Sermon 12th July 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, continues our study of Mark’s Gospel. 
The reading is from Mark 4: 21-41.

Like being in a boxing match

I am going to start, just for a minute or two, by talking to you about the sport of boxing and I hope it will become clear shortly why!

Can you put your hand up please if you have ever watched on TV any of a boxing match?

(…..Of course at one time boxing was just a men’s sport but as the wonderful Nicola Adams proved at London 2012, it is now firmly a women’s sport too. So I am talking about any boxing match on TV, men’s or women’s).

Thankyou…..that’s about [        ] of you. OK hands down….

And now put your hands up please only if you have ever actually paid to go to see a live boxing match? Not sure that is of any real relevance to what I want to say this morning, I was just interested to know...! So that is [        ] of you. OK hands down…

And now can you put your hand up again if you have ever, at any time in your life, actually put on a pair of those big red gloves and been in any kind of boxing match at all, whether a proper one or even just for a few seconds at a youth club or wherever. I am not talking here about just hitting a punchbag in a gym. I am talking about having someone actually try to punch you! OK that’s about [   ] of you….and hands down.

As far as I can remember I put on boxing gloves only once at a youth club about 45 years ago and all I remember was thinking I should be quite good at it but in fact I just kept getting hurt because the other lad kept hitting me!

OK, well I am really no expert but, from I have seen, it seems to me there are at least three kinds of punch in any boxing match.  Are there any boxers in the congregation here today who might like to help us illustrate this?

First, there is what is known as a jab where you just keep on punching out, hard but not too hard, but just banging away at your opponent, making sure they know you are there and unsettling them because it does actually hurt if the jab gets past your own guard, past your gloves.

And then there is the kind of punch that is pretty hard. It often follows the jab – or a number of jabs - and is intended to hurt and to score points. It is usually a punch to the head but it may be to the body, what is known as a body blow.  Let’s call one of these the thump. So jab, jab, jab and thump!

And then there is what you could call the knockout punch, the really big one, the one intended to put your opponent on the floor and you may be lucky to get up from it until after the referee has counted to 10. You might even be knocked unconscious.

So, for our boxing lesson this morning at least, we have the jab, the thump and the knockout blow.

[Thankyou at this point our boxer can go back to her/his seat]

Now, just for a few seconds, whether or not your have ever actually been in or seen any kind of boxing match before, I want you to imagine you are actually in a boxing ring please.  To do this first you have to put your hands up like this, to attempt to defend yourself. It is called putting up your guard, so please can everyone do that. Now close your eyes and just imagine you are trying to defend yourself against a pretty aggressive boxer, first they are jabbing at you trying to get behind your guard and hit your head or body. And when they do you can certainly feel it. At the very least it is very annoying and you want to get out of the way.

And then I want you to imagine that after a few jabs, maybe 5 or 6, most of which get through your guard, the other person lands a big punch, a real thump, you are still on your feet but boy does this one hurt, bang right on the side of your head. The edge of the glove catches your ear in a sharp pain, your face is scrunched up and at this point you think maybe golf or tiddlywinks or a nice swim might be a better sport for you as you shake your head and see if you can still see properly out of both eyes.

I won’t ask you to imagine being hit by a knockout blow you’ll be pleased to hear. I don’t want people falling over semi conscious!  But one or two of you might just be beginning to imagine being hit in that way….

Ok, please now open your eyes and relax…

So, why on earth have I asked you to think about being in a boxing match? Well, the reason is that it seems to me that it is a pretty good illustration of the rhythm and effect of Mark’s gospel.  Whether or not this idea might apply to other books of the Bible, for me it is as if the writer of this gospel really is trying to hit the reader:

Jab jab jab jab….parable, parable, parable, parable; then thump, the calming of the storm, then healing, parable, healing, healing, jab jab jab jab and thump, as Jesus feeds 5 thousand people and walks on the water; healing, healing, healing parable, jab jab jab jab then thump, the Transfiguration when Jesus meets Moses and Elijah on the mountain, then healing, parable, jab, jab etc etc, and so on all the way through to the knockout blow of the resurrection.

Can you just begin to feel these blows?

And all the time the writer is banging away this question. Who is this then? Who is he? Listen if you have any ears on your head…I am hitting your ears hard enough! Who do you think he is??

So let’s look now at today’s section of this gospel, the passages from Mark chapter 4 that we have just heard:

You may remember if you were here last week that Jesus has just confronted and challenged his hearers with the parable of the sower and the explanation about the different kinds of ground the seed falls into. 

And now he starts with this:

If you light a lamp in a room you don’t hide it under a pot, or stick it under the bed, you put it somewhere the light can be seen! Quick jab to the head it seems to me. Look, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, the kind of world God wants and the kind of people God wants us to be, not some obscure, boring, dry theological arguments. Justice, hope, forgiveness, faithfulness, healing…This is important stuff. Wake up! You are in a bit of a fight…At the very least what Jesus is doing and saying deserves to be clearly presented and available to shine a light on all of us and help us to see. And that applies to us just as much today.  In today’s world it can be tempting to hide. Don’t fall for it Jesus seems to be saying. And this is the challenge for our churches today…Keep the light shining out and shining freely, whatever happens next…..Jab! Did that one get past your guard at all?

And then a harder jab, I think, because Jesus then takes the idea of things being hidden and things being out in the open and broadens it out completely. He says that whatever is hidden away will be bought out into the open, whatever is covered up will be uncovered. Goodness me! What, everything? Everything that has ever been said or thought or done? Everything I have ever said or thought or done? Yes, we are God’s created children and will have to answer to him one day.

Thank God for forgiveness then but you had better start living in the light now because the light will shine on absolutely everything one day………  This is just one extreme example which of course does not apply to the great majority of Christians, but if only those in the churches who have been involved in abuse of children over the years had listened to these words.  Everything will be revealed…..

But for all of us there will be some things in our lives we need to address. This is pretty serious stuff. It is like a Jab to the head. Wake up, wake up! Listen ! You have got ears on the side of your head, haven’t you!

Did that one get past your guard at all?

And then he says that the standards you use to judge others by will be used by God to judge you, only more severely. When you spend all that time and energy having a go at other people, whoever they are, be very careful. Look in the mirror first! Or ask yourself how you might behave when you are under really serious pressure before leaping to attack your neighbour, your colleague at work, your partner or whoever it is. “The measure you give will be the measure you receive” is one old fashioned expression of this thought. “Measure for measure” is the way Shakespeare put it.  It’s like a jab to the head and to the body…

Did that one get through at all?

If not, how about this? Those who have things will be given more but if you have nothing, even the little you have will be taken away from you. What does that mean? I don’t know about you but it has puzzled me from time to time over the years. It can’t be right that Jesus is saying that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Can it? Well not perhaps unless Jesus wants to confront us with a statement about the way of the world. It just maybe that he is saying to us that if you just let things happen according to the way of the world, those who have do tend to get more and those who don’t have very much do tend to get poorer…..[Pause..]…..So what are you going to do about that then? Jab to the head! Did that one get through?

Or is Jesus talking here about more spiritual matters? Be very careful. If your faith is really superficial it may not survive many challenges. It may just wither and die. But if your faith goes deeper, if you are genuinely seeking God’s way for your life, however imperfectly, your seeking does not have to be perfect, it just has to be genuine, whatever your starting point, then more will be given to you.  

As a church, a body of Christians, do we take on board the depth and the beauty and the urgency and the relevance of the gospel? Maybe we need to nurture the sense of these things in our churches or the danger is that what we have may over the years begin to drift away.

Did any of that that one get past your defences, maybe as a jab around your heart?

Can you begin to feel the rhythm and effect of this gospel? Jab, jab, jab, jab….

Now two more short parables, both about growing seeds. In the way that Jesus tells them, his Jewish hearers would have felt the force of the jabs perhaps a little more powerfully than we might today so a short Old Testament explanation is needed for both.

The first describes a man who sows his seed in his field, goes about his business, the seed grows quietly into full grown corn, he does not really know how it happens but when it is fully ripe he goes in with his sickle and gets the lot because the harvest time has come. Harvest is urgent, because delay could lose the crop.

Here, cutting the corn at harvest time is a direct reference to the OT book of Joel chapter 3,  verse 13 which describes God’s judgment on the nations and Jesus’ Jewish hearers would almost certainly have known that he was indicating that that day was almost upon them.

For us looking back from where we are, maybe the jab is this, that what we see and hear about Jesus is urgent for us too. Don’t delay. Don’t let your own response to him drift away..

Jab…

And then the second seed parable. We are getting there. For a moment I was going to say I hope you are not feeling too many bruises but then I thought that as I am suggesting that the whole purpose of this gospel is to hit us quite hard, maybe I should be hoping you are beginning to feel a bit battered and bruised. I know that’s how I can feel when I ask myself some of these questions.

So, just one jab to go. And in a way this is a good one, if in fact you can have a good sort of punch at all. Maybe in boxing there is a sort of punch that encourages the person being hit to kick on in the match themselves and spurs them on to better things. So here it is, you may just be familiar with it already. It’s known as the parable of the mustard seed, the smallest seed in the world but when planted it becomes the largest of plants and the birds come and nest in the shade of its branches.

“What shall we say the Kingdom of God is like?” asks Jesus. “It is like the mustard seed”, he goes on to explain. But in that question , “What shall we say the Kingdom of God is like?” Jesus is echoing a very well known OT passage in Isaiah chapter 40 where the prophet asks what God is like; to what can we compare Him? And in doing so there will have been very little doubt indeed that Jesus was jabbing at his Jewish hearers a message that the OT vision of the Kingdom of God was beginning to be realized.

There really is the most amazing potential in the tiniest of seeds. I have brought along two this morning.  Not mustard seeds, as far as I know, but they may help us think about Jesus’ words. Hand them on down the rows on each side of the church, take a quick look as you have them in your hand and if they succeed in getting all the way to the back (in fact please can you make sure they do as I need tem for St Paul’s late this morning!) could the last person please bring them back up. They are seeds from a Hovis loaf, “Hovis Seed Sensations Wholemeal” to be precise! And I was eating my toast this week when a seed identical to these seemed to jump off my plate, run all the way under the edge of the plate then jump up into the margarine lid.  And I was reminded just how much energy is bound up in a tiny seed.

And the jab here I think, for all of us,  is that you should never be discouraged. From the tiniest of beginnings great things can grow. I read this week about a Catholic charity called Mary’s Meals. They provide food in schools to some of the world’s poorest children. It was started by two brothers in Scotland ten or fifteen years ago and now feeds a million children in various countries every day! Give the children a meal in school and they will go to school. Go to school and they will be educated and if the children are educated a country can develop. From a tiny seed that charity grew and now a million children every day sit in its branches, at school in some of the world’s poorest countries with a fully belly that helps them to learn and stay alive and come back to be educated the next day and the next.

And I heard a talk this week from a senior manager at a successful London credit union who described a credit union started just by two women from a church in Bermondsey in their front room, determined to provide better access to loans than the businesses who too easily fall into the trap of taking advantage of the vulnerable. And now that organization forms part of one of London’s most successful responsible social lenders.

Can you feel the jab that just might push you on, whatever it is you might be reminded of by this story this morning? From the smallest of beginnings great things can grow. Do not be discouraged!

And Mark says that Jesus used many parables like these to teach the people. Jab jab jab jab jab….

And now finally I think we come to the one really big thump in this small section of Mark that we are looking at this morning. It’s the very familiar story of the boat on the lake and a storm gets up. Jesus is asleep in the back even as the waves threaten the boat and the disciples wake him as they think they are about to die. But Jesus commands the wind and the waves to be quiet and be still and they die down and he berates the disciples for their lack of faith.

“Who is this man?”, the disciples ask,  “that even the wind and the waves obey him?”

For me what has gone up till now is like being jabbed at in a boxing match. It is like being confronted with the truth. It is very difficult to ignore. Uncomfortable  or maybe inspiring wisdom and troubling truth after troubling truth. But here comes the great thump. These are no mere words of the wisest of men. Mark is not going to allow us to fall back on that. These are the words of the God of creation, the one whom the winds and the waves obey. And to be honest that is so great a claim it really does feel like a thump to the head. If it makes your head spin, maybe, it was meant to and maybe just maybe the author of this gospel might have smiled if he could see us reeling a bit this morning.

Jab jab jab jab, and then thump…..

Are you reeling at all this morning? Did any of those blows get through your defences at all? If they did, I do think they were meant to. But don’t worry, you can carry on reading this gospel. The big knockout blow is not to the end.

And just as in any boxing match, please give yourself a break after every round before you climb back in the ring and during the break think about what has just happened, about anything you have just heard. Use the quieter times in this service or maybe the prayer time in the room at the back afterwards just to ask God to show you what he might be wanting to say to us today. We all have ears and he still challenges us to use them…..

Amen