The Challenge of Jesus

 As we have been reading (slowly) through Mark's account of Jesus' life, we have seen Jesus doing many things that show He is from God. For the most part, these unbelievable things have been mostly accepted. We haven't heard many negative reactions to Jesus up to this point.

As we get into chapter 6, though, that begins to change. Jesus goes back to Nazareth, where He was raised, and the people there doubt Him. After all, they had seen Him grow up. Who does this guy think he is? Isn't he the carpenter's son? And they didn't believe Him. These people that had known Him all His life didn't see how God was at work in His Son growing up right among them.

Then Jesus sends out His apostles, giving them some of His authority over illness and the spirits of this world. With all these things happening, Jesus was getting noticed, even by the rulers. Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist come back to life, and then we get a quick aside as to how John met his end. Herod started to see something ominous in Jesus, and it didn't exactly make him want to get closer to Jesus.

Following that, we then get one of the more popular stories of Jesus' life, the feeding of the five thousand men (likely plus women and children) with a mere five loaves of bread and two fish. However Jesus brought this miraculous feeding about, it was definitely a reminder of how God had fed the Israelites with bread and meat (manna and quail) while they were in the wilderness. Jesus provides yet another connection back to what He was doing with and through His people even back then.

Then Jesus walks on water while the disciples are battling the wind in their boat, and people come flocking to Jesus to be healed once He reached the other side of the sea. Even in this, the disciples are unsure of what they see as they see Jesus walking toward them on the sea. They are being kept from recognizing all that God is doing while wrapped up in human flesh.

In this chapter, we see some of the challenge of Jesus. Jesus is hard to believe. How can someone who was born and grew up be doing these great signs from God? Is He someone that has lived before, a powerful man of God that has been raised as a sign to God's people? How can He feed so many people with so few resources, and why didn't Mark or the other writers of Jesus' story explain how those loaves and fish kept on coming? Why did people not believe, even when they had seen Him do the same thing for others?

The challenge of Jesus is no less for us now. Sure, we might think that if Jesus were walking around us, we might believe more readily. But given the sheer number of people we encounter in His stories who struggle with the challenge of Jesus when they witnessed these things, why do we think we would be different? I would dare suggest that this is why God has to be the one who creates faith, because we humans simply have a hard time believing anything that we cannot prove. Jesus was challenging then, and is no less challenging now, and that is why we cling to God's gift of belief and faith.

A day in the Life

 Moving into Mark 5, we have the opportunity to narrow in on just a couple of stories from Jesus' life that stand out. This is one of the features we see with the accounts of Jesus' life. They aren't autobiographies. They don't contain a lot of rich details that you might get if you were to read a modern day autobiography. In fact, that they only cover about three years generally is somewhat remarkable. Modern day biographies look at significant events in the life of the person begin portrayed, and really seem to dive into them. But to do this, they take pages and pages to describe everything.

So when we come to the accounts of Jesus' life, the details may seem somewhat lacking. But that is where we remember the reason behind these accounts. They are not to give blow by blow accounts of everything Jesus did. In fact, when John wrote his account, he makes a note that if he were to describe everything that Jesus did, it would fill several books. John wrote so that people would read and believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and would therefore have life in his name. And that really gets to the point of the stories.

So when you read Mark 5, and you see the account of the demon possessed man, as well as the two women Jesus heals, it's great to see how remarkable these miracles are. We often will want to see God do something similar in our lives. We read the miracles of the Bible and wonder why God doesn't do these things more often. After all, wouldn't people believe if they saw something unexplained? Yet, the biblical account also reveals a bit about what people believe after they see a miracle.

Many of Jesus' miracles were explained away with things like, He has a demon. Shoot, in the case of raising Lazarus, the leaders even tried to put Lazarus back to death because they didn't want to believe the miracle. The people coming out of Egypt saw God's mighty hand at work, and about a month later, doubted that God would take care of them. In all of these instances, we see that the miracles actually created more of an obstacle to faith than serving as a faith-building event.

Jesus would even say that his resurrection would be something that would not be believed. And yet, through the Spirit's work, there are those who hear the stories and believe that God can do such things, and did such things. These stories of miracles aren't to inspire us to greater faith so that God can do miracles around us. Rather, it's to inspire us to believe Jesus to be who he says he is. And then, by that believing, we have life.

May you be led to a greater belief that Jesus is the one who gives you life as you read today!

The Stories of Jesus

 A story grabs our attention. When that story has the power of God behind it, just imagine what it can do. As we continue reading through Mark, today we come across a chapter where Jesus turns into a storyteller. He shares a few short stories, stories with a great deal of meaning behind them. 

Jesus is no ordinary storyteller. When he tells a story, he is trying to make a major point about a person and their relationship with God. Jesus wants his hearers, and us as later readers, to know about God's attitude toward his creation and how he created them to live. We get a small flavor of that with the stories we encounter today.

As you read through the story of the sower today, it may seem a little different. After all, most of us aren't farmers. Even if we have some background with farming, the setting of the story is so different. Instead of sacks of seed to fling to the ground, we now pour bags of seed into plows designed to plant seeds with precision. There is no room for wasted seed, which would just be a waste of money.

That's what sets this sower apart, and likely part of what would cause the hearers to remember this story. This sower is like some young child having fun with a sack of seeds, tossing seed practically everywhere except for where it is supposed to go. There is seed in the road, seed in the weeds, and seed in the rocks. Oh, some did get to the field, but that's almost by chance, it seems. This sower would not be the one you would hire to plant your field, make no mistake about it.

And yet, Jesus is making a rather unusual comparison. The sower is the person who spreads God's Word. It's Jesus. It's God, letting people know about him. It's Jesus' disciples, telling others about him. That's where this story gets really strange. The intent isn't necessarily to be strategic in where that seed gets cast. It's that the seed goes everywhere. Sometimes that seed will end up in places where it is quickly taken away. Those who hear won't like it and will leave. Sometimes that seed will seem to take root, but will be short-lived. We are to nurture that new life as long as God gives us opportunity, but it is up to God to determine what happens with it. Some of that message of good news will be well-received, but will end up being choked out as people work through all the other matters of this world. Our hope is that we can help weed through it with them. Yet other seed lands and takes great root, and that's when we rejoice in God's growth and harvest.

That's the thing with Jesus' stories. He tells them with purpose, to explain God and His design. He tells us about ourselves, sometimes as God's children and other times as those who are wandering away. He encourages us to live out life as God's people. So may these stories draw you closer to Jesus, just as he wants. 

And suddenly, there they were

 Hello again everyone. As we venture through the reading of Mark, I am going to continue to put these together. But by way of letting you know what to expect, on Sundays we will take a break from reading. I encourage you to find a local place to go and worship and hear God's Word spoken to you. That act also keeps you engaged with God's story.

As we work into chapter 3 today, one thing you will notice is that people have already started to notice Jesus. The action keeps moving fast, and it seems as though Jesus' words and actions are going highly noticed. Already there are plots against Him, watching to see what He does, and planning what to do with this disrupter of their nice comfortable system of religion. That's one of the things with Jesus, though. He gets people out of their comfort zones, and that includes you and I. 

This is also the first time we see Jesus starting to get an intentional group of people around Him that He will work with in preparation for sharing His work with the world. Even as He gathers these men, though, we see that everything Jesus is doing starts to disrupt even His family. They don't like what He is doing. They think He is out of His mind. And truthfully, when we see some of the things that Jesus does, or listen to some of the things He teaches, they truly do seem crazy. Love your enemies and try to work for their good? Really? Choose one follower who sympathizes with the Roman occupation, and another who actively worked to get rid of the Romans? That doesn't seem wise. 

And then Jesus changes the meaning of things. Even as His mother and brothers try to get Him to come home and mind His own business, He states that all who do God's will are His brothers and sisters and mothers. And that is the thing we experience with Jesus. He challenges our human, flawed way of thinking. He changes our reality. 

As you read through Mark, one thing you should experience is a good deal of unsettledness. Jesus is going to challenge how you think and act. And that is to be expected. Since He is the one true God, He knows how we were created to operate. So He is going to point out how God's design and expectations are different from our own. He points these out so that we see what He designed us to be, but also to realize how much we need what He came to bring. We need someone to restore us to God and to His original design. That's what Jesus came to do. 

So as we read, we will be confronted. It may be painful to think through some of what we read. However, the good news always resounds. Jesus came to restore our relationship with God and to make us new. That's why His death and resurrection become so key for us. We can't become perfect according to God's design, so we need Him restoring us. And so we read to make our feeble attempts in that direction, while giving thanks that He has completely restored us.