Good or Best

Mark 1:40-45

May 7, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Everyone loves a good story, but as Samwise Gamgee reminds us in that clip from the film “The Two Towers,” the best stories are about the things that matter, the things that last. We all tell stories about our lives, about things that have happened to us or to people we know. Some of the most enjoyable times in our lives are sitting around with family or friends sharing stories, though it is often interesting to watch people try to outdo one another with “I’ve got a better one than that” type stories. You know what I’m talking about; you’ve tried to do that yourself, haven’t you? But the best stories, the ones that stick with us, are about the things that really matter. Ultimately, the best stories are about eternal things.

What sorts of stories does a man in prison tell? A man who knows his final days are near? What sorts of stories would he share with the few who come visit him during that time? He might remember and talk about some of the most important parts of his life, the stories that shaped and molded him into who he became. He might remember some of the mistakes he made, the things he wishes he could change. And most of all, he might remember the singular event that happened that eventually led him to where he was now: facing possible death because of what he believed and stood up for.

That’s exactly what we have when we come to the Gospel of Mark. Scholars are almost all agreed that the sixteen chapters that make up this fast-paced Gospel are the remembrances of the apostle Peter, one of the original twelve disciples who was eventually killed for his faith. Mark was a close companion and friend of Peter; in fact, Peter even calls him “my son” in one of his letters (cf. 1 Peter 5:13; cf. Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 18), and the early church fathers give witness to Mark’s companionship with Peter even as he awaited his death in prison in Rome (cf. Card 192-193). Perhaps it was during that time that Peter began to tell the stories of his life that were about the best things, eternal things—the stories of Jesus. I can almost see Mark, sitting there in the dank and dark atmosphere of a Roman prison, writing things down as quickly as Peter could tell them. His notes, his writing, his remembrances of Peter’s preaching—all of that came together to form what became the first Gospel ever written, the Gospel of Mark.

As I’ve shared before, I’m of the belief that every Christian ought to read through at least one Gospel every year. Last year, we worked through the Gospel of Matthew, and this year we turn our attention to the first Gospel written, the second one in our New Testaments, the Gospel of Mark, the recollections of Peter. We’ve called this series “Stretch Marks,” which is not only a play on words with the name of the Gospel, it’s also a warning that this Gospel will stretch you and shape you, molding you more into Jesus’ likeness. Mark is writing to a community living in an increasingly unsafe environment. Scholars generally put Mark’s writing somewhere in the 60’s AD, during or near the time the emperor Nero was on the throne, Rome was burning and Christians were being blamed. He is writing to people who need to be able to stand firm in their faith, and to be able to do that, he knows they need to be stretched more and more into the image of Jesus. We get more of the emotional life of Jesus in this Gospel than in any other, which again points us back to Jesus’ best friend Peter, and we see Jesus more razor-focused on his mission and message in Mark than anywhere else. So, this is your warning: as you read and as you study and as you listen, prepare to be changed, stretched, and made more like Jesus as we look at the Gospel of Mark.

One more thing I need to clarify before we dive in this morning, and that’s this word “gospel.” We take it for granted now, but in Mark’s day, “gospel” was not a literary form. What Mark is doing is a whole new thing. What he writes is not a biography, though it has biographical elements. He isn’t writing a strict day-by-day account of the life of Jesus, or even an account that is in strict chronological order, as historians did then and do now. That frustrates some people, that the accounts in the four Gospels do not match in their timelines. The only time any of them pay strict attention to a timeline is for the last week of Jesus’ life. The rest of the time, they are organizing the events in Jesus life around themes. “Gospel” is not biography, nor is it strictly preaching. “Gospel” means “good news,” and each of these four writers, including Mark, has a point to make. In fact, Mark tells us up front what his point is: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The first half of the Gospel is about Jesus the Messiah (it ends in Mark 8 when Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah), and the last half is about Jesus as the Son of God (summed up in chapter 15 when a Roman centurion confesses Jesus as the Son of God). Mark’s Gospel has a message; it’s a story about things that matter—things that matter for eternity.

This morning, as sort of an introduction, I want to look at one particular story that takes place early in the Gospel, in the first chapter to be precise, because it gives us a quick glimpse about the way Jesus saw his ministry and the people who were around him. Very early on, as Mark tells it, Jesus has gained a reputation as a healer. He has begun to gather his own disciples, and has both cast out demons and healed many who were sick. The demons, Mark says, he silenced. In fact, “he would not let [them] speak because they knew who he was” (1:24). That’s an important detail for what comes next.

So after a time of healing, Jesus goes off by himself to pray—to recharge his batteries, so to speak. While he is fully divine/fully God, he is also fully human, and his body and spirit would get tired, worn out. So early in the morning, he goes off to a quiet place and prays, but when the disciples notice he is gone, they come looking for him. “Everyone is looking for you!” they tell Jesus, to which he responds, “Let’s go somewhere else. I’ve come to preach everywhere, not just in one small location” (my paraphrase; cf. 1:35-39). As they go, a man with leprosy comes up to him. Now, it’s hard for us to understand how much lepers were feared in the first century. This disease they had was considered highly contagious, and so every precaution was taken to make sure lepers stayed away from “normal” people. They were forced to live outside the city, with “their own kind,” and not only did they wear a warning bell around their neck, they also had to yell out, “Unclean,” whenever they approached others (Card 40). Leprosy was the disease of hopelessness, as a leper was considered not only physically incurable but also socially and spiritually rejected. Leprosy is a disease in which the person does not feel pain, so the body is easily injured without the leper knowing it and “in the absence of pain, the leper loses the hope of healing” (McKenna, The Communicator’s Commentary: Mark, pg. 57). This person who comes to Jesus has been rejected in every way possible, but there is something about Jesus that draws him. In the midst of life of hopelessness, he sees a ray of hope in this miracle healer from Galilee.

Notice the way he approaches Jesus: “If you are willing, you can make me clean” (1:40). He doesn’t say “if you can” or “if you have the ability.” He knows Jesus can do it. He just doesn’t know if Jesus is willing. He’s uncertain about the character of this healer, this miracle worker. He’s been rejected ever since the first signs of leprosy showed up in his body; he wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus rejects him as well. But he approaches Jesus on the slim chance that Jesus is different from everyone else. And he finds that his hope is well placed. Jesus says to him, “I am willing.” That could also be translated, “I am delighted to do this.” Then the leper hears words that he thought he would never hear: “Be clean!” And immediately (one of Mark’s favorite words, by the way) he was cleansed. The word there is catharidzo, from which we get our word “catharsis.” We experience a catharsis when all the tension that has built up in our lives is suddenly taken away or expelled, purged. It’s this huge feeling of relief, and that probably only begins to touch on the way this leper felt when he first felt pain again. Can you imagine—longing to feel pain? Yet pain would have been the truest sign for this man that he was, in fact, healed, cleansed, made new.

But it’s the reaction of Jesus I really want to focus on for a bit this morning. The passage we read this morning in the NIV says, “Jesus was indignant” (1:41) when the leper approached him. Some of the other translations say, “Jesus was filled with compassion.” Here we have one of the problems of Bible translation, or any translation. Often words in one language do not have a direct correlation in another language. The word Mark uses here to describe Jesus’ reaction, though, is a favorite word of mine. It’s splanchidzomai. I like that word because it sort of sounds like what it means, and it means to have your guts affected, twisted, moved. It sort of means “Jesus felt a kick in the gut” when he saw this man. Splanchidzomai. The reason that is sometimes translated as “compassion” is because in the ancient world, the gut was considered to be the seat of emotion. You felt things in your gut, not in your heart like we would say today. A guy in that culture might say to his girlfriend, “I love you with all my guts.” But splanchidzomai covered a whole range of emotions, from anger to compassion, from love to hatred and everything in between. I think there’s a good chance Jesus felt that whole range of emotions when this leper confronted him. Certainly there is compassion; we see that when he expresses his willingness to heal the man and then does it. He doesn’t just promise to pray for the man the next time he prays, if he remembers. He uses the resources he has at his disposal to actually bring healing to the man. He has compassion for him. He is moved in the gut by the sight of this hopeless figure.

But we also see the indignant Jesus come out, especially in the latter part of this story. Our word “indignant” encompasses a number of emotions: annoyance, resentment, offense or even anger. But if Jesus is not annoyed at the man who is asking for healing, then why is he annoyed or even angry? Look at what happens after the man is healed: Jesus sends him home with one instruction: “Don’t tell this to anyone” (1:44). He says such things often in the Gospel of Mark, and some scholars say that Jesus was trying to keep his identity a secret in this Gospel. It’s the so-called “Messianic Secret,” but the only reason Jesus is wanting to keep it quiet is because he doesn’t want to be known simply as a miracle worker. Yes, miracles, healings, even raising people from the dead—all those were a part of his ministry, but they were not the point of his ministry. Even today, some preachers (they tend to be on television, but not exclusively) act as if healing is the main thing Jesus came to bring. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus came to bring something much more expansive, much more life-changing and eternity-determining. He came to bring salvation; he came to bring the kingdom of God. We know that from the very first sermon he preached in this Gospel. It wasn’t, “I came to heal you all.” No, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark are these: “The time has come…The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (1:15). Jesus is warning the man to keep quiet about the healing because healing is not his primary purpose. He doesn’t want to be known as just another “faith healer” or “miracle worker.” He came to bring so much more, and though the healing is good, if someone’s focus is only on that, they are in danger of missing the best Jesus came to bring.

That, in fact, is what happens because the healed leper can’t keep his mouth shut. But, to be fair to him, would we be any different? I mean, if you’ve been healed of a major disease, something you had suffered for a long time, isn’t the tendency is to tell everyone? And that is exactly what the former leper does. “He went out,” Mark says, “and began to talk freely, spreading the news” (1:45). And suddenly, Jesus has to sort of hide out from the crowds. They’re coming to him, wanting healing (wanting what they want) rather than the kingdom (what he came to give). “The best of Jesus’ call to preach the good news is being eclipsed by the good of his ability to heal” (Card 41).

Does that ever happen in our lives, in our church, in our community? Do we ever sacrifice the best Jesus has for us for the sake of something that is only good? Or does the good ever eclipse the best? Miraculous stories of healing are wonderful; we all love to hear such stories, but the miracle is never supposed to be what we center our lives on. The real miracle, the best miracle, after all, is still a life changed and transformed by Jesus Christ. The miracle is good; the life transformed is the best he has to offer. When I was a teenage, I accidentally ended up in a Sunday night church service (and how I got there accidentally is a whole other story) where they were having “testimony time.” Even as a teenager, I couldn’t help but notice that all of the stories told were of things God had done in their lives many years ago. I got the sense they told these same stories every week, and there was something in me that wanted to ask each of them, “What is Jesus doing in your life right now, today?” Since I was a guest in their midst, I didn’t ask, but many of them were simply stuck in the past, on what Jesus had done once. The best question we can ask is this: what is he doing in your life now? Even if it seems unspectacular, how is he transforming you more and more into who he wants you to be, right now, in this moment?

There’s another piece to this which centers around the question of whether people can see Jesus through me and in me or not. One of the questions we ought to be asking ourselves often is this: do my actions speak the best about Jesus or only the good about us? In other words—if we were the leper in this story who had been healed, would the story we told after draw attention to ourselves or to Jesus? Now, from Mark’s account, we know it drew some attention to Jesus, but it sounds like it was only the kind of attention that asks, “What can I get from Jesus, too?” It’s all about “me” and what “I” can receive, not about who Jesus really is or how Jesus can be seen in and through me. Another way to put this might be: is who I am speaking so loudly that no one can hear Jesus speaking through me? It happens when the things we do, even good things become more about us than they are about Jesus. Many years ago, when I was a youth pastor, we took a mission work trip to another state to help build houses for low-income families. Before we went, we had our week of Bible School at the church, and since we knew we would be working on two or three houses during the trip, our Education Director came up with the idea of having the kids all sign Bibles to give to those who would live in the houses. So we packed the Bibles along with our construction tools, and the VBS kids were very excited to be able to bless a family in this way. The week we spent there was sort of strange. Everyone in the group felt something was off, but we couldn’t quite pinpoint what until, at the end of the week, we gathered with the staff and supervisors to celebrate all that had gotten done in the week. When it came time, I presented the Bibles to the supervisors and told them about the VBS kids back home. The supervisor took the Bible, mumbled, “Thanks,” and set the Bibles aside. To this day, I have no idea if those Bibles ever found their way into the homes, but as we headed back toward Indiana, one of our workers commented, “I think they’ve forgotten why they are doing what they are doing.” This Christian organization had become so focused on the good they were doing they had forgotten, it seemed, why they were doing it. They had left behind the best in favor of the good. And Jesus becomes indignant all over again.

Our mission here at Mount Pleasant is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We’re not making disciples of Mount Pleasant, or of the United Methodist Church, or (heaven forbid) disciples of Dennis Ticen or Rick Swan. We have a singular purpose and goal: making disciples of Jesus Christ—because it is only his power that will transform the world. It is only the proclamation of his kingdom that will bring the healing and hope this broken and struggling world needs. We do a lot of good and wonderful things here. We collect items for Operation Christmas Child boxes at Christmas. We send teams into the community to paint and clean and help agencies do needed work. Starting next week, we’ll be collecting funds for the Crisis Pregnancy Center in their baby bottle campaign. We have folks who work at 14th & Chestnut Community Center each and every week. Many of you volunteer with our children’s and youth and Grace Unlimited ministries. A lot of you will be volunteering for Vacation Bible School this summer. I could go on and on—all good things. But friends, we must never ever allow the good things we are doing to be a substitute for the best message, the hope that everyone needs: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (1:15).

When we take part in holy communion here, as we do each month, we are saying with our actions that we believe the good news. We hear and we experience, in the bread and in the cup, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the good news of the kingdom, and because we practice what is called an “open table,” we also proclaim that Jesus came for all. The real challenge, though, is whether or not this bread and this cup shape us in any real way. If we’re not changed by our time at the table, we may have received communion in vain. This holy meal is meant to make us more like Jesus, to remind us of all he did to bring the kingdom of God among us, and to send us out to live the kingdom each and every day in our world. A bit later in Mark’s Gospel, we’ll read about Jesus taking three of his disciples up on a mountain where they will see him transfigured. They’ll see a bit of his glory leaking out, and Peter will say, “It’s good for us to be here.” But you’ll notice in that story that they don’t linger on the mountain. It was good to be there, but the best was to happen at the foot of the mountain and across the land, where people needed to hear and experience the kingdom of God (cf. Mark 9:2-10). I think that’s a parable for what we do here on Sunday. It’s good for us to be here. It’s important for us to worship and celebrate and receive holy communion together. But the best takes place out there, as we live the kingdom values and as we help others see Jesus living in and through us. As you come to the table this morning, will you choose only the good or will you commit to the best? Let’s prepare our hearts for holy communion. Will you pray with me?