Sermons
Crazy Witness
“CRAZY WITNESS”
Landfall
After the storm, the boat pulls into the eastern shore of the lake. There is a stretch of about three miles of bluffs which rise up not far from the shore. Along these bluffs, in the cliff face, caves have been carved out over the centuries. This is Gentile territory, and in these caves is where they send their demon-possessed people to live.
The Disciples are all water-logged after the big storm. It’s morning and the lake is dead calm. They are grateful to be back on dry land for a bit—if only to catch their bearings—but of all the places to stop, none would have wanted this area, which amounted to an ancient asylum for the criminally insane. Plus, there were pigs there—they could probably smell them from offshore.
Mark 5: 1-20 Esv
1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8 For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" 9 And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them." 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.".†
From Obscurity to Sussita
I’m a huge fan of Mark and this is one of my favorite episodes. It’s full of the things that make Mark unique. There’s irony galore, and the Disciples would have been caught in that deep kind of awkward that present-day comedies love to celebrate.
For centuries, scholars have debated where this location might be—Gergesa, Gadara, Gerasene, and other places. The last time I preached from the text, the exact location was a big question mark, but God’s providence has some lovely ways of surprising us in this life.
When I went to Israel in 2006, I looked for Gerasene—I really wanted to find it—but according to my tour guides, it was no luck. I liked to say that the only way to see the Holy Land is with a Bible scholar and and archaeologist.
This year, when our pilgrimage went over, I expressed my dismay to our tour organizer—how fond I was of the story and how frustrating it felt to have no clue as to the exact location. Wouldn’t you know—she spent two years on the recently-discovered site of the very location!
Our tour guide was among the first people on the dig, and she was only too happy to point out the exact location where an ancient Roman city was recently uncovered. The town, called Hippo or Sussita, is likely the very town of our story. She worked on the graveyard excavations, where our demon-possessed man would have been living. She pointed out the slope of the hill where pigs would have been run into the lake and drowned. I was amazed.
I noticed that the cliffs she indicated ran down into dry land and not the lake. She explained that lake level changes, but more particularly, it can change a lot after a big rainstorm. And what does our text show us? A big storm right before the pigs run.
MAN AND YET NOT A MAN
The first significant detail is the attitude of this crazy, demon-possessed man. We should look at the words of the text with care. Look at the words used in our translation: “crying out,” “cutting himself,” and “shouting with a loud voice.” It’s easy to picture a monster-man who is violent and wants to be feared—and perhaps he was—but there is another possibility. The “crying out” doesn’t suggest aggression so much as torment—pain and perhaps great grief. The literal rendering of the word for “cutting” or “bruising” himself (with stones), is “mourning”!
Rather than the local strong man and tough guy, we may do better to see him as tormented soul—one with extreme grief and mourning that can neither be quenched nor calmed.
The text says he sees Jesus from a long way off, and apparently made a bee-line down the bluffs for the shore.
Just as Jesus and the Disciples are getting out of the boat, he comes running at them (some of the Disciples probably hopped back in to the boat about then). But nothing that comes from the man’s mouth is crazy; in fact, it is all perfectly sane and perfectly respectful! The demon, working the man like a puppet, bows down before Jesus (by the way, he is the first to bow before Jesus as if in worship[which is the literal rendering of the word]).
Jesus is already calling the unclean spirit out of the man. Jesus doesn’t even talk to the man; he talks only to the demon within the man. Jesus treats the man as someone to be rescued and redeemed, the demon as a spiritual nuisance to be removed like soul-splinter.
When the spirit within the man talks, it is not with inarticulate grunts and growls, but clear, articulate sentences:
"What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
Who is Jesus? The Son of the Most High God. This is a proclamation that none of Jesus’ own people have yet advanced. Who speaks the truth about who Jesus is? Not the righteous, not the holy, but the demons. They know who he is and they respect him! “I adjure you,” is legal language, and it means something like, “I legally bind you” to not torment me.
The demon is frightened and appeals to its own sense of justice to avoid punishment.
Jesus asks the demon its name. He says
“My name is Legion, for we are many.”
Roman legions of that time were about 3000 men. The nearby town was one of the ten towns that make up the Decapolis—the town of Hippo. Soldiers were known to be superstitious and pagan. They travelled with priests who offered sacrifices before and after every battle.
Pathos with a capital P
So the Disciples pile back in the boat. Some were no doubt relieved to be leaving this Gentile Hell—a place of Gentiles, demons, graves and now dead pigs floating in the water—and sailing on to better beaches. They climb back into their familiar seats and Jesus steps up into the boat with them, only there is something everyone has forgotten. As the townsfolk go back to their town together, and Jesus and the Disciples head out to sea, there is a lonesome figure standing in the middle with no place to go. The healed man. He wouldn’t be going back to the tombs and he wouldn’t belong with the townsfolk, so where is he to go? He does what any of us would do: he follows Jesus. The text says he
begged him that he might be with him.
Wouldn’t you and I? Please, please Jesus, let me come with you. I just want to be where you are. Can you see him there beside the boat, an imploring look on his face? Out of a world of reluctant followers, here is one who knows who Jesus is, knows his power, and loves him as Lord. In fact, this is the first. You might say that this man is the first Gentile Christian—maybe the first Christian altogether. Years before any of the Disciples would be made empowered Apostles, this man was commissioned—ordained by Jesus himself—to be a preacher of the good news. This ex-possessed man is the first voice in the Gentile world to proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus among the roman cities.
He went home and saw his family, all who must have been amazed at the change in him. He visited old friends from younger years who had broken off with him one he went crazy under possession. Now in his right mind, everyone wanted to know what happened, what made the difference, and by what power he was made whole again. And this man, whose name we do not even know, would have said, “I want to tell you about the greatest man I ever met. He is more than a man; he is the son of the Most High God. I was a wreck, living in the tombs, yelling at all hours of the night, broken, moaning, wailing, hurting myself over and over; and with a word from his lips I was restored. I sat with him and talked with him—he is really the most wonderful person!—and without him I’d still be living in the tombs. I had hit bottom. My soul barely had any human being left. I was more animal—or devil—than man. And this Jesus didn’t even care. He loved me. Me! He saw my true self hidden down under all that pain and corruption. And though the world had turned against me, he was for me. He loved me when I was most unloveable. He let me know that God’s love can reach anyone. What he did for me he can do for you. Remember! Remember Jesus—remember his name because he is my light and my salvation.
LOVE STORY FOR UNLOVABLES
This is essentially a love story—a love story of God’s love for what in this world appears unlovable.
G.K. Chesterton, the great British thinker, loved fairy tales. He especially loved Beauty and The Beast because it teaches that the "unlovely must be deeply loved before they become lovable." He said that, ‘the noble lesson behind the fable of the Beauty and the Beast is that one must be loved in order to become lovable... Someone treated like an animal will become an animal, someone treated with worth, dignity and beauty as a human being will become a human being.
We see this love in our story today. Jesus is determined to love the unlovable. That is exactly the kind of love that the gospel not only demonstrates but also calls each one of us to live out.
Loving the unlovable—loving the beast—is what Christian love is all about; and let’s be honest: there’s a little bit of a beast in everyone of us.
There was a young couple who went to see their pastor to try and get him to approve their divorce, because, as they put it, “there’s no feeling left.” The pastor told the husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The husband said, “I can’t do that.” The pastor asked him to love her as he would love himself. Again, the said that ‘I can’t do that’. So the pastor said, “The Bible says to love your enemies. Try starting there.”
It’s easy to love those who love us, but what about those we find it difficult to love? What about those who don’t like us? How do we still love and respect them as God’s people? We all know people who are difficult and the last thing we want to do or feel like doing is being a friend to obnoxious people. After all you have good reason to despise them. They have hurt you. They have betrayed you. They have exploited you. They have spread malicious gossip about you, they have ignored you, they have turned their back on you, they’ve excluded you from their social group – or for whatever reason – you just don’t like them.
St Francis and the Leper
An old story of Saint Francis has him riding in a horse cart, which suddenly pulls back by a violent jerk at the reins. The young Francis looked up and recoiled in horror. A leper stood in the middle of the road a short distance away, unmoving and looking at him. He was no different from the others: the usual wan specter with stained face, shaved head, dressed in gray sackcloth. He did not speak and showed no sign of moving or of getting out of the way. He looked at the horseman fixedly, strangely, with an acute and penetrating gaze.
An instant that seemed eternity passed. Slowly Francis dismounted, went to the man, and took his hand. It was a poor emaciated hand, bloodstained, twisted, inert, and cold like that of a corpse. He put a mite of charity in it, pressed it, carried it to his lips. And suddenly, as he kissed the lacerated flesh of the creature who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned, of all human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion, one that shut out everything around him, one that he would remember even on his death bed.
Beautiful MindS & hearts
In one scene of A Beautiful Mind, one of John Nash's colleagues is talking to his wife Alicia:
"So, Alicia, how are you holding up?"
Alicia responds feebly, "Well, the delusions have passed. They say with medications—"
The colleague clarifies, "No, I mean you."
Alicia pauses and explains, "I think often what I feel is obligation, or guilt, over wanting to leave, rage against John, against God. But then I look at him, and I force myself to see the man that I married, and he becomes that man. He's transformed into someone that I love, and I'm transformed into someone that loves him. It's not all the time, but it's enough."
We begin with loving. we love first.
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote,
"Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor—act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.
Norma Jean Mortenson
Years ago Father John Powell told the story of Norma Jean Mortenson: "Norma Jean Mortenson. Remember that name? Norma Jean's mother, Mrs. Gladys Baker, was periodically committed to a mental institution and Norma Jean spent much of her childhood in foster homes. In one of those foster homes, when she was eight years old, one of the boarders raped her and gave her a nickel. He said, 'Here, Honey. Take this and don't ever tell anyone what I did to you.' When little Norma Jean went to her foster mother to tell her what had happened she was beaten badly. She was told, 'Our boarder pays good rent. Don't you ever say anything bad about him!' Norma Jean at the age of eight had learned what it was to be used and given a nickel and beaten for trying to express the hurt that was in her.
"Norma Jean turned into a very pretty young girl and people began to notice. Boys whistled at her and she began to enjoy that, but she always wished they would notice she was a person too--not just a body--or a pretty face--but a person.
"Then Norma Jean went to Hollywood and took a new name-- Marilyn Monroe and the publicity people told her, 'We are going to create a modern sex symbol out of you.' And this was her reaction, 'A symbol? Aren't symbols things people hit together?' They said, 'Honey, it doesn't matter, because we are going to make you the most smoldering sex symbol that ever hit the celluloid.'
"She was an overnight smash success, but she kept asking, 'Did you also notice I am a person? Would you please notice?' Then she was cast in the dumb blonde roles.
"Everyone hated Marilyn Monroe. Everyone did.
"She would keep her crews waiting two hours on the set. She was regarded as a selfish prima donna. What they didn't know was that she was in her dressing room vomiting because she was so terrified.
"She kept saying, 'Will someone please notice I am a person. Please.' They didn't notice. They wouldn't take her seriously.
"She went through three marriages--always pleading, 'Take me seriously as a person.' Everyone kept saying, 'But you are a sex symbol. You can't be other than that.'
"Marilyn kept saying 'I want to be a person. I want to be a serious actress.'
"And so on that Saturday night, at the age of 35 when all beautiful women are supposed to be on the arm of a handsome escort, Marilyn Monroe took her own life. She killed herself.
"When her maid found her body the next morning, she noticed the telephone was off the hook. It was dangling there beside her.
Later investigation revealed that in the last moments of her life she had called a Hollywood actor and told him she had taken enough sleeping pills to kill herself.
"He answered with the famous line of Rhett Butler, which I now edit for church, 'Frankly, my dear, I don't care!' That was the last word she heard. She dropped the phone--left it dangling.
"Claire Booth Luce in a very sensitive article asked, 'What really killed Marilyn Monroe, love goddess who never found any love?' She said she thought the dangling telephone was the symbol of Marilyn Monroe's whole life. She died because she never got through to anyone who understood."
Maybe you’ve felt like a Norma Jean—everything great on the outside, but inside all emptiness and desperation to connect in a real way. The role of the Church today is to do as Jesus would have done. As Jesus called out the unclean spirit from the frightening man, so he would call out to the real person inside of Marilyn Monroe, as to you and me, in order that we might be rescued, redeemed, whole.
LOVE FOR THE WORST OF US
The world is filled with people who may or may not like you. They may find reasons for singling you out or separating you out from fellowship. They may judge you unworthy, or problematic, or just difficult; and then consign you to a world of emotional isolation.
Jesus, on the other hand, loves you no matter what things get ahold of you. He’s not coming to blame you for your afflictions. He didn’t blame the man for being possessed. His only interest is to heal and restore people from whatever this world and its dark mysteries may put upon us.
Jesus wants the inner man or woman restored, rescued, and redeemed from every affliction of the soul.
As his Church, we can start by loving first, loving well, and pursuing that inner person—that image of God—in all who are disconnected, unloved, or howling among the tombs.
Epilogue
Years later, a disciple traveling east comes to a Roman town. He is there to talk about Jesus. He tells them that Jesus is Lord, the Son of God, and the people say, “Oh yeah, we’ve heard all about Jesus! Please stay and tell us much, much more, because we all want to know all there is to know about Jesus. We want to know him too. Please, tell us all everything, we’re with you all the way.” †
The Lord of Nature
“The Lord of Nature”
HE NEVER LEFT THE BOAT
Continuing from last week, as Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Lake, he orders the boats across to the other side. No after-chat with the congregation, no meet-and-greet, no fellowship hour—they just go. The text says they took him “just as he was”—that is, there in the boat, probably still seated as he had been while teaching. Here is where our text picks up…
Text: Mark 4: 35-41 Esv
35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."
36 And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
40 He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?".†
iT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
It was a dark and stormy night. A writer’s cliché that describes our place in Mark. The waves pick up and slam the boat, and the Disciples fear for their lives. Jesus is asleep in the stern, asleep during the storm. Now this is either the perfect picture of keeping a cool head when all around are running crazy, or else it is the picture of people’s ultimate frustration—a leader who is completely asleep when all hands are needed on deck. Perhaps a bit of both.
The disciples are afraid. At least some of them know a thing or two about fishing at night and being caught out on the lake during a squall. It can be deadly, even for experienced boaters. I’m sure there are hundreds of similar fishing boats at the bottom of the Galilee Lake from nights just like this one.
Here’s my first question: How long did they wait before waking Jesus? Even in the dark, I would think the fishermen among the twelve would have known when foul weather was coming. Certainly they knew once the wind picked up that the waves would increase in size. Even so, they let Jesus sleep. Then the winds really started to blow, and all the non-fishermen were given cups and baskets to bail water that sloshed in. Even now, they prefer not to bother Jesus. “He’s had such a long day—he needs his sleep! It’s okay—we can handle it.”
And here’s one picture of the Church. After all, Jesus wasn’t a fisherman—he was a rabbi—what would he know about sailing? It would have been only too easy for the guys who wanted to take charge to say, “Why wake him? Let him sleep—we got this!” We too might think there are areas in our lives where we don’t really need to consult Jesus. Yes, on all religious matters we’ll go to him, but when it comes to our businesses, our families, our marriages, it can be tempting to do the same—to think, well, Jesus wasn’t married, Jesus didn’t have to raise babies, and no one ever expected him to run a business, so let’s just take care of those things ourselves. Let him sleep—we got this!
Did it work for the Disciples? No. Why then, would we think it can work for us? Pride goeth before a fall. Truth be told, there may be things we do—or enjoy doing—that we don’t really want Jesus taking over. Talking about Jesus is fine for Sunday mornings at church, but do we really feel like we need him in taking care of our own business? Perhaps that is why the Disciples didn’t wake him right away; they simply wanted to handle things themselves.
The Disciples Rebuke Jesus
As things get worse and waves fill the boat, they begin to realize that they have to wake him. If nothing else, perhaps he could help bail water. The tone of their question is most interesting:
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
Not, “Rabbi, we all wanted to let you sleep, but the situation has grown out of our control: help!” Not, “Rabbi, we just thought we’d wake you to let you know that we’re doomed…thought you might like to be awake when we die.” Instead, they rebuke him: “Don’t you care!?” or “Does it not matter to you that we’re all on our way to a certain, watery death?” The question is dripping with resentment. Where does this come from? Really—the nerve—Jesus doesn’t care?
There is a special brand of selfishness that can come upon us when we’re in trouble—in a personal storm of our own. A trial, a bind, the death of a loved one, an unforeseen emergency—any of these can be cause for us to enter a kind of crisis-mode self-absorption. Those times we might pray, “Why, O God? Why me?” or “Why does the storm have to be such an extreme one?” As we see ourselves suffering, we may even come to blame those who do not seem to be on our side or others who are not helping us when they clearly have the power to do so. There can be a kind of self-righteousness—a kind of special entitlement—that comes with our suffering. We can fall into the mode of blaming the rest of the world for not suffering in the same way. When we are feeling really rattled, the last person we want near us is someone who fails to share our anxiety, misery or outrage.
Jesus sleeps peaceably, even when water splashes onto him. Finally, one of the disciples (perhaps Thomas, who can be delightfully snarky) snaps and delivers his rebuking line: Don’t you care that we’re all dying? It is an understandable question. The resentment is only a mask. Behind that mask is simple fear.
FEAR
August 14, in Terminal 8 of JFK Airport, a group burst into mad applause at Usain Bolt’s 100-meter dash. Somehow, the applause sounded like gunfire; at least to someone, and apparently it only takes one. A woman screamed that she saw a gun. Then there was a stampede. A people plowed through the metal poles strung throughout the terminal to organize lines, the metal clacking on the tile floors sounded like gunfire. More stampeding.
There were other stampedes, some small and some large, throughout the airport, to judge by the thousands of passengers massed outside on the tarmac by about 11 p.m. — not a peaceful mass, but a panicked one. Some of them had been swept outside by police charging through the terminals with guns drawn, others had been on lines where TSA agents grabbed their gear and just ran.
One man had darted down a jet bridge to take cover, inspiring others to follow, running and yelling. Only when he reached the end did he realize that the door was locked, and that, because there was no plane on the other side of it, he was actually suspended 20 feet or more in the air, like at the end of an unfinished bridge, with dozens or maybe even hundreds coming behind him. He’d have to smash the window, he figured, and try and open the door from the other side, then just jump. That’s when he heard the screams of the crowd storming toward him: “They’re coming this way!”
There was no “they.” There was not even a “he,” no armed person turning on a crowd. But what happened at JFK on August 14 was, in every respect but the violence, a mass shooting. The fact that there was no attack at the center of it was both the weirdest and the scariest part — that an institution whose size and location and budget should make it a fortress, in a country that has spent 15 years focused compulsively on securing its airports, in a city with a terrifyingly competent anti-terror police unit, could be transformed into a scene of utter bedlam, stretching out from all eight terminals across the tarmac and onto the adjacent highways, by the whisper of a threat. Within minutes, the whole apparatus of the airport and its crowd-control mechanisms had collapsed into total disarray. [From New York magazine, by David Wallace-Wells, August 15, 2016]
Fear is false evidence appearing real. Applause mistaken for gunfire sends a city into a panic. Fear plays havoc with our every sense of reason and probability.
• [Your friend is 5 minutes late]— He’s never late; it’s obviously some horrible car accident!
• [You hear a negative comment]—Everybody is against me!
• [A stranger walks past your house, looking at it]—It was a burglar casing the joint!
Fear puts the nervous system into panic mode—fight or flight—and sends us charging for our lives down a dead end jet bridge. Fear is absolutely humorless and distorts reality to its worst possible conclusions.
“Don’t you care that we are perishing?”
FEAR & Fearless Christianity
The antidote to fear is loving and trusting in God. Placing our ultimate love and trust anyplace else is foolishness, though it is our instinct. The Disciples in the boat trusted in their own sailing skills, then in their own bailing skills, but it wasn’t enough; it didn’t work. We may look for sources to trust in other than God. We look to ourselves, human goodness, governments or insurance companies to keep us from fear. This is all, to some degree, misplaced trust. It’s like Peter expecting Thomas to save the boat.
When we trust in God, fear loses its power; fear is put in its place. If we fear God, other fears fall into perspective. When we fear God and God alone, both tyrants and terrorists are brought down to size.
Our calling is not to be like the Disciples, but like Christ. This means we are aiming for a fearless kind of Christianity. We are to become the cool heads in the crazy boats, the calm heart in the midst of the storm, gathered and fearless.
There are two kinds of fear: one is simple, biological fear. That is good—a good gift from God for our survival and care—and it is part of our God-given nature. The other kind is a deeper fear—fear that sets into the will or our attitudes—that’s what we need to get beyond.
Fear that is set into the will can make us permanently defensive and irretrievably suspicious. Think conspiracy theorists and end-of-the-world, doomsday Christianity. Fear drives them to see all the storms of life as eclipsing every other power, even God’s power to do what is redemptive. They, like the Disciples in the boat, assume we are all perishing.
We, however, are called to be cooler, and scripture gives us the antidote to fear in 1 John 4: 18:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
It is the number one commandment—to love God above all else—that also delivers us from fear. To love God means that we trust in his providence. God is in control, and the circumstances of our lives that can appear scary are actually overseen by God’s goodness.
Jesus Casts Out the Storm
In total contrast to fear, we have Jesus, who in the midst of a life-threatening gale is sleeping soundly as a baby (at least until the panicky disciples wake him). Jesus is fearless. Though hidden by the pitch black of a stormy night, I expect their faces would have been all fear and panic. Jesus gets up (or maybe just sits up) and shouts into the dark storm, “Be muzzled! Be still!”—which is the same word he used to cast out demons. “Pipe down! Knock it off, already—some of us are trying to sleep here!” The storm is “cast out” of the lake, and there is “enormous calm.”
As the Disciples stand with their mouths hanging open, Jesus says to them:
“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”
Amplified: “Has the secret of my authority not yet dawned upon you?”
After this, the Disciples say:
"Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
The text indicates that they are more afraid now than when they thought they were dying in the storm! Here’s Mark’s sense of humor. They’re all fine, the lake is glassy and smooth, and the dawn now casts its gentle light over the landscape. Jesus has gone back to sleep, and the Disciples are cowering away from him on the boat, saying things (I imagine) like, “I was afraid of him just for being an exorcist—but who casts storms out of lakes?”
After 2000 years, that question comes to us with equal relevance, because fear is still a big part of our lives. We too need the power that can transform dark and roiling seas into that enormous calm of the text.
What are Our storms?
What storms threaten us? Scare us? Send us into a self-delusional panics? It is a political year, which means all the networks are furiously competing for our earspace. Fox News has set the new standard for setting off the alarms—GIGANTIC HEADLINES for every story (I shouldn’t pick on Fox alone; this is now the industry standard for CNN and MSNBC as well)—everything is a SPECIAL REPORT and BREAKING NEWS, all the time, 24/7. Television news has completed a transition away from the traditional values of objective journalism and into unapologetic, sensationalistic titillation.
Remember the story of Chicken Little? The funny little hen who ran around shouting “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”? Chicken Little runs amok—not only in an election year, but every year—seeking like crazy to raise the public blood pressure and to get people agitated into a panicky dither. The story was originally told as a take heed against alarmism. Today its meaning is largely lost— absorbed by the endless alarmism of cable news.
The Church has its Chicken Littles as well—pundits and “church experts” who specialize in collective handwringing, bemoaning the state of the Church and American Christianity in general. “Look what’s happening in Israel!” they exclaim, “we are clearly in the last days!” The alarms are sounded, and all us chickens start stampeding through airports or stop what we’re doing and look up at the sky, waiting for it to crack.
Does anyone really want to live that kind of life? Do we want to be like the Disciples in the boat—fearful, panicky, and resentful of the powers that put us here? Do we want to be a part of a mindless, scurrying stampede of people running from their own shadows?
Instead, why can’t we be the cooler heads—the coolest heads? How can we become the God-loving, God-trusting, Love-empowered followers he wants us to be?
Asking the Love Question
Again, from 1 John 4:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
We choose between serving feat and serving love. When we love—when we trust in God and believe that God is in control—fear simply dissolves. The choice to renounce fear and serve trust in God is a necessary and deliberate choice.
We can begin by asking the Love question:
“In my fear, how am I failing to give love?”
Whatever the source of fear, no matter how menacingly it looms over our equilibrium, we can choose to love instead of fear.
Love says: God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good. When we believe that, we can accept that whatever it is that upsets us—no matter how big and dark the storm—we trust that God has not brought us this far only to have us drowned in the lake. Though troubles may come (does anyone imagine that they would not?) we can meet them with cool heads, even considering them as the exercises set before us by a loving Lord who means for us to develop our gifts—hurdles put on our path by a loving God who doesn’t want us squandering our hearts and lives on fear.
How would it feel to live that life to the fullest? Beyond fear, unshaken, unbroken, unflappable—cool, collected and faithful in the midst of every storm—this is the Christlike pattern toward which we grow and strive.
The ultimate hope is that at the end of all worldly storms, when we see him face-to-face, we will be able to say that we never feared, because we knew he was with us the time. †
Sermon on the Lake
“SERMON ON THE LAKE”
Text: Mark 4: 21-34 Esv
21 And he said to them, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? 22 For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." 24 And he said to them, "Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. 25 For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away."26 And he said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."30 And he said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." 33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.†
A PULPIT ON THE LAKE
Last week’s text saw Jesus preaching from a boat on the lake from—literally—the pulpit. Jesus explains the parable of the Sower to them in a “flash forward.” You know what a flashback is—on TV and in the movies it’s that moment when the screen goes wavy and harp music plays as a way of going back in time—but this is a flash forward to show readers how Jesus explained his parables to his disciples. They would not be left scratching their heads about the parables. Jesus would give them the key to interpret his teachings.
Today, we come back from the flash forward to Jesus’ teaching his “many parables” from the boat. As Matthew has its “Sermon on the Mount,” and Luke its “Sermon on the Plain,” Mark gives us what we can rightly call the “Sermon on the Lake.” In today’s text, we are given three more parables: The Lamp, The Wheat, and The Mustard Plant. Now with these three, unlike the Parable of the Sower, we do not hear Jesus’ explanation to his disciples, so we’re going to have to find the meaning for ourselves. Ready?
1. PARABLE OF THE LAMP
When the lamp comes in to a dark room, you don’t put it under a measuring basket or under the sofa, but rather on an end table. Nothing is hidden except that it be meaningfully revealed. Every mystery will in its time come to light. Let all who have ears to hear, hear!
Again, I want us to first imagine that we are not the Disciples in the know with all the clues, but just ordinary folk on the edge of the lake listening and trying to make sense of all Jesus is saying. What would be your impression so far? Yeah, you’re right, Rabbi—only a complete fool would put a lamp under the couch or beneath a bushel. So, you’re telling us. . . what? Living room light maintenance is an important thing?
“Those with ears to hear” are those who know that the parables have a deeper meaning and are not at all concerned about lamps and living rooms, but say something about God’s revelation. There is much that God is yet to reveal to his people, but Jesus is the light that comes into a dark room. Jesus is the self-revelation of God, though the people don’t yet see him as the light. Not yet.
The joy of looking closely at scripture is that when we do, we are struck by all kinds of insights! Insight is what we read for—not mere information—but those bits of God’s self-revelation.
It is significant that the basket Jesus talks about is no ordinary basket, but a measuring basket—a bushel. When the light of Jesus enters into the dark room of 1st-century Judaism, what is the first thing that happens? The scribes of the Pharisees begin to judge him, the Judge of the World! Their measuring of him according to the measuring basket of the Law of Moses would be a way of trying to put Jesus and his light under the bushel. The parable tells us that this wrong—every bit as wrong as putting a lamp under the bed, out of the way, rather than on an end table where it can light the whole room.
Jesus came to reveal God to us, and there is good news in Jesus saying that all mysteries have solutions and all puzzles will in time come to light. Our lives are full of mysteries, puzzles and questions. In the midst of doubt we can easily wonder whether these problems even have answers. People without hope are left seeing the cosmos as a great puzzle to which there are no solutions other than the ones we make up for ourselves. Thanks be to God, who reassures us through this parable that God is provident, God is in perfect control, and the day will come when we understand every mystery, every puzzle, every question, and Jesus—the light of God—will be at the center revealing all! And this is point number 1: The Kingdom of God is revealed in Jesus.
Between parable 1 and 2 we hear a transitional saying about our “measuring”:
And he was saying to them, "Consider what you hear: by the measure with which you do your measuring, you will be measured, and it will be added to you. For whoever gives, more will be given, and from the one who doesn’t give, even what he has will be taken away.”
This seems to be both a warning against judging others with that “measuring basket” and a call to generosity with others. As we give, it will be measured out to us plus more!
2. PARABLE OF THE WHEAT
And he said, "The kingdom of God is like this: a man sews seed on good soil. Day after day he goes about his business while the seed sprouts and grows in ways he neither knows nor understands. The soil does it by itself: first the grass, then a head of grain, then the full wheat in the head. But when the fruit is ripe, he immediately sends the sickle, for the time of harvest has come.
Again, if we are the ordinary person listening to Jesus, we might start getting very critical about now:
•What—we’re back to farming again?
•The Kingdom is like a seed planted until it grows up? What does that have to do with anything?
And again, if we listen in the flesh alone we will never make sense of a parable, but in the Spirit we can make good sense of this. We had a little help with the Parable of the Sower, so we can begin knowing that the seed is the Word of God. The farmer sleeps, wakes, goes about his business for the rest of the plant’s life. He does nothing to make the wheat grow; it does so all by itself, automatically.
We do not and cannot make growth happen; we are utterly dependent upon God’s Holy Spirit for growth to occur. God is responsible for all growth. We do well to water when we can and keep bugs away, but the work of growth is God’s responsibility, and though we seek and pursue growth, all credit goes to God.
We are planters; God is the producer.
The purpose of sowing the seeds of God’s Word is planting in preparation for the future harvest. We sow (and share the gospel) in hope of what God will make of it.
Those of you who have worked in youth ministries know this—we have little idea of the long-term effect of ministry upon teenagers, but our hope and intention is to be planting seeds. God will bring the growth.
Parents—you brought your kids to church until they were old enough to make their own decisions. You planted the seeds; growth is God’s work. And if you feel discouraged—if your children have visibly turned from the Christian faith—don’t imagine your work was in vain. You made a difference. Some of your children are chock-full of seeds that will grow by God’s design in God’s good time. Never fear, never doubt.
In all things, we trust in God to bring growth, and the implicit promise of the parable is that God will do just that.
And this is point number 2: The Kingdom of God will come to its completion.
3. THE MUSTARD PLANT
And he said, "[How can I help you to understand the Kingdom?] To what should we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable should we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is among the smallest of seeds, and when it is sown it grows up to become the largest shrub in the garden and puts out large branches, so that the birds of heaven can build nests in its shade."
In short, this is a parable of enormous contrast. From one, tiny seed—mere sparrow food—comes a huge plant large enough to feed and house many larger birds. From next to nothing, much abundance results. It’s like the Big Bang: from one infinitesimally small point comes the entire cosmos expanding at the speed of light.
You’ve probably heard of the Butterfly Effect. In this idea much is made of initial conditions. A butterfly flapping its wing in Argentina has an influence on hurricanes in the gulf.
For the sake of saying something about the Kingdom of God, it seems the Mustard Plant Parable builds upon the Growing Seed Parable. What God grows, God will most certainly bring to great fulfillment. And this is point number 3: The Kingdom of God will come to total abundance.
ABOUT PARABLES IN GENERAL
With many similar parables he was sharing the word with them (as they were able to hear). He did not speak to them except through parables, but privately (to his own disciples) he explained everything.
Jesus spoke all in parables, only in parables. And as we’ve seen, to the regular guy in the crowd, these teachings are cryptic, confusing, impractical and frankly off-putting. I so want to ask the obvious question:
Why didn’t Jesus just explain everything to everyone?
Really now, if Jesus’ intention and purpose is to reveal the kingdom, why didn’t he just go ahead and reveal it in his teachings?
Because God is God, we know there is a purpose at work here. Despite the cryptic teachings, plenty of people still followed him, unfazed by his style of preaching, while others surely walked away. This leads us to another, far more important question:
What is the difference between those who followed Jesus and those who walked away?
I find it disturbingly easy to understand why many people would have turned away and stopped following him at this point. Those who walked away were what we’d call sensible. It’s easy to imagine the kind of things they’d say to each other as they left the lake toward home:
•I find his parables unclear and cryptic—apparently people can make of them whatever they want!
•Where’s the “life application” in his teaching? These parables are not at all practical! I expect a rabbi to tell me how to live my life!
•He’s not preaching out of the scriptures but kind of going out of his own head. Is that really proper?
•I really don’t like Jesus’ preaching style: it really doesn’t hit the heart—I want sermons to make me feel good about God and myself—these parables do nothing for me!
•I really don’t think he should be preaching from a boat, do you?
We understand those who walked away only too well—we get them—but what about those who stayed and followed? I think they probably had a different kind of thinking and different voices:
•That Jesus is truly wonderful—do you see it?
•So he teaches in parables! He wouldn’t teach us in parables were there not a good reason for doing so!
•I’m not sure what all those parables mean, but I’m going to follow him until I figure it out!
The bottom line difference between those who kept following Jesus and those who walked away is simply that some people loved him and trusted him, while others did not. The key to the parables is not an idea but Jesus himself.
It’s all about a relationship: those who love Jesus and trust in him will be following at the end of the day whether their personal needs were met or not. These simply trust Jesus with their future. They know that answers are yet to come, mysteries are yet to be revealed, and answers to the puzzles of life will be given in God’s good time.
All of life is a parable, every problem a puzzle to be solved, every mystery a miracle waiting to be revealed. Do you want your answer? Do you want your healing? Do you want the abundance that is God’s Kingdom?
Love. Trust. Keep following.
A little six-year-old boy was following his father in the backyard while the father was trying to get some work done. He went into the shed; there was his little son at his heels. He went out behind the garage to get a ladder; his son was right beside him, trying to help. He went into his workshop to find some tools, and there was his son hanging onto his leg. The father said, “Go on out and play—you’re starting to get in the way!” His son looked up with a sad face and was frowning. Tears welled up in his big eyes and his lower lip began to quiver. “Wait, what’s the matter?” asked his father. The boy, catching his breath, looked into his father’s face and said, “But Daddy, I just want to be where you are!”
May our faith become exactly like this! †