Introducing the Community Bible Experience 2: The Big Story

Video of the talk here from around 45 minutes 30

Audio of the talk here

One way I once heard someone describe the Bible story was as a journey between two trees.

In Genesis 2 we read of God making a garden and putting two trees in the midst of it. Often the focus is on the Tree of the Knowledge of God and evil. But the main one if the tree of life.

Cos this tree reappears at the very end in Revelation 22. Not sure how this works, but on either side of a river is the tree of life, producing lots of varieties of fruit and it’s leaves are for the healing of the nations. The Bible might be seen as a journey between those two trees.

The Community Bible Experience unpacks the big story of the Bible in six acts…

God’s Intention: God creates the world. Christians will have many different views on how that happened, but at the heart of our faith is the belief that all things ultimately come from God. That includes our own life. We are placed in God’s world to care for the world, to nurture it, to guide it and cause it to thrive. We are made for a network of relationships.

We are created to live in relationship with God, in community with others, in relationship to creation, which we care for, and with ourselves. And the world is a gift from God and it is good.

Exile: But the world is not as God intended it to be. One of the first stories is of a couple, Adam and Eve, who listen to seductive wisdom apart from God, choose to rely on their own wisdom and not in relationship with God. The point of this story is not that someone way back when ate something they shouldn’t and we were doomed to repeat it. It’s about the choices we all make. In our own way, at different times, we make the same choices they did.

This has devastating consequences for the all this network of relationships.

Our relationship with God is damaged.

Our relations with one another are damaged, as we seek our own ends, without fully appreciating the needs of others.

Our relationship with creation is broken, which we see right down to today in the way our planet is under threat, and humanity and how we have treated the world is a significant part of that.

And our relationships even with ourselves is broken. We live with shame, we feel cut off from others…

Even we try to collaborate, such as we get in the story of Babel, it is often at the expense of others, and our own ambitions and interests get in the way.

The Bible has a word for this experience. It is exile. We live cut off from the things that make life most meaningful and precious. The big question the Bible deals with is are we destined to be that way forever, or is there a way that these relationships can be restored and things get back to their good intention.

Israel’s Mission: The Bible maintains that even with all that is wrong in the world, it is still God’s good world, God loves the world and God hasn’t given up on it.

But God still takes seriously the calling he has placed on humans to care for the world and be his image bearers, or to care for it as he would. He doesn’t force a top down approach. He works bottom up.

He starts small and builds. He starts with one family, Abraham, and promises to bless him and through them to bless the whole world. The Old Testament follows that story.

It’s a real up and down story. For a people who are supposed to bless the world, they’re not very good at blessing each other. But God keeps plugging away, often working through their failure. One of Abraham’s descendants is sold into slavery by his brothers. He is taken down to Egypt, but God uses him to preserve the people of the earth in a great famine.

This leads to the family going down to Egypt, but they end up in slavery. God uses a very flawed person, Moses, to bring them out of Egypt. They spend time in the wilderness, where      God instructs them how to live, he promises if they live his way, they will thrive, but if not, it will not end well, they will experience exile – there’s that word again.

They get the land promised to Abraham and develop a Kingdom, but even at their best they            keep falling into the same old traps, with the same old sins just talking on new and often    worse forms, and they end up in exile. Even when a small chunk of them return to the land things are not what they feel they ought to be. The Old Testament ends with the people still feeling in exile and wondering if anything can be done to break that experience

Surprising Victory of Jesus: That’s where we will pick up the story from September 10. God hasn’t given up on the world. He sends Jesus into the world. But not as a big leader, but as a teacher, prophet and healer, born under occupation, raised in the backside of nowhere, kept hidden for 30 years of the 33 he will live on earth.

In his world the Romans are the rulers. Caesar is said be God made manifest, the universal saviour of human life. The one who brings peace and prosperity to the world. There is no other name under heaven, given to us, by which we may be saved, than the name of Caesar. That was his good news. His Gospel.

And right under his nose, in a cave with animals, there is a little baby of whom all those things are really true.

And when he hits about 30, Jesus goes out teaching his good news or Gospel about how God has finally come to end the exile which has haunted humanity down through the ages, to fix these broken relations, to bring us back into relationship with God, others, creation, even ourselves.

He forgives sins, he heals people, he teaches about the immense, unfailing love of God, not just to the good guys and girls, but the whole world.

He teaches a very radical way to live, often undermining all that they thought their Bibles had been telling them, way beyond the goodness even of their best, yet welcomes even the worst of those whom the good folk of his day would have looked down on.

He even calls 12 disciples, as an echo of the 12 tribes of Israel. It’s like God is saying he’s reforming the band, getting the whole gang back together again. Reforming a people through whom God will bless the whole world.

But his message is not universally popular. Especially, sadly, amongst the religious types. They feel threatened by Jesus and from very early on, look to get rid of him. So at Passover, as they celebrated God rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, they have Jesus put to death by the Romans… and he looks defeated.

But this is God’s surprising victory. Jesus takes on the full force of the evil of the world and empties of its power. Even as humanity does its worst to God, God pronounced forgiveness. The worst they could do to Jesus was kill him. But God raises Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is the sign that nothing can stop God fulfilling his purposes for his world.

Church: But Jesus doesn’t walk out of the tomb and immediately announce himself as the world’s true king. He doesn’t raise up an army and wipe out those who killed him.

As God seems to have done throughout the story, he starts small, with a band of people, most of whom people would overlook, and uses them to spread the message of his love. It begins in Jerusalem and spread outwards to Judea and Samaria, then on into their world. They pledge their allegiance to God as the true ruler in the world.

They face lots of opposition and ridicule, but God uses that to be the way the message spreads. God sends his Holy Spirit to them to empower them for the task, and they speak of God’s love which breaks all the barriers humanity has erected. Race, class, tribe and nation. They declare that God has made us right with God, with each other and we can be free from guilt and shame.

And this part of the story is still going. It has been a word of mouth campaign for 2000 years. We are invited to be part of it.

God comes home: But we live in a period where God has won the victory but the power of evil still continues. Brokenness, wrongdoing, sickness and death are very much part of our world. We still live in a time of invitation. But our world still often runs rejecting God’s rule or even God’s existence.

But the promise is that one day God will come home and make his home amongst us. He will finally heal and restore all that is broken in the world. He will wipe every tear from our eyes and bring an end to death and mourning and crying and pain. He will bring unity to all these relationships, restoring things to how he created to be. And we will be made new with the indestructible life of God coursing through our bodies. Having been made fully new, we will share in ruling his new creation, his new heaven and new earth.

That’s the big story we will be exploring as we read the scriptures together over the coming weeks and months.

We live in age of what are called immersive experiences. I encourage you to immerse yourself in the big story of the scriptures.

Let it soak into our lives, like water soaking into a sponge. May we know that we were created in God’s image and even though that image can be hidden or tarnished by sin, both our own and others, God does not give up on us.

Though we live in this network of broken relationships, our sins can be forgiving and we can accept God’s invitation to live in relationship to him, to turn away from evil, to offer our hearts to Jesus, and become part of God’s story of new creation.

And to live our part. To be a people who not only soak in the Bible but through the Holy Spirit pour God’s love out to our community, our city, wherever we happen to be in the other 166 hours of the week, carrying the story forward, being a part of God putting the whole thing back together again.

Introducing the Community Bible Experience 1: What is the Bible?

Video of the talk here from 27 minutes

Audio of the talk here

This morning I’m opening with a video. I showed it a few weeks ago, but this is just to remind you of the new series we have, starting in the week leading up to September 10. It’s called the Community Bible Experience, and on-and-off, over the next year or so, these will help shape Sunday services, Zoom study groups, I’m inviting people to share in the reading patterns.

The first week’s readings are available in a sheet we gave out this morning and they were sent out by e-mail on Thursday. If you’re not getting church e-mails and want to, please just ask me. It’ll certainly make accessing the links easier.

This morning, by way of introduction to the series I want to do a couple of things. One is to talk a little bit about what the Bible is and how we should read it.

The other is to give a very brief summary of the big story that is going on in the background as we read. For some of you this might be stuff you’ve heard loads down through the years, for others at least some of it might be quite new. Either way, it bears repeating.

Normally when we think of The Bible we picture a book. That is how it comes to us. But in a way it is better to think of the Bible as a library of books. Our Protestant Bible has 66 books. Other traditions include a few more, most of which take place in the period between the end of our Old Testament and the start of the New.

Why do we have these 66 books and not others? It’s a long, convoluted, very human story. But the long and short of it is that down through the years, communities of people have found that when these books are read and shared, God has chosen to reveal something of himself through them.  More so than with other writings.

At the start of the Bible, God breathes life into dead dust and Adam becomes a living being. On their own, these words are just words on a page, but God has chosen to breathe life into them so that it’s like they come to life.

These books are written by at least 40 different authors, although many will have already existed for a long time, been passed on orally and handed down through generations. So what we have may come from a wide variety of sources, but were collected together by an individual or a group.

For the most part they cover a period from around 1800BC, which is roughly the time of Abraham, through to around 100AD.

Like any library, the books come in different forms. We get stories, history, law codes, poetry, wisdom writings, prophetic oracles, letters, sermons, songs, coded messages, sometimes called apocalyptic writings.

The Bible doesn’t come to us a list of propositions or doctrines we have to accept or reject. It’s got a big story in the background and throughout that story God is walking with people through its pages. And they are learning about God as they go along.

Sometimes they are even correcting themselves as they go along.

I mean, in one place the Bible says Moabites are evil and Israelites should not mix with them, nor should they be allowed to dwell with Israelites. Then along comes a woman called Ruth, who is a Moabite, who turns out to be a hero, who becomes the great grandmother to King David and later appears in Jesus’ family tree.

Or in another place we are told that people of Uz are evil, then along comes Job, someone from Uz, who is the most blameless person on the face of the earth.

Understanding builds as the story progresses.

So when we read the Bible we need to have three things in mind.

We need to appreciate what type of literature we are reading. All sorts of confusion can arise cos we try to read something in a way it was not intended. When Jesus said A man had two sons… don’t ask his name. It’s a story. Treat is as such. And do that with the rest of the Bible.

We need to try to get a sense of where we are in the story. That’ll make a difference.

One of the things that can make the Bible harder to read is that it does not come to us in chronological order.

Like any library, books are organised according to their type. Job may well be one of the earliest bits of the Bible, but it doesn’t appear until almost halfway through the Old Testament. Some books like the prophets or Paul’s letters are organised more according to length than chronologically.

Ideas develop over time, so it helps if we know where we are in the story. Maybe we understand the prophets better if we know what bit of the story they are talking about.

Above all, as Christians, we read the Bible with Jesus at the centre. Jesus made some startling claims. When he rose from the dead, he told two disciples on the road to Emmaus how to interpret all the scriptures and how they spoke of him. A lot of stuff only makes sense, or makes more sense when Jesus enters the picture. God had been revealing himself to a people in lots of different ways down through the ages. But his ultimate big reveal was not a book but a person – Jesus Christ.

This is a way in which Christians and Muslims differ. To Muslims, God’s ultimate revelation is the Qu’ran. To Christians it is not the Bible, but Jesus.

As I say to you so often….

            God is like Jesus,

            God has always been like Jesus

            And God always will be like Jesus.

If it’s not like Jesus, it’s not God. End of.

That’s why I plan to bookend our Community Bible Experience with the New Testament. To try to keep Jesus at the heart of what we read.

We tend to read the Bible in little bite size chunks, like we read this morning. I talk for however long on a little section most weeks. Some of you may do daily readings which take a few verses and jump around a lot. And this has its place. But it’s not our aim in the Community Bible Experience.

But for most of the history of the church people did not have Bibles. And they didn’t read it in bite size chunks. They read it aloud, in community and they read it as books.

In Community Bible Experience we’re less interested in detail and more interested in getting the big picture. The readings for each day might seem quite long, compared with what we might be used to, particularly if you are using the grown up version.

The kids version may be a little easier and manageable. It takes a little commitment, but I believe it’ll be worth it.

There are also short 1 minute daily videos, which I only discovered this week. They help to give a little more background to what we read. The links are also on the sheet and e-mail.

There are also audio readings for each day, maybe for those on a commute or doing something else, who may not find it easy to sit down and read, but can listen on the move.

It’s easy to get hung up on one minor thing, or a particular verse, or an idea. Or even some of the discussions about when something was written or why… whether Jonah or Job were ‘true’ as in history or whether they are stories which contain deep truths whether historical or not.

When we come together to discuss what we’ve read there are 5 questions we think about…

            What is something you noticed for the first time?

            What questions did you have?

            Was there anything that bothered you?

            What did you learn about loving God?

            What did you learn about loving others?

The top 3 are decent enough questions, but sometimes we may just decide to park particularly 2 and 3 for a later date.

The longer I follow Jesus, the less concerned I become about that stuff. And the more concerned I am about the other 2. Does this help me love God and love others? If I am being drawn more to  those things I won’t go far wrong. I can trust God with the rest of it.

There are 4 sections to the Community Bible Experience.

Covenant History: Which largely follows the story of the people of Israel from their origins, through the Exodus and wilderness wanderings, through their time in the Promised Land, through the Kings and why it all goes wrong, to being taken into exile in Babylon.

The Prophets: This is a collection of different types of writing, mostly from the period of the kings onwards. In Christian circles often their main use is as proof texts to point to Jesus. But they are best understood as a commentary on what was happening in their own time. Be it before, during or after their time on Babylon. When we read it that way it can be enlightening as we see that although they lived long ago, so many of the things that concerned them and God are very contemporary. Often they could be commenting on our news.

The Writings: this is a catch all for much of the rest of the Old Testament. With poems, songs, stories, wisdom writing, a bit more history of what happens after the exile.

We’re starting with the New Testament, which tells the story of Jesus and the church, and includes letters and sermons written by different early followers of Jesus to help communities of people follow Jesus, concluding with a coded message called Revelation which encourages people to be faithful as we live now, but to live in the light of God’s promise that one day we will be with him and he will make all things new, in a New Heaven and New Earth.

Meeting Jesus in Mark: Listen Without Prejudice

Scripture: Mark 6: 1-6

Video of the sermon can be found here (from around 34 minutes 30)

Audio of the sermon can be found here

Does anyone know who the woman on the screen is?

Here name is Elizabeth Blackwell.

Do you know why she is recognised in History?

She was the first female to qualify as a doctor in the United States and the first woman to have her name in the British General Medical Council’s medical register.

Elizabeth was actually born in this country, in Bristol, but her family emigrated to America when she was 11.

When a family friend became terminally ill and claimed she would have received more considerate treatment from a female doctor, Elizabeth decided to train as a physician. She applied to numerous medical colleges and was rejected by all but Geneva Medical College in New York. Rather than just saying no, the faculty, assuming that the all-male student body would never agree to a woman joining their ranks, allowed them to vote on her admission.

But as a joke, they voted yes, and she gained admittance in 1847. Two years later, after facing much resentment and prejudice, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive an MD degree from an American medical school.

She worked in Paris and London for a couple of years but returned to America in 1851 to set up a practice in New York. But not only was she unable to find patients — no one would even rent her a room for her practice. It took weeks for her to find anywhere, and that from a landlady who asked no questions about what Elizabeth planned to do with them.

Quaker women, who had always been receptive to the goal of equal rights, became Elizabeth’s first patients. But no hospital would allow her on its staff. Finally, with financial help from her Quaker friends, Elizabeth opened her own clinic in one of New York’s worst slums.

The clinic opened in March 1853. Elizabeth hung a sign out announcing that all patients would be treated free. Yet, for weeks, no one showed up. Then one day a woman in such agony that she didn’t care who treated her, staggered up the steps and collapsed in Elizabeth’s arms.

When the woman was treated and recovered, she told all her friends about the wonderful woman doctor in downtown New York. Soon her practice was doing well. It eventually expanded, moved, and is now a branch of the New York Infirmary. Elizabeth’s achievements are also recognised at the University of Bristol who have the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research.

But had she not been so resilient and determined she’d have been able to help no-one. It took a few students playing a practical joke for her even to be allowed to train! Who knows how many weren’t healed because they refused to go to a woman doctor? Prejudice and lack of faith in her abilities stopped her helping folk.

We catch a glimpse of something similar in Mark’s Gospel this morning, where prejudice about Jesus stops him blessing the people of Nazareth in the same way he had in other parts of Galilee.

This will be our last visit to Mark’s Gospel for a little while. This little chunk is the conclusion of a section which started towards the end of Mark 3, when Jesus family turn up thinking Jesus is out of his mind. It ends with the village in which he was raised rejecting him.

And sadly we never read of Jesus returning to Nazareth.  

A little bit about Nazareth. During the last couple of weeks I’ve made a point of saying to you that Capernaum wasn’t very big. Even so, it was much bigger, far more vibrant and way more prosperous than Nazareth. Nazareth was a real backwater, off the beaten track, an insignificant kind of place where nothing ever happened.

In John’s Gospel, when Jesus calls Phillip to come and come follow him, Phillip goes and finds his friend Nathanael. Phillip tells him we’ve found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

And how does Nathanael reply?

Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?

It’s estimated that Capernaum had a population of around 1500 in the 1^st Century, but Nazareth was only about 120-150, mostly linked through blood or marriage. It was the kind of place where everybody knew everyone else.

Interestingly, a few years ago, an archaeologist suggested he had found Jesus’ childhood home. Professor Ken Dark of University of Reading uncovered a brick and mortar dwelling which is believed to date to the 1^st Century. It was very well built for the time, and Dark thought it was clearly the mark of a master craftsman, which caused him to suggest it may have been built by Joseph. Sadly there is nothing to confirm of deny this. But in such a small place there wouldn’t have been that many houses, so I suppose it is possible.

We’re not told why, but at some point Jesus appears to have left Nazareth and settled about 20 miles North-East(ish) in Capernaum. That appears to be where he had his base and it was from there he drew most of his followers.

But news had travelled of Jesus exploits in the Galileean region. So when he returns to the village, he is invited to be the guest teacher at the synagogue.

A couple of little points about this passage. One of the more generally accepted assumptions about Jesus’ life before his ministry was that he was a carpenter. I remember once I was in hospital and a nurse told me her fiancé was a carpenter. I said That’s funny! My boss is one of those!

The actual word tekton which is translated carpenter, is much wider. Handyman or builder might be more accurate. Tektons didn’t just work with wood.  They were kind of people who turn their hand to most things.

But however we translate it, this is the only place where we are told that in the Bible. Even when Matthew tells the same story, Jesus is referred to as the carpenter’s son. No mention is made of what Jesus did.

The other thing is that it is one of only two occasions when we read of Jesus being amazed. Matthew and Luke tell a story of Jesus healing the servant of a Roman centurion at a distance. Jesus is prepared to come to the centurion’s home, but the centurion says he is not worthy to have Jesus come to his home, but if Jesus just says the word, the servant will be healed. We’re told that Jesus is amazed at his faith.

Here it is much less positive. In Nazareth we are told that Jesus is amazed at their lack of faith.

Luke gives a little more detail about what Jesus said that day. In Luke it is what Jesus says and how he interprets Isaiah.

In Matthew and Mark it is far more basic. It’s just who he is. Jesus begins to teach and at first they are amazed – there’s that word again.

Where does he get these things? What’s this wisdom that’s been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?

And you’d think they might be quite proud of one of their own making such an impact.

But suddenly they turn.

We’re told they took offence at him. That is less in the way we might offend someone by saying something quite personal to them. It’s more to do with how their prejudice stands in the way of hearing and appreciating what he is saying.

One of the books I read for this suggested maybe they couldn’t quite forget the precocious 6-year-old they’d known playing in their streets. Who knows, maybe some of them used one of his feeding troughs for their animals.

But there is a sense of how could this guy suddenly be a great teacher or rabbi? He was one of them and they found it hard to accept him as anything else.

Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?

That phrase isn’t this Mary’s son? It’s quite unusual. It would have been very rare to refer to someone as their mother’s son, rather than the father’s son.

Some suggest it was a sign that Joseph was dead.

Others that Mark, although he hasn’t said anything about Jesus’ birth, is deliberately trying to avoid suggesting that Joseph is the real father of Jesus.

But equally there is another option – that it was something of an insult. Questioning Jesus’parentage. Perhaps harking back to that time when Mary and Joseph were engaged and the circumstances or questions that would have surrounded her pregnancy. Remember this was that kind of place where everyone knew everyone else and probably knew everybody else’s business.

Did they question whether the sheer ordinariness of Jesus would disqualify him from being anything special? They could have focussed on the wisdom of his teaching, the depth of his compassion, the power at work in him… but it’s like they couldn’t account for the new Jesus, so they focussed on what they did know. They thought they knew him so well. They belittled him and his family. Familiarity bred contempt.

Most years at Christmas we will read those words at the start of John’s Gospel. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Even after Jesus death and resurrection, as the church began to spread her message, so many of their fellow Jews struggled to accept that one who had been crucified could ever have been a Messiah. It was one of the main questions they struggled with… how did they fail to recognise the one they had waited so long for?

But it was there long before… in his own family’s struggles to believe in him and now in the rejection of his home town, in the people who could not recognise God at work in the ordinary artisan who was amongst them.

Jesus responds a prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his own relatives and in his own home.

Capernaum it seems had only ever known Jesus as the preacher and healer. It made it easier for them to accept him. Back in Nazareth familiarity just gave them more information out of which to fashion their resistance to Jesus.

And we’re told that, as a result, Jesus could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few people who were ill and heal them. Matthew softens it a little, saying Jesus did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

Just as Elizabeth Blackwell was unable to help the people of New York because they refused to believe a woman could be a good doctor, so Jesus was unable to bless the people of his own town, because they refused to accept he could be anything more than a carpenter.

But with one tragic difference. It might have taken desperate circumstances, but Elizabeth Blackwell did ultimately get the chance to make a difference.

Jesus didn’t stick around to argue his case, to try to make them see sense. He simply moved on.  And, as I’ve mentioned already, we never read of Jesus returning. Unbelief meant Nazareth missed out on all that Jesus could have brought to them.

There is a sense in which familiarity has led to a kind of contempt in our culture. It’s not that Jesus has been rejected as such, it’s just we think we know him and so many have rejected that.

But it’s worth highlighting that those rejecting Jesus were not outsiders. As was so often the case, it was those who ought to have known better.

I’m reminded of another passage, later in the Bible, in Revelation, where Jesus says Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

It was a verse I often heard used to encourage those who weren’t already believers to come to faith. But the context was actually written to those who were believers. They thought that Jesus was in their midst and they were leaving him outside.

And it challenges me about the risk that we can limit the work of God by what we refuse to receive. Lest anyone think I’m pointing the finger, I say this as someone who once left a healing service because I wasn’t feeling very well!!

But even from a position of recognising Jesus as the Christ, the son of God and so on, we can develop a familiarity. We can hear the stories and they fail to touch us as they once did. We can become blasé about forgiveness, we can lose some of the passion that we had at first. In our own way we can want a handyman Jesus, one who comes along and helps us when we’ve got a problem we’d like him to fix, a bit of support and comfort. But we won’t give him his rightful place as Lord. And we fail to grasp the life he calls us to.

Jesus will not force his way on us if we want to live in an attitude of resistance and unbelief.  Unbelief, or even familiar complacency can have a restrictive, dampening mood on the work of the Holy Spirit. We can find ourselves thinking we’ve seen it all and heard it all before and stop having any sense of expectation. Our hearts can become hardened and Jesus struggles to do anything with us. And if God is to ever truly connect with us, we need to get out of our own way. The thing that is stopping God being at work in our lives is us.  

I pray we never get that way. An atmosphere of openness, curiosity, willingness are essential aspects of the Kingdom being established in our midst. Cynicism will kill pretty much anything stone dead. And we miss out on so much of what Jesus longs to do in us and through us.

But I want to end of a note of hope. Because although Jesus was not to return to Nazareth again, it was not the end for everyone in that story. It seems Jesus did struggle for belief within his own family. It’s a fairly consistent picture we encounter in the Bible.

But in the synagogue that day were two brothers James and Jude. In 30 years James would be known as a pillar of the Jerusalem church. Jude would write the short, second last book of our New Testament.

What changed them? Well, it appears it was the resurrection. Paul lists James as amongst the first people to whom the risen Jesus appears. Their past rejection did not disqualify them from being part of the family of Jesus.

And it need not be that way for us.

If we struggle we can always pray to be opened. And if we struggle with that we can pray that we will be willing to be opened to what God has to do for us. And if we even struggle with that we can pray that we will be willing to be willing to be opened to all that God has for us.

Jesus assures us that if we ask it will be given, if we seek, we will find, if we keep knocking he will open. But we need to allow Jesus to be who he is, not who we think he is, not just whom we want him to be. We need to get out of our own way and give him the opportunity to work in our lives. And if we do that he promises he can bring to completion all that he longs to do in us.

Meeting Jesus in Mark: Choosing Your Voices

Scripture: Mark 5: 21-43

Video of the sermon here (from around 35 minutes 30)

Audio of the sermon here

Once upon a time, an army of frogs decided to hold a competition. They would have a race to see which could reach the top of the Eiffel Tower first. There was great anticipation for this event and crowds from all over Paris gathered to see the spectacle.

The competition began, the frogs started to climb, while a crowd below cheered on their favourites.

A moment later though, someone shouted The Tower is very high. They can’t possibly do it! When they heard this, some of the Frogs collapsed almost immeidately, but others continued to climb.

Then another voice joined in You’re right  – it’s hopeless. No one will make it!

And gradually this chorus of doubt began to spread amongst the crowd. And as they made more and more noise, more and more of the frogs began to drop out of the race.

This went on until all but one Frog was left climbing the tower. He made it to the top somehow despite many in the crowd shouting he cannot do it. 

Everyone wanted to know how this one Frog succeeded while others failed.

It turned out that he was deaf. He couldn’t hear them.

Turns out in life, people can encourage or discourage you. But they cannot draw the boundary lines of your faith if you refuse to listen to them. So much of life is  a matter a choosing the right voices to listen to.

We’re continuing our series of meeting Jesus in the pages of Mark’s Gospel. We’re picking up on the same passage as we considered last week. You might remember I talked about how sometimes Mark likes to link two stories together by putting one inside the other, like literary Russian dolls. That’s what he is doing here.

Last week we looked at the inner story, where Jesus healed the woman with a bleeding condition which she had borne for 12 years. She reached out and touched the hem of his robe and was healed. But Jesus stopped to find out who it was before assuring her of her healing.

This happened when Jesus was on the way to do something entirely different, to the bedside of the dying daughter of a synagogue leader called Jairus. The incident of the woman with the bleeding issue heightens the tension of what is going to happen here. This outer story is where we’re going to focus our attention today.

But in some ways it’s not really a story about Jairus’ daughter as such. Sure, she is the one healed and raised, but it kind of just happens to her and around her. We don’t even know her name. Other than Jesus, the main character in the story is Jairus. He is the one who begs Jesus to come heal his daughter. He is the one who, when he is told Your daughter is dead. Why bother the teacher anymore, Jesus urges Don’t be afraid. Just believe.

Like the frogs in the story he is the one being told it’s hopeless. It’s impossible. It’s too late. It can’t be done. And he is the one who is having to silence all those voices and keep his ears trained on Jesus, keeping his faith on Jesus, when all around are telling him there’s no point.

Jesus has got crossed the sea of Galilee. Mark doesn’t specifically tell us where he lands, but Matthew tells us it is Capernaum. Although Jesus was raised in Nazareth, it seems Capernaum was where he based himself, certainly during the period of his ministry.

Capernaum has been an important centre for Mark’s Gospel so far. It was the same area where Jesus met and called his first disciples and where we have seen some of the stories of healings.

No sooner has he arrived, than the local synagogue leader, a man called Jairus, comes and throws himself at Jesus feet. You’ve got to help me, he pleads. My little daughter is dying. But come to my house and put your hands on her so that she will get well and live.

Now it’s worth taking a moment to highlight who Jairus is and what a synagogue ruler was. He wouldn’t have been a teacher, rabbi or whatever. He was what we might call a lay person. But he had an important job within the faith community. He was responsible for supervising the services at the synagogue. He was the one who kept order. For example he would decide who was allowed to come along and speak. He had quite a lot of status within his own community, but he would also have had people above him keeping an eye on him that he was doing a decent job, keeping the community on track. Not giving prominence to the wrong sorts.

That adds an extra dimension to the narrative. You see, this is not the first time Jesus would have encountered Jairus. Jesus had already been at his synagogue.

And, shall we say, it hadn’t been without incident.

We read about it early in Mark 3. When Jesus went to the synagogue there was a man there who had a withered hand. Jesus was already building up a degree of opposition, be it for announcing the forgiveness of sins to a paralysed man; or eating with dodgy sorts like tax collectors and sinners (even calling one to be his disciple!); or a seemingly rather lax approach to sabbath keeping.

So in the congregation that day there were a few watching him closely. And Jesus knew it. And chances are, whatever he thought about Jesus, Jairus knew it. But Jesus wasn’t having them tell him what to do. He called the man out on front of everyone, asked him to stretch out his hand and healed him.

Which you’d think was pretty amazing. Everyone would have been thrilled. Except those with a bit of knowledge and influence were very upset about the fact that he had done it on the sabbath.

That particular section ended in a rather ominous fashion. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

I wonder if Jairus had got a telling off that day. What kind of show  are you running here, Jairus? Do you not know what he’s like? Have you not heard some of the stuff he’s up to, who he’s hanging out with, what he is saying. The boys upstairs are not happy. And you don’t want word of this getting out to Herod and the like. You know what he’s like when he gets nervous. You’d better sort this…

Those were the voices trying to influence Jairus. This Jesus was a heretic, an imposter, an outsider, someone best avoided, not encouraged. For all we know, Jairus himself may even have had his own misgivings about Jesus.

Then there was his own dignity. Jairus was a man of status, even if only within this small community. He was what we sometimes say in English a big fish in a small pond. People looked up to him, respected him. This was a culture where status really mattered. You didn’t make a show of yourself in front of someone of lower status.

Those were the voices telling him all the reasons why he couldn’t, or shouldn’t, go rushing to Jesus. But faced with the hard realities of life, none of that mattered. This was his young daughter. Only 12 years old. All her life ahead of her. Sickness, tragedy, even death is no respecter of hierarchies. Jairus is powerless in the face of what his daughter is suffering. And, whatever else he thinks about Jesus, and no matter what others are saying about him, he knows this Jesus has a reputation for being able to heal.

And so he silences the doubting voices both within and without him. He pushes aside any doubts and uncertainties about this maverick rabbi. He risks people in the community looking down on him, perhaps sniggering at the local big wig kneeling before and begging the guy who all his superiors are furious about. His daughter is more important than what scribes and Pharisees and local villagers might think. He throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs him to come heal her.

As the crowd gathered around Jesus, all of this would have given an extra little edge to the encounter. How would Jesus react? Would he help this guy? Or would he tell him to ger lost? Would he make a point of telling him oh, need me now, do you? Weren’t so keen on me when I was in your synagogue, were you?  

Jairus himself may have had some doubts about what Jesus would say.

But in Jesus, Jairus discovers that days that there are no boundaries to the love of God. No-one is beyond the reach of the compassion and help of Jesus. Past record is irrelevant. All they need to do is reach out or call on him. Jesus simply picks Jairus up and starts walking with him.

As I said last week, it wouldn’t have been a massive journey. Capernaum wasn’t a massive place. But then there is the interruption. As they are walking along Jesus stops and says who touched me.

As his disciples protest about the crowds who are gathering round, how people are jostling for position, all keen to get a closer look or to hear what’s going on here, surely someone would have touched him, is Jairus thinking are you kidding me. My daughter is dying here.

Does the woman’s story seem to take an age? But Jesus seems in no rush. Does Jairus think Jesus is distracted? Does he feel the temptation to ask the woman to get to the point of her story, to move Jesus along.

And in the delay, comes the news he is dreading. It’s too late. Your daughter has died. Don’t bother the teacher any more.

Might he even feel a sense of anger towards the woman who touched Jesus’ robe. Was it really that important that she had to do it now? Could she not have waited til Jesus was finished with him? She’d been waiting 12 years. Another couple of hours wouldn’t hurt. Could Jesus not have waited? Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard in a small community to find out who it was.

And in that short time his daughter has died. The worst of his fears had happened. His hope was extinguished.

Except Jesus looks him in the eye, looks right into him, like he can truly feel all that Jairus is experiencing and he says those words.

Don’t be afraid. Just believe.

How hard must that final bit of the journey been? It was one thing to believe in Jesus for healing. He had seen that so often in this community of late.

It was another thing altogether to believe in the face of death.

But on they go, til they reach the house. The mourners had wasted no time in getting there. Our culture is normally quite reserved in these circumstances. We chat quietly over cups of tea. Not every culture is like that. They let it out. There are some cultures where wailing plays a big part in the mourning process. If two people meet for the first time after one of them is bereaved they will embrace and wail, often even if it has been a considerable period since the bereavement.

And already the mourning is in full swing. As Jesus, a few of his disciples and Jairus walk into the home, we’re told there is a right commotion. But Jesus is having none of it. What’s all this commotion and wailing – the child isn’t dead. She’s asleep.

And the wailing turns to mocking laughter, but Jesus just shoos them out of the house, like he’s evicting all the doubting thoughts. The only ones he allows to stay are his few disciples and the girls parent’s.

What follows seems so… well, ordinary. Jesus simply walks across the room, to where the young girl lies. He takes her by the hand and says two words. Talitha koum.

Quite literally Jesus says Get up, kid.

It’s interesting. Those two words are kept in the Aramaic which Jesus would have normally spoke. Not translated into Greek for writing. Some say it was to stop Jesus being accused of sorcery in raising her. Maybe it is just it stuck with those who heard it.

Whatever the reason, she did it. She got up and started walking around. But as if to prove she is real and alive, Jesus says give her something to eat.

Faith wasn’t easy for Jairus that day. He had so many voices telling him it was pointless, it was useless, it was impossible. Some of those voices were outside him. This Jesus wasn’t to be trusted. He was trouble. Best stay away from him. Some where within him. His own doubts, his own perceptions of Jesus and what he was like. Then there were the crowds of those around him saying stop hassling Jesus. It’s not worth it. It’s too late. It’s hopeless. She’s gone.

And those voices had to be silenced and ignored in the face of the one who says Don’t be afraid; just believe.

And in doing so, he discovers three things.

One was Jesus’ grace and compassion extends to all. Jairus may have had good reason to wonder if Jesus would help him. At best he was associated with a lot of people who had wanted nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus wasn’t bothered. His grace was for all who called on him.

A second was that Jesus’ power extends even beyond death. Even there, Jairus’ daughter was not out of reach.

And thirdly that Jesus can be trusted with what is most precious to him.

Maybe some of us need to hear those kinds of lessons this morning. We live in a fairly sceptical age, and can breathe can air. Not even necessarily in voices which are actively hostile to Jesus or the Gospel. Just in the sense that he does not even figure in so many people’s thinking. It can dim our sense of expectation, anticipation, even our sense of hope that things might be different. Perhaps time, experience, previous disappointment have had that affect on us.

We will be influenced by the voices we give credence to. And they’re not just out there. They’re inside us, shaped by the inner dialogue we have wit ourselves all the time. And often that inner dialogue is harder on ourselves than others would be, harder on ourselves than we would be to others. The voices of doubt and hopelessness can seem so strong and loud in the face of a still, small voice, whispering within us. Don’t be afraid, just believe.

Don’t be afraid – just believe – I can cope with your past. Jesus’ grace extends to all of us. On one hand Jairus was an insider. A respected member of the community. On the other he was part of a community that was proving increasingly hostile. But Jesus did not turn him away. His grace extended to Jairus, his daughter and the woman we thought about last week equally. His grace extends to all of us. No exceptions. All we have to do is ask.

Don’t be afraid – just believe  – it is never beyond hope with Jesus. We are never beyond the reach of Jesus. This table reminds us of that, as here we are reminded that Jesus was prepared to enter into death itself. But God raised him to new life. There is no depth to which we can do that he cannot reach us. Nowhere we can do that he is not been there before us. When those voices come from within us and outside us saying it’s hopeless, it’s done, it’s finished… God’s not done. He asks us to listen for that whisper amongst the clamour… Don’t be afraid… just believe.

For Jesus can be trusted with what is most precious to us. One of the privileges we have is that we can pray of behalf of those who can’t or won’t pray for themselves. It wasn’t Jairus’ daughter who came to Jesus begging for help. It was Jairus.

I am grateful for those who have brought me to Jesus in prayer down through the years. And I probably only know a fraction of the prayers uttered and how those prayers have been answered. But they have been many.

And there are many things I have prayed for that I still yearn for. I don’t know what, if any, difference those prayers have made. Perhaps you have prayed for years and seen little result. Perhaps that voice is within you saying If God was going to do anything about that, he’d have done it by now.

And we need to hear that voice once more… Don’t be afraid. Just believe. It’s never beyond Jesus. He is always at work. Ad he can be trusted with all that is dear to us.

Many will hear the voices of doubt and give up.

But we have another choice, just as Jairus did. We don’t know what he thought as he took each step with Jesus. But he did and Jesus proved faithful.

May we be able to trust him and may we too find him faithful to us.