Mark 1:12-13, Mark 2:13-17

And so today our journey to Jerusalem begins. It’s really Jesus’ journey, of course, but we’re following along with him as best we can as we read about him in Mark’s Gospel. There are a number of ways to look at this journey, a number of ways to participate in that journey with him.

First, we can regard it as a geographical journey, easily seen on the map on the cover of your bulletin, starting from the little villages in the north of Israel: Nazareth where he lived with his parents and became known as a carpenter, the shore of the Sea of Galilee where he found his first disciples, and Capernaum where many of the stories about healing we’ve been reading in recent weeks took place. The journey starts in the rural countryside of Galilee, and heads south toward the big city of Jerusalem. It is a long journey, and it’s all on foot.

Second, it is a chronological journey, too, time measured from Jesus’ childhood and youth in Nazareth to his full maturity around 33 years old as he enters Jerusalem, ready to contend with the powers and principalities of his day. From the first day Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God in his hometown to Easter morning takes about three years.

Third, it is also a sociological journey, from the rural periphery of nation, to its very heart in the urban center of Jerusalem. Galilee was considered far from the political, commercial and religious power centered in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the seat of the Roman authority that governed the land, and Jerusalem was the site of the great Jewish Temple. As Jesus’ band of Galileans approach the big city they were considered little more than unsophisticated peasants. Some of the push-back against Jesus comes from the opposition’s outrage that “country bumpkins” from Galilee might have anything of value to offer the rest of the world. So the story starts in the fringes of society, but by the end the apostles are not only preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem, but eventually in Rome, and finally in our own day to the ends of the earth! Not bad for a fringe message by a fringe character from a village no one had ever heard of.

One other way to measure the journey may be the most important. Fourth, it is also your journey, and I can’t describe that journey as well as you can. Because you know where your faith journey began, in what village or town or neighborhood you had your start, the obstacles and the dead-ends you’ve faced, the temptations you’ve fallen for and short-cuts you’ve tried, the mountains you’ve climbed, the family and friends that have helped or hindered your progress, and, hopefully, a journey that has brought you your first glimpses of the journey’s goal: the Cross and the Resurrection.

For some reason the church through the centuries has tried to condense the journey into a ritual of just forty days of the church calendar, but, of course, your journey probably takes much longer than that, maybe even your whole life. And all I can say about that is that I’m real glad we’re in it together, offering encouragement to one another as we take each step, helping each other in the rough spots, and always celebrating the joy of our progress.

Remember how I said a few weeks ago that Mark’s Gospel shows Jesus in such a hurry to reach Jerusalem? Everything Jesus does or says is done immediately, as if there is not a moment to waste. We can see it in the first text we’ve read today, verse 12 of chapter one: And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels, this time of temptation is given a lot detail, each one of the three temptations is spelled out: The Devil tempts Jesus three ways: (1) make bread from rocks to end his hunger, (2) to throw himself from the top of the Temple to test God, and (3) to bow down to Satan to gain power over all the nations. In Mark, though, it is an abbreviated story, as if to indicate that Mark is so eager to move forward on the journey with Jesus that he doesn’t have time for these details. The important thing is not the start of the story, but how it ends at the empty tomb.

Our second reading adds an additional factor in our understanding of the journey. Opposition against Jesus begins to grow, and the journey becomes more and more difficult, not because of the time and distance involved in reaching Jerusalem on foot, but because different groups have begun to take notice of Jesus and they don’t like what they see, so they begin making plans to slow him down, stop him in his tracks and send him back home. By the end of the journey this plan to discourage and defeat Jesus and his followers turns into a plan to kill Jesus, to put an end to him once and for all.

In this second story from Mark’s Gospel, in chapter two, Jesus’ approach to healing takes a new turn. Up until now he appears to be good at healing individuals with different sicknesses and diseases. But when he sits down for dinner with tax collectors and other sinners – the despicable riff-raff – he now appears to be healing the flaws of society, healing on a grander scale. And it’s not sniffles, coughs, fevers, paralysis and blindness that draw his attention, now it’s greed, corruption, graft, prejudice, violence – the sickness of society. And he invites the lost, the forgotten, the left-out, the rejected, the marginalized, the perpetrators and the victims into the new life of the Gospel. So I hope that our prayer and study during these forty days will open our eyes to the ones on this list in our community, and lead us to take some new steps, a new turn of our own.

Certain groups are not happy: Scribes, Pharisees, Herodians, the Temple priesthood, and ultimately the Roman government. These different groups like keeping things the way they are, because if the aspirations of the people rise they might lose their own power and authority. This journey to Jerusalem is becoming very dangerous. Another reason that I am glad we are on it together.

BACKGROUND

The Geography of the Gospels The story of Jesus follows a chronological order in the four Gospels, from his earliest years in Nazareth to his death on the cross at the age of around 33 years. It also follows a geographic order, from the rural country-side of Galilee in the north to the great urban center of Jerusalem in the south. We can even say that the story follows a sociological order, too. Galilee was considered far from the political, commercial and religious power centered in Jerusalem, As Jesus’ band of Galileans approach the big city they were considered little more than unsophisticated peasants. Some of the push-back against Jesus comes from the opposition’s incredulity that “country bumpkins” from Galilee might have anything of value to offer the rest of the world. The Gospel of Luke is unique among the four Gospels for having a “sequel”, known to us as the Acts of the Apostles. In it Luke continues to develop the chronological order, going from resurrection in Jerusalem to the dispersion of the apostles into the wider world, adding perhaps another 35 years to the story. Luke also adds to the geographic order in moving the reader from Galilee to Jerusalem and finally to Rome, the heart of the Roman Empire. The sociological order continues, too, for at the end of the story the Apostle Paul has finally brought the Gospel from the fringe territory of Galilee to Rome, the center of the known world. By the end of the story, Galilean carpenter’s Gospel is being told to the most powerful people in the world.

NOTES ON MARK 1:12-13

"And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him."        

Mark finds it sufficient to simply report that Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, while Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 tell the story in great detail, breaking down the story into three separate temptations: (1) to make bread from rocks to end his hunger, (2) to throw himself from the top of the Temple to test God, and (3) to bow down to Satan to gain power over all the nations. John reports nothing of this event. Also, Luke reverses the order of temptations (2) and (3).

Mark 2:1-12 & Mark 9:2-9

     For the last month we’ve been hearing one story after another about Jesus traveling from village to village, town to town, offering healing to the sick. The crowds that gather around him are getting larger and larger. Just look at the story we’ve just heard at the beginning of the service.  The crowd surrounding the house is so large that in order to reach him those four people carry their paralyzed friend up onto the roof, cut a hole in the adobe or the thatch or the tiles, and lower him down on a stretcher to where Jesus is.  It’s a wonderful story, not just Jesus seeing the paralyzed man needing help, but also that he was moved by the faith of the four friends who brought him. 

      I love picturing the scene.  Jesus is in the house talking to a crowd that is jammed into every square inch of space, and then there is the rustling sound up above, then bits and pieces of the ceiling begun to drop down to the floor, some larger chunks fall, and people back away from the debris, and as the dust clears they all see that stretcher being

lowered down, feet first, to end up in front of Jesus. Try to imagine the look on Jesus’ face as this happens.  I’m going to guess that his expression showed worry and concern about the paralyzed man, but also amazement and delight because of the extra effort of these four friends.   

      Think for a moment of an extraordinary thing that a friend has done for you, and an extraordinary thing that you have done for a friend.  It takes me about three seconds to answer those questions:  when I went with my friend Gary who was dying of cancer on his last journey to the wilderness at the bottom of his beloved Grand Canyon, and then a return trip to the same place with his cremated remains after he had died.  And three seconds more to remember the incredible love and support shown by all of my friends after my terrible car accident in 2009.  You all have similar stories, I know. 

      Then think about how Jesus notices acts of friendship like this, and, again, picture the look on his face as they happen.  The extraordinary things that friends do for each other draw the attention of Jesus.  It’s not that we have to call Jesus’ attention to anything, really, but when he sees acts of friendship he knows he has something good to work with, something good to build upon. 

      What really stands out for me in this story is that the paralyzed man never says a single word to Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t ask him about what he needs or what he believes, or what he knows or understands about Jesus.  All he needs to know is that those friends did an incredible thing to bring the paralyzed man down to him through the hole in the roof. 

      As we gather at the Lord’s Table this morning we remember those four friends, and how wonderful it is to have friends in faith, the people we help when they need it, and the ones who help us when we need it.  Jesus invites friends like these, friends like you and me, to the table to celebrate the love, care and peace of God. 

      Make no mistake, this table experience is not about remembering God from long ago, or talking about God as if God is not actually in the room.  This table is an intersection, an encounter, an interaction, an experience of the living God, the living God who gets involved, who takes initiative, who reaches out to you in the present moment, not just to touch you in passing, but to hold on to you with love beyond measure.      

     You may not have figured out yet exactly what the bread and cup represent or why they are so important in our divided and confused world.  But, at the very least, try this – try picturing the look on Jesus’ face when he sees you and your friends approaching the table.  Imagine his amazement that you are here, picture his delight for the people you are with, feel his kind regard and his high hopes for you, and know that he has something to offer you today, right now:  an experience of the living God. 

      The story of Jesus on the mountain in the 9^th chapter is one of the strangest stories in the Gospels, whether you read it in Mark, Matthew or Luke.  It is one of the strangest stories no matter the translation you read, the King James, the New Revised Standard Version, the Message, or any of the others.  Jesus and a few of his disciples climb that mountain, and at the top they see him in a way they’ve never seen him before, shining brighter than anything they’ve ever seen.  They’ve known him as a teacher and as a healer, but now it is obvious that there is so much more.  They’ve barely scratched the surface of who Jesus is.       

      All of these stories of Jesus offering healing have drawn crowds wherever he goes, and the crowds are getting larger.  This story from the mountaintop opens our eyes to what is really going.  Yes, the teaching is compelling, and the healing amazing, but what is really going on is that in Jesus our God is a living God eager to touch your life, not just on the surface, but at the core.  The living God is not just a warm feeling or an old memory, but a powerful experience in the present moment. 

      Now the traditional thing to be said at this point, the end of my sermon is “Amen”.  But today I’m going to offer that sentiment in contemporary language.  Here it is:  WOW!

Mark 1:40-45

For about eight years I worked with an awesome group of teens in Rochester. They all came from families with huge problems, but they had great potential, and somehow we found each other in the youth group my little neighborhood church offered, and these kids stuck with it week after week. With little or no parental involvement in our church these kids found their way to church each Sunday and the youth group on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most of them became church members, a few became teen elders, one became our Presbytery commissioner, and several went to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium. It was a great experience, and I got to spend so many hours with these kids that I really got to know everything about their thinking and behavior.

So when we got together after school one of the girls would always have a dramatic story to tell everyone, a story about someone that they all knew from school. And she would preface her story by saying “You can’t tell anyone about what I’m about to tell you. It’s a secret. Can you keep a secret?” And all of the other girls would solemnly nod their heads and promise not to tell a soul, “cross my heart and hope to die”. And I know as surely that the sun would come up the next morning that not one of the girls in our group could keep that secret. By the next morning the whole world would know that secret. Each time the secret got passed on, the next girl would say, “You have to promise not to tell anyone …”, but of course every last one of them did. So … can you keep a secret? Yes or no? I know, I know, it depends. If someone’s life or health is at serious risk you would tell.

So here’s the problem. On the one hand, everything we have ever known about Christian faith is that it is an evangelical faith, with an exciting story to tell the whole world. On the other hand we have these readings from Mark’s Gospel with Jesus telling his disciples to keep quiet about what they have seen. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is asking if we can keep a secret. Here’s the problem. The Presbyterian Church is an evangelical church. We love to tell the story of Jesus, we love to hear good preaching, we love singing about Jesus in our hymns (We’ve a Story to Tell the Nations, for example), we send out newsletters that tell about Jesus, and at this very minute Faline Tyler is sharing the love of Jesus in our Sunday School with a new generation of Christians. We do everything we can to tell the Good News of Jesus Christ. That’s what being evangelical is all about: we’ve got a great story in our hearts, a story that needs to be told, and we love telling it. But then we have this reading from Mark’s Gospel. Jesus heals the man with the terrible skin disease, and then he tells the man to keep quiet about it, don’t tell anyone, keep it secret, ssshhhh! So what gives? How do we reconcile these two ideas – tell everybody and tell no one?

Well I know the answer, but it’s a secret, so I can’t tell you! Oh, come on, aren’t you going to be like those teenager friends of mine. “Please, please, please, Jim, tell us. We promise not to tell anyone else”. Yeah, right. But if you say “please, please, please, pretty please” then maybe I’ll tell you.

Now you could say that the instruction from Jesus to keep quiet made perfect sense in this particular case. The man had leprosy, and in curing him Jesus was damaging his own reputation. Let me tell you that in those days leprosy was one of the worst diseases imaginable. If you had it, if you had just a little rash, a blemish a pimple or a zit, you could be driven out of town because no one wanted to be anywhere near you. Even your own family would chase you way. And the best you could hope for was to live on the outskirts of town, hoping that a few nice people might leave you some left-over food scraps by the side of the road. But not only did Jesus allow a man with leprosy to approach him, Jesus actually touched him. That was just not done, it wasn’t allowed, and if someone saw you touch someone with leprosy you were considered to have the disease too. If you touched a person with leprosy it made you automatically unclean, and you had to spend many days of going through endless rituals before you could be declared clean again. So by asking the man to keep quiet about being healed it it’s possible that Jesus was simply trying to protect his ability to keep healing others. If he was quarantined, then no one could be helped.

The problem with this theory is that Jesus tells people to be quiet not just in this story, but in lots of places in Mark’s Gospel. In fact, some have seen so many mentions of keeping quiet that Mark has been called the “Secret Gospel”. So why do you think that Jesus tells the cured man to keep it quiet? Why does he tell lots of people to keep it quiet?

Here are some other explanations. One reason is that Jesus liked one-on-one interactions with people, he wasn’t trying to run a modern media campaign. He was interested in doing the right thing, but he wasn’t in it for the publicity. You can see hints and clues that the large crowds were tiring to Jesus and the disciples. The crowds of people needing healing were endless. And Jesus was not interested in being seen just as a miracle worker. He was trying to teach people something about God. The healings got their attention, but many times it went no further than that. And Jesus wasn’t just interested in getting people’s attention, he wanted them to understand the whole story of his ministry, not just the surface. So he was trying to stifle the rumors and gossip that didn’t have it right, that didn’t really understand who he was and why he was doing it.

Another reason for keeping things quiet is that in Mark’s Gospel the story unfolds in such a way that “who Jesus is” is finally defined by the resurrection at the end of the story. It is in the crucifixion and resurrection that Jesus becomes the Christ, becomes the Messiah, not before. Any attempt to name Jesus as the Christ or Messiah was too premature in the way Mark tells the story. The timing of this request for silence is a good transition into the Lenten season, and the cycle of stories that will lead to the Cross. Are we following him because he can do healing, because he tells parables, or because he is so much more?

Sandra, Sarah, Roshanda, Charlene, Candi, Margaret, Alicia, Tina and Chrystal had trouble keeping a secret. I think Jesus knew his followers would have trouble keeping secrets, too. I think you’re going to tell, too. In fact, I hope you do!

Mark 1:29-39

What’s the longest line you’ve ever stood in? Ever had to wait in line for an hour for the roller coaster at Darien Lake? That’s nothing. When I was a seminary student in New York City in 1978 the King Tut exhibit came to the Museum of Natural History. Public interest in seeing the golden treasures of the Pyramids was huge, and tickets were strictly rationed. Even then you had to stand in a line to get them. So I went down there one morning to get four tickets, one for me, two for my Mom and Dad, and one for a seminary friend. I think I was in that line all day long, at least six hours, maybe as long as eight hours. They didn’t give out numbers, but if they had I guess I would have been number 12,576, and I had arrived early in the morning! Fortunately, I was prepared, and I brought a stack of books to study for my seminary classes while I waited. It was even a bit of adventure for the group around me in line, we became a little community that day, sharing snacks and holding places when someone had to go find a rest room. Finally, near the end of the day, we reached the head of the line and I had my tickets.

Waiting is never easy. One time during seminary I was assigned to observe a waiting room at Roosevelt Hospital on the west side of Manhattan. This is a big hospital, and hugely busy all through the night. My plan was to sit in the corner and take notes unobtrusively, but one of the hospital staff put me behind a desk. Before long, everyone who came to the Emergency Room, when told by the triage nurse to wait found their way over to my desk, thinking that I was an official of some kind that they could beg and plead with. Every one of them, with a broken bone, a sick child, or a high fever told me it was taking too long, and couldn’t I do something about it? What I learned there was than when you are worried or in pain, even a short wait is way too long.

Once again, our story from Mark’s Gospel is all about people looking for healing, and about Jesus offering it to them. Only the very rich could afford medical care in those times, so when Jesus came to town, people noticed that right away that he would help anyone, and they crowded in, even if they had to wait. It tells us that the first people who found Jesus were motivated not by theology and doctrine, but intense, personal need.

The story begins with a very personal encounter. Peter’s mother-in-law is sick and Jesus visits to make her well. You can see in the bulletin insert that the same story is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Mark and Matthew report that Jesus held her hand and she got well, while Luke mentions that the cure was effected by rebuking the demon in her. Last week, we talked about how diseases and illnesses, physical and mental, were often attributed to demons inhabiting the sick person, demons that had to be chased away by someone like Jesus. But from this story the situation becomes generalized, with people streaming toward Jesus to get the help they desperately needed. What seems do-able – Peter’s mother-in-law – goes off the scale.

When we begin to calculate that Israel at that time was populated by around 3 million people, we can quickly determine that it will take a long time for Jesus to reach everyone with healing. 3 million people, 1 million per year, works out to about three thousand per day, with no time for days off or vacation. That’s a lot of people! It seems overwhelming to me. It’s just like what we said in our Prayer of Confession a few minutes ago: “the enormity of the world’s need really gets to us at times. So much hunger, so much sickness, so much injustice and so much war, and we can never seem to catch up. It feels like our very best efforts are little more than a drop in the bucket. We try to be positive and hopeful, but for every person we help, ten more are waiting. We try to be generous with our resources, but if we were any more generous we might be the ones needing the help.” Yes, Jesus recruited disciples to help this endless work. Yet even with twelve disciples to help it seems far beyond what is possible. Though those disciples seem more overwhelmed than helpful. Even in the present day, we recruit people in our church to join with Jesus in reaching out, not just healing, but all the needs that people have for food, clothing, shelter, friendship, counseling, problem-solving. It seems overwhelming, but we hope and trust and pray, that what we lack can be filled to overflowing by the generous and powerful Spirit of God. We know it’s not much to go on when we’re feeling powerless, but the Spirit has a way of filling our hearts with hope and possibility.

Years ago, my parents drove my sisters and me from Connecticut to New Mexico for a week at Ghost Ranch. It was an educational program for Presbyterian elders, and my Dad got a scholarship to go. Kids had their own activities during the day. One day, we drove up to a rest area along the side of a steep mountain road. Our youth leaders invited us to look over the railing. As far as the eye could see, stretching all the way down to the river below were old beer and soda cans beyond count. For decades, people stopped at the rest stop and pitched cans over the side. Then our youth leaders told us why we had stopped there: “we’re here to clean it up!” It seemed impossible, but by the end of the day, scrabbling up and down that mountainside, we got them all, every last one of them, filling hundred of trash bags.

I try to remember that story whenever I feel overwhelmed, whenever I see those long lines of people desperately waiting for help, at the emergency room waiting for a doctor, at Cameron Community Ministries waiting for food, and so many other places. It reminds me of what we do when we come together in the hope of Jesus Christ. And, of course, I firmly believe that whatever we might lack, God completes!

Please, God, touch each heart in this room with your Spirit this day, a Spirit that heals, empowers, enlivens, and more. We’re praying in Jesus’ name. Amen.