A Walk on the Wild Side (Mark 5.1-20)

On 23 July this year, the Guardian newspaper reported a strange incident on the Franco-Spanish border.

It said: “More than 200 sheep have plunged to their deaths in the Pyrenees while apparently trying to escape a brown bear… The sheep… are thought to have taken fright when the bear appeared in the area last Sunday.

The flock panicked and hurled themselves off a 200 metre-high cliff…

The incident has provoked an angry response from the local branch of the French Farmers’ Federation.

More than 130 sheep died in a similar incident in the French Pyrenees last year.”

The parallel with today’s reading is striking. If you think what’s described in Mark’s Gospel sounds far-fetched, clearly large herds of panicking livestock will jump off a cliff to their death if they are frightened enough.

We’ll come back to that shortly but, since many have been away in August, I want to briefly set the scene so we get a feel for the flow of the story.

In the last few chapters, Jesus has been travelling around, addressing large crowds and doing many great miracles.

As a consequence, he is attracting more admirers and followers. But he is also making many jealous enemies. Great throngs of demanding people come to get something from him or pick faults and oppose him.

By now, Jesus is working long hours in a stressful atmosphere, and he isn’t eating properly. He is in the red zone, in danger of burnout.

So at the end of chapter 4, as we saw last week, even though it’s not yet fully dark, Jesus flops down in a cramped and creaky old wooden boat and falls into a sleep so deep that even a storm of biblical proportions cannot wake him up. Jesus, in his full humanity, is shattered. He is bushed.

Jesus says, at the end of chapter 4, he wants a change of scenery. “Let’s go over to the other side,” he says.

On the opposite shore is a territory called Decapolis. It is quite unlike the thoroughly Jewish side they’ve just come from, where there’s a synagogue in every village and everything shuts on the Sabbath.

Decapolis is a darker, more secular place, inhabited by unbelievers and pagans. That’s why pigs are farmed there, unthinkable on Jewish land.

Why would Jesus want to go there? The answer is simple; he wants some privacy, and he wants it for two reasons.

Firstly, as we know, he is overdue some rest. He needs a day off, a holiday, in fact.

We all need time to rest physically and replenish spiritually when we’ve been busy. Jesus needed it. So do you, and so do I. It’s why most things shut down here in August. It’s a sabbatical month to rest and recharge our batteries before the hectic autumn term.

But secondly, Jesus wants some privacy to spend time with his disciples so he can train them and mentor them. Good leaders invest in others.

Imagine your house is on fire. You are outside and you have one bucket of water. Next to you are twelve sleeping firemen. Where do you throw the water? On the firemen! If God’s work is going to multiply thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold, Jesus has to mobilise his twelve-man team.

In the very next chapter, as we’ll see, he commissions them and sends them out. Before that can happen, he has to prepare them. 

Now, with that in mind, the need for rest and the need to invest, you’d think they would head for a spa with jacuzzis, massage beds, and a decent training facility.

But when we open chapter 5 what do we find?

They arrive on Lake Galilee’s south-eastern shore. If you go there today you’ll notice there is a flat plain set about 200 metres high above steep hills that plunge down towards the lake. The hillside is limestone and it’s pitted with natural caves, which, in those days, were used as tombs.

It’s late and this is an eerie location. Just the kind of place you don’t want to meet a shrieking, disturbed, self-harming, unrestrainable, and completely naked man. There’s a story you didn’t hear in Sunday School…

What do we know about this individual?

Firstly, he’s a tormented soul. He cries out in distress night and day. He’s pretty intense. He’s not top of the invitation list for your dinner party.

Secondly, he’s got a weird thing about death. He lives in the tombs. There’s something dark and macabre about him. He’s scary. 

Thirdly, he self-harms. He breaks irons on his feet and cuts himself with sharp stones.

Fourthly, he’s excluded. People try everything. Nothing works. No one wants him around town. So they banish him to this desolate place to live in seclusion.

Such antisocial behaviour suggests this is a madman. But this is no mental health case. He is suffering from a rare and dreadful spiritual condition that can develop when people become involved with satanic rituals, the occult and the paranormal.

Two other details show that this is a case of demon possession, quite distinct from mental illness.

Fifthly, he has unnatural strength. They try restraining him. But he’s like an animal. No one can contain him, even with an iron chain. They try locking him up. He breaks the locks. “No one was strong enough to subdue him,” it says.

And sixthly, he has enhanced spiritual awareness. He knows immediately who Jesus is. In words that don’t come from him, it’s clear he knows that Jesus has power over his spiritual condition. “What do you want with me?” he says.

Nothing in our world can deal with this kind of thing. Politicians, police, prison, probation – none of it makes any difference. Only Jesus can set people free from this kind of oppression.

I think of Beth Eckert who, by the age of 13, was severely depressed and suicidal. At 14, her boyfriend raped her, filling her with hatred and rage. 

At 15, her ex-boyfriend committed suicide and she blamed herself and started self-harming.

She then met the son of a high priestess in a coven. He led her into pagan witchcraft. She got into drugs and embraced the persona of a witch, dabbling in the occult.

But, to cut a long story short, one day Beth walked into a church and she knew she had come home.  She got cleaned up and sorted out. She got baptized.

This is how she puts it: “I had no idea all these years what I was missing out on by not knowing Jesus. I had been using his name as a swear word. I had mocked him and tore down everything I had heard about him. And all that time he was just holding out his hand to me, loving me and never condemning me.”

I think of Shane Taylor, one of the six most violent men in Britain’s prisons. It took six prison officers at a time to subdue him.

But one day, after 8 years in jail for violent crime, a prison chaplain showed him from the Bible why Jesus died on the cross. Shane asked God to reveal himself if he was real. Something welled up from deep in his belly, his emotions overflowed and he found himself crying.

“At that moment,” he says, “I knew God had touched me and heard my prayers. All the hate, anger and resentment seeped away, leaving me feeling lifted.” Shane is now a settled family man who runs Alpha courses in prisons.

Jesus meets people in dark places and he lifts them into the light. He totally saves. He alone has authority over evil.

As soon as they meet, Jesus says, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”

He falls to his knees and shouts, ”What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

Notice, dark powers know exactly who Jesus is. They call him “Son of the Most High God.” Spot-on! They know that he has authority over all angels, including fallen ones, which is what evil spirits are. There’s no one equal to Jesus and they know it.

Then he shouts, “In God’s name, don’t torture me.” So not only do dark powers know who Jesus is, they also know they’re going to hell. Satan knows that when Jesus shows up, it’s game over.

Jesus asks, “What’s your name?” The man replies “My name is Legion, for we are many.” A Roman Legion was a battalion of three to six thousand soldiers. But demons boast and lie and there probably weren’t that many.

At their request, Jesus consents to send them into the pigs. There were 2,000 of them nearby which is quite a herd.

According to industry sources, the average market price of a whole pig in the UK today is £138. So at today’s prices we’re looking at £275,000 worth of livestock.

People are naturally troubled by this, and to be honest my first thought was “No! All that bacon…” but the point is this: the people in town loved their pigs more than they loved this man. Jesus values one man, made in God’s image, more than 2,000 swine who aren’t.

As I draw to a close, there are two twists at the end of the story. The first comes in v15-17. People hear about what happened and they see this man sitting by Jesus’ feet, showered, shaved and dressed. What has happened to Mr. Weirdo?

He has met Jesus. And Jesus changes people. He still does. Jesus transforms, sometimes overnight, the most wretched, messed up people who seem beyond hope - and he makes people new.

You’d have thought the villagers might say, “Wow, this is amazing! Jesus, how did you do that? We tried everything for him and nothing worked. Please stay.”

But no. They want Jesus out of the area. They actually beg him to leave. Why? Firstly, they’re afraid. “This is weird. I’m officially freaked out. We don’t know where this is leading. What’s going to happen next?” This is a surprisingly common reaction to God doing something new.

Secondly, they want Jesus gone because they think too much of their pigs. They value their lucrative pork business and the prosperity it brings more than they value the welfare of a fellow human being. So, “Jesus, you’d better leave.”

The final twist is in v18. As Jesus gets into the boat, the man says, “Can I come too?” What a great idea! This guy’s going to need follow up. And he’ll be great to warm up the crowd with his amazing testimony whenever Jesus is invited to speak. It’s win-win. Perfect...  

But Jesus says, “No. Go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you.”

Why does Jesus say that? Because, as we’ll see in three weeks’ time, the next time Jesus shows up in the Decapolis (in chapter 8), 4,000 people come to hear him. Between chapter 5 and chapter 8, this guy is busy – and productive.

To end then, how does this story meet your life?

·         Are you exhausted and needing to set time apart for relaxation and spiritual replenishment? Is today the day you open your diary and mark off some time to rest and meet with God?

·         I’m not suggesting anyone here today is where this man was but if you are in any kind of dark place will you come into the light and let Jesus change your heart this morning?

·         Are you, like the villagers, scared of God? Are you keeping Jesus at arm’s length, wanting him to go away? Aslan is not a tame lion. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. Jesus will not be domesticated to accommodate your fears or mine. Will you let God be God today?

·         Like the villagers, do you love things more than people? Will you ask God to give you a new heart today so your priorities are the same as his?

·         Or is the Lord challenging you to serve him where he wants, rather than where you want? The area he wants you to serve may not be the most comfortable, but it’s where you will be most fruitful.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 27 August 2017

The Secrets of The Kingdom (Mark 4.21-34)

Introduction

Have you ever listened to Just a Minute on Radio 4? It’s an entertainment show in which contestants have to speak for a full minute on a given subject without hesitation, repetition, deviation or repetition. It’s really hard to do. It’s rare to get past 20 seconds or so without a challenge from a fellow contestant.

If Jesus ever went on Just a Minute, he could easily talk for a minute on the kingdom of God without pausing for thought, drifting off topic or using a word more than once.

Jesus is the greatest teacher the world has ever known. As we’ve seen in Mark’s Gospel already, unlike any other leader of his day, he spoke with authority. What he was saying was new and fresh, and the way he said it was enthralling.

There is a hilarious passage in John 7 where the powers-that-be send a few heavies out to track Jesus down, get hold of him and bring him back for a slap on the wrist. Eventually, these guys find him busy talking, so they sit down and start listening. What he says is so spellbinding they forget what went for and return empty handed. The authorities fly into a rage. “You idiots, where is he?” “But no one ever spoke the way this man does!” they say.

Jesus never needed fancy visual aids, or gimmicks, or flip charts, or PowerPoint. Nor did he rely on stirring oratory; “I have a dream.” Instead, he told loads of simple stories. Parables.

Chapter 4 of Mark’s Gospel has a selection of four of them together, each one making a slightly different point. We looked at the first and longest last week. Today, we’re going to look at the three shorter ones, but Jesus didn’t stop at four. There are forty different parables in the gospels, and there may well have been countless others.

Verses 33-34 say “With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand… but when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.”

That tells me that most of the crowd basically grasped what Jesus was saying in the parables. “As much as they could understand.” It’s just his hapless disciples who didn’t twig and who had to have a private debrief afterwards.

Whenever you feel a bit useless for God, you can always cheer yourself up by reminding yourself that the 12 men Jesus chose as his team really were clueless. They had no natural talent, they were slow to learn, they made massive mistakes, and they barely had any faith despite being around Jesus all day. Yet Jesus chose them, and loved them, and made something of them.

What Is a Parable?

Firstly, it’s a story and people love stories especially if they’re well told. When our boys were small they used to listen to Johnny Morris reading Thomas the Tank Engine on tape and he was so good, they could sit for hours in rapt attention. J. K. Rowling once said that stories “can transport people to another place.”

Whenever I’m preaching I see people longing to be transported to another place. I see people looking at their phones, or glazing over, or staring longingly out the window, or gazing disconsolately at their watch, or properly nodding off and dribbling at the corner of their mouth…

But as soon as I start telling a story, I notice that people instantly wake from their slumber and look up and catch my eye.

A parable is more than a story though. It’s a story with a meaning. The Hare and the Tortoise has a meaning – or a moral if you like. It’s not just the tale of a race between two animals; it has a meaning; “don’t be smug.” Someone called Jesus’ parables “earthly stories with a heavenly point.”

More than that, Jesus’ parables are, as David Pawson puts it, stories with a mirror. They show us things about ourselves that we might be blind to. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Pharisees were forced to look at themselves as the hard-hearted passers-by.

The parable of the Prodigal Son was told to a crowd including self-righteous religious leaders and sinners. The story was a mirror; the Pharisees were the hard-hearted elder brother and the messed up people were the younger brother who was loved and forgiven.

But more than that even, Jesus’ parables were stories with a mystery. They were a bit of a riddle. They opened up truth for people who were looking for it and they hid truth from Jesus’ enemies.

As we saw last week, the kingdom of God is an enigma. Jesus called it “a secret” in v11. This is the secret of the kingdom. In v23 he says “If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.” Some people get it. Some don’t. Some of you here this morning will find yourselves enlightened. If you're looking for God, you'll find him. He's not far away from you now and has been looking for you long before you thought about looking for him. Others might think “what a load of rubbish! It’s just silly stories about seeds…”

It's like one of those magic eye pictures which, when you look at it a certain way, focusing on an imaginary point in front of the picture, it reveals a hidden 3-D image. Some can make out a 3-D image. Others can only see a pattern.

The Growing Seed (v26-29)

The first story I want to look at is the parable of the growing seed (v26-29). Jesus said that the kingdom of God is a bit like seeds that fall into the ground.

Have you ever planted seeds and watched them grow? Every single plant on the face of the earth started out as a seed. Every seed is packed with all the instructions and nutrients it needs to become a plant.

Jesus says here “the seed sprouts and grows, though no one knows how.” We didn’t then and we don’t now.

The National Centre for Families Learning says, “Amazingly, scientists still don't fully understand what all happens inside of a seed as it comes to life. As the seed soaks up water, its food stored inside begins to be converted into energy in the form of enzymes. These enzymes start the process of sending out roots and sprouting the first parts of the plant. But exactly how all this works is still a bit of a mystery.”

There are two things any farmer has to have. Firstly, patience. Between sowing seeds and reaping plants, you have to wait months. You can’t speed it up. You’ve got apples on your tree in July but they’re not sweet enough to eat until September. Or in the case of the ones in the vicarage garden – never. There’s no such thing as quick returns for a farmer. You have to wait. And in life, you have to wait for God. Everything happens in his time.

Messy Church is an environment where we sow many seeds. It is a fantastic opportunity to share faith with mostly unchurched families. You don’t always see much in terms of growth. That’s because a lot of it is underground. Spiritual growth, says Jesus, is a continual, gradual process; it’s slow - but sure.

The second thing a farmer needs is confidence. “A man scatters seed on the ground,” says Jesus. He doesn’t just do it for the physical exercise. He does it because he fully expects it will be worth his while. It doesn’t occur to him that nothing will happen. He has no doubt that it will produce a crop.

“All by itself,” says Jesus, “the soil produces grain.” The Greek word for “all by itself” is automaté for those of you who care. It’s automatic. Every dry, shrivelled, wrinkled seed has, packed inside it, enough power to crack concrete.

No one knows how, but you can be confident that God’s Word has the power to give life, to save souls and change hearts. Only God can give spiritual growth, only God can produce spiritual life from nothing.

The Mustard Seed (v30-32)

Jesus starts his next parable in v30 with a couple of questions. “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like? Or what parable shall we use to describe it?”

Imagine everyone’s interest when Jesus asks this question. Oooh, what is the kingdom of God like? Everyone present thinks ‘grand and impressive’. The kingdom of God is like a glorious marble palace, overlaid with gold and precious jewels. Or the kingdom of God is like an imposing mountain range, majestic and enduring, touching the heavens. Or the kingdom of God is like a vast galaxy, mysterious and beautiful.

And Jesus looks around and picks a pod of seeds off a nearby mustard plant and says, “Actually no; it’s more like one of these.” People are squinting to try and see what’s he’s got between his thumb and index finger. It’s the size of a pin head!

He picks the smallest, least impressive seed they know about; you can fit hundreds of them in one hand.

But mustard plants in the Middle-East grow up to 20 feet tall; exceptional ones have been known to reach 30 feet. When you shake the pods, dozens of small seeds fall out. From just one of those seeds came the tree. And birds love to roost in the branches, attracted by the seeds in the pods.

Here’s the point. Don’t worry about unimpressive beginnings. If God is in it, it will grow beyond all expectations.

I spoke earlier about Jesus’ disciples.

Essentially they are 12 losers, 12 half-wits:

·         who argued among themselves about who was the best

·         who never seemed to understand a word Jesus said

·         who never caught one fish without Jesus having to do a miracle

·         who fell asleep when Jesus told them three times to stay awake

·         who ran like chickens as soon as trouble turned up

·         who strenuously denied ever knowing him hours after swearing they’d die with him

·         who (apart from one) were nowhere to be seen at the cross

·         who hid behind locked doors for fear of the authorities

·         who were slow to believe he had risen from the dead

That’s as unpromising a start as you can have. That’s the mustard seed. Acts 1 tells us that there were only 120 people in the upper room when the church was born. Then there were 3,000. Then there were 5,000.

It kept growing. The religious authorities tried to suppress it but they found they couldn’t stop it.

The Roman Empire battered it but still, it grew faster than they could throw it to the lions.

All through history it’s been attacked, ridiculed, suppressed, misrepresented and banned. But from 120 people, now there are millions of us and the movement has taken root in every continent and every country.

From that pathetic, pitiful, sorry little seed, is coming the greatest kingdom the world has yet seen, ruled by the majestic and awesome King of kings whose indestructible reign will never end.

The Book of Revelation says his kingdom will one day comprise a multitude no one could number. They will come from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. The kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.

Never mind the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the European Union, or the Russian and American superpowers; whatever political and military structures man creates, the kingdom of God will supplant them all.

And it all began with the mustard seed of a dead leader and twelve nobodies.

That’s the kingdom of God. This is who we are. Never be discouraged by small beginnings.

The Lamp on its Stand (v21-25)

Thirdly and very briefly, the lamp under a bowl or on a stand.

What are you going to take out of this building today? Jesus says (v21-23) that if a lamp doesn’t help people see it is useless. The kingdom has to be shared. 

If you have received the love of Christ and the joy of the Holy Spirit, then let it all out! Think about your life. Do you think it shows people how to find God? Does it help people to see what it’s like to live in the kingdom of God?

Ending

And finally v24-25. “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” I used to think this sounds really unfair. But Jesus is just saying what we know to be true.

It’s like learning the piano. If you learn the notes, and exercise your fingers and practice your scales you will improve as a musician. Whoever has will be given more. If you neglect the piano, the little ability you had will get rustier and rustier. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

Jesus is saying that before the kingdom can be shared it has to be received. If you don’t want to grow in faith - you’ll lose what little you have. Those who close their minds and harden their hearts end up with nothing.

Only the open hearted, open minded among Jesus’ hearers get more out of it. Every time you open your hands to receive, you’ll be given a bit more.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 13 August 2017