I was driving to Auckland for a conference this week and the
Beatles song ‘A day in the life of…’ came on the radio. It’s the last track of
the 1967 Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts club band album. I found myself
singing along. The song captures something of the mundane nature of everyday
life. The start and finish of the song written by John Lennon was inspired by simply
reading the newspaper, the significant events, a prominent man killed in a car
crash, and the trivial page fillers, like a series of holes being dug in Lancashire,
“now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”. The middle of
the song, written by Paul McCartney remembering that rush to get up, get
dressed, drag a comb across our head, grab the bus and head off to school… or
work, day-dreaming along the way… all finished off with that most memorable
sustained piano chord, like the lingering last rays of a setting sun. Just a
day in the life of… and I went into a dream, well my mind wandered as I drove to
the reading we had this morning… You
see, the last part of Mark chapter one has that kind of feel to it. An ordinary
sabbath day in Capernaum, at the synagogue, home for a meal, dealing with
sickness in the family, waiting till after sunset to do things that needed to
be done, ( remember for the first century jews a day went from sunset to sunset,) alone time reflective time, quite time as the sun rises after a busy day. Yet into that everydayness we see with
Jesus, the kingdom of God breaks in bringing freedom, healing, wholeness and
acceptance.
More than that we are also presented with a day in the life
of Jesus Christ early in his Galilean ministry. In fact in his commentary Kent
Hughs says Mark present us with a day in the heart of a healer. Full of
preaching, compassion, action, then alone time with God in Prayer, and finally
having to refocus on what Jesus mission is. A day in the life of…
We are embarking on a year long journey through the gospel
according to Mark… what Mark calls ‘the beginning of the Good News of Jesus
Christ’. The series is called The Way of the cross… as in Mark’s fast paced
narrative, dd you notice the words like immediately in the reading this
morning, the focus is on Jesus as the suffering servant, who will give up his
life for many. It invites us to strip away many of the cultural expectations we
have of Jesus and what it means to follow him and again realise as one commentator
puts it we are an army whose only weapons are service and self-sacrificial
love. That to be a flourishing Christian community is ironically to follow
Jesus on the way of the cross.
Mark’s gospel started with the witness of scripture, from
the book of Isaiah to who Jesus was, then we meet Jesus at his baptism by John
the Baptist, and have an account of his temptation, where in the wilderness
Jesus is able to over come Satan. Then Jesus starts his ministry he goes about
preaching ‘repent, and believe the good news because the Kingdom of God is at
hand”. With Jesus coming the reign of God has come into the realms of humanity,
and we are called to live in a new way. A way that reflects God’s love, righteousness
and justice. Jesus starts to gather a group of people around him, he calls some
Galilean fishermen to come follow me and they will become fishers of men, help
to bring people into this new relationship with God through Christ. Then it
seems that instead of following Jesus its like he follows them home to
Capernaum. Jesus goes to the synagogue and is invited to speak, and we start to
see that as the kingdom of God is at hand that the powers of darkness are
started to be pushed back. A demon possessed man is set free and delivered.
While the people don’t really get who Jesus is the unclean spirt is told to be
quite because it recognises Jesus as God’s holy messenger. The people are
amazed, who is Jesus and what is this new teaching. Now we move to today
reading… again it seems to simply be moving through the day in the life off…
Jesus heads to Simeon’s place for lunch.
In this passage we are given a glimpse in to the everyday
life of the disciples, or at least Simon, who Jesus will name Peter. We find
out that Simon is married, and his mother in law lives with them, maybe she is
a widow… later in 1 Corinthians 9:5 Paul tells us that Peter took his wife
along with him on his mission trips. But this story also shows us Peter’s personal
accounts as a major part of Mark’s sources.
As they arrive home, they discover that Simion’s mother-in-law
has a fever, and is unwell. First century jews saw fever as a unique illness
they didn’t necessarily see it as a symptom of an underlying illness, and as it
could be from an infection it was seen as a serious matter. We are told
immediately Jesus goes to her, takes her by the hand and lifts her up, she is
healed, gets up and serves them. This getting up and serving them shows us a
couple of things: the first is that the mother in law is totally healed,
normally when you recover from a fever you are left weak. May of you will know
from recent experiences, like the effects of COVID, that linger weakness and
brain fog. But here the woman gets up and immediately serves Jesus. Secondly,
unlike in our culture it wasn’t the mother in law or the women who did the
serving, it was not a done thing for a women to serve a rabbi, but here Simon’s
mother in law shows us the appropriate response to Jesus healing and
intervention in ones life, she serves him. She is an example of what it means
to be a disciple.
One of the things that we might not get from this story is
the radical nature of what Jesus does. In Mark’s gospel Jesus touch is
important, Jesus is always touching people, following on from our reading this
morning he touches the leper, later he puts his finger in the ears of the deaf
man, he dines with Levi and his friends. Francis Moloney in his commentary notes that
there is no record anywhere of a first century Jewish rabbi grasping the hand
of a woman. Jesus crosses a cultural and religious barrier here, out of
compassion and concern to heal and lift up Simon’s mother in law. In Mark Jesus
is always reaching out to people across those barriers and bringing healing and
kingdom life. Where as for the religious jews they saw such touching as making
them unclean, Jesus touch always brings healing, restoration and transformation.
Its important to note in Mark’s gospel that the story of
women are very important, Jesus is the beginning of Good news for men and for
women, we see that in the first two miracles presented here. Both in the public
space, often seen in those days as men’s space and the private, or home space,
which was the women’s domain. Jesus reaches into both.
The narrative quickly changes and we see that as the sun
sets that the people of the town bring all their sick and those possessed by
evil spirits to Jesus. They crowd around the door of Simon’s home. Jesus heals
the sick and frees people of the evil spirits. Jesus shows his compassion for
people and his power and authority, having defeated Satan we now see the
darkness rolled back. But in Mark’s gospel its always hard to understand the
crowds response to Jesus. They flock to Jesus seeing him as a miracle worker
not necessarily as the Messiah, coming for healing, not out of repentance and
belief. I’m not rugby league fan, but this year like many I’ve been swept up in
the ‘up the wah’s’ I’ve joined the band wagon, because of the Cinderella like
story of their success. But as part of the crowd, I’m not a rugby league
convert. The crowd in Mark want Jesus but don’t actually become fully committed
to who he is.
Then the scene and the frantic pace of the narrative changes
again, We are told Jesus gets up early in the morning before the sun rises and
goes away into a lonely place to pray. In
Mark’s gospel wea re told that Jesus goes to pay at pivotal times. I’m sur it
was his regular routine to spend time alone in prayer with his father, but in
the narrative it always comes at crunch times. How was Jesus going to handle
the success he had had at Capernaum, as the crowd gathered round the door. That
pressure is intensified as the disciples come looking for Jesus and Simon says “everyone
is looking for you Jesus”. There is the expectation that Jesus will continue to
do what he has been doing in Capernaum. Here is a good place to set up a base
of operation, as my friend mark Keown commented on this very point at a
conference this week, we could start a big church here Jesus. Is Jesus going to
bow to the will of the crowd? The answer of course is that Jesus reaffirms his
ministry and mission, that he is to go to the other towns and continue to
preach his message repent and believe for the kingdom of God is at hand. But
everywhere Jesus goes of course the kingdom of God continues to push back the
powers of darkness people are set free, are healed and are welcomed back into
God’s people.
What is there for us from this passage today?
Firstly, as Mark calls his narrative the beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ, I want to affirm that Jesus Christ is still good
news for us today. That in Christ, the kingdom of God has broken into our
everyday life as well and pushes back the darkness. Jesus can free us from
oppression of spiritual forces today. Jesus can heal people today. We have
people who are willing to pray at the end of the service today, willing to be
like the door that the crowd gathered round that you can meet Jesus through.
The good news of the kingdom is still for us today, you and I are called to
repent, and believe the good news because the kingdom of God is at hand. Maybe
you are here today and you need to acknowledge Jesus as the messiah and the son
of God, and receive forgiveness through his death and resurrection and turn to
follow Jesus.
For those who know and follow Jesus I think that as we move
through Mark we are going to be confronted and encouraged by Jesus touch to
reach out across the various social barriers that we have today, just like the Jewish
folk of Jesus day, with the good news of Jesus Christ. There is a kind of fear
that I believe many of us have of people who are different than us. People who
seem like they are outside of what we think of as socially acceptable. We are
concerned that somehow we will be contaminated by contact with them, that we
will be dragged away from our faith. But when you see Jesus you see that his
touch was the opposite, it bought new life, kingdom life, freedom, healing and
wholeness to those he touched. We believe that Jesus is with us today by the
Holy Spirit as well, and in our everyday life we too can see that kingdom life
reach out in our touch, our presence our compassion and care, across all those
social barriers. Even as it did in the reading today to that most troublesome
of groups… mothers-in-laws. I thought about starting this sermon with a mother
in law Joke, I went on the website and there was a whole heap of them. But the
website I was on was from grooms at weddings, and it said it takes a brave man
to make such jokes, and I thought even more so in church as it is a mother-in-law
rich environment… and I’m not that brave. But you know when we realise that we
are on the other side of the cultural barriers of Jesus day and have received
his grace, When I preached this sermon the other day kris reminded me of the
old Jewish prayer ‘thank you Lord I am not a gentile or a woman…when we thing
of that it helps us to rethink the social barriers of our own day. Racially,
culturally, socio economically we reach across with the cleansing, welcoming
the healing touch of Jesus.
Lastly, the line that
really stuck out to me was “everyone is looking for you”. We all live with the
expectations and demands of others on us and our time. Be it the popular and
successful, the crowed at the door, or the pressing issues, those urgent things
that demand our attention, I am always reminded of the quote that helped
Eisenhower with his priorities and planning "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent
and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never
urgent." Or even the peripheral, those edge things sidetracks, that can
stop us individually and corporately from focusing on our mission and what
Jesus has called us to do and be. We need to take the time in our busy lies in
the face of all those things looking for us, to spend time like Jesus praying and seeking
God and also then to have the courage to go to another place, to do what we
believe God is calling us to do, to be about his kingdom and walking the way of
the cross in the midst of our ordinary life… to allow the kingdom of God to
break into a day
in the life of… a day in the life of you, a day in the life of me a day in the life of of us.. to break into an
ordinary everydayness in Whangarei…
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