The reading
Mark 1
As soon as Jesus and his new disciples left the synagogue,
they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a
fever, and they told him about her at once.
He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left
her, and she began to serve them. That
evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with
demons. And the whole city was gathered
around the door. And he cured many who
were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not
permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark,
he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for
him. When they found him, they said to
him, "Everyone is searching for you."
He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may
proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming
the message in their synagogues and casting out demons
The message
In the Bible, we have 4 different Gospels. Each one, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all
report on the events of Jesus' life, ministry, teachings, death and resurrection
as well as share some theological reflections and understanding of what the
events mean. Each one was written by
different people, for a different audience, in a different time period and
social context. There are very few stories
found in all 4 Gospels (one is the feeding of the multitude), many are in two
or three and a few that are unique to one (For example the prodigal son and
Good Samaritan are only in Luke). Each
book focuses on telling the world that Jesus Christ is the savior who set us
free from sin and death through his life, death and resurrection but there are
different approaches, words, tones and points of focus. This year at church
many of our Sunday readings will come from Mark’s Gospel, the first and
shortest of the 4.
It’s important to remember that when you compare Mark to the
other Gospels, it is very fast paced. There is a strong focus on the urgency and
sense of hurry in Jesus work. In the
original Greek text of Mark, the words Kai Ethous, meaning "and
immediately" appear every few sentences. Most of the “and immediatelys” have been
removed in modern bible translations to make reading it simpler. Even so, as we go through Mark's Gospel this
year, you can tell from his report that things happened very quickly. From
start to finish, Jesus ministry is one thing right after another. You are left
imagining that Jesus was in a hurry, that during his ministry, he saw every
moment wasted on travel or distraction as time that could have been better spent
healing, teaching or sharing God’s love.
This morning, our reading comes from the very first chapter
of Mark and we can already see that Jesus is driven by how important his work
of sharing God’s message with the world is. Jesus works aware of the time
constraints and challenges there were in getting to, communicating with and
helping everyone. In many ways it is
easy for us to relate to Jesus here. The
rapid, and often unforgiving pace of Mark's Gospel and Jesus drive to do it
all, probably feels familiar to many of us. Our world, the space where we live,
work, love, and experience God’s grace in, is rapid and often unforgiving. We
admire, lift up and celebrate the successful, the vision driven, the dedicated
and committed. We wear how busy we are like and advertisement, a t-shirt that
says "I am important”, “I am good at something”, “I am needed” ,“or “I am
capable of doing things”, We live in a world where “I know your very busy, but
thank you for the time” is a big compliment and sign of respect. We see busy Jesus as a model of the ideal
work ethic and an example of what we should be doing.
The danger here is that we become too focused on Jesus as
busy that we miss the other parts of his life, work and ministry: namely 1-
that Jesus always stopped for people in need of healing, teaching, or a sign of
God's love in their lives and 2- that Jesus never neglected his relationship
with God. First, In terms of Jesus
stopping for people in need, we live in a world where people in need are
honestly seen as annoying, distractions and in the way of our busy lives. We
hurry by people in need. We accept that people get run over or left behind as
part of life. We can easily see people who are not so busy are seen as slow,
lazy or somehow defective and less worthy of good things. That is something Jesus never did. We actually saw this last week in the Gospel
reading, where Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and he is interrupted by a
man possessed by an unclean spirit. The crowd tells the suffering man to keep
quiet. Jesus tells the crowd to keep
quiet and heals the man with the unclean spirit. Jesus never worried about running out of healing, grace or love. We see plenty of this
love and attention for those in need, for the weak, troubled, rejected and
outcast, throughout the Gospel. We could
use more of it in our world though.
Our next point about Jesus example in today’s Gospel is that
Jesus never neglected his relationship with God. We are only in the first chapter of Mark but
we can already see that Jesus was so tired and drained from the work that he
needed to take a break to recover. That is just what he did, Mark reports that
"In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out
to a deserted place, and there he prayed". Jesus made time for prayer, recovery
and spiritual health, he knew that his work could not be done without it.
That is a lesson we could all learn from. When I was at my internship in CT, we were at
the Bishops’s retreat and a number of us skipped the evening worship and
workshops to drive over to a local church and hear Barbara Brown Taylor (a very
well known preacher / teacher that many pastors heard about during classes). I don't necessarily remember too much of what
she said, I do remember that at the church, everyone who was supposed to be at
the hotel for the bishops retreat looked at each other like, yeah, you
shouldn’t be here either. I also remember Taylor kept coming back to the idea that
keeping the Sabbath, the biblically ordered day of rest, that not working one
day a week, no matter how important you think you are, or how urgent the
situation, that this law was no burden, it was a gift. To stop and rest, to
stop and pray, was not a sign of weakness or being inferior, it was part of a
healthy life and part of God’s grace to us. This stood out to me for all these years
because I don’t know if I ever heard anyone else, before or after, talk about
it.
This morning, the call is for us to understand the example
set by Jesus, who knows the urgency of God’s work in the world but who also
knows that people are important because they are children of God and loved by
their creator, not because they are busy and who knows we cannot live well
without taking a break to rest and pray.
It is my hope that church is a
place for you experience all of those things.
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