Sermon 19th July 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, concludes our study of Mark's Gospel. 

The reading is from Mark 5: verses 21-43.

Today’s straw poll is quick, and not at all demanding! So: who heard last week’s sermon here? … Thanks for helping me to know how much detail is needed, as we begin this process of summing up our series from Mark’s Gospel.

Well, today is the 10^th, and final, instalment of it; and we’ve not even covered one third of the book! Of course we knew that this was always going to happen; and ‘just’ having this reminder, that there is so much wonderfully rich resource for exploring in Bible is a good one in itself. But living in and with the detail of that, specifically in Mark, really has been quite an experience. So I do need to ‘borrow’ Simon’s key analogy from last week – which was all about boxing, for those of you who missed it!

Don’t worry; I won’t be repeating Simon, or his helpers’, live demonstration of the sport: that will remain one of those “you had to be here moments”. But there really is, I think, no better illustration of what these past 4 months have been like. This week I tried, as I usually do at the end of series, to read all of the sermons in it in a single sitting. That’s always a demanding exercise anyway; but this time it’s almost impossible. By all means try doing it yourself, if you can: the texts are available on our website. (So are all the audio files; but that would be an even bigger challenge – almost 4 hours of listening!) In whatever form you attempt the task, I’m sure that it won’t be long before you too are feeling the effects of the jab-jab-jab-punch-jab-jab-thump (etc!) that Simon and co laid out so memorably for us last week: Mark truly is relentless!

There was another, related, feature that also struck me in my attempted read-through. As good a job as each of the preachers did in their sermons – and this has been another consistently high-quality series – none of us got anywhere near full coverage. Each story about Jesus – be it him healing someone (jab); telling a parable (jab); performing a miracle (jab); in conflict (punch), with whoever (jab); teaching his disciples (jab); confronting evil (thump); etc! (jab-jab-jab-punch) – each story has content and depth that demands we dig deeper; find out more; and be radically changed in the process of doing so. Which is, of course, exactly what Mark aimed for when he wrote his account of Jesus’ life and death. What Mark wanted above all was for all people to be transformed by knowing the truth about the arrival of God’s Kingdom in the person of Jesus.

That’s amongst the many features of Mark which I said when this series began we would find. I don’t plan to list the detail of how we have, because again that would be impossible. In one sense each passage that we’ve had has stood alone; with unique lessons and challenges for all of us. No matter where we personally are in relation to Jesus (and the range here is very broad, we know), there has been something for everyone; every week. The parable of the sower (or of the soils, perhaps more accurately) that we’ve had in this series has reminded us that it’s how we receive, and process, Jesus’ message that determines the outcome for us. So it’s extra good that one of the other features in Mark is how Jesus brings about change in people: in their hearts as much as in their circumstances.

There is no better illustration of that wonderful reality than today’s double-story, with which the series ends; but we’re not ready to get there quite yet. First I need to say again that Mark did always have the bigger picture, a wider message in mind. Even if the stories might each seem to stand alone, he chose to record these ones in particular because together they added up to what Mark wanted his readers to know. That’s why I began this series by challenging us to learn memory verse – which regulars really should have absorbed by now. So: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And that is the one, stand-out thing to be remembered from this series, I’d say.

Now that’s probably about as much summary as is possible – though it doesn’t have to be the end of our learning from this early part of Mark. As I say, the sermons are available for revisiting at any time; as are the stories themselves, of course. In his “For Everyone” commentary on today’s passage, Tom Wright invites us to hear, or see, the action from the perspectives of the different participants. Much of the material in this series lends itself to that method of Bible study; and very revealing it can be too. There’s not time to do too much of that in the rest of this sermon; but you might like to ask yourself what it would have been like if you had been: the sick woman; one of the disciples; a casual on-looker; that frantic Dad, Jairus; one of mourners at his house; a dying 12-year-old; or even a newly-resurrected one, perhaps!

Whether or not you choose to take up that invitation – now, or at any other time – what we will still need to do is to see Mark’s bigger picture. Yes, he told real stories; about real people; whose real lives were impacted, and forever changed, by the real Jesus. But those stories are always telling, or pointing to, the bigger story; of why the Son of Man came: to give his life as a ransom for many. We need to remember that all 4 of the Gospels exist primarily to tell the story of Easter. Everything that happens before Passion Week is, in some way or other, building up to that story of all stories; because that is the story that has changed all things for all people for all time. And if you don’t know how Jesus’ death and resurrection has done so, listen very carefully to the words of the Communion prayer later in this service. As the response we’ll use then puts it: “Listen, and you will hear”.

Both of today’s stories point forward, to That story. One of them does so rather more obviously than the other, perhaps; but actually both are stories about the transformation from utter despair to joyous hope that Mark knows Jesus alone make possible. The 2 stories are deliberately told together – probably not least because this is how these events actually happened! Even so, the one story feeds and enhances the other; each of the parallels between them is inviting us to see more of what’s actually going on here. And what is going on here is that there will be another time when people expect only to find a dead body, but will instead discover something so much more gloriously wonderful; when their utter despair was transformed into the joyous hope that is still being celebrated more than 2 000 years later.

Despair, and desperation, is where this double-story begins, though. First-Century Palestinians lived in an age where less than 50% of people survived childhood (i.e. made it into their teens). Average life expectancy would then have been only 29: and how many of us here would still be alive if that were so? The loss of children, and early death would have been very common then – but no less painful for loved ones. We get a taste of that from the outset of this story. Verse 21 says that Jesus was back in Capernaum: as a synagogue ruler there, Jairus would have known full well what Jesus had been up to; and what the reaction from religious Jews had been to him. But when his own daughter was dying, Jairus rushed to fall, pleading, at Jesus feet; begging for, believing in, literally a miracle as his only hope. And Jesus went with him, Mark wrote; without saying a word; and just maybe these facts speak very loudly to some of us who are here today.

As we ponder that thought (or don’t), do spot the gathering crowd. This has been another common feature of Mark throughout this series: wherever Jesus went; whatever he did; or said; people gathered; usually wanting something from him. At times they didn’t say what it was they wanted (or not to Jesus anyway) – but then people often don’t; for good reasons as much as for bad ones. The reasons that this woman didn’t say anything were good, or bad, depending on your perspective. What is for sure is that she ‘shouldn’t’ even have been there. The fact is that in that society her bleeding made her unclean, ritually speaking. And that was a huge deal for her because it had been, and had shaped, her whole life for 12 long years; and nothing that she had tried, or done, had made any difference.

Jesus made a difference, though: transforming her utter despair to joyous hope in an instant; without even doing anything, it seems. She sneaked up and touched him; with a mixture of faith, and shame and fear that many will doubtless be very familiar with. If only he had then let it, and her, be, she clearly thought. But Jesus’ purpose here was far bigger than her own; and that too is a fact which is worth taking away to ponder over this summer. We usually know what we want from Jesus; but what is it that he wants for and from us? That is the far more important bigger-picture question that all too often we fail to ask after encountering Jesus. But it’s here, by asking this that true transformation happens, I’d suggest. Mark doesn’t spell out here what the life-long consequences were for this woman; but what are they for you after your meeting with Jesus?

Now it’s not difficult to picture Jairus hopping while all of this lot went on! His daughter’s dying, remember; but actually she was already dead, we find out when Jesus finishes speaking with the woman. Not even that fact stopped Jesus, though: and note how his invitation to faith went to Jairus in his deepest despair; when there was no hope. If there was anything funny in those desperate circumstances then it would, it must have been a joke; as those mourners said aloud to Jesus when he reached the house. But it was; it is; no joke; instead it’s again this glorious transformation: from utter despair to joyous hope that Mark knows Jesus alone makes possible. And part of what shows that it is as real as the nose on your face is this record of the Aramaic words that Jesus spoke when he raised that girl from death to life.

I do realise that such a skimming of these stories does them both serious injustice. But even the most profound public digging would – or should – leave us wanting more. We would need at least a month of Sundays to get close to unpacking each part of them; and even then I’m sure that God would have more to say to us through them that hadn’t been covered. As ever, that’s the challenge to each of us, though. At the outset of this series I said that Mark tells an action-packed story; in an action-packed way; that is designed to get us to take action. The key action, upon which all else hinges, is for us to believe in who Jesus is, and in what he came to do. Keep thinking memory verse: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many”. From there, as we have seen, time and time and time again, all kinds of transformation becomes gloriously possible; for us and the whole world. Jesus can and does transform utter despair to joyous hope; in real ways, in the lives of real people, like you and me. As this series ends, then, the question must be what God wants for you; and from you as we live in and for the Kingdom that Jesus brought in? And so let’s pray …