Now in this third week of September we have made great strides and are already three quarters of the way through the first verse of Mark s gospel! I kid you not, we have made great strides, because already we have penetrated to what is, or should be, the heart of the matter in any Christian Church. We have arrived at the name of Jesus Christ. Who is this Jesus Christ, as Mark first shows him to us? He is first of all a Jew, for we find him in today s reading entering the synagogue in Capernaum and doing what it is natural for Jews to do on the Sabbath day read, interpret, discuss and debate the Scriptures. Jesus then is a Jew, but specifically a Jewish teacher, a rabbi. Although he may not have been to rabbi-school, he taught with what the congregation at Capernaum recognized as authority his words somehow commanded their attention and respect in a way that their regular preachers words did not. Mark 1.22 tells us They were astounded at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Now as one involved in the task of preaching, I would love to know what Jesus did to create that reaction among those who heard him. What is it exactly that divides powerful preaching from so-so Page 2 of 6

3 preaching? What was that difference, do you think, between the way that Jesus preached and the way the scribes preached? Was it only some greater level of personal charisma, some trick of body gesture or eye contact, some good fortune whereby Jesus had a voice like Jeff Veenstra? What was it that the congregation meant when it said He speaks as one having authority. I rather suspect it was none of these things these techniques of elocution. It may have been more like the difference between having a newscaster report on the news and having the policy makers themselves George Bush or Colin Powell come on the television to address the nation directly. Jesus did not need to reference his sources in what he said about God and the will of God. He was The Source, The Revelation, the One who could represent God exactly, because, as he tells us elsewhere I and the Father are One. But it s not only the congregation in the synagogue who sense and who react to Jesus authority. It is the unclean spirits as well. I don t know about you, but whenever these stories of Jesus and the unclean spirits come up in my reading of Scripture I m not sure what to make of them. I m not sure whether they belong to an ancient way of understanding mental illness, or whether there is a real and continuing phenomenon in the world called demon possession. I do believe in the reality of Satan and of forces which oppose the gospel of Christ, but whether they operate by taking over the minds and wills of individuals, I am not sure. What I think we must do is accept that, whatever he did, Jesus acquired a reputation as an exorcist. The Bible talks about Jesus the teacher, Jesus the healer, and then there is this testimony about Jesus the exorcist. It is too substantial a testimony to ignore. Whatever that ministry of Jesus was, it was somewhat different than his ministry of healing or his ministry of teaching, and it was definitely a liberating ministry for those who experienced it. Mark tells us in verse 23 that just then there was in their synagogue, a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to Page 3 of 6

4 destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him saying Be silent and come out of him. With this, the unclean spirit, convulsing the man and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. As the apostle Paul tells us elsewhere, Greeks were impressed with wisdom but Jews were impressed by signs. The crowd at the synagogue had already listened to Jesus teaching and had determined that he was different that his words carried weight. He had amazed them already with his wisdom. But what really seals the matter with this Jewish crowd is when Jesus confirms his words with a sign. When they witnessed the exorcism, they were all amazed, Mark tells us (verse 27) and they kept on asking one another What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. The sign had the effect of verifying that the words which Jesus spoke with such authority were words from God. What Mark has built up by this point in his Gospel is a threefold testimony to the authority of Jesus Christ. At his baptism, which we looked at two weeks ago, the voice and the dove out of heaven, are the divine testimony. Now we have the human testimony of the synagogue congregation in Capernaum. And to these two testimonies is added that of the unclean spirits, who in the ancient understanding belonged to the watery regions under the earth. See, it is just as the hymn to Christ in Philippians chapter 2 predicts: at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, those in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The main thing Mark wants us to know about this Jesus, is that he is the one with the authority of God. He is the Christ, (which means the one God has anointed). He is the one we are supposed to be looking at. Next week I want to consider the term Son of God. Part of what this title, Son of God means, is that although Jesus is one with God and equal to God, still he does not promote himself. He understands his ministry as a fulfillment of Page 4 of 6

5 the Father s will. The role of the Son is to point to the Father. But all the time that Jesus is pointing away from himself and toward the Father, the Father is pointing to him. And it is this pointing which the gospel of Mark picks up first, and which concerns us today. You see if the early church didn t think that Jesus had an authority from God, which was absolutely unique, and absolutely necessary to accept if one was to benefit from what God was doing in the present, then the early church would never have broken with Judaism. But accepting Jesus authority in your head is one thing, and accepting Jesus authority in your life is quite another. At the same time as the early church was promoting Jesus as the uniquely authoritative Son of God, they were struggling, as Paul s letters show us, to bring themselves really under that authority in daily life. We know that struggle too. Often the cry of the unclean spirits is close to the cry of our own hearts What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? For when we accept his authority, and become his disciples, Jesus causes us to undergo a washing which is so rigorous, a surgery, which is so invasive, that we feel it may kill us, before it saves us. The authority of Jesus is a threatening thing, for it does destroy many of our old priorities, our old indulgences, our old ways. The church today, much like the early church, promotes Jesus Christ, holds centrally to Jesus Christ, all the while developing defenses against a whole-hearted experience of what Christ s authority would mean. Do you believe me? One of the cleverest ways our church, the Presbyterian Church, has done this, I think, is to retreat from the particularity of Jesus Christ into the generality of God. Something I have noticed when I speak to Presbyterians or analyse Presbyterian worship is the fact that our deity is called God. People will speak of their relationship with God, their hope in God, their anger at God, but seldom will they speak of their relationship with Jesus. Roman Catholics and Pentecostals are different they speak of Jesus all Page 5 of 6

6 the time. This, of course, leaves them open to other temptations, but we don t need to discuss those right now we were talking about our own temptation, which is to bypass Jesus, thinking that without him, we can get more directly somehow to God. If, when we speak of God, we have in mind the God we have come to know in the face of Jesus Christ, then well and good. But if we speak always of God and never of Jesus, it is just possible that we will begin to assume another God the god of our imaginings; the god we would like God to be rather than the God who says such surprising things, and who acts so perplexingly, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Part of the authority of Jesus is his authority to define God for us. If God has said: I will be known in Jesus Christ, look at him and listen to him; we look for God apart from him at our peril Yes, the Church and Christians do strive against the authority of Jesus Christ, at the same time as we profess it. Our error perhaps is in thinking that if we can shake off the authority of Christ just a little, then we shall be in some neutral space where there is no authority over us but our own. The truth is that until we come under the authority of Christ, we are governed and dictated to by the other authorities in our world: the voice of money, the voice of the media, the voice of science or celebrity. And none of these authorities can speak to us at all concerning the God who made us, or our place in God s world. The man with the unclean spirit begins by fearing the authority of Christ cries out against him but at the end of the day goes home liberated. The overwhelming experience of Christians is that the yoke of Jesus authority, compared to that of other authorities and task-masters, is an easy yoke. His burden is light. In any case, Jesus is where God s finger points, where God s express image can be seen. What more do we need to focus our eyes upon Jesus? Page 6 of 6