(This sermon originally included slides.)
Good morning.
Here we are in a little/big church or a big /little church not far from the shores of Lake Ontario in the Beaches neighbourhood of the Metropolitan city of Toronto. And in this church, in this gathering of followers of Christ, this morning we are celebrating the baptism of two persons, and receiving others into our fellowship
upon transfer of membership and confession of faith. In these important public acts the little/big, or the big/little Mennonite church in the Beaches will be changed. The persons who join us on the path of following Jesus will bring with them experiences from other parts of the path. Their path of following Jesus previously took them through cities and lands and connected them with communities that we don’t know as well as they do.
For Dora – her path includes Germany and Brazil and California and Toronto. It includes intimate experiences with Burderhof and Hutterite communities of Faith.
For Alexandra the path includes Montreal and Toronto and Mennonite Fellowship in Montreal, for Edna and Carlos, and Luis and Diana the path includes Columbia and Toronto – communities of faith in Colombia and Warden Woods Mennonite church here in Toronto, and for Jon and Lori the path includes Winnipeg, California, Pennsylvania and most recently Laurel Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster. (I know the places that I’ve listed for each of you is not exhaustive) Generally we know that the land and cities we travel through inform us and have an impact on what we know and the way we think just as we have an impact on all the places we have been and where we currently live, move and have our being. But though this is something we intuitively know, unless we pay attention, unless we have the eyes to see, we will not notice the way this occurs. Speaking of having “eyes to see,” and the impact of the journey, Tim Schmucker in his introduction to the Gospel of Mark several weeks ago reminded us of the importance of the themes of “seeing” and “following” in this gospel . Jesus heals the blind so that they can see, not only literally, but figuratively as well. In fact everyone in the gospel or everyone who hears the gospel is invited to see what following Jesus really means. Tim pointed out that in Mark, following Jesus means to follow him on the way that leads to Jerusalem.
I’m going to quote a couple of sentences from Tim’s sermon.
To follow Jesus is to follow him to the cross in Jerusalem. (in fact the text is divided into two sections – the ministry in Galilee and the journey towards Jerusalem) Jerusalem: the place of confrontation with the authorities, and the place of death and resurrection, of endings and beginnings. To follow Jesus is to join him on this journey of confrontation and transformation.
And Tim also pointed out that the end of the narrative is also the beginning. At the last supper, Jesus tells the disciples that “after he is risen, he will go ahead of them into Galilee, (Mk. 14:28) and at the resurrection experience of the women, the man in the white robe, sitting in the empty tomb, tells the women “ Go, tell his disciples and Peter, “he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
And so we go back to the beginning; to the Galilee and, as we do so, we ask Jesus to heal our blindness. We ask Jesus to help us see what “following him on the path he walked” means. In order to see, we have to look and so for the rest of my sermon this morning, I’m going to invite us to look: to look at the parts of this Gospel that until recently I rarely ever saw. I didn’t see these parts because they didn’t mean very much to me – the parts that I had Jana and Bruce read for us this morning.
And he came to Capernaum
and they crossed to the “other side”
and then he went to Tyre and he wanted no one to know he was there
and then he came down through Sidon and continued on into the Decapolis.
and from there they went up to Caesarea Philippi I can’t stress strongly enough that in the narrative structure of Mark, none of the references to places and geographical movements of Jesus are incidental or unimportant. The places, the cities, the villages, the towns, the roads in between, and all the folks that inhabited that space with Jesus, and even the landscape itself infuse the story with meaning, if we will see. So this morning I’m going to share with you some images of Galilee.
(There is a slideshow that goes with this sermon)
Jesus’ journey, in the Gospel of Mark, begins with this simple statement: Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Jesus’ call and election as God’s Beloved Son, occurs in this place and Jesus’ subsequent spiritual formation takes place in the Judean dessert. I’m going to suggest that there were several things about his world – the land, the cities and his travels, that both formed and transformed Jesus and his ministry and by extension had the potential to form and transform his followers. The Dessert varies greatly throughout the region. It isn’t always as rugged as this slide. Nonetheless it can be a pretty formidable place.
In this wilderness Jesus was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and attended by angels, After John was put into prison Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.”
The kingdom of God – in Galilee – what could that mean in a largely conflicted society suffering under Roman occupation? And Jesus came to the Sea of Galilee making Capernaum his home, and called his first disciples – fishermen by trade. Come, follow me he said to them and they left their nets and their boats and their fish and followed him.
In the synagogue he taught just as the other Pharisaic Rabbi’s did, but the people were amazed at his authority and the healing miracles and exorcisms that he performed.
His ministry was so popular that soon he had to get into a boat to get away from the crowds. The land rises gently from the sea and provides a natural amphitheatre. From here he told them parables including the parables of the sower.
Capernaum became his home. Sitting on the shore in Capernaum at the top of the lake Jesus could see down both sides. In a glance from this position he would have been aware of his entire conflicted society. Pharisaic Judaism down the right hand shore, Herod in his citadel in Tiberius, the Greco-Roman cities of the Decapolis to his left, the Roman garrison a few hundred metres away and the Roman road manned by tax collectors running along just behind him, and Mount Arbel and the valley of the doves, that harboured Zealots in its cliff top caves just a few miles to the southwest.
He also regularly withdrew to a solitary place – just a thirty minute hike up into the hills behind Capernaum – from here he could also see the Sea spread out before him.
His movement into solitude was never an escape from it all, but a chance for clearer vision. His prayers kept him in the presence of God and his vista kept his entire society spread out in front of him. It wasn’t long before he chose to cross to “the other side.” The line that divided this side and the other was Bethsaida and where the Jordan emptied into the sea. On the other side (in the region of the Decapolis) he also encountered people who needed healing (a man possessed by a demon and living in the tombs). After he healed him, Jesus refused to let this man follow him. This denial of the man’s desire was contrary to anything Jesus had told folks on his own side of the lake. Instead he told him to go ahead and tell his neighbours and friends everything he had done for him. It seems that this man paved the way for Jesus’ reception back in the Decapolis later on in his journey.
Back in Capernaum Jesus’ awareness of his conflicted society, the pressure of the crowds and eventually the danger that Herod posed from his citadel in Tiberius – all of this – influenced Jesus’ ministry so much so that eventually he left that area for the region of Tyre and Sidon. Did you know that Tyre and Sidon are cities on the Mediterranean? I imagine his motives for going there were both to hide and to take a break. Mark tells us that he hoped that no one would know where he was. However, a Syrophonecian woman tracks him down and asks him to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus’ response to her makes it appear that he thought his ministry was primarily only for the lost tribes of Israel. But when she says that even the dogs under the table deserve the crumbs it’s as if her faith begins to transform Jesus’ understanding of his own ministry. He seems to discover in this moment that he was called to be Messiah for everyone, not only Israel, and the placement of this realization here in the text seems to function to send him
back into the Decapolis where the cured demoniac from the tombs has gone ahead of him.
This is where I have to mention the two feedings of large crowds. The first feeding of the 5000 occurs, according to the narrative, just to the west of Capernaum in Jewish territory and there are 12 baskets left over – the twelve tribes of Israel. The second feeding of the thousands – four thousand in this case – occurs in the region of the Decapolis and there are seven baskets left over – to symbolize the seven peoples that the people of Israel under Joshua had cast out. Referencing Deut. 7:1 this would have been the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Jesus has discovered through his prayer and his journey and his experiences with the faith of others that his mission is for Israel and beyond. And eventually Jesus makes one final significant geographical move. He heads to Bethsaida, the town on the border between the two sides, where he heals the blind man in two tries – Seeing doesn’t come easily he seems to say – it can come gradually and he takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi a place known for it’s Deification of the Roman Emperors. It was at this place that Roman Emperors were celebrated as Sons of God. It was at this place that Philip the Tetrach ruled and it was at this place that Jesus tried to teach his disciples what his Messianic call was really all about. In this place, he asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am? “
“You are the Christ,” they reply, but when he tries three times to tell them what that means, it is not something they can see. All they see is the cold hard reality of the conflicting forces and powers of the world all around them and the equally overpowering response their Messiah should make in return. But Jesus says,
“The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” And then Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.
If we follow Jesus on the way, on his path, we will be invited over an
d over again to open our eyes to everything around us. IF we go to a solitary place it will not be so that we can escape but so that we can have clearer vision. If we follow Jesus on his path we will be invited to see where the kingdom of God exists or can exist in contrast to the kingdoms of this world. In more contemporary language we will be invited to be part of the nation of God. What does the nation of God look like among the nations of which we are a part and the nations that surround us? God longs to heal our blindness. God through Christ can help us to see.
God has walked among us in the person of Jesus in a particular way and in a particular place and in a particular time. That’s called Incarnational theology.
The living Christ walks among us now. The kingdom of God is among us and the invitation is still the same. Jesus says, “Follow me”.
Here we are in a little/big church or a big /little church not far from the shores of Lake Ontario in the Beaches neighbourhood of the Metropolitan city of Toronto. And in this church, in this gathering of followers of Christ, this morning we are celebrating the baptism of two persons, and receiving others into our fellowship
upon transfer of membership and confession of faith. In these important public acts the little/big, or the big/little Mennonite church in the Beaches will be changed. The persons who join us on the path of following Jesus will bring with them experiences from other parts of the path. Their path of following Jesus previously took them through cities and lands and connected them with communities that we don’t know as well as they do.
For Dora – her path includes Germany and Brazil and California and Toronto. It includes intimate experiences with Burderhof and Hutterite communities of Faith.
For Alexandra the path includes Montreal and Toronto and Mennonite Fellowship in Montreal, for Edna and Carlos, and Luis and Diana the path includes Columbia and Toronto – communities of faith in Colombia and Warden Woods Mennonite church here in Toronto, and for Jon and Lori the path includes Winnipeg, California, Pennsylvania and most recently Laurel Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster. (I know the places that I’ve listed for each of you is not exhaustive) Generally we know that the land and cities we travel through inform us and have an impact on what we know and the way we think just as we have an impact on all the places we have been and where we currently live, move and have our being. But though this is something we intuitively know, unless we pay attention, unless we have the eyes to see, we will not notice the way this occurs. Speaking of having “eyes to see,” and the impact of the journey, Tim Schmucker in his introduction to the Gospel of Mark several weeks ago reminded us of the importance of the themes of “seeing” and “following” in this gospel . Jesus heals the blind so that they can see, not only literally, but figuratively as well. In fact everyone in the gospel or everyone who hears the gospel is invited to see what following Jesus really means. Tim pointed out that in Mark, following Jesus means to follow him on the way that leads to Jerusalem.
I’m going to quote a couple of sentences from Tim’s sermon.
To follow Jesus is to follow him to the cross in Jerusalem. (in fact the text is divided into two sections – the ministry in Galilee and the journey towards Jerusalem) Jerusalem: the place of confrontation with the authorities, and the place of death and resurrection, of endings and beginnings. To follow Jesus is to join him on this journey of confrontation and transformation.
And Tim also pointed out that the end of the narrative is also the beginning. At the last supper, Jesus tells the disciples that “after he is risen, he will go ahead of them into Galilee, (Mk. 14:28) and at the resurrection experience of the women, the man in the white robe, sitting in the empty tomb, tells the women “ Go, tell his disciples and Peter, “he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
And so we go back to the beginning; to the Galilee and, as we do so, we ask Jesus to heal our blindness. We ask Jesus to help us see what “following him on the path he walked” means. In order to see, we have to look and so for the rest of my sermon this morning, I’m going to invite us to look: to look at the parts of this Gospel that until recently I rarely ever saw. I didn’t see these parts because they didn’t mean very much to me – the parts that I had Jana and Bruce read for us this morning.
And he came to Capernaum
and they crossed to the “other side”
and then he went to Tyre and he wanted no one to know he was there
and then he came down through Sidon and continued on into the Decapolis.
and from there they went up to Caesarea Philippi I can’t stress strongly enough that in the narrative structure of Mark, none of the references to places and geographical movements of Jesus are incidental or unimportant. The places, the cities, the villages, the towns, the roads in between, and all the folks that inhabited that space with Jesus, and even the landscape itself infuse the story with meaning, if we will see. So this morning I’m going to share with you some images of Galilee.
(There is a slideshow that goes with this sermon)
Jesus’ journey, in the Gospel of Mark, begins with this simple statement: Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Jesus’ call and election as God’s Beloved Son, occurs in this place and Jesus’ subsequent spiritual formation takes place in the Judean dessert. I’m going to suggest that there were several things about his world – the land, the cities and his travels, that both formed and transformed Jesus and his ministry and by extension had the potential to form and transform his followers. The Dessert varies greatly throughout the region. It isn’t always as rugged as this slide. Nonetheless it can be a pretty formidable place.
In this wilderness Jesus was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and attended by angels, After John was put into prison Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.”
The kingdom of God – in Galilee – what could that mean in a largely conflicted society suffering under Roman occupation? And Jesus came to the Sea of Galilee making Capernaum his home, and called his first disciples – fishermen by trade. Come, follow me he said to them and they left their nets and their boats and their fish and followed him.
In the synagogue he taught just as the other Pharisaic Rabbi’s did, but the people were amazed at his authority and the healing miracles and exorcisms that he performed.
His ministry was so popular that soon he had to get into a boat to get away from the crowds. The land rises gently from the sea and provides a natural amphitheatre. From here he told them parables including the parables of the sower.
Capernaum became his home. Sitting on the shore in Capernaum at the top of the lake Jesus could see down both sides. In a glance from this position he would have been aware of his entire conflicted society. Pharisaic Judaism down the right hand shore, Herod in his citadel in Tiberius, the Greco-Roman cities of the Decapolis to his left, the Roman garrison a few hundred metres away and the Roman road manned by tax collectors running along just behind him, and Mount Arbel and the valley of the doves, that harboured Zealots in its cliff top caves just a few miles to the southwest.
He also regularly withdrew to a solitary place – just a thirty minute hike up into the hills behind Capernaum – from here he could also see the Sea spread out before him.
His movement into solitude was never an escape from it all, but a chance for clearer vision. His prayers kept him in the presence of God and his vista kept his entire society spread out in front of him. It wasn’t long before he chose to cross to “the other side.” The line that divided this side and the other was Bethsaida and where the Jordan emptied into the sea. On the other side (in the region of the Decapolis) he also encountered people who needed healing (a man possessed by a demon and living in the tombs). After he healed him, Jesus refused to let this man follow him. This denial of the man’s desire was contrary to anything Jesus had told folks on his own side of the lake. Instead he told him to go ahead and tell his neighbours and friends everything he had done for him. It seems that this man paved the way for Jesus’ reception back in the Decapolis later on in his journey.
Back in Capernaum Jesus’ awareness of his conflicted society, the pressure of the crowds and eventually the danger that Herod posed from his citadel in Tiberius – all of this – influenced Jesus’ ministry so much so that eventually he left that area for the region of Tyre and Sidon. Did you know that Tyre and Sidon are cities on the Mediterranean? I imagine his motives for going there were both to hide and to take a break. Mark tells us that he hoped that no one would know where he was. However, a Syrophonecian woman tracks him down and asks him to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus’ response to her makes it appear that he thought his ministry was primarily only for the lost tribes of Israel. But when she says that even the dogs under the table deserve the crumbs it’s as if her faith begins to transform Jesus’ understanding of his own ministry. He seems to discover in this moment that he was called to be Messiah for everyone, not only Israel, and the placement of this realization here in the text seems to function to send him
back into the Decapolis where the cured demoniac from the tombs has gone ahead of him.
This is where I have to mention the two feedings of large crowds. The first feeding of the 5000 occurs, according to the narrative, just to the west of Capernaum in Jewish territory and there are 12 baskets left over – the twelve tribes of Israel. The second feeding of the thousands – four thousand in this case – occurs in the region of the Decapolis and there are seven baskets left over – to symbolize the seven peoples that the people of Israel under Joshua had cast out. Referencing Deut. 7:1 this would have been the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Jesus has discovered through his prayer and his journey and his experiences with the faith of others that his mission is for Israel and beyond. And eventually Jesus makes one final significant geographical move. He heads to Bethsaida, the town on the border between the two sides, where he heals the blind man in two tries – Seeing doesn’t come easily he seems to say – it can come gradually and he takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi a place known for it’s Deification of the Roman Emperors. It was at this place that Roman Emperors were celebrated as Sons of God. It was at this place that Philip the Tetrach ruled and it was at this place that Jesus tried to teach his disciples what his Messianic call was really all about. In this place, he asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am? “
“You are the Christ,” they reply, but when he tries three times to tell them what that means, it is not something they can see. All they see is the cold hard reality of the conflicting forces and powers of the world all around them and the equally overpowering response their Messiah should make in return. But Jesus says,
“The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” And then Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.
If we follow Jesus on the way, on his path, we will be invited over an
d over again to open our eyes to everything around us. IF we go to a solitary place it will not be so that we can escape but so that we can have clearer vision. If we follow Jesus on his path we will be invited to see where the kingdom of God exists or can exist in contrast to the kingdoms of this world. In more contemporary language we will be invited to be part of the nation of God. What does the nation of God look like among the nations of which we are a part and the nations that surround us? God longs to heal our blindness. God through Christ can help us to see.
God has walked among us in the person of Jesus in a particular way and in a particular place and in a particular time. That’s called Incarnational theology.
The living Christ walks among us now. The kingdom of God is among us and the invitation is still the same. Jesus says, “Follow me”.