Mark 6:6b-13; 30-32. Two by two.

And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff- no bread, no bag, no money in their belts- but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them…

 

…The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

 

So far, Mark has arranged his accounts loosely into cycles of miracles and other pieces of narrative, each cycle with a different focus. In the first cycle, the point was simply to show what God’s kingdom is going to be like, right at the outset, as the king appeared. So Jesus casts out a demon, heals Peter’s mother and many sick people, and cleanses a leper, in order to show that under his reign, Satan’s power will be broken, the curse will be lifted, and uncleanness will be no more. Under God’s reign, Jesus is the King. So Jesus commands some disciples to follow him, and teaches with authority in the synagogues.

In the next cycle, a new element is introduced, namely that of opposition and division. God’s kingdom is not only a place of blessing, but also a place of conflict. There are those who harden their hearts and oppose the reign of King Jesus, despite its obvious goodness. In all of the snapshots of Jesus’ ministry under this section- the healing of a paralysed man, the healing of a man with a withered hand, the calling of Levi- Mark’s focus is not so much on the miracles themselves as the disputes which they occasioned. And Mark also records the dispute over plucking of grain on the Sabbath, and the occasion when the religious leaders accused Jesus of being under Satanic control, and the time when Jesus’ natural family said that he was a madman and tried to take him away until he got better. The disciples are marked out as Jesus’ true family, because they are in his kingdom. Mark wants to point out that the kingdom of God is essentially divisive. When it comes, it makes things much clearer, and the goats are plainly shown to be different from the sheep.

The next cycle focuses on those who do respond to the kingdom of God, and who grasp the blessings offered. Mark chooses two more miracles out of the many which Jesus did in order to make a point about faith. The blessings of the kingdom are grasped by faith. Both the woman and Jairus are commended for their faith.

Now Mark comes to the time when Jesus sent the disciples out as heralds of his kingdom. So far, they have been learners, observing Jesus in all he did. Now they are to go and be his apostles. Between the sending of the Twelve (v6-13), and their return (v30-32), Mark tells us about what happened to John the Baptist, who he had introduced right at the start of the gospel.

 

The sending and return of the Twelve

 

1) What is the relationship of the Twelve to Jesus?

Teachers in Israel would have different groups of followers. Some would hear them when it seemed convenient- when the teacher visited their home town, for example. Others would be more interested, would have marked out a particular teacher as a favourite of theirs, would identify themselves in some sense as a supporter, might offer him hospitality, or put themselves out and travel to the next town to hear him teach. But there would be a small and dedicated group who were actually the disciples of the teacher. They would call him “Rabbi” (My teacher). They would be allowed to sit at his feet, to hear him intimately. They would be allowed to share his life in every way. They would follow him everywhere he went, listen to all his teaching. He would teach them privately, apart from the crowds, and take them deeper into his thought. They would eat with him, sleep where he slept, even leaving home and family for a while to follow him. The Twelve are chosen by Jesus personally to be his disciples. They have left home and family for his sake, as Peter says (Mark 10:28). Jesus sees them as his family, and says so publicly (Mark 3:34).

In some sense, they are actually an extension of Jesus himself; his body. The Twelve are the embryonic church. There are twelve of them because they are his new Israel, the new twelve tribes.  They, along with the prophets, will be the foundation for the church (Ephesians 2:20). The structure will be built on them after Pentecost, but for now, they are all that there is. They are the group publicly identified with Jesus. We have Paul’s teaching in his letters to churches that the church is Christ’s “body”

 ”For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many”… “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body”… “But God has so composed the body, giving greater honour to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” I Corinthians 12:12-27.

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”… “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:11-16.

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Ephesians 5:22-33.

“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” Colossians 1:24.

Your body is the physical organism by which you interact with the world around you. You pick things up, put them down, eat, drink, communicate- all by using your body. The church is the physical thing by which Jesus Christ himself interacts with the world. Paul is drawing out similarities between (variously) a man and his natural body, a man and his wife, and Christ and his church. The Twelve stand in this intimate relationship to Jesus. When people reject the apostles, they are rejecting Jesus himself. Mark is concerned to point out that when Jesus goes hungry, the twelve apostles go hungry.

But more even than that, they are his plenipotentiary ambassadors- the apostles of Jesus Christ. They are sent out by Jesus to be his personal representatives. He gives them authority to use his power over the demons. They do his work, in his name, by his authority.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We are linked to the apostles. We are part of the superstructure, and they are part of the foundation. We should do as they did in looking to fulfil Jesus’ commands and work to build his kingdom. There are a thousand practical implications here:

Do we see our fellow church members as part of the same body?

Do we care for them as part of the same family?

Do we work together as one unit for the same goal?

Perhaps this is highlighted by the big difference between modern believers and the twelve. We are not apostles with Jesus’ authority over the demons. There are other ways in which the power of God should be evident through us. Unlike them, we are not on a whistle-stop tour through the nation. We have time to live alongside people and let them see the way we live our lives. Are we conspicuously different from the world around us? Conspicuously more holy? This should be evident in us as individuals, and also in our families, and (most of all) in our churches. Our churches should be places where the presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be denied. We should evidence the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Under the surface of most other associations of fallen men and women, lurk resentment & rivalry- the workplaces, the social clubs, the political parties.  Not so in genuine churches. They are supernatural. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” John 13:35.

 

 

2) Why are they sent out two by two?

There is undoubtedly a practical element to it- they are weak and need support from one another. They are given Jesus’ power, but they are still vulnerable. And they will likely come under attack. Jesus has caused controversy, and in some places, he has been rejected. The Herodians and Pharisees have already plotted together to kill him (Mark 3:6). The servants cannot expect to be treated any better than their master. They will face hostility too. It would be dangerous and foolish to go out alone. And they will face questions. The teachers of the law might try to trip them up on various points from the law and the prophets. When Jesus came to the Temple, he was asked difficult questions in order to trip him up. Two heads are usually better than one in such cases. They will be more effective in pairs. We need a balance when we think of them. Sometimes they seem to be great men of faith. Others they seem so weak and fragile and wrong-headed. They are real men.

But more than that, they are witnesses. In the Old Testament, when a serious case came before the village court, the elders could not convict on the evidence of just one witness (Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15). These men are going out to bear witness to the fact that Messiah has come. The King has arrived. They will tell people about his teaching and his deeds. Their witness has got to be trustworthy.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

As servants of the same master, we cannot expect any better treatment either. And so we need to be wise and acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Having just thought of the ways God’s power should be at work in us, we also need to recognise our flaws. Some of these are due to the limitations of finite beings. Some of them are due to our sinful failings. Although redeemed, we are not yet made perfect. In Luther’s words, we are “simul iustus et peccator”- at the same time righteous and sinners.

Christian biography can be unrealistic and unhelpful here, with pictures of supermen who use every disappointment as a springboard, leap high buildings in a single bound, and leave converts in their wake wherever they go. Even an undeniably great man like the apostle Paul was left crumpled and bleeding, an apparent failure in many of the cities he visited. We aren’t strong enough to go it alone.

 

3) Why are they to take nothing for the journey?

Is this redolent of any Old Testament passage? When Israel were called out of Egpyt, they left in a hurry. They didn’t have time to pack. Maybe they’d have liked to prepare, to pay off and call in debts, to say goodbyes, to set affairs in order. But it was not to be. They were to eat the Passover with their belts fastened, their staffs in their hands, and their sandals already on (Exodus 12).

Like the Exodus from Egypt, the disciples have an urgent mission. The apostles are God’s messengers. They are going to call the nation out of Egypt and back into covenant with God and obedience to his law. They might like to pack some things- a change of clothes and a spare pair of sandals at least, and some money for food and shelter. But they are not given that chance. They must go now.

This is perhaps one reason why Mark has recorded the section about John’s death here. It is another example of his split-screen technique. And it is one not necessitated by chronological demands. Mark could have recorded John’s demise anywhere in the book. But he inserts it between the sending and the return of the Twelve. We will (D.V) look at this section next time, but for now we can note that Mark is calling our minds back to the opening of his Gospel, where John appeared in the wilderness, baptising with a baptism of repentance. This was an initiation ritual. John was performing it down at the Jordan river, the entry-point into the land. He was performing that initiation ritual to call out a new Israel; an Israel from within Israel. The people had disobeyed, and there was judgement in the land- the Romans had defeated them and occupied the place, and every Jew knew that God had promised to protect them from their enemies so long as they were obedient. John called out a repentant people who wanted to renew covenant with God.

The Twelve were the seed of Jesus’ new Israel, and they were to call other Jews to join them in this nation. This is a new Exodus. The people have been in exile, not in Egypt, but within the land itself. They have been in spiritual exile, and now the disciples are going about like Moses, gathering them together and calling them out. They will not cross the physical Jordan as God’s people did under Joshua, but they will cross from the world into God’s kingdom in a different sense. Moses’ exodus was only a shadow. This is the reality. And there is a sense in which it is beginning here in this passage, as the disciples go out. It is a work of urgency just as was the first exodus.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

Planning ahead is not wrong. Packing adequate provisions for a long journey is plain commonsense, provided that you have time to do so.  But our message should be an urgent one. We are not speaking “Peace, peace” where there is no peace. We are telling men and women and children to flee from the wrath to come. There is a sense of haste to it.

And we are to do what we can with what we have, now. Proper planning is sometimes necessary. If a church wants to set up an orphanage, or a pastoral seminary- both worthwhile aims- then these are not things which can be done overnight. The church will have to save money, buy property, plan over many years perhaps. All well and good. But we are never to let long-term aims become an excuse for short-term inactivity. O.K, so you want a larger kitchen in order to strengthen the kingdom of God by offering hospitality to others in the church who live alone and go back to empty houses when they leave your meetings… But there’s nothing stopping you from inviting them in for coffee today. If a job’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing badly.

 

4) Why are they to stay in only one house in each place?

It would be inappropriate, given their position as messengers of the kingdom. When Jesus says, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there”, he doesn’t mean “stay in the house until you depart from the house”. It would be difficult to do anything else, and such an instruction doesn’t need giving. Rather, the idea is that the apostles should pick a house in a place, and stick with it until they move to the next town. The apostles will arrive at a village, proclaim the Gospel, call the people to repent and to follow Jesus, heal and cast out demons, and then ask for a bed for the night. The next day, they will do the same again. Maybe they will spend a week in one town, if there are many who want to hear them and think about their message. And Jesus foresees a situation arising where they accept lodging with someone, and a few days later somebody else comes up to them and says “Why don’t you come and stay with me for the next few days? I’ve got a bigger house. I can supply hot water in the mornings. My food is better quality. You’ll be much more comfortable with me.”

The idea here is that of soft bribery. There is nothing wrong with comfort and enjoying the good things God gives. And there might be all sorts of unselfish reasons for accepting such offers of hospitality; it would mean personal contact with two homes instead of one; the new house might be bigger and more suitable for teaching meetings; it would reduce the burden on the householders to share the hospitality. But if this sort of thing was allowed to happen, it could give the impression that the disciples were hawking themselves around, using their position as ambassadors of the great kingdom to obtain favours. It would undermine their whole message. They are calling a disobedient people to repentance. They are not to be bought off with a hot bath.

They are messengers of the king who has wealth beyond compare. And he is giving away his wealth. His ambassadors can’t afford to give the impression that their favour can be bought. The Gospel cannot be bought. It is a free gift.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23)

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We are not to be bribe-able either. I’ve heard people say of churches “They’re only after your money”. Partly that’s a pathetic and wicked excuse to ignore the Gospel- throw mud at the messenger and you might get away without having to listen to the message. But it’s partly because we sometimes give that impression. With collections, and fund-raising events, and little thermometers outside church buildings to show how much of the money for the new roof has been raised so far, we can easily give the impression that we’re out to part fools from their money. And we have a solemn responsibility not to do so. It undermines the Gospel.

We should also not be gullible, and not be afraid to call evil evil when it comes under a “Christian” banner. The US Senate is currently investigating 6 “mega-ministries” for a form of fraud in which tax-exempt status for churches, given with the rider that the tax-exempted funds are not to be for personal use, has been abused. Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer (4 of the 6 under investigation), and many others have become rich from their “ministries”. It is a public disgrace, and these charlatans should be ashamed of themselves.

 

5) Why are they to shake the dust from their feet when they leave a place that will not accept them?

This is something we see again in Acts, and it has a very similar meaning there. In Acts 13:51, Paul and Barnabas go to Antioch in Pisidia (this is very relevant to our impending summer studies in Galatians. The church in Pisidian Antioch was one of the Galatian churches, and we can see something of the makeup, and likely fracture lines, of that church in Acts 13. This is crucial to a proper understanding of Paul’s letter). When Paul and Barnabas arrive, they preach in the synagogue to the men of Israel and the God-fearers about Jesus. They draw crowds, and the Jews become jealous, and revile Paul. Paul then pronounces judgement on them, and turns to the Gentiles, who rejoice. But the Jews stir up persecution against the missionaries, and have them run out of town. And as Paul and Barnabas leave, they shake the dust from their feet as a testimony against that place.

Again in Acts 18:5-6, we have this statement,

“When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’”

Paul was shaking dust out of his robes, as a symbolic declaration.

Devout Jews, if they left the holy land, the land of promise, would shake the dust off their feet when they came back in across the border. They would see it as contamination- Gentile dust, dirty dust, unclean dust. They didn’t want to get the unclean dust all over the soil of God’s clean earth. Gentile dirt would contaminate the clean land. So they shook the dust from their feet, as a symbolic declaration that they were now leaving the unclean place, and coming back in to the holy land, out of the world.

So what the disciples do is radical. When a town rejects them, they are to shake the dust off their feet as they leave, as if it were unclean dust; but they are visiting towns in Israel! They are declaring towns which were well within the boundaries of Israel to be Gentile towns. Israel was a land under God’s protection. It was a land where there were guaranteed blessings, so long as the Israelites obeyed. It is all there in Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Their harvests would be good, their enemies would be defeated, everything they did would be smiled upon by the Almighty. But if they disobeyed the Lord, and were not careful to do all his commandments, then all of these blessings would be turned into curses upon them, which is all there in the much longer and more explicit section of Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

The apostles were removing God’s blessing from these towns. Effectively, they were redrawing the boundaries of Israel. They were declaring places that would not welcome the Messiah to be no longer part of the commonwealth of Israel- to be unclean places.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We start where the twelve ended. None of our towns are holy places. God has not promised protection and blessing to any of our towns. There was only ever one holy land, and it ceased to be holy when Israel refused their Messiah. Darkness fell on the whole land at the crucifixion (Mark 15:33), just as it had fallen on Egypt before. If there is a holy land now, then it is not a physical land. It is the church. Churches, not nations, are promised God’s blessing, and his protection, and his kindness.

This passage is not there to teach us that we should preach somewhere, then move on; a hit-and-run strategy. That may be a sensible use of resources, but it is not a scriptural command. The apostles are not forbidden from ever going back to the places they’d left. This is not a one-strike-and-you’re-out scenario. Many of those places must have been visited again when the believers went out from Jerusalem in Acts. But if the apostles returned, it would be with the awareness that this place had forfeited blessing already. It was a place over which God’s wrath loomed large. Our attitude should perhaps be more like that as we evangelise.

And it tells us to have courage, confidence, boldness, as we proclaim the Good News.

In our pluralistic society, we grow up in a world in which every point of view must be valid and every opinion must be valued. We are told that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and that to be unshakeably certain of something is somehow arrogant. There can be no dogma, and the only heresy is that there could be such a thing as heresy. Growing up breathing such an atmosphere, it is easy for us to feel that we shouldn’t push our views on people. In fact, even the construction of the previous sentence shows that I am a child of post-modernity. “Our views”, as if we have our views and other people have theirs, and that’s just fine? We can feel that when somebody gives us a hearing, they are doing us a favour by being so tolerant and reasonable.

Precisely the opposite is true. We are doing others a favour when we tell them about the saviour, not them us by giving us a hearing.  When the Queen writes the invitations to her annual garden party, do you think she words them “Dear Sir, I hope you don’t think me too pushy, but would you mind awfully if I invited you to a garden party? I would be most grateful if you could come- if you’re not too busy, of course”? Of course not. She will phrase the invitation kindly and graciously, but the fact remains that she is doing the invitees an honour by inviting them to meet her- they are not doing her an honour by attending. So it is with the kingdom of God. We can proclaim a royal invitation from the king to come under his rule and be delivered from the powers of darkness.

When the twelve were rejected, those who passed judgement upon them were in fact cutting themselves off from God. Those who refuse to listen to the Gospel today are confirming themselves as being under wrath. We are doing them a kindness, for which we shouldn’t need to apologise.

Mark 5:21-6:6. Faith works. And not by magic.

“And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief”

 

Mark, from 4:35-5:43, records for us four more of the signs of the kingdom. At the inauguration of his reign, Jesus visibly brought the everlasting kingdom of God into this fallen world in a number of different ways. We’ve read in the first 3 chapters of Mark about how Jesus cast out many demons, healed many sick people, cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic, and restored a man’s hand. We have looked recently at the significance of the calming of the storm, when the chaotic waters are stilled. In God’s kingdom, ultimately, there is no sea- or the sea is like glass (Revelation 4:6; 15:2; 21:1). In God’s kingdom, there is no chaos, no danger, and no storms; and Jesus brought that kingdom to earth with him.

We looked at Jesus healing a demonised man, restoring him to proper control of himself, breaking the power of Satan which was working for destruction through the man. In God’s kingdom, Satan is cast out utterly, and people are restored to the way they ought to be, fully Christlike and bearing God’s image. God’s kingdom is here now. God has invaded the cursed earth in the person of the Son.

But we have seen also that people rejected this kingdom, and couldn’t understand it. We saw intensifying opposition to Jesus throughout the early chapters, until the Pharisees and Herodians were plotting together to kill him. In chapter 4, even the disciples were terrified rather than overjoyed when Jesus spoke to the wind and waves. And in Chapter 5, the Gadarenes rejected Jesus- they would rather have their pigs than the Son of God.

Now we come to these healing miracles, and to events in Nazareth, when Jesus returned to his home town.

 

A woman touches Jesus

1) How does this woman view Jesus? 

2) How did Jesus’ healing power work? He “perceived in himself that power had gone out of him”. Was he a kind of mechanical power source, like a battery, into which anybody could tap?

3) Why does Jesus stop and ask who has touched him? Why can’t he just move on?

 

Discussion 1-3)

Jesus and the disciples travel back across the Sea of Galilee, and doubtless the disciples remember how the waters had behaved the night before when Jesus had commanded them. When they arrive on the shore, they are swamped by a crowd of people. The crowds flock to Jesus, wanting his help. A man, Jairus, is among them. He comes to Jesus in desperation. He was the leader of the local synagogue, and so he would have known something about Jesus- it would be his business to know about the religious movements in Israel. And when his 12-year-old daughter fell seriously ill, he came to Jesus. He came in faith- believing that Jesus could and would help him. Jesus listened to his pleading, and followed him back to his home.

But on the way there, they were interrupted by someone else who needed help. This, incidentally, indicates the sort of pressure Jesus worked under. There were constant demands on him, people incessantly begging for aid from all directions. This woman has suffered from bleeding for many years. And she is a tragic figure. She’s thrown all her money at doctors, and they have been able to do nothing for her. She’s got nothing left, and she’s still sick. She is despairing, slowly dying- and worse than that, she is desperately unclean. Her blood flow caused uncleanness (Leviticus 15:4). Perhaps this is why she seems so very shy of appearing in public- and especially of allowing Jesus to know that she is there: She would be coming among the people while unclean, which would be about as socially acceptable as sneezing all over the faces of your co-passengers on a train, and she would be doing it in order to come before a religious leader, which may have served to heighten the taboo in her mind. She seems to have hoped to take advantage of the crowd by touching Jesus unnoticed, and slinking away again. How did she think this was going to work? Was she superstitious? Perhaps she was in some measure, but she had real faith, and Jesus responded to her faith.

The passage seems to present Jesus as having an innate supernatural healing quality, to be tapped into by touch, like power is drawn from a battery when a circuit is connected. And I think that this was exactly how the woman thought of it- if she thought of it at all- Jesus was like a charged battery, and she could drain some of his power by touching him. It is clear that Jesus knows that power has gone out of him. What does that actually mean? Healing people took effort- it cost Jesus. It was physically and emotionally draining, and so Jesus does know when he has healed someone, even apparently involuntarily- God the Father healing through him. The woman touches him, and Jesus knows that this touch is different from the jostling of the others in the crowd. He feels strength go out of him.

So Jesus stops dead and demands to know who has touched him. His disciples think that the whole thing is ridiculous. “The crowd are pressing all around you, Jesus. We’re all being jostled constantly- yet you stop to ask who touched you? Well, who hasn’t touched you? Come on, we’ve got an emergency on our hands here. Jairus is waiting. We can’t hang around wasting time like this.” But Jesus stops walking, and looks around him. He does not want to let this go unresolved. He won’t let the woman sneak away, healed.

From the conversation which ensues, we can see Jesus’ reason for wanting to talk to the person who had touched his garments. The key thing is that Jesus made sure that there would be no remaining ground for superstition in the woman’s mind. He brought her into the open, showed love and care for her, and did not allow her healing to be a mechanical act. He wasn’t about to let her go away with her misunderstanding. He breaks off from his urgent mission to heal an ill girl, and searches for this woman, demanding to know who had touched him. The woman alone of all those in the crowd knew exactly what he meant. She had believed that Jesus garments could heal her- as if by magic- but Jesus makes it clear that it is he, not his clothes, which have the power. He suggests that he has responded to this woman’s grasping for healing- and it was vital for this woman to realise that it was because she had trusted him that he healed her.

The woman, trembling with fear- literally, you could see her shake- came out of the crowd and fell at Jesus’ feet. She told him her story, how she had desperately hoped to be cured, and desperately hoped that touching his garments would cure her. Jesus then blessed her and sent her on her way.

 

Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter

4) Mark deals with these two miracles in detail. Jesus must have done thousands of miracles, and Mark could afford to be highly selective with his material. Why does he choose these two to include in his Gospel?

5) The account of the bleeding woman is sandwiched between a two-part account of Jairus and his daughter. Mark structures his narrative in this way (when other Gospel writers do not) in order to point out the inter-relatedness of central meanings of events. What do these two accounts have in common?

6) How are these two miracles “signs of the kingdom” in a way which means that they are not just repeats of earlier signs? What would we lose if Mark had left them out?

 

Discussion 4-6)

All of the above questions have essentially the same answer. Mark has told us of many miracles that Jesus did, and all the miracles have been signs of the kingdom. We’ve thought a little about this- the casting out of demons and the healing of diseases reveal God’s kingdom in a way that flying about in the air would not, though both would be demonstrations of power. So far, Mark has arranged his accounts loosely into cycles of miracles and other pieces of narrative, each cycle with a different focus. In the first cycle, the point was simply to show what God’s kingdom is like. Under God’s reign, Satan’s power is broken and the curse is lifted. So Jesus casts out a demon, heals Peter’s mother and many sick people, and cleanses a leper. Under God’s reign, Jesus is the King. So Jesus commands some disciples to follow him, and teaches with authority in the synagogues. 

In the next cycle, a new element is introduced, namely that of opposition. God’s kingdom is not only a place of blessing, but also a place of conflict. There are those who harden their hearts and oppose the reign of King Jesus, despite its obvious goodness. So Mark tells us of how Jesus healed a paralysed man, and a man with a withered hand- but in these accounts, Mark’s focus is not so much on the miracles themselves, as the disputes which they occasioned. Mark wants to point out that the kingdom of God is essentially divisive. When it comes, it makes things much clearer, and the goats are plainly shown to be different from the sheep. And along with those miracles, Jesus calls Levi- and again the real focus is on the disputes which followed and on Jesus’ teaching about his kingdom being new and different from that which had gone before. And Mark records another dispute Jesus had with the religious leaders over the Sabbath, and also the occasion when the religious leaders accused Jesus of being under Satanic control, and the time when Jesus’ natural family said that he was a madman and tried to take him away until he got better. The disciples are marked out as Jesus’ true family, because they are in his kingdom.

Mark therefore chose these two miracles out of the many which Jesus did in order to make a point. There is something about these miracles which means that they add something to the Gospel so far. They are not just repetition of truths Mark has already made plain. These miracles are certainly signs of the kingdom in the same way that other miracles were signs- we’ve already thought of that in previous passages. But Mark is a skilled author. His Gospel is an excellent literary composition, with no redundant material whatsoever. He has already made the point that Jesus healed as a sign of the kingdom with no disease or death. Here, he is making an additional point about the kingdom if God.  The blessings of the kingdom are grasped by faith. Both the woman and Jairus are commended for their faith.

Mark weaves the two stories together not only because that is how things happened, but also to highlight the basic elements in common, and the basic elements of difference. In both miracles, there is a focus on the faith of people involved. Jesus wants to make it clear to the woman that it is her faith that has made her well. Jesus says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” The woman has a confused faith, full of misunderstanding, and Jesus encourages her and corrects her. Jairus has great faith. He is willing to risk the opprobrium of other religious leaders by seeking Jesus out. He is sure that Jesus can heal his daughter. And Jesus tests his faith to strengthen it.

Another point of similarity is the “twelves”. Mark considers it worth the space to record that Jairus’ daughter is 12 years old, and that the woman has been suffering for 12 years. Given the weighty Biblical freight attached to the number 12 (See the study on the calling of the Twelve in 3:14 for more detail), it seems that we are supposed to see these women as typical of God’s people. The woman and Jairus are representatives of the new Israel, gaining the blessings of the kingdom by faith.

When Jesus stopped to deal with the woman, Jairus (almost certainly) would have been impatient. This woman took Jesus’ attention away from him and his daughter. She was an unwelcome distraction at just the wrong time. The daughter’s situation was urgent- as we see when the servants arrive with news of her death- and Jairus will desperately want Jesus to hurry. The woman has been ill for 12 years already. What difference would another day make? But Jairus has to trust Jesus and leave things in his hands. The servants turn up and say, “Just come home. It’s too late now. Why bother the teacher- let him go his way, he can’t help us now. She’s dead.” And did Jairus’ hopes plummet? This was surely the end. To cure illness is one thing, but to raise the dead? Jesus though, tells Jairus to keep trusting, and they keep going to Jairus’ house. In effect, Jesus is telling Jairus that he has power over death, and is capable of raising the girl from the dead. And Jairus obviously believes him- he doesn’t say “Oh don’t be stupid. It’s too late now. Just let me go and bury my daughter.” Rather, he takes Jesus home.

When they arrived at the house, the elaborate ritual of Jewish mourning had already begun. This was something to be done with all speed in a hot middle-Eastern climate (Acts 5:5-7). The people mentioned as causing a commotion here were professional mourners. They would weep and wail for money- and this was the accepted cultural norm. A local bigwig like Jairus would be expected to give a good impressive funeral for one of his own family. But Jairus trusts Jesus enough to allow him to disrupt the mourning arrangements and ruin the funeral.

We’ll just digress for a moment and deal with Jesus’ brief debate with the mourners. These men had seen a lot of corpses in their time. They knew what death looks like. But Jesus waltzes in and tells them that the girl isn’t dead, she’s asleep! The mourners think that this guy must be a comedian. They laugh at him. Dead bodies are their business, and they know a stiff when they see one. Anti-supernaturalists jump at this as proof-positive that the early church invented all the miracles. “Aha, aha!” they say- most of them doubtless opening wide their mouths into the bargain[1]- “Jesus didn’t raise the girl from the dead. She was merely in a coma, and Jesus simply calmed everyone down and roused her. But then after Jesus had died, his disciples started telling lies about him, and invented a whole bunch of divine powers for him.”

But Jesus hadn’t even seen the child when he told the mourners that she was sleeping, and he wasn’t in the habit of giving snap medical diagnoses anyway. Rather, Jesus is making a veiled promise of his power. Jesus was saying that for this girl, her death now was not something final and irrevocable. The household did see death as final- “Don’t bother the teacher any more”. But Jesus intends to give this girl her life back- to put the ghost back into the machine. His usage of sleep terminology is like that of Paul in I Thessalonians 4.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

Paul is talking about dead Christians. But he refers to them as “asleep” because he wants to make the point to the Thessalonians that death is now reversible. Jesus has risen from death, and so all those who died united to him cannot remain dead. They will wake up one day.

The miracle is simply described. Jesus does not recite a magic formula, but simply commands the dead girl to rise, as he also commanded the sea and the demons.

As with previous miracles, Jesus is clear that nobody should be told about this. He had already ensured that only minimal witnesses would be present, leaving the crowd with the disciples, and taking only his inner circle of three into the house. Those outside the room could only speculate about what had happened- until the silence was broken by the apostles when they began to speak publicly of these things.

Why should this be? We’ve noted this secrecy theme before, and will do so again. But for now, briefly, the Jews expected a great Messiah; a king, a ruler, a man to command their armies, drive out their enemies, and rule in peace and prosperity. Jesus would do all of these things, but not in the way they expected. He came to do them fully and perfectly, where many of the Jews in Jesus’ day wanted only a partial and imperfect Messiah. They wanted someone to give the Romans a good kicking. Jesus came to defeat the great enemy, Satan. They wanted someone to establish an earthly throne. Jesus came to establish an everlasting kingdom. They wanted safety from human attackers, and plenty to eat and drink. Jesus came to bring in a kingdom of real and lasting joy, freedom from all sorrow. And to do those things, he would have to deal with the curse; to deliver those who he chose to be in his kingdom from the curse. So his Messiahship could only be properly understood when it was understood that he had come to die, despised and rejected, and to be raised to life on the 3^rd day. In Gentile Gadara, there would be no such misunderstanding, so the healed demoniac is free to tell everyone he knows about what Jesus has done for him. In Israel, these things must be kept quiet.

This point is underlined by Luke in Acts 9, where we find a big contrast with this episode. After the resurrection of Jesus; Peter raised a woman from the dead, saying words strangely similar to those of Jesus…

 ”Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room… All the widows stood beside him… But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.”

Peter said “Tabitha kumi” where Jesus said “Talitha kumi”. Luke, I am sure, is well aware of this. The striking difference is that where Jesus kept things hidden, Peter called everybody into the room to see what had been done. After the cross and the tomb and the ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ power should be made plain- and many in Joppa believed.

 

Jesus in Nazareth

7) Why is it that Jesus can do no mighty work (except a few healings) in Nazareth?

Eight, which appears as a smiley if I type the number) How does faith operate? What is it about faith that means God either cannot or will not work without it? Is it basically a sort of magic?

9) What is it about the content of all three sections of the narrative from 5:21-6:6 that bind them all together as parts of a larger unit, and how does this develop the central themes of Mark’s Gospel so far?

10) What is the most important thing we should take from this passage?

 

Discussion 7-10)

Jesus went to his hometown, Nazareth, and began to teach in the synagogue there on the Sabbath. But those who heard him “took offence at him”. They resented him. These are people who know Jesus well. Some of them will be friends of his mother, and will have seen him grow from a child into a young man. Some of them will have shared jokes and meals with Jesus and his family. They identify Jesus as their carpenter- it seems that Jesus must have worked as the village carpenter for some time. Many of them will regularly sit on chairs made by Jesus, eat at tables which he made, use ploughs and sickles which have passed through his hands. They know his brothers. His sisters still live in the village. And that is how they relate to him. Everywhere else in the land, Jesus is the hot new phenomenon, followed by crowds all the day long. In Nazareth, he is not a celebrity, but is a village lad, the carpenter. People are used to walking into his shop and ordering a couple of yokes for their new oxen, not walking into the synagogue and hearing him speak authoritative wisdom.

The bleeding woman and Jairus had their requests granted because of their faith. They came to Jesus because they believed that he could help them, and so he did. We see the opposite here in Nazareth. Jesus’ own townsfolk have the opposite of faith. They seem to sneer at Jesus. “We know this guy. He’s just the carpenter’s boy. Who does he think he is, going around like a teacher? Where did he learn all this stuff anyway? He never went to any fancy school. He’s gotten too big for his boots. Someone needs to take him down a peg or three.” They are amazed at his wisdom, and can’t understand how he is so learned- but they won’t trust him. They refuse to believe that he is anything but a carpenter, the son of Mary. The latter phrase is possibly an offensive slur on Jesus’ parentage- it would be very odd in Jewish circles to refer to a man’s parentage through the maternal line rather than the paternal, even if the father was deceased. Sometimes there was a good reason for it (sons of the same man distinguished by their mothers, for example), but not in this case. And those in Nazareth would be aware that there was something a little unusual surrounding Jesus’ birth. If so, then Mark displays his nice sense of irony here- the townsfolk are looking down their noses at Jesus for being a bastard, as they see it. But Mark and his readers can see that Jesus’ lack of an earthly biological father is proof that he is indeed the Son of God.

The fact that Jesus can do no mighty work in Nazareth (oh, except for the minor matter of healing a few sick people[2]) seems to be linked to the lack of faith among the people there- and this theme of faith (or lack thereof) is what links this passage to the end of chapter 5. Jairus and the woman had it. The Nazareth-ites didn’t.

With regard to the question about what faith is, and how it works; to use theological jargon, the word “faith is used in two ways. It either means something which somebody exercises and which is the instrument of their being saved- the “faith” by which one is “justified” (Romans 5:1). Or else it means the body of doctrine which constitutes the Christian beliefs- the “faith” that was “delivered once for all to the saints” (Jude 1:3). It is the Romans-type of faith in view here, and to keep using theological jargon, it has three components, which are assensus (assent), notitia (knowledge), and fiducia (trust).

I would think that a fairly close synonym for “faith” generally is “trust”. With that in mind, it becomes clear why Jesus “could do no mighty work” in Nazareth. People took offence at him, and so they refused to come to him for healing. So he didn’t heal them.

The point of the question (no. 8 above) was to deflate the (I think pretty foolish) idea that faith is a sort of magic. I’ve heard readings of the passage that seem to think of Jesus as a mystical wizard, and “faith” as the mysterious well of power on which he draws. Under this view, Jesus actually becomes stronger when lots of people really believe in him, and actually becomes weaker when they don’t. Which is nonsense, and if it were worked out into systematic coherent doctrine would be serious heresy, making the creator’s power dependent upon his creation.

A more present danger of that view is that it often mutates into thinking “if I believe it really really hard, it will come true”. This is dangerous because it divorces the content of the belief from the content of God’s promises. We have no warrant for faith in anything which we are not promised. We can trust in Jesus Christ for salvation because he has promised that all who come to him seeking forgiveness, will be forgiven. And if we trust him even weakly, he will save us. Weak faith; strong saviour.

If I throw a coin on the floor and ask you firstly whether or not you think I can levitate it by miraculous powers, and secondly whether or not your beliefs about my ability would actually change the ability itself, what would you reckon? The correct answer is that if I throw a coin on the floor, then a combination of physical realities means that it stays on the floor unless someone touches it. I do not have the power to flout gravity with my mind, not even if I really really believe that I do. And most people who really really have faith that they can ignore gravity end up really really dead really really soon, because their faith by itself does not alter reality. What their faith might alter is their own behaviour. Specifically it gives them a tendency to walk out of the windows on the 20^th floor saying, “Look at me, I can fly”. It does not alter the reality outside themselves, and so they end up half an inch tall and twenty feet wide.

I don’t have the power to levitate coins no matter how many people believe I do. If a million people believed it, they’d all be wrong. And likewise with Jesus. He had the power to do miracles. And that power was his regardless of what anyone else thought. If all the world had doubted him, his power would not have altered one iota. Mark is simply saying that if nobody will come to Jesus looking to be healed, then nobody will be healed.

Beliefs have consequences. Faith and works cannot be separated. If Jairus trusts that Jesus can raise his daughter to life, then that faith will show itself in Jairus’ actions. He will seek Jesus out, he will not rest until Jesus is going to see the girl, he will allow Jesus to disrupt the funeral… And on the flip side, if none in Nazareth believe that Jesus can help them, then they won’t seek him out for help. And if none come to him, Jesus won’t heal them. Faith and works can be distinguished, but cannot be separated. I can distinguish between my body and my spirit. But I cannot separate them unless I want to inconvenience the ambulance service and put further strain on the NHS. Like faith without works; the body without the spirit is dead. If there are no works, then any faith is not real faith at all. It is dead.

Of course Jesus would have had the power to heal the sick of Nazareth anyway, regardless of what they wanted. But in terms of ”signs of the kingdom”, physical healing of stubborn Christ-haters would have been a sign that pointed the wrong way. If people reject the kingdom of God, then ultimately they don’t get to share in its blessings.

 The kingdom is entered into by faith. People come to Jesus- and they come trusting, believing, that he can help them. If they had no faith, then they wouldn’t come. They came believing that Jesus could do for them what they desperately needed. And he did.

And he still does. In Acts, people came believing that Jesus can forgive their sins. They saw him revealed as the Messiah who died and rose again, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom of joy and peace. And they trusted him to forgive their sins and bring them into his kingdom. And through their faith, they were forgiven. Not through any intrinsic power in their faith, but rather through the intrinsic power of the saviour to whom faith sent them.

 

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 [1] Psalm 35

[2] Mark’s “except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them” seems to be almost amusing to us. It dismisses as insignificant something which we in our day would regard as highly significant. “A handful of people were healed- so what? Big deal” Mark seems to be saying. Whereas if a guy walked into your local hospital, laid his hands on 5 folk with their legs in traction, and had them leaping and dancing and praising God, it would make the news headlines. But in his day, Mark was dead right. A handful of healings were small beer. The kingdom had finally come, and signs of it were abundant everywhere. In other towns, Jesus was up half the night healing all who came to him, so big were the crowds. A few healings gets a mention only because it is an abnormally poor show.

 

Mark 5:1-20. “My name is legion, for we are many”.

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 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. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 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.” For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 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. The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 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. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 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.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marvelled.”

Jesus has been teaching about the kingdom of God. He has taught the crowd in confusing parables, so that they may see and not perceive, and hear and not understand. Jesus has explained the parables privately to his disciples, to whom the secret of the kingdom of God is given. Mark now (from 4:35-5:43) records for us four more of the signs of the kingdom which Jesus wrought; visibly bringing the kingdom of God into a fallen world. We looked last time at the calming of the storm, to which the disciples responded in fear and amazement.

 

Jesus casts out many demons from a man

1) Where does this miracle take place? Is the location significant? What does it mean for Jesus to do this miracle where he does it?

2) What do we mean when we describe someone as “demon possessed?

3) Is “demon possession” a helpful term?

4) What are the features of those who have unclean spirits?

5) Do we see demon possession today?

6) If so, how should we deal with it?

 

Discussion:

1) This is the first instance in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus goes outside Jewish territory. This is very significant. We don’t immediately see why it matters, but that is partly because we are Gentiles, partly because we live in a Western democracy, and partly because we are used to cheap flights, easy travel, and finding Coca-cola and McDonald’s in every nation. As with understanding so much of the Gospels, one huge obstacle for us is that we do not have 1^st century Jewish mindsets.

In this case, we are used to thinking that location is relatively unimportant. We can fly to the other side of the world in less than a day. Some of us teleconference with colleagues in the U.S.A or Sweden every week. And as far as we are concerned, there is a global culture. We all speak English. We are all aware of Hollywood movies. We all know what a cheeseburger tastes like. In one sense, that would have been true within the Roman Empire. But in Israel, the dominant culture was Jewish, and location was very important. If you were a true-born Israelite, then had everything run smoothly, your family farm should have been in the family ever since Joshua first conquered the land. The disobedience of Israel, and the exiles, made all this very complicated, but land as a fixed inheritance was a much more vital concept in Israel than in modern-day England.

A more important difference between our mindset and that of a Jew in Jesus’ day would be our views on church and state. We almost automatically think of church and state as separate institutions. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, as he himself said to Pilate (John 18:36). Our churches do not have physical borders, or flags, or currencies in the same way that nation-states do. For the Jews, things were different. They would be used to thinking of their religious views as at least coterminous with their national and ethnic identity, if not inextricably bound up with it. They would have looked back to the promises to Abraham, and to David- promises God made to his people that he would give them a land and a king. The Jews would have seen Canaan as the holy land, and “the nations” as unholy. Had you asked a Jew where you should go to meet with God, then he would have told you to go to Jerusalem, to the holy city, and to God’s own house, the temple, where God dwelt. And they would have been right. God really had set his name on Jerusalem. It really was holier than anywhere else in the world.

 And Jesus here goes to a place inhabited by Gentiles- a place where they herd pigs (think of the “far country” in the parable of the prodigal son- a place where uncleanness is rife). It is not a holy place. But Jesus does something which would have shocked the disciples rigid. Given that the miracles were signs of the kingdom, then to the extent which this was understood by the disciples, they would be amazed to see Jesus casting out demons from a man in this Gentile place. Jesus was extending the blessings of the kingdom of God to a Gentile land, an unclean place.

The disciples thought of God’s kingdom as being something for Israel. It was not for the Gentiles. Sure, maybe it would extend to the Gentiles too- but not to the Gentiles as Gentiles. They would have to be proselytised, and become Jewish, like Rahab, or Ruth or Caleb. We can see this in the way the disciples express their hopes about what Jesus will do. Even after Jesus’ death and resurrection, their question to him is, “Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). If the Gentiles wanted a piece of the blessings of God’s kingdom, then they would have to take the route that Gentiles had always taken to God; they would have to become part of Israel.

Jesus changed that. With the incarnation, Jerusalem was no longer the pre-eminent place to meet with God. Rather, at Jesus’ feet was the best place to meet with God. Israel was no longer the holy land. Wherever Jesus chose to walk- that was holy ground. And so this episode is a foretaste of things to come. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, people (Gentiles? Jews living in exile?), have come to hear him from Tyre and Sidon, but they have had to make pilgrimage to the holy land in order to do so. Now, the holy land comes to the Gentiles.

 

2-4) When Jesus and the disciples reach the other side of the sea, they are met by a man who has an unclean spirit. He has seen them coming across the water, and has run down from his den in the tombs to meet Jesus. This is the longest section in any of the Gospels about a demonised man. So it is probably worth our stopping a moment to think about demons and “demon possession”. I’ve put the phrase in inverted commas, not because I don’t believe it happens, but because the phrase doesn’t appear here. Our translations have it, but the Greek does not. The usual Greek construct is that a man has a demon, not the other way round.

There is a spirit realm, a part of creation which we cannot always see (although men have seen angels- Abraham, Elijah, and Rhoda the servant girl among others). This part of creation is populated by beings which have personality. There are good spirits and bad spirits, clean and unclean. They are sometimes called “angels”, which simply means “messengers”. God’s angels are described as holy, and these spirits in Mark 5 are described as “unclean”.

And we all have spirits ourselves. There is a part of us which is not material. When our physical bodies die, part of us- our spirits- will still live, waiting to be re-united with our bodies at the resurrection. There is a ghost in the machine. If your body, including your brain, can be thought of as a machine, then there is something that animates the machine. There is something in there which cannot be touched or seen, but which is alive and is pulling the levers to make the machine work. Something that is “you”, but which can be thought of apart from your body.

And other spirits apart from yours can also pull levers in the machine. Normally, your spirit and your body are in harmony, your spirit driving your body (apart from when you’re asleep. And let’s take a moment to reflect on how bizarre sleep is). But in some cases, we see evil spirits coming in and taking over a body, invading it, pushing the native spirit out and taking the wheel, or coming in where the native spirit has abdicated the wheel.

The phrase “demon possession” can be unhelpful. It carries the sense of total ownership. “Demonisation” is better. Some people are more demonised than others. This man is very demonised indeed. He has a whole legion of unclean spirits, and they are defacing the image of God in him. This we would expect. They hate God, and so they hate to see him even in a cracked and distorted mirror. They can’t destroy the mirror utterly in this world, but they can warp it ever further. This demonised man is obsessed with death and unnatural things- he chooses to live among the tombs. He loves destruction, and is addicted to self-harm, injuring his body with stones. He doesn’t care about wrecking the machine. He will wrench chains apart regardless of the damage he does to himself in the process. He isn’t himself any more. If you were sufficiently impervious to pain, and sufficiently uncaring about the state of your forearm, you could probably punch your way through a brick wall. Your arm might be a bloody stump afterwards, but fourteen inches of bone and muscle are probably stronger than four inches of brick and mortar. And why should the unclean spirits care if they break the man’s body?

In cases like this, demonisation does not mean that medical care is useless. We will read in Mark 9 of a boy who has an evil spirit which convulses him and throws him on the ground, making him froth at the mouth. Today, this would be diagnosed as epilepsy, and the boy would be given anticonvulsants. And I think that this would be an accurate diagnosis, and that the anticonvulsants may well stop the boy convulsing. Just because the behaviour has a demonic cause, does not mean that it cannot be physically treated. The body is still physical. Cut the tendons, and the arm won’t move. Shut down the neurotransmitters, and the convulsions won’t be happening. If you disable the transmission and siphon off the fuel, the car isn’t going to move, no matter whether a demon or a man is behind the wheel.

Not all cases of demon possession will be like this. Judas, we are told, had an unclean spirit at some point. During the Last Supper, Satan “entered into him” (John 13:27). But in his case, he didn’t become obviously destroyed. It didn’t suit Satan’s purpose to erode Judas’ rationality to the extent that he became a gibbering madman. Judas acted irrationally, even going so far as to double-cross the omniscient omnipotent Lord, but no doctor would have certified him insane.

 

5 & 6) There would be a coherent argument to be made for the amount of demonic activity in the New Testament to be considered abnormal. After all, Jesus is breaking down Satan’s kingdom. Demons are being cast out from their strongholds. There will be an obvious clash between Jesus and the evil powers in the heavenly places. We would expect to see Satan’s troops gather where their line threatens to break.

But whether or not there was unusual demonic activity in the days of the Gospels, it is undeniable that we still see demonic activity today. In one sense, everything wrong with the world is demonic. Evil men do evil because they are the children of Satan, the father of evil. And there is no reason to believe that the illnesses and natural disasters we see all around us are not in any sense caused by spiritual agents- think of the case of Job, and how Satan caused his livestock and his children to be wiped out in a series of disasters including military raids, fire from heaven, and something like a tornado, and then later caused Job himself to contract a painful case of all-over boils. It is a category error to assume that just because we have some understanding of the immediate physical causes of an illness or a pattern of weather, it is therefore removed from the spiritual realm.

And even in the more specialised sense of demonisation- of evil spirits actually pulling the levers of certain men, to the extent that the spirit of the man is no longer active- I would argue that we still see cases very similar to those in the Gospels. People do harm themselves. I’ve known a man who imagined he heard voices, and who spoke back- either to the voices or to himself or to both, and who eventually tried to kill himself with an overdose of pills and alcohol. I’d describe him as demonised. Ditto a lad I’ve met on a street corner, shivering and begging my friend and me to buy him some cider. What he told us of his life was wholly joyless. Peter Sellers was the man of a thousand voices, but I don’t think he knew which of them was his own. “My name is legion, for we are many”.

 All of these men, I would pity. Those of them I met, I would pray for. In no case would I attempt an “exorcism”. Jesus had authority over the demons, and so could cast them out from people. Those who haven’t such authority shouldn’t attempt to use what they don’t have.

Jesus shared his authority with certain men. Mark says explicitly that Jesus gave to the Twelve the authority to drive out demons (Mark 3:15). Matthew and Luke add to the powers shared with the Twelve the authority to cure diseases (Matthew 10:1, Luke 9:1). After the resurrection, the apostles continued to do these things. But they were plenipotentiary representatives of Jesus. He had given them this authority to act as his representatives, with all his power.

The Twelve held a special place in other ways too- they were given Jesus’ authority not only over demons and diseases, but also over churches. Their words were authoritative over churches. I would argue that believers today have no more authority to command a demon to come out of a man than we have to write to a church and tell it what it ought to be doing in various matters hard to determine. Paul feels free to do both, because he can do so with Jesus’ authority, as an apostle.

The obvious rejoinder to this view is to say that other men apart from the Twelve were also given special authority. There were the seventy-two sent out by Jesus who returned joyful that the demons submitted to them in Jesus’ name (Luke 10:17), and an unidentified man appears to be doing the same thing in Mark 9:38. Philip in Acts 8 is not an apostle (assuming that this is Philip the Jerusalem deacon rather than Philip the apostle), but is still doing miraculous signs. And isn’t every believer an ambassador of Christ? Don’t we all have authority to act in his name?

My answer would be “no”. Paul doesn’t call every believer Christ’s ambassador- if you’re thinking of 2 Corinthians 5:20, it is Paul and his fellow ministers who he has in mind. And an ambassador isn’t the same thing as an apostle anyway. And all the other men who performed signs and wonders in the early church, did so either under the direct approval of Jesus himself, or under the approval of at least one of the apostles. The whole phenomenon of healing, driving our demons, and performing other signs and wonders is all linked to the coming of God’s kingdom. These were guarantees, proofs, of the character and power of the new kingdom as it came. They were like the bread and the cakes of figs and of raisins handed out as freebies by David when the ark of the Lord first came “home” to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). These goodies were symbolic foretastes of the time of blessing and plenty which could be expected now that God’s presence dwelt in the capital city. It was understood that there would not be handouts again the next day and the day after that. I would argue that Jesus has authority, and the apostles were given authority, and other men exercised authority under them. After the initial foundation of the church, we see the exercise of this authority in signs and wonders decline. And with the death of the last apostle, it died completely.

This is why Matthew and Luke both link healing with driving out demons, putting both authorities in the category of “things Jesus said that the Twelve could do”. But when James writes, perhaps in about 40-50AD, to believers about sickness, he doesn’t say, “Is any one of you are sick? He should find a healer, and be made well”. Rather, he says “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord”. Surely, if every believer- or even if some believers- in the churches James wrote to had “healing ministries”, an injunction to pray and do no more would be a little odd.

The fact of the matter is that we don’t see exorcists or healers doing things like Jesus and the apostles did. We see charlatans like Benny Hinn putting on a show for money, but we don’t see them restoring genuine maniacs to normal in a moment, or raising the dead as Jesus and Peter and Paul did.

It seems to me that a charismatic reading of the scriptures is inconsistent here. On the one hand, there is the appeal to the Gospels to support healings as part of Gospel ministry The argument for this is very straightforward- “People listened to Jesus because he went around healing people and casting out demons and doing miracles. So we should do the same as part of our evangelistic efforts”. But though it is a simple argument to follow, it is also simple to knock down. There is the obvious fact that lots of people remain resolutely ill and demonised. This is accounted for by saying resignedly “Well, this is the Lord’s will.” or “Maybe it is better for some people that they shouldn’t be healed, or at least not yet” or even “I’m afraid you need more faith, brother”. Now surely it is indeed better for some people to be ill sometimes, and these things certainly happen under God’s control, and according to God’s good and wise purposes, and we all need more faith. But as an explanation for Gospel healers being unable to heal, these are pretty thin. If Gospel healers are healing just like Jesus and the apostles did, as a continuation of their ministry, then they should be able to heal everyone. It is a fact that EVERYBODY who came to Jesus asking for healing was healed. We do not read of a single occasion of someone coming to Jesus saying, “Lord, heal my daughter” or whatever, and Jesus saying, “Nope, afraid not. It wouldn’t be good for her, you know. She’ll be able to minister to other sick people if I let her continue to be ill. And anyway, she’ll grow in patience and holiness on her sick bed.” The disciples weren’t able to cast out a demon once, but this was so far from being a regular occurrence that it was a matter of considerable perplexity for them (Mark 9:18,28). And Jesus himself didn’t turn anyone away. Everybody who asked him was healed indiscriminately and without exception. Even some of those who didn’t ask him were healed. Even those who were only out for themselves and were not remotely grateful were healed. Jesus healed ten lepers, and as far as we know, nine of them ran off and never wanted to see him again. Only one of them was interested in the kingdom, but all ten were given some of the benefits of the kingdom coming. God’s grace was extended to the unworthy. We see nothing like it in the modern charismatic movement.

The Pentecostals can’t have it both ways. If the Gospels are the model for ministry today, and if that means that we ought to be healing and driving out demons as Jesus and the apostles and those associated with them did, then why are some people not healed? Jesus never told anybody that they didn’t have enough faith to be made well, so why should we be allowed to?

If we are allowed the get-out clause of “it wasn’t God’s time”, then we should recognise that this represents a significant difference from the situation in the Gospels, when, funnily enough, it was God’s time for everyone. But then that starts to sound less like charismatic theology and more like cessationist arguments that the signs of the kingdom were for the specific time of the inauguration of the kingdom.

This does not mean that we are powerless. Far from it. We have recourse to the one who sits upon the throne of the universe. We can pray to him to drive demons out. Believers can try to drive out demons in the same way that we would try to heal a broken leg- by non-authoritative practical steps; setting and plastering the limb in the case of a broken leg, trying to speak peace and truth in the case of a broken mind. But above all, we should pray.

We can be sure that whatever we ask for, in Jesus name, it will be done for us. When we ask for something which Jesus legitimises, that thing will be done. Nothing and nobody can stop it. Satan himself is bound and powerless. When a policeman arrests somebody “in the name of the law”, then he expects that the law will back him up when the case goes to court. And insofar as his actions have been upholding the law he invokes, the law promises to back him up. Assuming he isn’t a shonky copper making an illegal arrest, then arresting “in the name of the law” means that the full power and authority of the law are the guarantors for his arrest. If the criminal resists arrest, he is guilty of a further transgression of the law.

When we pray “in Jesus’ name”, this isn’t just a magic formula which we say at the end of a request because that’s the way we Christians do things. When we say those words, we are calling on the limitless authority of the king of all kings to underwrite our prayers. And if our request is in line with his will, then he has promised to act on it.

Mark 4:35-41. Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 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?” 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. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

Jesus has been teaching about the kingdom of God. He has taught the crowd with confusing parables, and has explained the parables privately to his disciples. Jesus has introduced some of these parables explicitly as being about the kingdom (“The kingdom of God is as if…” “With what can we compare the kingdom of God…”; Mark 4:26,30) Mark now (from 4:35 – 5:43) records for us four more of the signs of the kingdom which Jesus wrought; visibly bringing the kingdom of God into a fallen world.

Jesus rebukes the wind and waves:

 1) How is this a sign of the kingdom?

a)      What is the Biblical significance of the Sea?

b)      Are there any Old Testament passages which this episode calls to mind?

 2) Why are the disciples terrified? What scares them so much?

 3) How are we to apply this passage usefully to ourselves?

 Discussion:

1a) Jesus has been standing in a boat, teaching the crowds at the side of the Sea of Galilee. He’s been there all day, and when evening comes, he tells that they are going to cross the sea to the other side. So they go, leaving most of the crowd behind on the shore. Some of those listening to Jesus will be local fishermen, and they have boats there on the shore; and some of them probably hop in to their boats and follow Jesus and the disciples across the water- we read that other boats were with them. As this little convoy crosses the sea, a storm breaks out. And it seems to have been quite a vicious storm. The Sea of Galilee is nestled in the hills, and I’m told that it can get pretty windy, especially in the mornings and evenings as air heats and cools on the sides of the adjacent hillsides and rises or falls (Fact for the day, if I remember rightly from Geography lessons; these are called adiabatic and katabatic winds). A storm arises on this occasion, and the disciples- at least some of whom are experienced fishermen who know these waters like the backs of their hands- are scared. The boat takes on water, and it becomes obvious that it will soon go under. And the disciples wake Jesus from his slumbers in the stern (he has been on his feet teaching for a long time, and is absolutely shattered), and ask him to do something about it. They are afraid, and they question Jesus’ concern for them. Jesus wakes, and speaks to the wind and waves, and quiets the storm.

 We’ve said that the miracles are “signs” (as the Gospel writers frequently call them). Specifically, that they are signs of God’s kingdom. Signs point to something, and these signs point to the fact that God’s kingdom has come in the person of Jesus. They are vanguard invasions of the perfect kingdom into a fallen world. They are demonstrations of what the kingdom is like. In God’s kingdom, there will be no illness, no demonic powers, no death- and so Jesus heals the sick, and casts out demons, and even raises the dead. Miracles are more than mere demonstrations of power. There are plenty of possible miracles which Jesus could have done, but didn’t. He never flew about in the air above everyone’s heads purely to prove that he could, because that wouldn’t tell us anything about the character of the kingdom of God. The one time Jesus flew (I guess you could call it flying) was at his ascension. And that did show us more than the fact that Jesus could fly. So how does calming a sea fit into this mould? How is calming a storm different from flying? What does it tell us about God’s kingdom?

 The answer lies in the whole Biblical concept of the sea. If you went to look at the Sea of Galilee, you would come home again calling it a “lake” rather than a “sea”. Photographs of it on the web look not especially more impressive than Lake Windermere- and I’m led to believe that it is fresh water, not salt. But Mark calls it a sea in v39 and so do the disciples in v 41, and so it is to their minds. This is not because they are small-minded provincials who’ve never seen a proper sea. Mark, remember, has travelled across the Mediterranean to Cyprus with Paul and Barnabas, and has quite likely done a lot more travelling since. He was better travelled than many of us. Rather, the lake of Galilee is called a sea because in conceptual or theological terms, it is a sea.

We thought a little about the biblical imagery of mountains when looking at Jesus going up a mountain to call to himself the Twelve. Throughout the Bible, mountains are places where man goes up to meet with God, and where God comes down to touch the earth: Moses and Elijah on Sinai, Israel on Ebal and Gerizim, Jerusalem- the city on a hill; all of these are places where earth stretches up to heaven and heaven reaches down to earth. The root of the idea is in Genesis, where there is a garden on top of a mountain, in the East, and there God walks with Adam. This is all part of a whole conceptual Hebrew cosmology. Heaven is up, the grave is down, the earth is square (having four corners), and the earth sits in the middle of a boundless ill-defined sea. And it is in Genesis that we will find the roots of a Biblical symbolism of “sea”.

In the beginning, the earth was covered in water. God had made the earth, but it was formless and void, a watery blob, chaotic, disordered. Already, there is a basic view of what the waters are like.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

Then on the second day, God divided the waters. He imposed order upon what was chaotic, imposed form upon what was formless, separated water above from water beneath, and placed the sky in between them. On the next day, he gathered the waters beneath into one place, making dry land appear, bringing more order. The sea in Genesis, is something raw, something without structure or order, something unfinished and unpredictable.

On the 5^th and 6^th days, God created creatures suitable for the domains he had made. Land is populated with beasts and creeping things, the sky has birds. There is an order to it, things fit neatly into their places. Birds are the category of animals appropriate to the sky. Beasts are appropriate to the land. The creatures appropriate for the water are “teeming things” or “swarming things”. The water is chock full of chaotic unpredictable life. It itself is a “swarming” environment, and so it is filled with “swarming” life. Try watching a school of fish for a while in the shallows of a lake, and you’ll see how unpredictable they are. Can you count them? Can you even follow them with your eye constantly? They dart this way and that way- and they are chaotic, like the water is chaotic. This take on the “fit” between animals and environments is strengthened when you look at Leviticus. In the clean and unclean categories of things there, the unclean water animals are the ones that aren’t like the swarming fish. They don’t fit the proper category.

When the time comes for Adam to begin to exercise his God-given dominion over the creation, he does so by naming things (Genesis 2:19-20). He is not just pulling words out of the air to call the creatures. Rather, he is defining them, giving them limits. His work is both descriptive and proscriptive. He is the vice-regent, and he tells the creatures what they shall be and do. But which class of creatures is noticeable by its absence? Adam names the beasts of the field, and he names the birds of the air, but he does not name the fish of the sea. His rule does not (yet) extend over the chaotic waters. The earth is his domain, and the waters are alien and dangerous. Perhaps he will one day extend his rule over the waters, but not at first. His first sphere of rule is the solid predictable land, not the shifting untameable sea.

The symbolism develops with the flood. When man’s sin becomes so great that God is grieved that he had made the world, God wipes the slate clean. The corrupt order is removed, and everything goes back to water. The earth is a watery blob for the second time. Everything is in ruins, in chaos.

Finally, in John’s visions in Revelation, what is heaven like? How does John see it? 

“At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne… and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.” (Revelation 4:2-6)

“And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire–and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.” (Revelation 15:2)

“…and there was no longer any sea.” (Revelation 21:1)

In the new heavens and the new earth, there is no sea. Or there is a sea, but it looks like glass. There is no chaos, no danger, nothing out of control. Nowhere is off-limits for the new humanity. Jesus’ kingdom has no boundaries. Even the sea has become something steady and orderly.

So on the immediate face of it, this is a miracle that plainly speaks of Jesus’ power over creation. Yet we can better understand it when we look at the significance of the sea in the Bible. Jesus is the one sent to bring in the kingdom of God, to give life to the new humanity, redeeming them from the curse. And his miracles are signs of that kingdom, the kingdom where there will be no disease, no death, no demonic powers at work, no chaos and no danger. He is the one who turns the raging sea into a mill-pond.

 

1b) In keeping with that emphasis, this sign does of course speak of Jesus’ power. We see passages in the Old Testament where God calms storms. The 5^th “verse” of Psalm 107 reads,

“Some went down to the sea in ships/ doing business on the great waters/ they saw the deeds of the LORD/ his wondrous works in the deep/ For he commanded and raised the stormy wind/ which lifted up the waves of the sea/ They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths/ their courage melted away in their evil plight/ they reeled and staggered like drunken men/ and were at their wits’ end/ Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble/ and he delivered them from their distress/ He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed/ Then they were glad that the waters were quiet/ and he brought them to their desired haven/ Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love/ for his wondrous works to the children of men/ Let them extol him in the congregation of the people/ and praise him in the assembly of the elders.”  (Psalm 107:23-32)

By calming the storm, Jesus is laying claim to divine power. It is God who calms storms. But here is this man doing it! Who can he be?

And more than just his power; there is significance in the way Jesus speaks to the sea. Jesus “rebukes” the wind and the waves. The language there is specifically that of Psalm 106:9, where God rebukes the waters of the Red Sea.

“Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the Sea, at the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power. He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry, and he led them through the deep as through a desert. So he saved them from the hand of the foe and redeemed them from the power of the enemy.” (Psalm 106:7-10)

The Psalm as a whole is a prayer for redemption. The Psalmist looks back on the exodus from Egypt not only as a great past redemption of Israel, but as a pattern of redemption for the future. God delivered his people in the past, in spite of their constant disobedience. Israel angered God, they were faithless, they despised the pleasant land he had promised them. As a result, God condemned them to the wilderness for 40 years, and he gave them into the hands of their enemies. But in the end, he did deliver them when they cried to him.

And the Psalmist says “Well, we are just like they were, both we and our fathers have sinned. And will you not deliver us, O Lord, from our distress, as you did our fathers when you rebuked the Red Sea.

By choosing the words he does, Mark is drawing an implicit parallel between what Jesus does, and what Yahweh did at the Red Sea. The implication is not only that Jesus has the powers of Yahweh over the waters, to rebuke them, but that Jesus is answering the prayer of the Psalmist. Jesus is bringing about a new exodus, a new salvation, a re-constitution of God’s people. Though they are faithless and disobedient, he has appeared to deliver them.

 

2) The disciples were terrified, and Jesus points out to them that there is no need to be terrified, and that had they faith, they wouldn’t be. Notice the present tense in v40- Jesus asks, “Why are you afraid.” It is easy to read the passage as though Jesus were asking why the disciples had been afraid when the storm was raging- a sort of “Didn’t you know that I wouldn’t let you die? Why did you not just trust me to sort things out?” question. But the timing of Jesus’ question means it can’t be read like that. Jesus actually asks why the disciples are afraid after the calming, when the sea is still. They were scared while the wind and waves were raging, but now thee is silence, they are absolutely terrified. They look at Jesus in awe, and ask each other “Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him.”

The secret of the kingdom has been given to them, but it is fairly clear that they haven’t understood it very well. The disciples have seen Jesus’ power, and you might think that they would rejoice, and say to each other “What a saviour we have. See his power?” Of course they won’t understand all the implications of what Jesus has done. They’ve just been in a crisis, on the brink of drowning; they’re not going to be thinking, “O.K, let’s sit down and work out the significance of sea in the Scriptures and see what it means for Jesus to calm a storm.” Of course, they might understand more of this than we’d think. They are Hebrews and this is the mindset in which they live. We have to put it on like a strange garment, whereas to them it is their daily dress. But even if they’re not working it all through, you’d think they might grasp that Jesus is almighty, and that he cares for them. They could show some gladness and gratitude. But instead, they cower in the bottom of the boat.

There is much here that we don’t know. We don’t know exactly how Jesus spoke the words he did, what his posture was, or his tone of voice. Perhaps he woke to instant alertness, stood up, stretched out his hand, and commanded the elements in a deep authoritative voice, eyes flashing impressively. Then again perhaps he rolled over in the stern of the boat, still half-asleep, and rebuked the storm in the voice of a man who is dog-tired, wet through, and has just been woken up in the small hours of the morning. Mark isn’t really interested in those details. He tells us that the disciples were scared because of what they had seen Jesus do. They “…were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?“

These men have had a glimpse of Jesus in kingly glory. As men in a storm suddenly see the landscape lit up by a flash of lightning, and see the reality for a moment before it all falls dark again, so these men have seen Jesus as he really is for a moment; Jesus revealed as God’s glorious king. And it scares them. A proper reverence would be good and right, but this is not the fear that comes from knowing God. It is the fear that comes from ignorance. They’ve had a glimpse of Jesus’ power- but they have only half-grasped it. Their response is not to worship Jesus, but to show abject terror.

 

3) The temptation when coming to this sort of passage is to say, “Well, the disciples are in trouble here. They’re in a storm, a crisis. And they cry to Jesus, and he helps them. So… Whenever I am in a crisis, when there is a storm in my life, I can cry to Jesus and he will help me.” Now that may be very true. And certainly when we are troubled, the right thing to do is to cry out to Jesus. But it isn’t what is taught in this passage. When the disciples cry out to Jesus in fear, he doesn’t calm their fears. He actually leaves them more scared than they were before.

One thing we can take from this passage is simply the awesome power of Jesus. He is not predictable. Like Aslan is not a tame lion, Jesus is not a tame king. He is almighty God. He tames everything else, even the sea. Nothing can tame him. The disciples were constantly tempted to put Jesus into a box, to try to limit him, to think that they could understand him totally and manage him. They see him as the Messiah, but their urge is to try to push him into their ideas of what a Messiah should be.

We will see this when Jesus tells the disciples that he is going up to Jerusalem to die. He says that he will suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed (Matthew 16). This notion does not fit with their ideas, and Peter tells Jesus so. He says, “Never, Lord. This shall never happen to you.” If Jesus is the Messiah, as Peter is convinced that he is, then in Peter’s mind, Jesus can’t go up to Jerusalem to die. The Messiah has to be the king. He can’t be rejected by Israel and killed- he has to be accepted by Israel and crowned as king, and lead a glorious revolution, and set up a victorious kingdom, as God had promised to David’s offspring. We see it again when James and John approach Jesus and ask him for places of honour in his kingdom. They have their own preconceived ideas about what the kingdom will be like, and what sort of king Jesus will be. They have their own concerns, and they want to use Jesus to serve those concerns.

This is a temptation for us also. We have causes, things we care about- and there will be an urge to harness our Christianity up to those causes. So we have had the fruits of many searches for the “historical” Jesus. And it turns out that Jesus was a Marxist revolutionary, or a commune-dwelling hippie, or a paid-up member of Greenpeace, or a libertarian activist, or a spokesman for the Pro-life alliance. According to various sources, you’d have found Jesus participating in gay pride marches, or working as an anti-homosexual campaigner, or speaking at a civil rights rally, or peeking through the eye-holes of a KKK headdress. I don’t think that all of those are equivalent positions, but I think it’s ridiculous to sign Jesus up as a part of a larger organisation of any kind. People ask “What would Jesus drive”, and in case you don’t get it, the correct answer is that Jesus would drive a hybrid car, and those who drive an SUV are going to have to account for their sins of emission. The question is only asked in order to sign Jesus up to the warm-monger agenda. All kinds of people want to use Jesus’ authority to promote their cause, and they’re all mistaken. Screwtape understood this well… “Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here. (Screwtape letters, chapter 7)

I’m not arguing that Jesus wouldn’t have had views on any or all of those issues. And I’m not arguing that there isn’t a distinctively Christian position to take on racism or social justice or homosexuality or abortion. There is.

But Jesus is king. He doesn’t join your kingdom; he invites you into his. That means that you sign up to his agenda on all the above, and that you submit to his authority about how much of a priority those things are to be in terms of your time and effort, both of which belong to him. So devote yourselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread, and to prayers.

Mark 4:21-34. Schroedinger’s kingdom.

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? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 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. 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.” And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 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.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

Recap:

Through the first three chapters of Mark, we have seen Jesus become more and more famous- a bigger name- until he is attracting people from all over the country- they are coming not just from Galilee in the North, where Jesus has been teaching, but from Judea in the South, and Idumea even further South, and across the Jordan to the East, and Tyre and Sidon in the Gentile North. Everyone is excited to see this man who teaches with authority, and who goes around healing diseases and casting out demons. He is an obvious candidate for the vacant position of Messiah-King-National Hero.

But along with the larger fame has come a larger, more vicious, hatred from some. There are those who find out about him and harden their hearts against him. The religious authorities- both local and now even national- have heard Jesus teaching, and have realised that his idea of God’s kingdom is quite different to theirs, and so they want to squash him. They have a god- for all men do- but the god they serve is not the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when men who refuse to serve the real God are confronted with men who do, they tend to get a bit agitated. The Pharisees and the Herodians- unlikely bedfellows in any normal circumstances- plot together to kill Jesus. The Jerusalem authorities say that he is in league with the devil.

In Chapter 4, Mark has given us a fuller picture of the sort of teaching Jesus gave to the crowds who gathered around him wherever he went. Mark says that to the crowds, Jesus said nothing except in parables. 4 such parables are here; the sower and soils, the lamp on the stand, the growing seed, and the mustard seed.

Introduction to  parables:

We looked last time at the first parable of the chapter, and at the function of the parables- at why Jesus would teach in parables. We tried to see something of the confusion and incomprehensibility of this form of teaching, and then to see that Jesus was using them precisely to make things obscure, to hide what he meant from those who didn’t have ears to hear and eyes to see and hearts to understand. To a few, the parables would be windows into God’s unfolding purposes. To the rest, they would be a brick wall.

We can say a few more things about that than time permitted before. When his disciples ask him about the parables, Jesus quotes God’s words to Isaiah, telling them that his ministry will be one in which the hearers do not hear, but become more hardened, and riper for judgement. And God speaking to his servant Isaiah, was echoing the words his servant Moses spoke to Israel on the borders of the land. Moses told Israel, in words that sound harsh and unfeeling to some ears, that they would all turn away from God because they were wicked and rebellious (Deuteronomy 29:4).

The parables fulfil the same function as tongues do in the New Testament churches. In Isaiah, we have predictions of tongues…

“For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people, to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.”

This sounds very similar to the part of Isaiah Jesus quoted to explain the parables- “Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Tongues are a sign of God’s displeasure with Israel. The verse in Isaiah is the verse Paul quotes in Corinthians when he is explaining their function…

“Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.” Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers.

In Jerusalem, when the apostles first speak in tongues, they do so not to Gentiles- but to Jews. Peter addresses the crowd “Men of Israel…” Jerusalem is heaving with Jews, gathered there for the Passover- and this corrupt and wicked generation of Jews has crucified their Messiah. God is cutting them off and to show this, his people speak to them with foreign tongues. Parables too, are used so that the people may hear and yet not hear.

Three more parables:

1) In Ch 4:1-34, Mark uses a literary technique which some have called a “split-screen”. It is a short chiasm, an “A, B, A” pattern in the narrative. Why does Mark use it? Where else does Mark use it?

2) What is the meaning of the parable of the lamp on the stand? Would the hearers have understood it?

3) What is the meaning of the parable of the growing seed? How does the view of the kingdom taught in these parables tally with the teachings of rabbis? How does it square with the teaching of the OT prophets?

4) What is the meaning of the parable of the mustard seed? Can we take encouragement from these parables? What does it mean for us to be in God’s kingdom?

Discussion:

1) Jesus has told the parable of the sower to the crowd, and then when alone, has explained it to the disciples. Mark now switches back to the crowd scene, and continues with Jesus’ public teaching. This is probably the same occasion, although it doesn’t have to be so. Jesus probably used much of the same material several times in different settings in any case (all good preachers do). I would suspect that this is the same occasion not from the content of the narrative, but from its structure.  Mark uses a sort of split-screen technique several times in his Gospel. He starts on a piece of narrative, then breaks off from it to go to something else, then resumes the original flow again. We see this with the account of the healing of the woman with a blood flow, dropped into the middle of the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead. And again with the cursing of the fig tree, split into halves around the cleansing of the temple. Mark is a far more skilful author than JK Rowling. I’ve read all the Potters, but it’s a bit of a guilty addiction; she can’t write for toffee (or even for huge sums of money). Mark’s Gospel, however, is not awful literature. Mark uses this technique of weaving narratives into each other in order to draw our attention to their interwoven meanings. Linking two stories in terms of narrative structure emphasises the way that the stories link into each other thematically. Structure reflects meaning.

This is either the first or second occasion on which Mark uses the device -depending on whether you reckon Ch. 3 as a deliberate use- and so the relatedness of the meanings is very obvious. We can’t miss it this time, and we’ll be ready to look for it the next time. Technically, it would be called a “chiasm”, from the shape of the Greek letter Chi, where you have 2 lines intersecting. Chiastic structure is found commonly in many types of literature, including Bible books and passages.

In Chapter 3, Mark has used a longer chiasm -A, B, C, C, B, A, – Mark has spoken of the disciples, then of Jesus’ family, then of the Scribes, then of the family again, and finally of the disciples again. The scheme has been:

A₁- The 12 called and sharing Jesus’ ministry (hungry when he goes hungry);

B₁- Jesus’ family’s assessment of Jesus;

C₁- the Scribes’ assessment of Jesus;

C₂- Jesus’ assessment of Scribes;

B₂- Jesus’ assessment of his family;

A₂- Jesus’ saying that the disciples are his family.

This is a common literary structure, and Mark has almost certainly recorded these events deliberately in this pattern- even though they also seem to have naturally fallen neatly into the pattern by chronology.

In Ch. 4, Mark takes an event, which happened later in time (the explanation of the parable of the sower), and inserts it back into the narrative, almost as an editorial comment. Mark breaks away from telling us some of the parables Jesus told, and he breaks away from that to explain how and why Jesus used parables. Then, armed with that understanding of the parables, we are sent back to read some more parables.

2) So the parable of the lamp on the stand. The lamp comes into the room, and if it is placed beneath a basket, or underneath the bed, then the whole point of having a lamp there is ruined. You bring a lamp in to shed light in a dark room. The whole point of having a lamp is so that you can put it on a stand, in a prominent place, high up. For us in 21^st century England, the picture would be of an electrician wiring up a house. Does he put the light fitting on the skirting board behind the sofa, or does he put it in the middle of the ceiling? Since the whole point of having a light is to give light to the whole room, the obvious place for the lamp to go is in the ceiling. Unless the electrician was particularly concerned that the spider hiding underneath the sofa should be able to see all the fluff-balls properly, he wouldn’t put it in the skirting board.

What is Jesus talking about? Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God, by its very nature, is something that is not hidden. It is big and bright and obvious. It is like a lamp. It shines out and gives light to the dark world. It is what the Gospel is about- the good news. There is no news, good or bad, unless people are talking to other people, declaring, proclaiming, announcing. If there is good news about the kingdom, then it not something to be put under wraps. And so if it is being hidden, then this is not something normal. Things won’t usually be like that. Usually, the lamp is on the stand, and the kingdom of God is proclaimed openly. Only under special circumstances are things different. The Greek perhaps makes it slightly clearer what Jesus is thinking of- “erchomai” translates as “comes” rather than “is brought”. Jesus himself has come, and he will shine out. His kingdom is not something passively brought- it actively comes as Jesus himself comes. And although it is a secret at the moment, secrecy is not the essence of his kingship- secrecy is something adopted only for the moment by an essentially open kingship.

Again, we should see that the parable would not be understood except by those who already understand. If they don’t get it already, this won’t get them to where they’ve got it. If a speaker at Hyde Park Corner told his hearers that he was doing a bit of DIY this weekend, and asked whether they thought he should wire in a light fitting underneath his bed, or into the bedroom ceiling, they’d think he was barmy, and his meaning would go totally over their heads. Most of the speakers at Hyde Park corner are barmy, and none of them are the Messiah, so this is not a great example- but you get the point.

Only the people who have listened to the earlier parable, and to other parts of Jesus’ teaching, and have understood that Jesus is talking about a secret kingdom of God will be able to grasp his meaning.

Jesus says as he said after the first parable, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he follows that up with, “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. 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.”

He is talking about the kingdom again. To those who have eyes to see and ears to hear- those who have been longing to see the king, those like Simeon and Anna in Luke’s Gospel- to them, more will be given. They will be given not just desire for the kingdom, but the kingdom itself. They who hunger and thirst after righteousness have already been given more understanding than their peers who do not hunger and thirst after righteousness. But more will now be given them. They will now be filled. Those who have understanding, will be given more understanding of these kingdom parables, and will be given the kingdom itself. All their hopes will be fulfilled.

But to those who have nothing, who have closed eyes and hard hearts, even what they have will be taken from them. At the moment, they still enjoy status as God’s people. They still enjoy living where God is worshipped and not idols, where the law of the Lord is upheld and not the arbitrary whim of the most powerful warlord. They enjoy great privileges- God has shown himself to them; the King has come to them to speak to them; salvation is of the Jews. But those privileges will not last long. They despise what little they have, and so even though it is but a little, it will be taken from them. The lower right section of the image heading this blog is a detail from a picture of the sack of Jerusalem in 70AD.

Again, we have this division into two sorts of people. The kingdom comes, and it makes this division clearer than ever before. If you want to couch it in modern evangelical language, it is those who are regenerate, and those who are not. If you want it in Jesus’ own language, it is those who have been born again, and those who haven’t. Those who are born again can see the kingdom of God, and those who aren’t, can’t.

3) The second parable is making a complementary point to the first. The farmer sows seed, and then- in a sense- he forgets about it. He gets on with his job, he goes to bed at night and gets up in the morning, milks his cows, eats his breakfast, and he doesn’t worry about the seed. He doesn’t have to do anything. He isn’t there at the edge of the field, 16 hours a day thinking, “grow, grow… c’mon… grow”. But silently and secretly, the seed does grow. The farmer doesn’t know how. The earth does it all on its own. And the crop sprouts and develops, first being visible above ground but not very impressive, and then becoming more obviously grain-like, and finally looking like a full crop. It grows until it is time for the harvest. And only then, only after it has grown, does the farmer need to take an active interest again. He sows, and then does nothing, and only appears on the scene again when it is time for the harvest. And the kingdom of God is like that.

This teaching would be revolutionary to Jewish ears- if they could grasp it at all. Most of the crowd would not have understood a word, but to those that did, it would have sounded desperately unorthodox. The Jews had a 2-stage view of history. At the start, there was creation, and then fall. And then there was a long period of misery. God spoke to some men, and he called a nation to himself, and the nation’s fortunes rose and fell, but generally, men were disobedient and nothing ever much changed. There was an apparent new start with the great flood; but the new humanity from Noah was no different to the old humanity from Adam, because it was in fact still the old humanity with a bit of a face-lift. Any changes were cosmetic, while what was needed was radical heart-surgery. And so this pattern continued. God chose Israel as his nation and gave them the law; but the first set of tablets was broken in anger because Israel was disobedient from the start. Israel inherited the land; but continued to break God’s law. Judges were raised up to reform the nation and defeat the enemies; but they died and their influence died with them. Kings came and the nation had a golden age; but the gold was only ever a thin plating, and it was soon rubbed off. Prophets came and preached; but the nation slew the prophets and stopped their mouths. Nazirites were given to lead by holy example; but the people made them drink wine (Amos 2:12). And in the end, God took them off into exile. The covenant, based around the giving of the law and the promise of the land, was all but cancelled. The land was gone, and “Israel” had to live under the laws of other nations. There was another apparently new start, when Israel came back from exile, full of hope and joy and expectation. But the restoration wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be. The temple was rebuilt, but only slowly. The work was hard and the people were sluggish. People still found that they were no different from before.

And the big expectation for the Jews then was that God would one day break in and change everything. The prophets spoke of Messiah. They spoke of God removing the heats of stone from Israel and giving them hearts of flesh- of people no longer needing to teach their neighbour saying, “know the Lord”, because all of God’s people would know him from the least of them to the greatest. They spoke of a great final battle, when God would appear for his people, defeat the nations, and there would be an everlasting kingdom of righteousness and peace and justice and prosperity, founded by David’s son, the Messiah. And the prophets and people both seemed to think of this as an all-at-once-thing. There were differences and different emphases- some prophets spoke of judgement on God’s own house, some of judgement on the nations, some of blessing for Israel, some even of blessing for the nations, and not all the prophetic pictures seemed to be reconcilable, but the broad brushstrokes were there. God would appear, and raise up a great Messiah, and all the wrongs would be set to rights. Everything that Israelite men sat together moaning about outside the synagogue would be sorted out for good. The world would be just as God wanted it. While many had a very limited expectation of this, it would still be an all-at-once thing. God’s kingdom; not there one moment, and then you blink, and when you open your eyes, there it is. Certainly not more than a few years in this changeover period. There might be few hefty battles with the nations, but how long can that take? Creation and fall- and then all human history- and then the coming of Messiah and the start of God’s kingdom, world without end, Amen. That was the Rabbinic scheme.

Jesus seems to be giving a different scheme. He’s talking in terms of slow invisible growth and then slow visible growth. In the earlier parable of the lamp, Jesus has left room for the idea of the kingdom of light coming into a dark room, but the room remaining dark for a time while the lamp is hidden. There could be a delay before the lamp, which is already now there as it wasn’t before, is set on the stand. In the parable of the growing seed, this delay is made explicit. This teaching would contradict the position of the Rabbis. Even today, some Jews hold to the sudden change take on the kingdom. I’ve heard Sir Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi of the Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, speaking on Radio 4. He was asked why he didn’t think that Jesus was the Messiah, and he replied that Jesus couldn’t have been the Messiah, because things haven’t changed. There is still evil, there are still those not in God’s kingdom- and when the Messiah comes, according to Sacks, nobody will be able to mistake it. There will be nobody saying, “He isn’t the Messiah”, because it will be such an earth shatteringly obvious event. Sacks has a big view of Messiah and what he will do, which is a good thing. But he’s wrong that nothing changed when Jesus came, and he’s wrong that the change will be all-at-once. He needs to understand Jesus’ own teaching about his kingdom.  You can read his take on the kingdom and his attempt to make sense of the disaster for Judaism in AD 70, which he of course calls CE 70 at the link below. As an aside, I don’t really mind using “CE” and “BCE” instead of “AD” and “BC”. But when I use them, they mean “Christ’s Empire” and “Before Christ’s Empire”. Sacks tries to explain the fundamental shift in Judaism from a religion of sacrifice and temple, to one of law and synagogue. In my view, he shows a tragic misunderstanding of his own prophets. http://www.ou.org/shabbat/5766/rsacks/achareiked66.htm

The OT prophets also- some of their prophecies seem to be confused to our ears. They appear to have expected an all-at-once kingdom. And perhaps they did. From the perspective of the OT, the future kingdom was something indistinct in many ways. It was like a distant mountain range. The prophets were given a sight of the mountains from afar off, but they could only see from afar. When you look at hills on the horizon, you can distinguish one peak from another as they are defined against the sky, but it is very difficult to get an accurate perception of depth. The prophets could pick out peaks in the distance, and say “Israel will be judged”, and “Israel will be blessed”, and “The Gentiles will worship the LORD”. But they didn’t have those things laid out in a consistent scheme. From a distance, you can’t tell how far apart the hills are from one another. As you walk towards them, and what was once the horizon is now beneath your feet, you realise that the range that looked to be all-at-once is actually spaced out. You climb one peak, and then you see the deep valley between that peak and the next- the valley that was invisible to you as you stood afar off. The prophets described the mountain range from a distance. Jesus stands on the first great peak.

4) The third parable here is also very similar in some ways. A different picture is used to make a similar point. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. You take this tiny seed, and it looks like nothing. There are other more impressive seeds, which look much more interesting and bigger and far more likely to produce a great and mighty plant. But the unremarkable-looking mustard seed silently and secretly grows underneath the surface, hidden form human eyes, until it sprouts out into the visible world, above the surface, and grows into one of the largest plants in the garden, dominating the scene, and birds of the air come and nest in it.

There are parallels here with OT passages- Ezekiel speaks of an offshoot planted and tended by God, which becomes a mighty tree, and birds of the air rest in its branches (17:2-23). He speaks also of Assyria and Egypt as mighty trees, in which all the birds of the air nested (31:2-6). Daniel compares Nebuchadnezzar to a tree, in which all the birds of the air nest and under which animals find shade (4:10-13; 20-22). The idea here is of great empires- Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian-, which benefit and sustain other communities. Great empires bring wealth, culture, civilisation, and protection to many others, just as birds draw protection from the great tree. Think of the Roman Empire. What did the Romans ever do for us? Try speaking English with all the Latin taken out, and you’ll find out. We can see that although the Romans came to us as the conquering enemy, life under Roman rule was far better than ever before. The Romans brought peace- the “pax Romana”. Wars between the tribes ceased. They brought culture, engineering know-how, responsible government, a stable currency, the benefits of trade with nations situated many months journey away. The birds of the conquered nations made nests in the branches of the great Empire.

And so it is with God’s kingdom. It might not look very obvious, it might be small, but it will become greater and greater, until the birds of the air nest in its branches. We can see that this has come true in our day. Countries which have been influenced by Christianity are generally the peaceful prosperous pleasant ones. The countries of Europe, America, Australia, Canada- these countries have benefited enormously from having the Bible preached within their borders. In some of the less salubrious corners of the globe, a good general rule is to head for the place that was under the British Empire the longest.

The disciples needed to hear this, and so do we. To the disciples, who had ears to hear, who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but who wondered why the end-of-all-things didn’t seem to be just around the corner, and why all Israel was not following the Messiah; Jesus tells them that this is all part of God’s plan. Jesus words would have been difficult, but encouraging. And we can take encouragement from this again. We have a mighty God, a God who has always been in control of all history, working his purposes out. It has all been done at his decree. Everything that has happened, has happened because he willed it so. Nothing can overturn his kingdom. It might not come as men have expected it, but it will certainly come as God has planned it. We live in the overlap age. The kingdom of God is here already. but it is also not here yet.

In one sense, the lamp is on the stand, and has been for 2000 years. Jesus Christ is proclaimed as king, openly. He has been raised from the dead, and reigns now in heaven at the right hand of the Father. All his enemies are being put under his feet. The secrecy has gone.

And yet in another sense, the room is still dark. Things have changed, but the change is only slowly penetrating the dark world. Everything still is below the surface. The final harvest has not been reached. God’s people have new hearts, the blessings have been extended to all nations- but we still struggle with indwelling sin. The war against the world, the flesh and the devil has been won, but there are still battles to fight.

It would be easy for us to be discouraged. We talked last week about Christianity in the media- and sometimes it can seem pointless to even engage the media, because the whole institution is biased against God’s kingdom and God’s truth. Why bother saying anything when what you say will only be twisted against you, or held up to ridicule? But we are reminded that the human institutions, which seem so powerful and invulnerable to us, are nothing to God. He laughs at them. His kingdom is unstoppable, and those who set themselves up against Jesus Christ are setting themselves up for crushing defeat.

The disciples needed to hear that in their day, with the powerful religious establishment against them, with the crowds interested mostly in the miracles, with the hard graft of preaching and wandering from town to town- and with little evidence of the nation changing and coming to God. They were in a far harder place than we are. They were there with the embryo kingdom- we have inherited a 2000 year old kingdom. We have seen the empires of men rise and fall, but the kingdom of God stand firm through it all. And God’s kingdom is not only unstoppable- it is also good. It brings peace and protection and countless blessings to those who live in obedience to the king.

Mark 4:1-20. When you don’t hit paydirt.

  Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty fold and sixty fold and a hundredfold.” And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘They may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”

And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty fold and sixty fold and a hundredfold.”

In this chapter, we have the first long stretch of Jesus’ own teaching in Mark’s Gospel. Until now, Mark has given us snapshots of Jesus’ ministry, building a developing picture. Mark has begun with Jesus’ purpose- as explained by John the Baptist, and by Jesus himself. Jesus has come as the God of Israel himself, with John as his servant, preparing the way. Jesus has gone through a symbolic death in his baptism- going under the waters and coming up again- to express his willingness to suffer on behalf of those who long for forgiveness of sins.

But while this may be understood by Mark and others who look at it from a post-resurrection perspective, it was certainly not understood well, if at all, by those who witnessed it at the time. So Mark has moved onto the way Jesus’ ministry developed in the public eye. Jesus has toured around Galilee, teaching, healing, and casting out demons. His fame as a Messianic figure has been growing- and with growing fame, opposition also has grown. We’ve seen hatred to Jesus’ kingdom awaken, and concentrate itself throughout Ch. 2, with a climax in 3:6, when the Pharisees and Herodians plot to kill Jesus, and another climax in 3:22 when the teachers from Jerusalem accuse him of being possessed by Satan.

Mark has so far concentrated on Jesus’ actions and disputes, and has only given us a very brief summary of Jesus’ public teaching- “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” Mark’s Gospel contains the least of all the Gospels of Jesus’ teaching, but this isn’t because Mark considers it unimportant. He often tells us that Jesus taught the crowds. And now we have a lengthy example of Jesus preaching; both to the Jewish public, and to his own disciples.

Mark tells us that Jesus taught in parables- extended metaphors. Jesus tells 4 such parables in this chapter; the Sower and Soils, the Lamp on the Stand, the Growing Seed, and the Mustard Seed. We will look at the first of these, and the conversation Jesus has with his own disciples about it afterwards.

The parable of the soils:

1) What is the purpose of the parables? To reveal truth, or to conceal it?

2) What would Jesus’ parable of the sower have meant to the crowd?

3) What would it have meant to the disciples?

4) What does Jesus actually mean by it? Why does Jesus say that those who don’t understand this parable won’t understand any of the parables?

5) When those around him with the twelve ask Jesus “about the parables”, are they asking Jesus to explain the parables, or are they asking something else? Why does Jesus quote Isaiah to them?

6) What implications does all this have for our evangelism today?

Discussion:

1) Almost any longish non-literal statement could be called a parable. But why would Jesus want to teach that way? Why not proclaim things literally?

In the Old Testament, the Jews will have read prophetic sayings that could be described as parables- see for example Ezekiel 17, or the better known passage in 2 Samuel 12 from Nathan the prophet. Nathan came in to King David and tells him a story about a poor man and a rich man. The poor man had one ewe lamb, which was like a daughter to him. The rich man had many sheep, but he stole the poor man’s one lamb, and killed it when he needed to lay on a meal for a guest. David thought that Nathan was bringing before him a definite real-life injustice, and he became angry with the rich man, and pronounced his kingly judgement that the rich man should restore four-fold what he had so pitilessly stolen.

Then Nathan said “Well, you are that man”, and explained the parable to him. Nathan had been describing a real-life injustice, but not in the way David had thought. Nathan was talking about David’s theft of Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. David then saw his own wickedness. Nathan’s “parable” had revealed the truth to him. David had been drawn in by the story, had taken sides and made judgements, and then when Nathan finally showed him that the story was all about David himself, David stood condemned by his own mouth.

Often, we are told that Jesus’ parables were meant to function in this way- that parables were used because they were particularly effective ways of teaching. We are told to think of the parables as nice accessible stories with a pointed meaning, a sting in the tail. Jesus is telling stories about farming and seeds and household lamps because that is a world his hearers are familiar with, and he thinks that they will connect with it, and understand better. The attitude is, “Well, there’s no point in filling their heads with dry academic doctrine. These are simple homely folk, concerned with fishing and farming. There’s no point giving them systematic propositional truth- they’d forget it as soon as they heard it. No, what they need is narrative. They need stories about the kingdom of God, and then they’ll understand.”

And there is something very plausible about that take on the point of using parables. It rings true in our own experience. We are familiar with Aesop’s fables, are we not? The story of the sun and the wind, making a bet about who could remove a man’s coat sooner? The wind tries to blow it from the man’s neck, and only makes him wrap it around himself all the more tightly, but the sun gets the man to remove it himself by warming him. The fable tells us about the value of persuasion over coercion, but it does so in a memorable and engaging way. The fable is better and more convincing than just saying, “Persuasion is more effective than coercion”.

The parables make a direct appeal to the imagination, and involve hearers in the situation. It entices the hearers judge the situation depicted, and then challenges them to apply that judgement to themselves, just as Nathan did with David- so not only is it sensible, it has Biblical precedent.

And if you want to theologise about it, you could argue that basic to the parables is recognition that the natural and the redemptive strata of God’s creation are intrinsically alike. Through parables, Jesus uses the natural and familiar to draw attention to things previously hidden about the redemptive. Both originate in God’s purposes. The created natural order is an appropriate vehicle for revealing the redemptive purposes of God, because both originate from God himself and they show his character.

1,2, & 3) But if you really want to blow gaping holes in that view of Jesus’ parables in this chapter, just ask yourself what Jesus’ hearers made of his parable. You will see that all the above is, at best, only a half-truth.

In fact, if all you say about the parables is that Jesus used them to help people understand him, then you’ve missed the real point completely. Some of Jesus’ parables in other places are meant to reveal truth. But the ones in this chapter are not. For this chapter, it would be better to say that Jesus used parables so that people wouldn’t understand him. And that is exactly what Mark says. Mark says that Jesus used parables so that people would hear a story, and nothing more.

Just put yourselves in the place of Jesus’ hearers for a moment. There are these guys- normal working Jewish men- who gather round Jesus to hear him teach. Without explanation, he tells them about a farmer who sows seed everywhere. Some of the seed springs up, and some of it doesn’t. What are they supposed to make of that? Jesus is supposed to be a rabbi, and more than that, people are talking about him as the Messiah. Shouldn’t he be laying out his political manifesto for his kingdom? Or explaining his military plan of action? Or at least calling Israel to holiness and faithfulness to God’s covenant? 

Let me tell you a parable about the parables. Imagine that you were walking through your town centre, and you saw a crowd gathered around a man on a soapbox, and there was a sign next to him saying, “Gospel preaching”, and he was preaching to the crowd. And you thought “Oh good, I wonder what he’s saying” and you went closer, to listen. And when you came to the edge of the crowd, you heard him telling a story. He said,

“Once upon a time, there was a lottery winner, and he won a jackpot of £10,000,000. He was a wise lottery winner, oxymoron though that may be, and he decided to invest his money. So he hired a financial manager, a man familiar with the ways of the stock exchange. The rich man said to his financial manager, “I want you to invest this ten million pounds in 100,000 different companies. Divide the money into packets of £1000, and buy shares in 100,000 companies. I want you to spread the investments far and wide. Buy UK shares, and shares in Japanese and American markets. Buy shares in the steel industry, and in oil, and farming, and shipping, and financial companies. Spread the money all over the world. Sink it into all sorts of ventures, so that whatever happens to the markets, I will get some return. And so the manager did according to the word of his millionaire boss.

Now some of the companies in which he invested were run by crooks, and they embezzled the money and let the companies go bankrupt. Other companies had lazy workers and incompetent bosses, and though they generated excitement among the investors initially, it was soon obvious that they were going nowhere and they started making a loss. Some of the companies were new start-ups, trying to carve a niche in an already overcrowded market, and they were choked out by the established competition and couldn’t turn a profit. But some of the companies did just great, and they were very profitable, and the rich man received huge annual dividends, £30,000, £60,000, even £100,000. Thank you for listening and goodnight. I hope you hear and understand.”

And then the speaker picked up his soapbox and walked off. What would you think? Good sermon? Would anybody gain useful spiritual lessons?

To explain the parable about the parables, of course the crowd wouldn’t get the story about the investor. As an evangelistic sermon, it stinks. To the crowd, this is just a story about a millionaire and his share portfolio. Maybe a Marxist would draw applications about the evils of the capitalist system that gives moneymaking opportunity only to those who have money to invest already. Maybe a free-marketeer would draw applications about the benefits of a system where the lazy and the corrupt go to the wall, and the hard working and clever attract more investment. Maybe a hermit would draw lessons about the unpredictability of the stock exchange and the advisability of keeping apart from it all. Maybe a hedonist would draw arguments in favour of living for today because tomorrow your money may all be gone. But the meaning of the speaker himself is completely opaque… unless you already knew what he was on about. Nobody understands it. Any meaning given to it has to be imported into it. The man is a rotten witness to the Gospel.

We might understand his meaning- but that would be because we are already professing believers, and already know about Jesus’ parables, and already have understanding of what the man is talking about. Someone who hadn’t got that understanding would not gain it from the parable.

But Jesus here does exactly that. He tells a story, gives no explanation, and that’s all folks. Forget that there is an explanation later in the chapter, because the crowd don’t hear that- it is given privately to the disciples. In front of the crowd, Jesus simply tells the parable, then says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”, and then moves on. Even Jesus’ own disciples don’t understand him- they have to ask him to explain later. Maybe they’ve tried to interpret it, but come to no firm conclusion. Is Jesus encouraging them as they see few who are ready to join them? Or is he warning the crowd to listen carefully and be good soil? Or is he just reflecting on the mixed success of his work and saying that as in agriculture, this is only to be expected? Or what? If the disciples don’t understand, then the crowd certainly don’t understand.

Jesus is not doing what Nathan did. Nathan explained his parable to David, saying “You are the man”. Jesus pointedly refuses to explain his parables, saying “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear”. These parables are clearly not stories told to aid understanding. Rather, they divide the hearers into those who have understanding already, and those who don’t- those who do have ears to hear, and those who don’t.

4) And this first parable is about exactly that. It is about those who have ears to hear, and those who don’t. Later, the disciples came to Jesus, and asked him about the parables, and he explained it to them. The different types of soil are different groups of people. They all hear the same message, in the same words, on the same day, from the same speaker- just as the same seed is scattered over all the soils and the same money is invested in all the companies. But the seed takes root in some soils and not in others- and this is not the fault of the seed. It is good seed. If it doesn’t produce fruit, then the soil is at fault.

Some people just will not hear. Satan stops up their ears, or convinces them that what they are hearing is nonsense. Try to preach to Richard Dawkins, and that is the response you will get, unless God restrains Satan’s activity.

Others hear with joy, and ask some good questions, and say, “I’d like to talk again. See you next week” But then they feel embarrassed- or their friends tease them about being a God-botherer- and the next time they see you, they don’t want to know you.

Others still listen and think “Hmm… That makes a lot of sense” but then they’ve got such a lot of work on at the moment, and their cousin is getting married next week, and Corrie is on tonight, and they always watch Corrie, and so they put off thinking about God until another day, which often means never.

But some hear, and think, and believe, and obey.

Jesus’ point is that the seed is now being sown. The kingdom of God has come. And if it isn’t springing up and flourishing in Israel, then that isn’t because it hasn’t really come- it is because the soil is not fertile. Those who have ears to hear can indeed take encouragement in an apparently fruitless work. They can be warned to listen carefully and guard against the world, the flesh, and the devil. But those who don’t have ears to hear, won’t hear. They are bad soil.

Jesus sees this parable as key to understanding all the other parables- “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” I don’t think that Jesus is saying “But guys, this parable is the easiest one! If you can’t wrap your heads around this, then you’ve no chance with anything harder.” Rather, he is saying “This parable contains the reason why I tell parables. This parable is about those who hear and those who do not, and the way they respond differently to the message. I tell parables precisely so that some people won’t understand me. And if you don’t understand that, then you won’t understand why I tell any of the parables.”

5) When the disciples ask Jesus “about the parables”, Jesus doesn’t immediately explain their meaning. Instead, he says, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘They may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

By asking Jesus “about the parables”, maybe the disciples are not only asking, “What did that mean?” Maybe they’re also asking, “What on earth are you doing?” “There’s this crowd, eager to hear you, and you’re using the opportunity to tell them things they already know about agriculture!” The disciples, like us, weren’t always wise enough to realise that Jesus knew better than they did. We can see Peter who, when Jesus tells him that he is going to die, takes him aside and begins to rebuke him! We can be just as bone-headed about doing things the way we want to do them without asking whether we are guided by Scriptural principles.

In reply to the question about the parables, Jesus quotes Isaiah 6. He says that the secret of the kingdom of God is given to the disciples, but that to those outside, everything is given in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

That sounds very alien to our ears, does it not? It sounds ungracious. It sounds uncompassionate and unforgiving. Isn’t Jesus loving and forgiving? Doesn’t he want his hearers to find forgiveness? For some people, this just plain doesn’t fit their ideas about what Jesus is like. But there we go again, thinking that we know Jesus’ character better than he does, and that we know what he should have said better than he did. We blaspheme in our hearts, and we need to repent.

Jesus meant exactly what he said. He quotes Isaiah because Isaiah also exercised a ministry in which God purposefully hardened his hearers though the prophet’s words. Look at the quote in context- the context in which Jesus himself knew it.

Jesus is not actually quoting Isaiah’s words. He is quoting God’s words, recorded by Isaiah. Isaiah has just seen the vision of God in the temple, high and lifted up, with the holy seraphim who cannot bear to look upon him. And Isaiah has broken down and wailed in misery at his own sinfulness, saying, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips”. And then one of the seraphim has flown to the altar there in the temple, where all the sacrifices were burnt, and he has taken an ember from the altar- maybe a charred piece of animal flesh, maybe a blood-soaked coal- and he has touched Isaiah on the lips with it. By the burnt-up sacrifice, Isaiah’s lips are purified as though by fire. The seraph says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for”. Isaiah then hears God’s voice, saying “who shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah replies “Here am I! Send me”. And God commissions Isaiah to go and be his spokesman to Israel.

But- and this is where we see a strong similarity with Jesus’ parables- Isaiah’s preaching will not turn the people to repentance and renewed faithfulness. Rather, God warns Isaiah that his ministry will be a miserable one. Isaiah will preach and preach and preach- and will see no result. In fact, he will see a negative result. “Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes”, God says to him, “Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed.” Isaiah is to preach his heart out, and he will see Israel become harder and harder as a result.

Isaiah asks God “How long will this go on for?” And God says, “Until cities lie waste   without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.” God’s patience with Israel was at an end. He sent Isaiah to them not in order to turn them, but so that they might be left without excuse when he punished them. Isaiah is a faithful preacher, but his message is rejected, and wrath falls on Israel as a result. And all this was God’s plan from before Isaiah began to preach.

But there will be some who will be restored. God says to Isaiah (still in Isaiah 6) that Israel will be like a mighty tree felled so that only the stump remains. And the holy seed is the stump. Later, Isaiah will speak of a shoot coming from the stump of Jesse (Isa 11:1). The Davidic dynasty, cut short when the final king of Judah’s sons and heirs are killed in front of his own eyes just before his own eyes are put out, will come to life again in the Messiah.

Jesus then sees his own ministry as performing a similar (but greater) function to Isaiah’s. He comes to bring judgement as well as mercy. The two are inseparable. If Jesus brings the kingdom of God to earth, then it will be made obvious that some come into it and receive mercy, and some turn away from it and invite judgement. And the apparent lack of success is not a statement about Jesus ministry not being blessed by God- it is a statement about Jesus’ hearers not being blessed by God. The seed is good, the soil is bad. And this was all in God’s purposes, just as with Isaiah.

In Ch. 3, you have this division between those who oppose Jesus and conspire to destroy him, declaring his power to be demonic and the disciples who are his family. Against this backdrop, Jesus draws the distinction in Ch. 4 between the disciples to whom God entrusts the mystery of the kingdom, and the unbelieving multitude. The Jewish nation is being cut off. The Messiah comes, and they are like poor soil, not bearing the harvest they ought to bear. And yet there are some among them who bear an abundant harvest, a harvest unreal in its vastness- a hundred times the seed sown. As the old Israel dies, so the new Israel flourishes.

Jesus says that the secret of the kingdom is given to the disciples. God’s righteous kingdom has finally come. But only the disciples have any awareness of it. Most Jews expected it to come with trumpets, a glorious Messiah appearing and sweeping all before him, establishing a golden age for Israel, just like David- forgetting of course that David himself lived in obscurity for many years, and was on the run from Saul even as the anointed king. The disciples do recognise Jesus as God’s king, and they obey him and work for his kingdom. But those on the outside do not. Just as Isaiah preached to a people who refused to listen, so Jesus’ hearers cannot understand. This is a process that will end in the final chapter of Acts. Acts 28- and almost the last words of the book are this same quotation from Isaiah. Paul is speaking to the Jews at the heart of the Gentile world, in Rome itself, and most of them seem to reject his message. They then turn their backs and walk out on Paul because he says to them that the Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet “Go to this people, and say, You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.“

Paul then says that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and that they will listen. Luke’s history of the apostolic church then ends with a short statement about the success of the Gospel in the centre of the Gentile world.

6) For our own evangelism, this is helpful. Earlier, we thought of the man who stood up in a town square, and told a parable, and then packed up and went home- and I think our instincts are right about him- he was a rotten witness to the Gospel of the Son of God. Jesus has a reason to hide his glory for a while (and only for a while, as we shall see in the next few parables). He preaches so that people will not understand. But we live post-resurrection. We live in a day when the gospel is to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth, when things are to be spoken clearly. We can read the book of Acts, and we see that nowhere do the apostles use parables in their preaching. Peter and John and the others speak clearly about the Son of God who took flesh, suffered, died, was raised, and reigns now in heaven. Their meaning is not deliberately hidden.

But we can still see that the purpose of evangelism is not to count numbers of converts. Rather it is to glorify God. Isaiah was told that his preaching would glorify God by hardening the hearts of Israel and magnifying God’s justice when he raised up foreign invaders to slaughter them and then sent them off into exile. And Isaiah lived with that, because he believed that God is all-important. Just read Isa 6, and you see the all-consuming vision of God that Isaiah had. Isaiah knew that God was the important one, not men. If we have that view of God, it will help us in our evangelism.

Jesus too was taken up with his Father’s glory. He wept at the hardness of Jerusalem, but he did not consider it his duty to focus on man’s need above God’s glory. He could teach in parables, deliberately hiding the truth from men, to fulfil God’s purposes.

This will encourage us when we seem to fail. Most evangelical churches in Britain in our day preach and talk, and deliver leaflets, and hold special meetings, and invite people along, and see nothing. And this can be so disheartening. We pray for God to convert many, and we seem to see only small answers to our prayers. But we need to remember that even if we see no conversions, evangelism has not failed. God will be glorified when his character is proclaimed. If we tell people that God is a just and a merciful God, then even if they harden their hearts against him, God will be glorified, terrible though it may seem.

It will refocus our evangelism away from a man-centred view and towards a God-centred view. A big temptation in our age is to be consumer-friendly. The corporate world invests millions in advertising campaigns, and the question is – what does the customer really want? And what he wants, he gets offered; to entice him to buy the product. The customer wants to be slim and good-looking and rich and successful with the opposite sex? Well then we’ll persuade him that buying this car will make him all of those things. Look, customer, see the car? See the man in it? He looks like a film star, and he’s got a holiday home in Bermuda, and his girlfriend is drop-dead gorgeous. Implication: Buy the car that this guy drives and you’ll be like him. Of course the reality is very different. Buy the car, and you’ll be £40,000 poorer, and you’ll develop a beer gut because you drive everywhere instead of walking. But that is the generation we’ve grown up in, and it can influence our thinking. We need to guard against it, and we need to be especially careful that it doesn’t influence our thinking in the church.

Be “seeker sensitive” is the thing. And that’s all well and good if it means, “Be nice to people”- manifest grace to them, smile occasionally, shake their hand, make them welcome. But it is wrong where the seeker becomes the focus instead of God. We must do everything we do with an eye to God. In fact, with both eyes to God. When being seeker sensitive means that we make decisions about what music and words to sing based on what people will feel comfortable singing, or on what we ourselves enjoy, rather than what is most appropriate to praise and honour God, then man has become an idol, usurping God’s throne.

When we decide that unbelievers won’t want to come to a meeting to hear the Bible explained, so we’ll forget that, and hold a 5-a-side football contest instead, because people will come to that; then we’ve forgotten that the Gospel is all about God. If people won’t come to hear about God, then they bring judgement upon themselves. Playing football with them is frivolous as a method of evangelism. We are heralds of the great king, and we bring an offer of peace to those who are at war with him. We are to offer to all- to sow the seed broadcast. But if people don’t want to know, then in the end, that’s their loss, not God’s. Not that we should be uncaring, but that in the end, we are God’s servants, not the world’s.

Mark 3:13-19. The Twelve go up the mountain.

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve- designating them apostles- that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder); Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

1) Why does Jesus go up onto a mountain, and why does Mark record this fact?

2) What is an apostle?

3) Why does Jesus call 12 apostles rather than 21, or 7?

4) Are there apostles today?

Discussion:

1) We read that Jesus went up onto a mountain. Is this just incidental detail, to give us a mental image and help us “get into the scene”? Or is there a deeper significance? Mark is very economical with words, and therefore very sparse with detail. There is very little in his Gospel which does not carry theological freight.

Mountains have a long and distinguished history in the Bible. The Garden of Eden was on the top of a mountain. From Eden, four rivers went out to water a vast area. On the mountain, God met with Adam. On the mountain, Heaven and Earth were joined. This is a consistent factor in Biblical geography.

If I look at a map of the world, then in order to understand it, I must enter in to the language it uses. I can’t interpret the map literally, or else I end up believing that the earth is flat, that some countries are yellow, some green, some red, and some purple, and that if I climb Scafell Pike, I’ll be able to see a small black triangle and the number “978″ carefully inscribed at the summit. So it is with a Biblical cosmology. The type of map depends on the information it wishes to convey. A world map is usually meant to convey geo-political information, so boundaries are marked between nation states, and empires are colour-coded. An OS walkers’ map is meant to tell walkers where they are and how to get to where they want to be, so the contours are marked and the shape and length of the paths are drawn as accurately as possible. But we understand that there are symbols for youth hostels, campsites, sites of battles, tumuli, and so on which are not literal depictions of the things symbolised.

We read the Bible, and see that it describes the earth as having four corners. We are not supposed to use this information for navigation. The Bible describes heaven as being above- and again, we are not supposed to suppose that we can build a tower to reach God. But we are made, psychologically, to equate physical height with authority and power, and, ultimately, with God himself. Why else did the ancients build ziggurats upon which to sacrifice, if not to bring them closer to their gods? Why else was the tower of Babel built? And when it was built, God himself “came down” to see the tower- not “came up” or “came along” (Gen 11:5).

Mountains are natural towers, reaching up into the heavens. And when God comes down to earth, he comes to rest on (or above) the tops of mountains. It is so at Eden, and it is so again at Sinai. Israel is encamped at the foot of the mountain, and Moses goes up to the top of the mountain to speak with God. This mountain is not like Eden. In Eden, Adam and God spoke together freely. At Sinai, God cannot speak with his people face-to-face. Instead, there is thunder and lightening, and fire on the top of the mountain. The people are forbidden from going up on it at all, and only the mediator, Moses, may ascend all the way up. After the fall, when God comes down to a sinful world, he reacts against it explosively.

In later years, when Elijah meets with God, he goes up a mountain to do so. And when an Israelite in later years wishes to meet with God, where must he go? He must go to Jerusalem, the city on a hill. The Bible often speaks of “going up” to Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem was not at the highest physical elevation of all the hills in Israel. Theologically- because God’s house was built there- even if you were travelling downhill to Jerusalem, you were still going up.

So Jesus here goes up a mountain. But he does not go up the mountain as a servant of God, seeking to speak with God, as did Moses and Elijah. Rather, he went up the mountain, and then turned and called others up to speak with him! In the Hebrew mindset, Jesus is taking the place of Yahweh. He calls his servants up to meet with him, and he commands them and sends them out to do his bidding. The picture is of complete authority- Jesus does not call people to him, and see whether they come, then ask them if they’d be able to do a favour for him. Jesus calls those he wants. And those he wants come, and he appoints them to do his work. The idea that they might say “No” is inconceivable.

2) An apostle is literally a “sent one”. The idea is of a personal messenger, a representative, an ambassador. If a king had pressing duties at home, but also needed to be present somewhere abroad to meet with other kings and make agreements with them, then he could appoint an apostle to be abroad for him. The apostle would have all the authority of the king. If he signed a treaty, it would be as if the king had signed it. If he declared war, then war would be declared. Our Queen sends ambassadors to other nations- and they are identified with her. If another nation mistreats the ambassador, it shows disrespect for the Queen. If the ambassador misbehaves, it brings dishonour on the Queen. Apostles are plenipotentiary ambassadors. The apostles appointed here (and Paul, appointed “out of time”), will speak with Jesus’ voice. If they command the church to do something, then the church must either obey, or be disobedient to Jesus. Jesus appoints apostles here, and he gives them his personal authority. They are “apostles of Jesus Christ”. We read in the NT of men appointed as “apostles of the church”, meaning that their churches appoint them as delegates, giving them the authority to speak for that church where they are sent.

We are told several things about these twelve: They are going to be with Jesus. They are going to drive out demons. They are going to preach. Jesus’ work is their work, and they do it by his authority- in his name. A policeman can arrest somebody “in the name of the law”, and by this, he means that his authority to arrest them is derived from the law. He acts as the law commands. If the criminal objects to being arrested, then his quarrel is not just with the policeman, but with the law. And on the other hand, the policeman can only arrest lawbreakers. The law gives him no authority to arrest innocent men and women. So it is with the apostles. They are given authority to act in Jesus’ name, with his authority- and this means that they can do the work which until now has been his alone. They can preach, and drive out Satan.

We see this identification not only in v14-15, but in v20. Jesus is rushed off his feet- the crowds press around him constantly, and he has been so busy that he hasn’t even had time to grab a bite to eat. But it isn’t only Jesus who hasn’t eaten. His apostles are engaged with his work. When he is too busy to eat, so now are they. They can’t leave Jesus to deal with the crowds while some of them slip off to get a sandwich. They are apostles. Jesus’ authority is now their authority, and Jesus’ work is also their work.

3) Jesus, on the mountain, calls to him those he has chosen, to be his apostles. He chose 12 men. We might ask why twelve men, and not any other number. We might (in a mindlessly egalitarian age) ask why twelve men, and not six men and six women.

Back in Israel’s history, we have seen the number twelve before. Jacob (also known as Israel) had twelve sons. These twelve sons were the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. They were (under Jacob, Isaac, Abraham and God himself) the fathers of the nation. Israel was built upon the foundation of these twelve brothers.

If we go back to beginning of Mark’s Gospel, we see that John the Baptist was preaching repentance at a particular place- at the Jordan river, towards the South. He was baptising people there, at the gateway into the land, the place where the Jordan had originally been crossed. And he was calling out a new Israel, beginning to gather a people who were repentant, a people who longed to be part of the new covenant promises made to Jeremiah about a people who would all be forgiven and would all know the Lord.

The twelveness of the apostles is again part of the new Israel theme. These men were (under Jesus himself) founders of the new Israel, the church. Paul can write to the Ephesians that Jesus has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, creating in himself one new man out of the two, and that consequently, the Ephesian Gentiles are no longer foreigners, but fellow citizens and members of God’s household, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the head cornerstone” (Eph 2:14-22).

4) Given this imagery, it seems clear that the apostles are a once-for-all gift to the church. They are a foundation, and the thing with foundations is that they are only laid once, at the beginning of the work. God isn’t a cowboy builder, giving a foundation after the walls have started going up. This is the natural conclusion drawn from both the role and the symbolism of the Twelve.

Firstly, given the role of the Twelve- their position of authoritative representatives of Jesus Christ- then if there were still apostles walking the earth, this would be something massively important for all Christians. These men would speak with all Jesus’ authority! They would be Popes and then some. What they said as apostles would be binding on every single Christian on the planet. If they were to pronounce upon matters of doctrine, then their words would be of equal authority to Scripture. If they were to write down their thoughts, then we should bind them together with the letters of Peter, Paul and John, as equal in authority with them. Can we even imagine a man who could be accepted by all churches across the globe as having this sort of authority?

That authority can only be given by Jesus, personally. There are many men today who call themselves apostles, but do we treat their claims seriously? Are we to give them the authority which the churches of the New Testament accorded to the Twelve? The answer seems obvious to me. I once had a postcard from an “apostle” through my door, when I was staying in America. He was inviting me to come to a conference on wealth and prosperity at which he was speaking. Had he really been an apostle, surely I should have gone. But my hair needed a wash, so I didn’t.

Secondly, the symbolism of there being twelve apostles and twelve tribes- twelve men called as founding leaders of the people who were obedient to Jesus, as there were twelve men called as founding fathers of Israel, the people who served Yahweh- is ruined if we allow that there have actually been many many more apostles since these men, perhaps hundreds or thousands. We can see this at the start of the book of Acts. Judas, one of the twelve, has apostatised. Since there have to be 12 apostles there at the inception of the NT church, and given the scriptural support for the idea of replacing the one who has fallen away, Peter says that another man must be appointed to fill Judas’ sandals (Acts 1:15-26). Of all the people there- “about 120″- only certain men are in the running for this position. Peter lays down the one criterion that must be applied. The new apostle must be “One of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us- one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection”. The apostles are all men who have seen Jesus, bodily, both pre- and post- resurrection. There were very probably present some wise and godly men who worshipped Jesus without having met him before his death- but they are all disqualified. The new apostle must be one of the company that followed Jesus around even at the very beginning, since John’s baptism, and that seems to leave a choice of only two.

Furthermore, who can choose which of these two is to be the apostle? Who has the authority to appoint somebody to be a personal representative of Jesus Christ? Obvious answer- only the Lord himself. And so the company of believers there, although it is clear to them that only two of the group are potential apostles, do not take it upon themselves to choose between the two. Instead, they draw lots- acknowledging that this is not a decision which they have authority to take. And this is the only replacement of an apostle of which we read. When James is killed by Herod (Acts 4:2), he is not replaced. By that point, his job has been completed. Judged by these criteria, it is not possible for apostles to be walking the earth today.

Some people will no doubt spot an apparent flaw in this scheme. Paul was appointed an apostle of Jesus Christ, just as these 12 were. But Paul was called after Jesus had died. He may or may not have met the Lord occasionally, but he certainly wasn’t of the company that followed Jesus around from the beginning. And Paul was an extra apostle, added on to the original twelve. So why can’t more apostles still be added today?

Two reasons…

Firstly, an apostle must still be personally appointed by Jesus, and be a witness to the resurrection (Acts 1:22). So unless modern apostles are also claiming that Jesus has appeared to them, really and physically, to appoint them, then I would be quite happy to throw the claim out with no further hearing. Paul was personally appointed by Jesus Christ. Although he may not have known the Lord Jesus before the resurrection, Paul did meet with him afterwards. Paul had an encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, and Jesus there appointed Paul as an apostle.

Secondly, Paul is an unusual case. He says so himself (“Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” 1 Corinthians 15:7-8). Paul is aware that his calling, though genuine, is unusual. It is not normal for an apostle to be called from the ranks of men who did not know Jesus personally in the flesh. He was called later than the 12, and so was an odd apostle.

It is also not normal for a 13th apostle to be called. There might be room in the symbolism for one more- remember that you can actually count 13 tribes of Israel in the OT- Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Asher, Gad, Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, Dan, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh, Joseph’s two sons each making up a tribe in their own right- but this is a little tenuous, and isn’t even hinted at in the New Testament. Paul nowhere says in defence of his apostleship “Aha, and just as there was an extra tribe of Israel, so I am the 13th apostle.

As we are aware, Paul’s claim to apostleship was hotly contested by many in the NT churches, and this is why Paul has to argue fiercely for the genuineness of his apostleship to the Galatians and Corinthians (“Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my workmanship in the Lord?” 1 Corinthians 9:1. Note there that Paul’s argues that he is an apostle from the fact that he has seen Jesus, and the fact that he is a foundation for the church). The men who opposed his claims well understood what was at stake. If Paul is an apostle, then they should obey him, no question. We can see then that they have an ulterior motive. Paul is the man who seems most active and capable in contending for the truth and stopping their various heresies. So they’ll try to cast doubt on his authority, try to rank him beneath the twelve.  And Paul is having none of it. Yet despite the dangers of playing into the hands of his enemies, he still refers to himself as “one born out of time”.

However, if there have been hundreds of apostles since the death of John, then Paul is not unusual after all. He wouldn’t need to mention the abnormality of his appointment, since it wouldn’t be anything to remark upon.

Mark 3:7-12. The story so far…

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. When they heard all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.

Recap:

We’ve come to the end of the first part of Mark’s Gospel. Mark has been telling us about Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. We’ve just looked at 5 snapshots marked by opposition to Jesus from the Pharisees and teachers of the law, and this opposition has intensified as things have progressed. At first, the Pharisees were merely thinking in their hearts, “This man is a blasphemer.” But then Jesus told them that he had come not for the righteous, but for sinners. He said that his new order was going to destroy their ideas like new wine in old wineskins. He claimed to be the rightful king, the new David, and he cast them in the role of Saul. After that, they began following him around deliberately in order to gather evidence against him. Jesus confronted them about the Sabbath, telling them that they’d twisted the law and made it evil, preventing it from doing good. We saw that they even plotted to kill him, working together with their natural enemies; that bunch of politically motivated sell-outs, the Herodians.

The Herodians were those Jews who supported Herod, the puppet king propped up by Gentile Rome over a people who mostly despised him and disliked his rule, which was characterised by childish rage and indulgence. The Herodians, incidentally, will be more than happy to oppose Jesus too. Herod is their king, and they don’t want to rock that fragile boat. Jewish history under Roman rule is marked by periodic popular uprisings under the leadership of quasi-messianic figures- historians of the time tell us this, and we also have statements like that made by the commander at Paul’s arrest in Ephesus (Acts 21:38). Herod’s fan club will be constantly aware of the precariousness of their leader’s authority, and will be alert to any popular figure who might undermine him. Herod himself, of course, feared Jesus in whom he saw John the Baptist, back from the grave to haunt him (Mark 6:16).

Mark records the alliance to underline the hatred of the Pharisees against Jesus. They had hardened their hearts against him, and were willing to do anything to be rid of him- even to join forces with those they despised as Gentile-collaborators.

Summary statement.

In the rest of the chapter, from v13-35, we have effectively one unit, describing 3 groups of people: The apostles, Jesus’ natural family, and the Pharisees. But we’ll deal with that next time. Before v13-35, we have a summary statement describing the sorts of things Jesus was doing at this stage in his ministry.

Fame!

We can see that Jesus’ fame has grown during the time he has ministered in Galilee. Jesus is now a national celebrity. Mark has told us before of the crowds which he has drawn- how “the whole city was gathered together at the door“of the house where Jesus was in Capernaum (1:33), but in this passage, interest in Jesus seems to have spread even more widely. Crowds from Galilee dog his movements, as we would expect, since he has been living in Capernaum for a while. At the end of Ch 1, Jesus’ “fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee” (1:28). But although large crowds gathered, they gathered from just one or two towns. Now, things are very different. The folk here are not only from the local area. People have come from all over the country, specifically to see and hear Jesus. Everyone has heard something about who he is. Almost certainly, messianic rumours are spreading, and everyone wants to see the man who might be King. There are people from the South- from Judea and Idumea. There are people from the other side of the Jordan, where Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh had settled way back in Joshua’s day. There are people from up in the North, from the mixed Jew-Gentile populations of Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon. Everybody and anybody Jewish wants to know more about this Galilean teacher who can heal and cast out demons.

And Jesus does not disappoint the crowds. He keeps doing as he has been doing. He heals, casts out demons and teaches. His teaching is about the kingdom of God. We have already had a summary of it already: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (1:15). We shall have some more detailed examples with the parables in Ch 4, which again are all about the King and the inauguration of his Kingdom. And Jesus’ miraculous signs underline and prove his teaching: They are signs of the kingdom.

Incognito.

Again in this summary, we have the demons who recognise who Jesus is. They stand in contrast to the crowds. Men call Jesus “Lord” or “teacher”. It is the unclean spirits who call him “Holy one of God” and “Son of God”. But Jesus commands them to be silent!

We’ve seen the same thing happen when Jesus dealt with demons in 1:24-25, and 1:34.

Does this strike you as odd? Jesus is going around telling the crowds to repent and believe the good news of the newly arrived Kingdom. Wouldn’t it help his mission to have these supernatural witnesses? Doesn’t it prove his authority to have even the demons shout his identity before they are cast out? Why does Jesus apparently want to suppress the truth about who he is?

Paul in Philippi also tells a spirit to be silent. In Acts 16:16-18, Luke writes, “As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.”

But this is a very different situation to Jesus’. Jesus tells the demons to be silent almost before they’ve had a chance to speak. The demonised girl in Philippi has been following Paul around for perhaps three or four days. She has been a constant annoyance and hindrance to his ministry. Whenever he tries to speak, he has to raise his voice to drown her out. What she says is true, but it still amounts to heckling, and that is why Paul, “greatly annoyed” (and I don’t blame him), silences her.  If Paul had wanted his status as God’s servant to be kept quiet, he would have commanded silence immediately. He didn’t. Jesus did.

The question of why Jesus did this has become a central one in Markan studies. William Wrede published a work in 1901 entitled “Das Messiasgeheimnis in Den Evangelien“. The title of the English translation of the book is “The Messianic Secret”. This book dealt with the instances where Jesus commands the demons to be silent, and also with many other passages in the book, where Jesus…

a)      Commands people who have been healed to keep silent about what has happened (1:43-44; 5:43; 7:36; 8:26).

b)      Commands the disciples not to make his identity known (8:30; 9:9).

c)      Repeatedly withdraws from the public arena, despite having eager crowds at his feet (5:37; 6:31; 7:24; 9:30).

d)      Explains that he teaches in parables not to make his teaching more accessible, but in order to make it obscure. He wants to hide what he says from most of his hearers, only revealing secrets to his inner circle (4:11-12).

e)      Uses the rather ambiguous* title of “Son of Man” for himself

On top of all of this, Mark is clear that the disciples themselves do not properly understand Jesus’ mission, even after spending three years under his tutelage.

Wrede asked himself why these passages appear in the Gospel, why Mark portrays Jesus’ status as Messiah as a big secret, known only to Jesus and the spirits.

Wrede’s own conclusion was that these parts of the Gospel must have been made up. According to Wrede, Jesus did not actually command people to keep quiet about their healings or tell the demons to be silent. He didn’t want to suppress the knowledge of who he was. This “Messianic secret” has been inserted into the narrative to explain why nobody seemed to recognise Jesus as Messiah in his own lifetime.

According to Wrede, Mark and the early church had an embarrassing problem, and this was their solution to it. Their problem was that only the Twelve and a few others saw Jesus as Messiah during his life, and when he was crucified, even they abandoned him with their hopes in tatters. When later, they all joined together under Jesus’ banner, and said that he had been the Messiah after all, it looked a bit iffy. The church needed to explain why the disciples and a wider public had not seen the obvious all along. Wrede said that Mark (or whoever wrote Mark’s Gospel) hit upon the idea of saying that although it was obvious now, it hadn’t been obvious all along. So Wrede reckons that Mark (or whoever) has fabricated bits of the Gospel in order to make Jesus’ Messiahship out to be a big secret.

Obviously, this conclusion is unacceptable to those of us who hold a more orthodox view of the inspiration of Scripture, and who don’t want to call our own imaginations “Benedict” and declare them to be Pope. But Wrede raises a real question, which demands a real answer. Why did Jesus keep his identity secret? To dismiss the question because we don’t like the answer would be to leave the metaphorical dead mouse rotting behind the fridge.

I would argue that the key passage to help our understanding of Jesus’ reasons for secrecy can be found in the account of the transfiguration. There, Jesus says to the three disciples who have witnessed this event that they are not to tell anyone about what they have seen “until the Son of Man had risen from the dead” (Mark 9:9). Jesus knows that his Messiahship can only be understood in the context of his death and resurrection. People will not be capable of grasping what it is he has come to do, until after he has done it. Before he dies, people will try to force him to be their king. Jesus does not want political leadership thrust upon him- as he says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). If Jesus had revealed himself to be the Messiah fully and openly and always, the problem of John 6- where the people he has fed try to make him king by force- would only have gotten worse. There was an intense expectation of the Messiah in some sections of Israelite society, and there would always be those who would get behind a potential candidate and try to make them the Messiah they had hoped for. Contrary to there being a widespread non-perception of Jesus as Messiah, which needed explaining by the church, it seems that many people expected Jesus to be some sort of Messiah-figure. But Jesus came to be a different Messiah from the Messiah everyone expected. He connected the revelation of his glory to his resurrection from the dead, and told his disciples that not until then was he to be made known.

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* You may be quite surprised that this title can be considered ambiguous. After all, most Christians automatically make the mental link to the passage in Daniel, where the “Son of Man” is a shining figure who comes to the Ancient of Days to receive eternal dominion- and that naturally links in to our understanding of Jesus as this eternal glorious king.But compare this usage to that of Job, Ezekiel, and various Psalms, and it is plain that the title has a wide range of possible meanings. We’ll go into more detail on this at a later date.

Mark 2:23-3:6. Still in the snapshots: Jesus and the Sabbath.

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: How he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”  Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.  

Disputes over the Sabbath:

Jesus’ disciples pick grain to eat on the Sabbath. The Pharisees, who are keeping Jesus under surveillance by this point, pick this out as “unlawful”. Jesus replies by drawing an analogy with David’s actions in 1 Samuel 21, and then teaching on the Sabbath. Later, he is in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and deliberately picks a fight with the Pharisees who are watching like hawks. 

1) What was the Sabbath day, and why did the Jews observe it? 

2) What is wrong with the Pharisees’ view of the Sabbath, and how is this starkly shown in this incident? Does their misunderstanding of the Sabbath epitomise their error in their view of God’s law as a whole? How was the Pharisaic understanding of the law flawed? 

3) Were the disciples acting lawfully in picking grain?  

4) Was David acting lawfully in what he did? Is the lawfulness or unlawfulness of their actions the focus, either in this passage or in 1 Samuel 21:1-6? How was David’s situation of taking the priests’ bread analogous to Jesus’ situation of doing things on the Sabbath? 

5) Why is the second incident recorded? What does it bring to the Gospel which the first incident does not? 

6) What does this mean for us? How should Christians understand the law? Is the Sabbath law binding today? If so, how? How is it good for us? What blessings does it bring? What should our attitude be towards it?  

Discussion:

1) Perhaps we can answer two different questions here. What was the Sabbath actually for? And when did the Sabbath begin? Sabbath simply means “seventh”, and that is what it was- it was the seventh day of the week. It was given as a day of rest and a day special to God. It had been so ever since God made the world, and rested on the 7^th day. The weekly Sabbath was just a way of life for the Jew. It was taken as read that on the Sabbath, there would be no work- not for you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner within your gates. I’m quoting the Law there. And the law goes on to give a reason for this cessation of work. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy (Ex 20:8-11). So it was ordained at creation, that the seventh day was to be a day of resting from work, and a day kept holy to God- kept apart from the other days, and dedicated to God’s service, just like the vessels in the temple were holy vessels- vessels not for common use, but only to be used in the temple for God. We can call the Sabbath a day of rest, but it was not a day for sitting around doing nothing. It was a day kept separate for God. The Sabbath was a day not for common use, and an Israelite would indeed rest from his weekly work, but the point was not to kick back and relax, but to worship God.

To give a brief history of the Sabbath: Adam was created and given life on the 6^th day. So the first full day he spent alive was a Sabbath day- a day when he didn’t have to do any work, stamping his authority upon creation, but instead could talk all day to his Creator. The Sabbath was enshrined in the law at Sinai, put on the statute books for Israel’s national life- but it was already old by that point, and God links the Sabbath for Israel to the first Sabbath, instituted at creation. In Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law, which Moses spoke to the Israelites on the borders of Canaan, Moses links the Sabbath not to creation, but to the remembrance of salvation. He says it is a day to remember slavery in the land of Egypt and the deliverance from slavery which God wrought with a mighty hand and outstretched arm (Deut. 5:12-15). The Sabbath was important specifically for God’s people. Keeping it was part of being an Israelite, being one of God’s covenant people, the people he had chosen, and whom he loved and had delivered, and to whom he had promised great things.

Sabbath breaking was no light matter. It was there in the 10 commandments, the quick memorable summary of the law. People could be stoned for Sabbath breaking (Exodus 31:12-17; 35:1-3). In Numbers 15, you have a short account of a man who was caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and the people bring him to Moses and Aaron before all the gathered Israelites, and the Lord told Moses that he was to be taken outside the camp, and stoned to death. And this sounds rather severe to our ears, does it not? I mean, come on, the guy is just picking up a few sticks on a Saturday- he doesn’t deserve death, does he? But when we think like this, we are not thinking in Israelite terms. We have individual mindsets, not covenantal corporate mindsets. This man wasn’t “just picking up a few sticks on a Saturday”. He was wilfully breaking the Sabbath. He was explicitly going against the command of Exodus 35, which enjoins the death penalty on those who light fires on the Sabbath. Every other day of the week, all round the Israelite camp, there would be little camp fires burning. Tiny columns of smoke would be going up, and people would be going about their business. The camp would be noisy, bustling, full of people coming and going. But not on the Sabbath. The man couldn’t have missed it, couldn’t have just forgotten. The whole atmosphere of the camp would be different on the Sabbath. By continuing to do his weekly work, this man was saying publicly by his actions, “I don’t care for God’s law, and I don’t care about being one of his people, and I don’t care for God himself.” By doing so, he brought danger on all the people. The man had rejected God, and so either he had to be cut off from Israel, or Israel would be cut off from God. This sort of thing could not be tolerated in the midst of God’s people. And so the people dragged him outside the clean camp into the unclean wilderness, and picked up stones, and hurled them at him, until he was smashed to death. This was done at God’s direct command, and it was the only thing they could do. He had to be removed from God’s holy people, removed from the clean camp where they lived, and put to death in the wilderness. The whole people took responsibility for it. Stoning is a very corporate method of execution. No single person was responsible for killing the man- everyone was. It purged the whole nation of the evil which had been among them.

And the Sabbath was still important to the Jews of Jesus day, and was still linked to being God’s people, and to the hope of deliverance. A strand of Rabbinic tradition taught that when all Israel kept the Sabbath, then God would send the Messiah. And in the Maccabean revolt against Syria, between the Old and New Testaments, many of the Jews refused to fight on the Sabbath, even though it meant certain death for them. 

2) The Pharisees’ take on the Sabbath.

So God thought that the Sabbath was important. And the Pharisees clearly agreed. In typical Pharisaic fashion, they had looked at the law and said, “Well, this must be kept. We are not allowed to work on the Sabbath- that much is clear. Now we need to be sure that we don’t work, and in order to be sure that we’re not working by accident, we need to define very carefully what work is, and what it is not. The law says, “For six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work.” Seems plain enough, doesn’t it? Well, the Pharisees rightly wanted to apply it clearly to themselves. So they went about defining precisely what work was. If you went on a long arduous hike on the Sabbath, was that work? If it was, then how about a short hike? How about walking to the Synagogue? How many steps should you be allowed to take? Some Pharisees actually set limits on the number of steps they could take. It was stupid, over the top. Counting your steps made more work, made the Sabbath a burden rather than a rest, made it harder to concentrate on God, not easier. They started by trying to uphold the law, but finished up undermining it, unable to see the wood for the trees.

In the example we have in here- what about gathering in the harvest? Reaping was definitely work, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Moses had given some directions about what was and what was not permitted. And in the law, reaping was one category of things that was definitely out (Exodus 34:21). At harvest time, Israelites would sweat in the fields all day. This was exactly what work was all about, eating food by the sweat of the face, wrestling crops out of the cursed earth. So then, no reaping on the Sabbath, that ought to be very clear.But then, if we’re going to keep the law properly, we need to know exactly when we are reaping and when we aren’t. The urge then was to define reaping very tightly, leaving no room for doubt or ambiguity. So reaping is defined as picking grain from the stalk. And that means that if a man strolling through his field on his way to the synagogue on a sunny Sabbath morning should pick a few grains from the wheat crop and rub the husks off and pop them in his mouth, then for the Pharisees, he was a lawbreaker. The Pharisees’ take on the Sabbath was just like their take on the other laws. Their problem wasn’t that they were concerned with the minute details of the law- it was that in their concern, they forgot the broader sweep of it. Jesus does not criticise them for tithing the mint and cumin in their gardens, but for doing it so myopically that they forgot the weightier matters of the law, mercy and justice. They were right to be careful about law keeping. They had gone wrong in that they had wickedly over-inflated the importance of their extra regulations.

It wasn’t even the urge to define that was wrong per se. If a Pharisee wanted to define what was reaping and what was not, then all power to his elbow. It would be a good and profitable exercise… provided of course that his reason for so doing was to glorify the thrice holy God by striving to please him in obedience. But the Pharisee must always remember that his definition, though it may be a help to the law, is only a help to the law. It is not the law itself. It does not carry the full weight of the law in itself. And the Pharisee needs to retain the larger perspective- when enforcing the help to the law would actually violate a part of the law, then of course the help is a help no longer, and must be abandoned. The Pharisees went wrong in that they had forgotten this. Their view of what was law had extended to include their own traditions. They no longer thought of their traditions as commentaries on the law, but as authoritative, like the law itself. They were adding to the law. 

3) Were Jesus’ disciples transgressing the law?

Jesus’ disciples were not breaking the law in what they did. They were transgressing against the Pharisaic tradition, but not against the law itself. You can make an argument from the law that their actions did not constitute “reaping” proper. The law allowed for gleaning (Deut. 23:25), and did not call it theft. A man could walk through another man’s harvest, pluck some of his crop with his bare hands and without the owner’s permission, and walk away. The owner of the harvest was not to class this as stealing. But if the same man were to take a scythe to his neighbour’s harvest, I rather think that this would be classed as theft. So the disciples, casually picking grain as they walked by, were not stealing another man’s harvest, and so presumably were not “reaping”. They were not breaking the Sabbath, for this was not work that they were doing.

Which rather begs the question- why did Jesus reply with reference to David? Why not just say to the Pharisees “Look, you’re taking this to absurdity and beyond. You’re making the Sabbath a burden which it was never meant to be. Sure, forbid work, forbid fires, forbid stick gathering- that is all good, and all in the God-given law, and all meant so that Israel can join together in worshipping God. But when you start forbidding picking grain with your hands, you’re going beyond what God said- and even going against what God said.”  

4) So how is the David reference relevant?

Was David doing something similar at all? The passage Jesus is referring to is 1 Samuel 21:1-6. (See end note for possible explanations of the apparent confusion between Ahimelech and Abiathar.) In this passage, there is no mention of the Sabbath unless “how much more then today” implies it. So it is not for an authoritative answer on the question of the Sabbath that Jesus appeals to 1 Samuel. And neither is it to justify lawbreaking, since Jesus’ disciples are not breaking the law and do not need to be justified on this point.Remember some of the background here. David has already been anointed king by Samuel, has slain Goliath, has been a kind of court musician, and also a national hero as a warrior. He has commanded armies, and the people sing about him “David has slain his tens of thousands.” But immediately before this incident, David has fallen from grace at the court. David has just been declared persona non grata at Saul’s court, and is now on the run, suspected of treachery. A small band of loyal followers are with him, and these men trust David and believe that he is the rightful king (although they are inconsistent in this. They leave home and family for an uncertain life as outlaws for David’s sake, yet at times they are ready to stone him.). David is in hiding with this band of outcasts, and they are hungry. They are God’s faithful people, suffering rejection by the official leaders of Israel under king Saul. They are hungry because they are in hiding, and they are in hiding because they are faithful.

So David goes to the priests at Nob, where the priests were in those days (this was before Jerusalem was captured from the Jebusites). Ahimelech, the priest, is scared, probably because he is aware of Saul’s temper and suspicion of David, and when he sees David on his own, with no official retinue, he suspects that David has been thrown out. David, however, lies to Ahimelech, and says that he is on a top secret mission for Saul. He explains that his men are going to meet him later, at a secret location, but that he now wants food. David demands of the priests, “Give me five loaves or whatever you have.” He knows that there will be at least twelve loaves there on the golden table, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. They are to remain before God all week, and to be replaced with fresh loaves on the Sabbath. Only the priests may eat this bread and they are to eat it in a holy place (Lev. 24:5-9). Ahimelech replies that the only bread there is this holy bread, but offers it to David on the understanding that only clean men will eat it. He also gives David the sword of Goliath, the Philistine. Ahimelech is deliberately crossing Saul in favour of David, and will pay for this later with his life.

Jesus is quoting this incident in order to draw strong parallels between himself and David. Jesus is claiming that he stands in David’s shoes. He is God’s anointed king. He is unrecognised by others. He is oppressed by the authorities, but he really has the right to reign. And it is his followers, the band supporting his right to rule, that are being fed. Jesus is the new and greater David. He has come as the anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah- those words all mean the same thing. The official rulers do not accept him. A band of outcasts follow him, and he feeds them as they go about their business. Their walk through the fields is unlikely to be an afternoon stroll. It is the Sabbath, they are probably going to the synagogue to preach and teach there. This is part of their mission. It is kingdom work. And for the purposes of the kingdom, Jesus has authority to break with convention. David has authority to actually break the law, and the priest recognises this. He gives David the bread, knowing that David’s need is more important than the law about priests only eating the bread, and he gives David a sword even though he almost certainly sees through David’s flimsy lie. Who goes on a secret mission with a bunch of men, without taking food, and without even taking a sword? Ahimelech knows that what he is doing will not offend God, because David is God’s king. Jesus is telling the Pharisees to watch it, because by questioning him, they put themselves in the position of the new Sauls. This is not a general “People are more important than rules” point. It is a point about the kingdom. Jesus is saying that because of who he is, he has the absolute right to judge how the Sabbath ought to be employed. He is lord of the Sabbath. His authority is absolute. Faithfulness to God is now measured by allegiance to Jesus before any other standard. 

NOTE- Jesus refers to the incident as being “in the days of Abiathar the high priest”. But in the passage from Samuel, it is Ahimelech who is mentioned, not Abiathar. Abiathar was actually Ahimelech’s more famous son. One of Saul’s men, an Edomite shepherd, witnessed Ahimelech giving aid to David, and when Saul heard of it he called the priests to him, and accused them of helping David. Ahimelech replied in a roundabout manner, saying that David was the king’s son-in-law, and very loyal and honourable. But Saul ordered his soldiers to slaughter the priests. None of the soldiers was willing to carry out these orders, and so the Edomite shepherd did it. Abiathar managed to escape the massacre, went to join David, and became High Priest a chapter later.Some interpret this as a sort of “President Reagan stars in this film” statement. I have a DVD at home, which features Ronald Reagan, who was a B-movie actor in his youth. At the time he was in the film, he was certainly not President, but we can still talk of him as “President Reagan”, since that is what he was famous for. This seems unlikely to be the case here though. Abiathar is not a player at all in the drama in 1 Samuel 21, and Jesus is talking about Abiathar’s predecessor. If we were talking about US politics during the Carter presidency, we wouldn’t speak of it as “in the days of President Reagan”, even though Reagan was undoubtedly alive at that time. We would instead refer to it as “in the days of President Carter”.

It could be a statement analogous to that in 12:26 -”Have you never read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush…” Commentators say that the Greek phrase is analogous. The point of referring to Abiathar would then be to identify the section of the scroll of Samuel in which the account of David and Ahimelech is found.

5) What about the healing of the man on the Sabbath?

This escalates the matter. Jesus goes into the synagogue, quite possibly later on the same Sabbath day, and there is a man there with a dead hand. Jesus can see the Pharisees watching him, and it is obvious what they are thinking. They are looking for a reason to condemn him, and they know that healing the man is the sort of thing that Jesus would do.

So Jesus deliberately makes a confrontation out of it. He gets the man to stand up in front of everybody and walk over to him. Everyone’s eyes are on Jesus and the sick man. Then Jesus challenges the Pharisees publicly in the synagogue. He brings them back to the point of the Sabbath. What is it about? Is it a blessing, or a curse? Should it be a happy day or a burden? Is it right to do good, or to refrain from doing good in order to keep some pathetic regulations dreamt up by the Pharisees? The Sabbath, of course, was a blessing, a day of rest, a day of communion with God, almost a day on which the curse was temporarily lifted.

The OT law forbade the man from the temple (Lev 21:16-24 gives a list of injuries which precluded a man from temple worship, since injuries were marks of the curse). The man was cut off from God, and Jesus restores him to fellowship with God on the Sabbath. It is exactly what the Sabbath ought to be used for. Jesus often heals on the Sabbath (Lk 14:1-6; 13:10-17; Jn 5:2-18; 7:22-24; 9:1-17), perhaps to make the point that the Sabbath is for blessing and communion with God. If the miracles are “signs of the kingdom”- and we’ve discussed that concept in previous weeks- then the Sabbath is a foretaste of the kingdom. The writer to the Hebrews can talk of the Sabbath rest that yet remains for the people of God, when the kingdom is bought to its fullest expression as heaven and earth are remade. The Sabbath anticipates this rest, and it is fitting that Jesus should heal on the Sabbath.

This account also shows the hardness of the opposition to Jesus. It appears that the Pharisees actually know that Jesus is in the right here. They can’t answer him. They are forced into a resentful silence. They know that he is right and they are wrong, and they hate him for it. The only answer they could make is “Yes, we’ve got it wrong, and you’ve had it right all along. Sorry”, and they’re just not willing to do that. This is one of the most scary passages in the Bible for me. It shows the utter depravity of the human heart. These men have seen Jesus do miracles, have heard Jesus’ teaching, and have seen his compassion for the sick, and all it makes them do is harden their hearts in hatred against him. This is the epitome of the older brother attitude. They really will cut off their noses to spite their faces. They’d rather have their stubborn pride than God’s kingdom.

6) The Sabbath and us

We live in the new covenant age. And many think that God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai does not apply to us. “We live under grace, not under law”, is heard often. And this is very true- we do live under grace, and not under law. It must be true, because Paul said so. But Paul does not mean that we throw the law out of the window. In fact, he means the very opposite- he means that we have been rescued from our lawbreaking, and that as those in Christ, we must keep the law. He is talking about the new and old covenants, and the ability given to the believer to keep the law. Paul (in Romans 5 and 6) says that the law was given so that people might become more guilty- but that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. He goes on to knock down the argument that runs “well then if grace is magnified in the forgiveness of sin, shouldn’t we sin lots, so that grace becomes very great?”, arguing that those who are united to Jesus Christ have died to sin and are alive to God, and concludes with the statement “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”

Paul is not saying that the law is irrelevant now that Jesus has come. Rather, he is saying that those who are united to Jesus will keep the law and not sin.

We could argue that the law is an expression of God’s holy character, and so forever valid. Keeping the law will always please God. Jesus said that the law would stand until heaven and earth pass away.And so how then should we view the law? We can look at it through several lenses. On the one hand, we could look at it as a sort of manual for right living. If I buy a Hi-Fi, then it comes with a set of instructions- a little booklet which tells me how to set the thing up properly, what all the buttons do, and how to sort out problems. If I follow the manufacturers’ instructions, then I will get the best usage out of my Hi-Fi. The people who know best how the Hi-Fi is supposed to work, are the people who made it. And many believers see the law as a little like this. God is our maker. He knows what makes us tick, and if we follow his instructions, then that will be best for us. And we can see this working out in reality. Attempts to change the week from 7 days have been impractical, and short-lived at best (The French tried to decimalise the week in the aftermath of the French Revolution, along with a decimalisation of the minute, hour, day, month and year. The Soviet Union introduced 5 and 6-day weeks, in part as a specifically anti-Christian measure). God made us to function on a 7-day cycle, and this can be a helpful way of reading the OT law.But there is more to the law than just doing what is best. If I buy a Hi-Fi then I can, if I so choose, throw the instruction manual out of the window and proceed to press whichever buttons I feel like. That may be foolish, but it isn’t actually wrong, and nor is it illegal. The point is that law is law, and should also be viewed through that lens. Following it is not only good, but also necessary. Breaking it is wrong.I am not arguing for a direct imposition of the OT commands onto a modern setting- meaning that we would cease from eating shellfish, make sure that our roofs had parapets around them, and never wear jumpers made of mixed fibres. Rather, I would argue for a careful reading of the law, and for careful keeping of the principles behind those commands in a modern setting. A New Testament implementation of the food laws (and, by extension, other similar laws like the law about mixed fibres) is given a fair bit of space in the NT, and we shall come to it in Mark 7. We should still be careful for the safety of others when they are on our property, which is the thrust of the parapet law. But these laws are not merely guidelines, which we have the authority to ignore when it suits us to do so. When the Bible commands that a holy day be kept for the Lord, then we should treat that law seriously- as law.”If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable”, says the Lord to Israel, “if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth”. There is great blessing to be found in keeping the Sabbath. It is a picture of heaven, of the final Sabbath rest to be enjoyed by God with his people, when perfection will be the de-facto standard of behaviour, and a de-jure standard will no longer be necessary.

And only Jesus can bring the grace we need to enter into the final Sabbath rest of the kingdom, in joyful obedience to God’s commands

Mark 2:12-22. Another few snapshots of Jesus: Sinners and fasting.

He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins–and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” 

2 more snapshots from Jesus’ early ministry: 

It’s been a long time since last we met to read Mark’s Gospel, so I thought it would be a good idea to recap briefly. Mark, a younger disciple of Jesus, who probably met Jesus, but who has learned more from Paul, and most of all from Peter, is writing a theological book about Jesus. He is writing it with Gentile Christians in mind. These men have signed up to the cause of Jesus Christ in some sense. If nothing else, they are willing to listen to Mark’s book being read aloud. And that in itself is a risky activity in Rome and other cities of the empire, where Christianity is seen as an antisocial cult. Many of them believe that Jesus is God, that he has forgiven their sins, and that they are to live in his service, doing good and preaching the Gospel about him. They will suffer persecution from the state, and mocking and distrust from their neighbours. They will need certainty about what they believe, they will need patience and endurance and faith to persevere through their sufferings. And Mark is trying to give them a deeper theological underpinning, to prepare them and help them for this. Mark is teaching them in more depth about who Jesus was, what Jesus did, and how Jesus himself saw his own ministry- and how then Jesus’ followers can expect the world to treat them, and how Jesus’ followers should see their own mission.

To that end, Mark has given us an account of the start of Jesus ministry. Jesus was baptised, identifying with the repentant faithful people gathered by the Jordan, the entry point into the land of Israel. The Holy Spirit came to rest on Jesus, like a dove (echoes of Noah there, and also of creation), and then he was led for 40 days of trial and testing, to emerge marked out as the head of a new humanity, a changed humanity.

Mark then gives a series of snapshots in chapters 1-3 from Jesus early Galilean ministry, before moving on to some of Jesus’ teaching in more detail in Ch 4. These snapshots are meant to show us something of the sort of King Jesus was, and the sort of kingdom that his kingdom is. Jesus has been preaching, saying that the kingdom of God is at hand, because the time is now fulfilled. These events show us the character of the kingdom of God.

The first 5 episodes have been the calling of some disciples by the lake, the teaching and conflict with a demon in the synagogue, the healing of Simon’s mother in law and many others, the withdrawal alone to pray and moving on to other towns and villages, and the cleansing of the leper. Jesus has been showing some stark differences between God’s Messiah- himself- and the Messiah expected by the Jews. He has not come to fight against Rome, but to fight against Satan. He drives out demons, not foreign soldiers. He has not come to bring material prosperity and a golden age of peace, still in a fallen world. He has come to do greater things than that. He will reverse the curse. The whole creation has been crying out for salvation since the days of Adam, and Jesus now has come to deliver it. Sickness is no more. The unclean becomes clean at his touch.

The next 5 pictures in Marks series of snapshots: The forgiveness of the paralysed man, the calling of Levi, the questions about fasting, and two disputes over the Sabbath, have a new element introduced. There is conflict found in these latter pictures, which is absent from the earlier ones.

Mark has used the earlier incidents to show us the true role of the Messiah.  Jesus has come not to be the political and military leader of a Middle Eastern superpower- he has come to be the leader of a redeemed humanity, and not just to lead, but actually to redeem them. So Jesus identifies with sinners in his baptism, experiences the curse in the wilderness, comes into conflict-not with the Roman occupiers, but with Satan whose demons have occupied the heart of this man in the synagogue. Jesus destroys signs of the curse. He heals illness, a token of death, which is the wages of sin. He forgives sin. He cleanses the unclean. He brings fallen, broken men back into communion with the God who made them and against whom they have rebelled. He is a grander, more important, figure than the Messianic hopes of the Jews allowed him to be.

And in the latter pictures, Jesus clashes with some of the Jews, notably the Pharisees. The kingdom of God is now revealed, not only as a place of wholeness, holiness, and cleansing; but as a place of conflict. The kingdom of God, in the person of Jesus, has invaded a fallen world- and as the kingdom is established in a fallen world, there is continual battle. Those who are not in the kingdom, fight against it. Those who are not with Jesus, are against him.

The coming of the kingdom demands a response from those to whom it comes. The disciples leave their nets and follow the king. He might not look like a king- he looks more like a Galilean carpenter- but they recognise his authority and obey him. Others don’t. Some of the Pharisees and scribes refuse to recognise Jesus as God’s king, and oppose him.

Levi’s calling:

1) Why were tax collectors so despised?

2) Who were the “sinners”?

3) Jesus’ reply shows something of his view of the kingdom of God. How does this differ from the view of God’s kingdom held by the Pharisees?

-Does Jesus think that the Pharisees are right to class themselves as “righteous”?

-Does Jesus think that the Pharisees’ categories of “righteous” and “sinners” are valid?

-What do the Pharisees see as Messiah’s main task?

-What does Jesus see as Messiah’s main task?

4) How should this affect our attitudes?

 Discussion:

1) Tax collectors were scum. They were the lowest of the low The Romans farmed out tax collecting as a series of independent franchises. Since their conquered provinces were so vast, accurate census taking was a real headache for them. Instead of employing a centralised taxation system, they instead assessed taxes as a blanket tithe on whole communities- not on an individual basis. Tax farmers (Publicani) were used to collect these taxes from the provinces. Rome, eliminating its own burden for this process, would put the collection of taxes up for auction every few years. Hopeful tax-collectors would bid for the right to collect in particular regions. Bidding was intense, because the collectors could keep anything they gathered in excess of the amount Rome demanded- making this a lucrative business. Augustus reformed the taxation system, imposing a poll tax and an income tax on each individual, hence the need for an empire-wide census (thought to be the census to which Matthew and Luke refer, when they are speaking about Joseph’s journey with his pregnant wife from Nazareth in the North to Bethlehem in the South). By Jesus’ time, the days of outrageous profits for the tax farmers were just about over (although doubtless still alive in memory). But the profession was still rife with corruption, and the publicani had diversified into money lending, and would lend cash to hard-pressed provincials at exorbitant rates of interest. So they were hated for their notorious dishonesty and profiteering. They were like loan sharks, or ambulance chasing litigation lawyers.

But it was more than just that. In a nation under occupation, they were collaborators with the enemy powers. The Pharisees saw God’s honour as bound up with that of his people, Israel. They would be fiercely anti-Roman, and anti-Gentile-of-any-sort. So people who went into alliance with the Gentiles who were their overlords, made the Pharisees sick. They disliked the Romans, and they really hated the Jews who were traitors to their own nation, the tax collectors who acted as the Romans’ lap-dogs, gathering money to swell the coffers of Rome.

Romans themselves were bad enough, but they were born and raised as uncircumcised Gentiles, so although they were filthy, you couldn’t blame them too much for their filthiness. But Jews who were willingly subservient to the Romans, and who made personal profit out of the shame of God’s people- they were much worse because they ought to have been better. Tax collectors were excommunicated from the synagogues. They were considered apostates.

2) Special contempt may have been reserved for the tax collectors, but the Pharisees seem to have had plenty of contempt to go round- enough for many other groups of people besides. The Pharisees were very concerned for holiness, for separation from uncleanness. They wouldn’t go into the house of a Gentile, they wouldn’t eat with people who didn’t meet their exacting standards for fear that they might be eating untithed food. They classed an awful lot of people as “sinners”. On the one hand, according to the Pharisee, you have the holy people, the separated ones (the Pharisees, basically). On the other hand, you have the sinners, who don’t make the grade. This class seems to be made up of anyone of whom the Pharisees disapproved. It is difficult for us to guess the exact criteria which would be applied- and maybe there weren’t any which were applied consistently. But a tax-collector would definitely be a sinner. So would a divorcee (in Israel, there were four categories of woman: Widows, married women, virgins, and bad women).

Jesus was a teacher. He would be going into synagogues and opening up the scrolls, and reading, and teaching. He was a figure to be respected, and the Pharisees thought he ought to know better than to associate with the tax collectors and sinners. He ought to have higher standards. He ought to be eating with them- the holy people, not with the human scum, the dregs of society. We are meant to read their question and see the shocked tones in which they would have asked it.

3) Jesus’ reply to their objection shows the difference between their views of God’s kingdom. Jesus tells the Pharisees that he has come specifically for sinners. This would have conflicted with the Pharisees’ expectations.

The Pharisees expected that when Messiah came, he would divide humanity into two. There would be one group, made up of themselves and the other great and Godly men, who would be praised as good and faithful servants. Theirs would be the reward of eternal life. And there would be another group of all the sinners, who would finally get their come-uppance. Messiah would come to judge everybody, and everybody except themselves would be found wanting.

So if you asked them the question “When Messiah comes, who will he be coming for?”, they would have answered “The righteous”. In their view, Messiah would come for the good of the righteous, and not for sinners. He would come to deliver the righteous from the wicked men who surrounded them, and to condemn the sinners. Jesus, in contrast, says that he has come to rescue sinners. He will deal with them as a doctor deals with the sick. He hasn’t come to destroy the sinners, but to save them.

Jesus isn’t denying the validity of their distinction between holy and sinful. But he is saying that they have got the cut-off point wrong. The Pharisees externalise the law, and think that the law doesn’t condemn them. They think that they are blameless under the law- because nobody can point the finger at them and convict them of illegality. They can keep all the law as far as anyone can see, looking at the outside, and so they think that God will be happy with them. They forget that God sees the heart. They would say of a woman caught in adultery “She is an adultress and therefore a law-breaker”. They wouldn’t think of themselves as adulterers when they looked at another man’s wife, and desired to have her. This wouldn’t be law-breaking as such. They hadn’t actually done the deed, so they were still law-keepers, blameless under the law in their own eyes.

They’re wrong. The categories of “righteous” and “sinner” are good, but in reality, everybody is a sinner. Jesus has come to save the lost, so he can go to everybody and anybody. He will eat with Simon the Pharisee, and he will eat with Levi the tax collector.

And more centrally, Jesus is saying that they have misunderstood his purpose. He hasn’t come to condemn, but to save. We mustn’t misunderstand Jesus’ words here. Jesus isn’t saying, “It’s OK to be a sinner. Don’t worry, tax collectors and prostitutes, I’m cool with what you’ve been doing. Stealing lots of money isn’t such a big deal- those uptight Pharisees need to stop sweating the small stuff”. His analogy of the doctor shows that. A doctor comes to the sick- but he doesn’t come to say, “Don’t worry about your cancer. It’s really OK- it doesn’t matter. Just keep on dying like you are”. The doctor comes to cut the cancer out and save the victim. That is the Pharisees’ problem- they’ve written the sinners off. Jesus is saying that though these people are evil sinners, they are redeemable sinners- and he can redeem them. Jesus isn’t condoning sin, is certainly not saying that the Pharisees are being too tight with the law- but he is saying that there is redemption from sin. He is the doctor, and he can make the sinner righteous. Jesus chose his analogy carefully- he deals with sinners exactly as a doctor deals with the sick. He has compassion on them, and pities them. He doesn’t just write them off. But he does not let them stay the way they are. The doctor makes the sick to be sick no longer, and Jesus makes the sinner to be a sinner no longer. It is like the case with the leper in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus is willing to touch the leper when everybody else avoided him; but Jesus’ touch transforms the man, he is a leper no longer.

4) Jesus is dealing with ideas about the kingdom of God. The Pharisees see the Messiah as one who will come for the sake of the well, the righteous. He will be on their side, and save them from their enemies. Jesus is saying that he has instead come for the sick sinners, to deliver them from their sin. Jesus says this as the king who has at last come, and his attitude is relevant for us today. We are his subjects, and we need this balance. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. We can’t cut ourselves off into a little monastic community, nice as that may be. We are to live in the real world, speak to our neighbours, be part of the larger society, not retreat to the Christian ghetto and become Pharisees. But at the same time, we are to remain different from the world. We are not to become tax-collectors either. I can remember at my college CU, there were an awful lot of people who would speak out very strongly against the Christian ghetto- who would say that we need to be out there, in the world, building relationships with non-Christians. But in practise, this seemed to mean going out drinking and clubbing with their course-mates, exchanging idle gossip and dirty jokes. They’d defend their conduct because they were “being a witness”, but I can’t really see in what way this was true. In order to be a witness, you need to be speaking about Jesus to the people who need to hear it. You can’t do that if you avoid the people who need to hear it, and you can’t do it if you pretend to be just like the people who need to hear it either. If you do the latter, you will rob anything you might say of any power. Could Levi have preached to other tax-collectors about God’s kingdom while remaining a cheat and a robber himself?

Questions about fasting:

1) The Pharisees fasted twice each week (as in Lk 18:12, and rabbinic tradition). John’s disciples fasted. Jesus’ disciples didn’t- at least not at this time. What is the point of fasting?

2) Why would John have taught his disciples to fast?

3) Why didn’t Jesus’ disciples fast?

4) What does this have to do with the teaching that immediately follows, about wineskins and wine?

5) Why should we fast today?

 Discussion:

1) People come and ask Jesus about this matter of fasting. Mark does not specify who these people were- presumably they were normal Galileans, who had heard Jesus teaching, seen him so miraculous signs, and had some level of interest in him as a religious leader. And the absence of fasting from the lives of Jesus’ disciples concerned them. Fasting is good. Everyone knew that. So if John’s disciples fast, and the Pharisees fast, but Jesus’ disciples don’t fast… It looks like Jesus’ disciples are 3^rd in the spiritual league table. They’re a bunch of spiritual push-overs. They can’t be bothered to put the effort in to be holy. And if Jesus’ own acknowledged disciples don’t seem too enthusiastic about what they’re doing, then why should anyone else follow him? If he hasn’t inspired his disciples to do great and good things for God, then why should anybody else give him the time of day?

Some commentators assume that the questioners are mistaken. They take the line that it isn’t that Jesus disciples don’t fast- after all, there are several references to fasting in the churches of the New Testament- it is just that Jesus’ disciples don’t fast so obviously. The questioners haven’t done their research well enough to uncover the fasting that is in fact going on.

This interpretation would seem to be supported by other passages- notably the point in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus addresses fasting (Matthew 6:16-18). He specifically warns against fasting with a great public show, and yet he assumes that his disciples will fast. But this interpretation cannot really be supported by the passage at hand. If it was the case that Jesus’ disciples were fasting in private, then the obvious reply would be “Oh, but hang on a minute- we do fast. Just because you guys don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. We’re up there in the spiritual premier division with the Pharisees. We just do it in secret”. But not only does Jesus not use this reply, he actually seems to agree that fasting isn’t something for his disciples to do. Jesus reply seems to be more along the lines of “Yes, my disciples don’t fast… and here’s why”

In order to understand why Jesus’ disciples don’t fast, we need to understand what fasting is all about. So why should Christians fast?

Fasting is an exaggeration of a natural response. A mother has a young child, and the child gets hit by a car, and is seriously injured. An ambulance arrives, and rushes the child to hospital, where the child is put on life support, in a coma, and surgeons are operating. The situation is critical. The mother has dropped everything, and rushed to the hospital, and is pacing around outside the theatre, asking everyone who goes in or out whether her child is still alive. Do you think that she will leave the hospital to go and get a sandwich? Of course not. She will be fasting. She won’t have made the conscious decision to abstain from food, but it just won’t have occurred to her to eat. She has more important things on her mind than eating. In the end, it will probably be her husband or a doctor who will have to say to her “Look, there’s nothing you can do. You need to get some food inside you before you get ill too”.

In the Bible, people fast for several reasons. Maybe they have sinned, and are repentant and wish to demonstrate their sorrow (e.g. the inhabitants of Nineveh). Perhaps they are praying earnestly for God to grant some blessing (e.g. David praying for his son, who is dying). In both of these situations, fasting comes as a response to a given situation, and springs from the natural emotions attending that situation. It is a mark of seriousness. The fasters are saying to God, “We are very serious about this. We think this is so important, that it is more important for us than eating”. We can see the basic point if we look at Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. This was the only commanded regular fast. It occurred annually, one day every year, and the instructions can be found in Lev. 16. Fundamentally, it was a national day of mourning. Israel would remember their sins, and make solemn sacrifices- or rather, have solemn sacrifices made for them by the high priest. To show their seriousness, they would fast. They were commanded to forget food, forget work (the day was a special Sabbath), forget everything else, and only remember their holy God, their sins, and the sacrifices made for them.

2) So given that this is the point of fasting, it seems fitting that the Pharisees and John’s disciples would fast. Remember that they live at a time of strife and trouble for Israel. The people have returned from exile in Babylon, and the temple is rebuilt, but their hearts have remained wicked. The prophecies speaking of joy and prosperity coming with return from exile seem to have evaporated. There are no more prophets now- there has been silence from heaven for 400 years. And the Greeks and then the Romans have invaded the holy land. Things have clearly gone badly wrong. This sort of thing should never be allowed to happen. God seems to have abandoned Israel. It is very much a time for fasting, if you care about God’s people at all. The faithful in the land will be in mourning, crying out for God to act, to send his Messiah, to raise up a deliverer who will rescue Israel and bring the nation back to God in repentance.

John has presumably taught his disciples to fast, as they call out for help and repent of their sins. And the Pharisees also fasted, being very conscious of the disgraceful state of the nation. In different ways, the Pharisees and John both recognised that there was a desperate need for God to act and deliver Israel. We’ve seen in John’s preaching and baptism, the call to repentance and the inauguration of a new, hopefully obedient, Israel, who are looking to the imminent coming of Messiah. So they fast, calling out to God to send the Messiah and answer their prayers and needs.

And it is also entirely possible that John is in prison by this stage, locked up by Herod to stop him criticising Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife. If this is the case, then with their leader gone from them, John’s disciples will have yet another reason to cry out to God.

3) And it is also then fitting that Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast while he was with them. Because God has come, has appeared to deliver them. Even if they don’t understand that Jesus is God (and they don’t, yet), they do understand that he is a man from God- and they have some sort of Messianic hope in him. God has at last answered their prayers. They do not need to mourn any longer. Instead, it is like a wedding. Jesus uses this picture of a wedding. An Israelite wedding would involve a big party, where all the guests would be assembled and waiting for the bridegroom to arrive. And the arrival of the bridegroom would be the signal for the feast to begin. Jesus is the bridegroom. He is the one for whom everyone has been waiting. Ever since the fall, the world has groaned for a redeemer big enough to redeem it- and now he is here! This is not a time for mourning, but a time for joy and celebration.

4) It is therefore in the context of Messianic arrival that we understand the teaching which follows. I think it is important to mention this because usually, when you hear these verses quoted, they are used wrongly. The verses about new wine have been horribly misinterpreted by Charismatic teachers, who have taken them as a rather flimsy justification for introducing whatever innovation they feel like, while saying (and I paraphrase), “You can’t oppose this. It’s new, and new is always good, just like Jesus said”.

That’s a caricature, but seriously, there is an awful lot of stuff out there, almost exclusively from Charismatic sources, which quotes this passage and proceeds to rant about the established church and organised religion (which makes one wonder whether the preference of the authors is for disorganised religion). They talk about catching revivals, and waves of the Spirit, and these verses are quoted to give an apparent Scriptural basis for saying that the new is what is important and the old should be forgotten and written off when it criticises the new. The new is where it’s at, and if you’re not with the new thing, then you’re nowhere.

You can find examples of this interpretation all over the internet- from a frustrated Anglican bemoaning the “stuffiness” of his church. From an excited charismatic, enthusing about the “new thing” that God is doing in his area- whatever the source, the interpretations have this in common: They all identify the old wine as being the immediate past. For them, the old wine is the mindset of the people who haven’t accepted the innovation they are supporting. Now some of the new things they advocate, I like, and some I think are harmful, but whether good or bad, this is a very short-sighted interpretation of the passage.

In one sense, they have understood how Jesus’ metaphor works. When the new wine was trodden out, the pressed grape juice would be stored in new leather wineskins. That way, as the new wine fermented and gave off gas, the wineskins could expand to hold it because they were new and supple. If the new wine was put into old wineskins, which had already been stretched out and were now toughened- the pressure of the still-fermenting wine would burst the skins. And it is the same idea with the cloth. New wine expands, but new cloth shrinks- but in both cases, the new thing is powerful, dynamic, different. And when it is put into the straitjacket of the old framework- it doesn’t fit, and the whole thing is wrecked.

But in another sense they have completely missed Jesus’ point. This passage cannot be lifted from the context and slapped across the modern church. Jesus’ words are “once for all” words. They are not to be repeated ad nauseam thoughout history. Jesus speaks specifically to his, vitally important, situation, i.e. to the coming of Messiah. He could only have said these things at this time. He is not talking about revivals or blessings or anything else that has happened in 2000 years of church history- he is talking about the great seismic shift from BC to AD. He is talking about the new covenant as opposed to the old covenant. The new wine is the kingdom of God, which has now come.

Earlier, Jesus has gone about preaching the good news, and his gospel was this, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe”. Jesus’ words here are a warning to the Pharisees, and indeed to all Israel. If they don’t fit in with the powerful dynamic new kingdom of God, they will be cut off from God’s people. They will be rendered useless. The new wine will destroy the old wineskins. Israel had better change to fit in with Jesus’ programme, because he is the king.

The passage is just not about getting up-to-date with the latest fad to sweep through what passes for evangelicalism these days. It is about the awesome majesty and centrality of Jesus, the Messiah. All churches, if they are truly his churches at all, are, de-facto, the new wine.

5) So what about us? I would argue that we should be fasting. Jesus does seem to expect his disciples to fast once he has left them. His time on earth was like the wedding party. There were many features of it which were peculiar to those few years. A wedding party is the start of a (hopefully) long marriage, but the marriage itself is not one long party, as those of you who are married can doubtless testify. Some of the things Jesus and his apostles did were “for a limited time only”. And certainly the atmosphere of celebration at the long awaited coming of Messiah was not meant to be a permanent feature of Messiah’s people in the coming centuries.

We should fast. By which I mean not only abstention from food, but also the attitude which should give rise to fasting. Messiah has come, and his coming was an occasion for great joy. But he has left, to stay at the Father’s right hand for a time, until all his enemies should be put under his feet. He will return one day, and we should be looking for that day, crying out to God to bring it quickly. Fasting as we pray would be good and right and fitting.

We should be seeking to live as kingdom people, living in line with the principles of God’s kingdom, which were laid out by Jesus and his apostles. In a sense, the New Testament serves as a constitution for God’s kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount, I would read as a coronation address from a king to his subjects. We should live out those principles, until the king returns. And often, this will mean sadness for us.

Jesus warned that following him would mean being out of step with the rest of the world. And it is easy to say “Yeah! We’re going against the flow!” and make it into something to be proud of, a sort of rallying cry. But in real life, it isn’t usually like that. Jesus himself uses the example of family break-up (see, for example, Mark 3:31-35 or more combatively, Mark 13:12-13). Jesus’ own disciples will have seen this, and so do we. We see people converted from unbelieving families, and the parents becoming hostile and suspicious. This doesn’t make the convert proud and triumphant. It makes them stressed and unhappy. Those who had been very secure in their families, now have a rift between them, seemingly unfixable by anything they can do. Fasting and praying for God to save the parents would be an appropriate response.

There will come a day when there is no more fasting, because there will be no more reason for fasting. Everything will be perfect. We will not need to call out to God for any reason but to praise and thank him. Heaven will be one great feast. But for as long as the kingdom of God is found in a fallen world, there will be cause to fast.