Introduction
I said last week that Mark’s gospel was the first of the four to be written and that the emphasis is on what Jesus did. Matthew and Luke came afterwards and, using Mark as a basic outline, they expanded on what Jesus said. John’s Gospel came last of all and its unique focus is on who Jesus really is.
Jesus’ words are truth that set people free. They are spirit and life. Heaven and earth will pass away but his words will never pass away. Nevertheless, none of the Gospels focus exclusively on what Jesus said.
Words alone are incomplete. Jesus came with words but also with works and wonders. As Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 4.20, “The Kingdom of God not a matter of talk but of power.”
If you add up all that Jesus says in Mark, it amounts to about 20 minutes of speech. If you add together all Mark wrote about what Jesus did even that only compresses down to about three weeks’ solid action. But 20 minutes of Jesus’ words and a few weeks on what he did is all you need to know to become a follower of Jesus.
Our passage today divides neatly into three scenes.
Scene 1 - Peter’s Mother-in-Law
Chapter 1 is about the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry. Everything went fine. No one criticised him, no one was jealous of him, no one plotted to kill him. That all starts in chapter 2 and we’ll see that next week.
But at the start, the only reaction to Jesus was one of wonder. Jesus was popular. People came from everywhere to see him. As soon as Jesus left the synagogue (where we were last week), he goes to a house to get some rest. It’s Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum.
If you go to Capernaum, as I did in the 1980s, you will see some excavations of a First Century fisherman’s home. I remember it being very modest, quite small, and not particularly noteworthy. Who knows, those ruins may be of Peter’s old home. As you’d expect, the tour operators waste no time in telling you it probably is!
Actually, they may be right. Because there is evidence that the function of the house changed dramatically in the years immediately following Jesus’ death. There are several extensions that suggest the house was no longer used as a home but instead as a place for communal gatherings. So there is speculation that Peter’s house became a church that kept growing and needing extra space. Sounds familiar…
There Jesus is. It’s late in the afternoon. It’s been a long, hot day. But the minute Jesus gets a bit of shade, puts his aching feet up and rests his head on a cushion, Peter comes and says “My mother-in-law’s really poorly.”
So Peter, having a mother-in-law, must have been married - which is quite a story if you’re the first pope. 1 Corinthians 9 says that Peter’s wife travelled around with her husband as did other apostles’ wives. They weren’t just stuck at home waiting for the men to return. In fact, the early church historian Eusebius wrote that Peter’s wife loved the Lord and was actively involved in spreading the gospel with him.
We sometimes imagine Jesus travelling with a dozen bachelor types but the reality is very different. Wives came too, and Luke 8 other women joined them too and even supported the group from their own means.
Anyway, in Luke’s Gospel Peter’s mother-in-law’s condition is described as a high fever – and Luke was a doctor so he would have known this wasn’t just a harmless, minor infection. A high fever could be serious, even life-threatening, without antibiotics.
They come to Jesus and appeal to him saying, “Do you think you could come and have a look? She’s white as a sheet, she’s soaking in sweat, her temperature is off the scale. She’s fretful. She’s hallucinating. We’ve tried everything. Nothing’s working. Please help.”
We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that when Jesus healed, he felt power go out of him. A full day like this drained him. It exhausted him. Jesus is shattered. Now it’s time, at last, to rest and recharge.
So Jesus says “You know what, can it wait? It’s been a busy day and I’m wiped out here…” No he doesn’t. He says “Yes.” He only has to touch her hand and help her up. The fever goes immediately.
And without even thinking, she does what my mum would do and your mum would do, the moment she realises there’s a houseful, she asks who wants tea and who wants coffee, who takes milk and sugar and puts the kettle on!
Jesus flops down again. But as soon as the sun sets, about 6 o’clock, signalling the end of the Sabbath, with the smell of dinner in the air, there’s a crowd outside. “The whole town was there,” it says.
“Pray for my back,” “heal my blindness,” “help me walk again,” “mend my broken arm,” “I’ve got these red spots, can you take a look?,” “will you take my cancer away?” “my son has got a demon,” “come and see my bedridden dad.” “Fix this. Fix that. Help me, help me, help me.”
Lots of people are outside, knocking on the door and peering through the windows. It’s intrusive. I would have told them all to clear off! Actually, I wouldn’t. I might think it, but I’m much too British to say it.
The Bible says “Jesus healed many who had various diseases.” Not “a few”, not “some”. “Many.”
The power of the kingdom is that even when you’re tired and weary, the Lord is there. Do you need the touch of Jesus on your life today? Are you, like this crowd, willing to come to him with open hands and humbly ask? And once you have received, are you like this woman ready to serve? Are you up for serving in a new way today?
The All Party Parliamentary Report into Holiday Hunger was published in April and churches in our diocese were highlighted in it. Church-led events in 30 locations including Sunderland, Gateshead, Hartlepool and Stockton over the last two summers provided over 10,000 meals to families in areas of high child poverty.
That is what happens when lives are touched by Christ. And that’s an example of why we give so much in Parish Share.
Scene 2 - Replenishment
People don’t usually get up very early unless they can’t sleep or have something important to do. A bit of advice for you; if you can’t get to sleep at night, just lie right on the very edge of the bed. You'll soon drop off…
But this is not about Jesus’ insomnia. As we’ll see in chapter 4, he can sleep soundly, no problem, in an old creaking boat as it’s tossed about in a violent storm. This is about Jesus’ number one priority – time with the Father. So “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
Vance Havner once wrote, “If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart in a while.” Jesus never fell apart, never lost his nerve, never burned out.
People ask, “What is the secret of Jesus’ power in ministry?” This is it. This is where it all comes from. This is why Jesus always knows what to do next. “I only do what I see my Father doing,” he said – this is where he saw it.
I read a little book last year called Zeal without Burnout by the aptly named Christopher Ash. (I mean what are the chances that a guy writing about burnout is called Ash?) And it says when you serve at a level that your spiritual inner life with the Lord cannot sustain you end up first faking it and then burning out.
Pete Scazzero is a church leader in New York. One day his wife said to him “I’m leaving your church because it sucks.” She was fed up of being married to a man who was bright and positive up front but behind the scenes was irritable and distant. It was busy, busy, but with no replenishment. It was the shock he needed to put things right and rebuild his marriage.
Time to replenish. Time with God. It doesn’t have to be in the morning. But if you’re going to know anything about the power of the kingdom, it does have to be some time.
Even Jesus, the Son of God, knew he had to breathe in, before breathing out in ministry. Nobody can give to others what they haven’t received themselves.
Some of you are giving out a lot. Are you planning replenishment time? Jesus ministered in power because he was constantly refilled spiritually. That’s why we do prayer ministry here. We seek the fresh anointing and empowering of the Holy Spirit - not just for broken people, or burdened people; but for busy people, for bushed people.
Hours after Jesus is up, everyone else wakes up. They find him gone so they send out a search party. Where’s Jesus? Where’s he gone? What about my needs, what about my problems, what about my burdens? Someone find him! Quick, we need him!
When they finally track him down, you can hear the relief. “Ah Jesus! There you are! Great, everyone is looking for you.” Jesus could have settled down and started a nice big church right there. Everyone wanted him to stay.
But Jesus has already decided he’s moving on. Not because he’s sick of Capernaum. But because, in prayer, he has heard from the Father that it’s time to go. “Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.”
The region of Galilee measures about 60 miles north to south and 30 miles east to west. It’s roughly the size of County Durham. There were about 250 towns and many synagogues. There was a lot of ground to cover.
Scene 3 - The Leper
But Mark picks out one particular encounter with a leper for special mention. The Greek word used here can mean any one of a variety of skin complaints, but Jesus’ instruction is consistent with the procedure they had for leprosy.
We don’t know where this man lived. Mark doesn’t say. Luke says the meeting took place in one of the towns. That’s significant because lepers weren’t allowed in towns. It was like bird flu or Ebola today. Because of the risk of contagion and because there was no known cure, lepers were kept in isolation and there were strict laws regulating the distance they had to keep from healthy people.
Leprosy was a terrifying disease. It was disgusting to look at; disfigured faces and skin peeling off the body. Lepers became social outcasts, banished and estranged from their families. They had to wear special clothes and shout “unclean” wherever they went.
No one would go anywhere near them. If they came too close people would throw rocks at them to keep them away. They were feared. They were judged. They were scapegoated. They were cut off spiritually, banned from entering synagogues and forbidden to approach the temple. Just imagine the hopelessness and despair these people lived with.
Every society has “lepers”; people who are excluded, who are shunned, who are made into outsiders.
The young family who left everything behind, and to save their children risked snipers and grenades, ran many dangers, went hungry, braved the cold of winter outside only to arrive in a foreign land to be insulted and stigmatised by our best-read newspapers. Lepers.
In January this year, People magazine published a feature about Christian singer called Colton Dixon. The piece included honeymoon pictures of him and his beautiful wife Annie, and it came out in the interview that they had saved sex for marriage. It attracted a barrage of angry abuse. Comments like “they’re repressed”, they’re “brainwashed,” “this is sick”, “it’s freakish and against nature.” Lepers.
The elderly woman wasting away in a care home with no one to visit, not even family. Ours is the only society the earth has ever known that treats its elderly as burdensome. Lepers.
At our Connect Home Day two weeks ago, one of our brilliant volunteers asked a lady called Agnes if she was enjoying the day. “Oh,” she said, “I’m 95 years old and today is one of the top five days of my life.” When asked why, she just said, “I feel so loved.”
That moved me so much. This is the touch of God, the touch of love. Jesus stood out because he touched untouchable. He had time for the forgotten and forlorn. He reached out to the excluded and unwanted. He loved the least, the last and the lost.
So lepers were kept apart and banished from society. But this one was desperate. Maybe he spent all his money in vain for a cure. He didn’t worry if he upset social conventions and he was past caring about rabbinical laws; he’d heard that Jesus could put people right, so he came out of the shadows, into the open, into town.
He left his safe place and walked towards Jesus. Is that what you need to do this morning?
Listen to his desperation. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” That’s a big ask. But if you don’t think God can do much you won’t ask for much.
Jesus left his safe place too. Any other Jew in that society would have warned him to stay away, and even thrown rocks if necessary. Not Jesus. He is filled with compassion. We talk about compassion as a tearful emotion of the heart. It has a sentimental feel about it, but the word used here speaks of something much deeper, it’s visceral. It literally means “gutted.”
Religion says, “sort yourself out and then you can come in.” Some churches would say, “clean yourself up first and then we’ll see.”
Jesus says, “I am willing. Be clean.” “I heal you, I cleanse you.”
Ending
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Jesus says “you can be new today. I loved you first; this is grace.”
Let’s stand…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25 June 2017
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