~~Mark 9:14-29~~

~~The healing of the boy.~~

~~‘Why couldn’t we drive it out?’~~

•	~~It’s not about the demon. This passage isn’t about how powerful the opposition is. If only we were stronger. If only our charms were more effective.~~ 
•	~~It’s not about the disciples. This passage isn’t about how skilled the disciples are. Prayer - and fasting, which some passages add - are not techniques to learn, but ways of understanding our dependence. Harry Potter is a pretty rubbish exponent of magic. He defeats the vastly more skilled Voldemort by the power of a surrendered life.~~ 
•	~~It’s about Jesus, and it’s about the boy. They could have healed him - if they had realised that the power is never theirs, it is always Christ’s - and if they had a heart of compassion. Jesus alone engages with the boy!~~

Mark 1:14-28

I looked at several passages of scripture before finally feeling that I had arrived at the right place for today.

I love preaching the stories of the Old Testament - they’re full of grace, full of life, and full of practical teaching. I love preaching the Prophets - such a powerful rebuke to a world that has lost itself in the pursuit of money, sex and power. I thought about the wonderful condensed teaching of the epistles - but we were there last time, looking at love in Romans 12. 

And when it came right down to it, it was Jesus I wanted to be the focus of what we do today. And so we’re here - the start of Mark’s Gospel, the shortest of the gospels:

Now after John was imprisoned, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God. He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!” As he went along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen). Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” They left their nets immediately and followed him. Going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother in their boat mending nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. Then they went to Capernaum. When the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people there were amazed by his teaching, because he taught them like one who had authority, not like the experts in the law. Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “Leave us alone, Jesus the Nazarene! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” But Jesus rebuked him: “Silence! Come out of him!” After throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. They were all amazed so that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him.” So the news about him spread quickly throughout all the region around Galilee. 

Times were different then. Not everybody was good, but there were things that pretty much everybody believed, and things that pretty much everybody did. And in Galilee, pretty much everyone practised at least the externals of the Jewish faith - unless they were foreigners, of course. Everyone was a bit of an expert. And you knew the local Rabbis, and the teachers of the law.

For the most part, they were an uninspiring lot. And then, all of a sudden, Jesus steps into the picture. And although he starts behaving like a Rabbi, he’s not like any Rabbi they’ve ever seen before. 

And I really think we’ve got to recover some of that. Because just at the moment, most of the people who live around us think they’ve got their opinions about faith sorted out. And they mostly believe that people like you and me are a waste of space - an irrelevance. 

Here’s one example - just a random comment on the web. Talking about the Bible: “It was written by a dozen or so starving peasants under the rule of an oppressive Roman regime, using the most popular prophet of the time, Jesus, as subject matter. The authors embellished his life and added time honored stories passed down thru the generations. The 10 commandments of the bible (the only worthy part) is not god sent ... most DECENT humans were born with a keen sense of it. I was and I’ve despised Religion for years.”

Changing that takes something that is different from an encounter with a religious organisation. It takes an encounter with Jesus.

So let’s tag along with this Jesus as he gets started in his ministry. And let’s listen to what he says.

“He came proclaiming good news” 

When Mark chooses a word to summarise what Jesus came to tell us, he chose the word ‘gospel’ - which, as you know, means ‘good news’. It’s the first description of what Jesus came to do - and it is so important. He even repeats himself, it matters so much. There’s a lot that Jesus teaches - he has words of rebuke for the religious leaders, words of challenge for his disciples, words of hope for the despairing and broken. We can easily get lost, and make something that isn’t the Most Important Thing central. So Mark wants to start with it. And he starts with ‘Good News!

More than anything else, what Jesus has to bring is good news. It’s the news that after such a long time, God has made a way to give us back the life we threw away. The news that there is hope; that we have a place with God, that the broken relationship can be restored.

Before everything else, Jesus is good news. Of course there are hard things to say and to hear as well, but top of the list, first out of the traps, biggest print headline comes this: GOOD NEWS!!

And it’s no surprise to me that churches that see real growth are churches where people have a story to tell that is full of good news. Something to celebrate. Lives re-made; brokenness healed. Relationships renewed. Hope re-awakened.

Are we proclaiming good news? Or do we prefer to be the heralds of doom? There is bad news, and Jesus himself wasn’t afraid to let people know - Mark 13 - but when he stands up to preach, and when he encounters real people living fractured lives, then it is good news he brings.

I don’t expect everyone to be cheerful all the time. Let me tell you about Lorna. One of the first tasks I had when I went to Kirby was to conduct the funeral of Cyril, her husband. Her daughter was handicapped; her son, though a lovely guy, never really kept his faith. But if ever I felt low, I went to visit Lorna. She had an irrepressible joy, welling up from her relationship with Jesus. And her own funeral was one of those rare times when we really did celebrate a life lived to the full. Lorna knew that Jesus came with good news, and her joy was contagious.

“The kingdom is near to you”

There’s one aspect of Jesus’ teaching that is utterly and astonishingly shocking. Read the teachings of great religious figures - from Ghandi through Mohammed to the Buddha - and you’ll discover that they are, on the surface at least, self-effacing. And the OT prophets are the same. Pointing beyond themselves to someone else.

If Jesus is going to be a great man, or a powerful prophet, then we’d expect the same from him. But it isn’t so. Time after time, Jesus points directly to himself. The ‘I am’ sayings that John record. Or here - when Jesus says ‘the kingdom - the rule of God - is near you’, he means that he is near you. The kingdom has arrived because he has arrived. Jesus broke all the rules - he told his followers ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’ - and that was out and out blasphemy. 

Jesus simply says to the people he comes into contact with: “it’s all about me.”

Our mission is not to teach people theology, nor to construct complicated ways of worshipping God - it’s simply to introduce people to Jesus. 

I think about my friend Chris - some of you may have met him. Chris was BU president a couple of years ago, and he’s an evangelist. The Red Carpet - Jesus loves you, thinks you are special. It is in coming nearer to Jesus that people are changed, transformed. 

“Turn around and walk with me!”

Jesus uses the word ‘repent’ here - it means so much more than those of us who have lived our lives in and around churches sometimes think it means. It’s a word that means ‘turn around’ - and it implies a fundamental change of direction, a change of heart. It’s about letting go of the things that guide and determine our lives - whatever that might be - and turning to go a different way.

When Jesus says ‘follow me’, he’s illustrating what ‘repent’ means. It means - leave that - walk with me instead. And that’s exactly what Peter and James and John do. 

Repentance is all about coming back to God. And that will mean letting go of the thing that has been taking us in the wrong direction - whatever that thing might be. 

What’s a little scary is that it might be something good, rather than something that looks clearly like sin. It might be family, or fishing, or food.

And just look at what happens to those who do follow Jesus - straight away they are pitched into ‘fishing for men’ - a ministry of healing, casting out demons, feeding people and more. And here’s something that those of us who are Christians may well have forgotten - being a Christian is first of all about following, walking with Jesus. Not where we are, but which way we are travelling. That’s why judging one another is so foolish - two people; one whose life is a mess, one who is really sorted out, living a decent life. Which is closer to Jesus? No way to know. All depends which way they are walking.

I think of my friend Dewi. Even after he turned to Christ, his life was still in chaos. Today was going to have been your Sunday to look at 

I may never get the opportunity to say this again in quite this way - so I’ll say it now. Churches across the world are full of people who know all about religion but have never met with Jesus. 

The greatest news in all creation is that God the Father wants you to meet his Son.

If that’s happened to you, then you have something amazing to celebrate. Life won’t always be great - it won’t always be fun. But meeting with Jesus is Good News, for he can - and perhaps he has - put broken people like us back together. Seeing in you the joy that Jesus gives is the best advert for Jesus that the world can see.

If you haven’t yet met with Jesus, then let me introduce you to him. 

And now you’ve met him - turn around, and walk with him. Make no mistake; he calls you to walk a tough road; a hard road that demands everything of you. But it’s going the right way; the way that leads to life.