Fourth Sunday after Trinity Mark 4:35-end Job 38:1-11‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’ If you’ve ever been in open country side or at sea during a thunderstorm, you will know how frightening it can be. Also, there is usually nothing you can do about it, once it starts; it has to run its course. Of course, we all now know that there are weather patterns and some of these can be predicted. But then, my own grandfather – a farmer – simply looked at the sky and then told my grandmother to take in the washing if rain was threatening. His observation from experience even told him how many minutes she would have to do it; he was that accurate! Here, though, in Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus calming the storm on the lake, we have something more impressive: Jesus showing his authority even over the forces of nature. If the storm frightened the disciples in the boat – and there were well-weathered fishermen among them! – Jesus’ intervention made them even more afraid: who then is this? It is a known-fact that the Sea of Galilee can be very unpredictable; storms can rise up out of the blue. But the weather can also change in other places. The story of Jonah and the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles (Paul on his way to Rome) are telling a similar thing. However, in the other cases, the storm did not just die down very quickly and at command. This is a different story altogether. So, what is it about? One thing that may strike us is the fact that Jesus doesn’t seem to be bothered about the storm at all; he is even asleep and has to be woken up by the frightened disciples, who are saying that they are perishing. And I’m sure we can all identify with them. The sea is dangerous; sailing comes with a real risk. In the Psalms and in Genesis, the sea is also the picture of darkness and evil, overcome only by God’s sovereign power. So when Jesus rebukes the wind and the sea and saves the disciples from perishing, we are seeing something of God’s authority over evil. It is like the parables and the signs that Jesus performs during his ministry which are all pointing to the new kingdom, the Kingdom of God, which is at hand. While the forces of evil are roused, and making their anger felt in such a way that the disciples are fearing for their lives, Jesus is sleeping, confident in God’s presence. No wonder that the disciples are upset, thinking that he doesn’t care. But there is something that they have missed: who Jesus is. No wonder then, also, that Jesus says to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’In the passage for today from the book of Job, God responds to Job ‘from the whirlwind’, storms being typically accompanied by a manifestation of God. In a string of rhetorical questions, God reveals his authority, including how limits were set for the primeval waters of chaos. Jesus, by rebuking the wind and the sea, is showing the same authority, as a characteristic of the divine. So that the disciples, filled with great awe, said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’ Wind and storms; they are a part of life. We all go through bad times, even as believers. But God cares, and knowing Jesus makes a difference. Jesus went through the biggest storm of all: dying on a cross for the sins of the world. For a moment, it seemed as if evil had won, but in the end Jesus won the final victory over sin and death when he rose again from the dead. We can be part of his victory through faith, and hear his words amidst the storms of life, saying, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Who is this? This is God’s Son; and this is how we know him. Amen.
Third Sunday after Trinity Mark 4:26-34 Ezekiel 17:22-endThe laws of nature are saying it quite clearly: when you sow seeds, they will sprout and grow and in their coming up they reveal their kind. Jesus, in Mark chapter 4, is teaching that something new is now coming up: the Kingdom of God. He uses parables to explain the truth of the ‘resurrection’ of the true Israel, of the restoration of the people to God, through his ministry and work of salvation. Of course, parables are not always understood straight away; they need explanation, which is what Jesus gives the disciples in private. But in public, he teaches through these stories with a hidden meaning, as his Good News is so explosive in many ways, that it would be too risky to say certain things out loud. It is not, though, as if it is impossible to understand a parable. You may have to think in order to work out the message, but the image uses items and pictures of everyday life, and sometimes reflect something from the earlier Scriptures and prophecies. Today, we find words that God gave to Ezekiel and that record a messianic allegory, describing the Messiah as a twig or branch, that he will plant on Mount Zion, and that it will bear fruit and become a noble cedar. And ‘under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.’ So, what is Jesus saying, then, when he likens the Kingdom of God to someone who ‘would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.’ Could it be that the Kingdom of God is first hidden but it sprouts and grows until it is ripe for a ‘harvest’, as Jesus calls it? There is something else that this picture is also telling and we find it in the sequence of the growing seed, where Jesus says, ‘The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ It has an echo of the prophet Joel, chapter 3, verse 13, which is an image of Judgement Day. Likening this to a time of harvest, Jesus is not saying that it may come, but that it surely will come, just as harvest follows the ripening of the crop. So what can we take away from these images that the parables are teaching? Firstly, we can learn that the Kingdom of God is coming at the right time and in accordance with God’s design: sowing and growing and harvesting are like the cycle of day and night. It is consequential and has an outcome, like the proverb: ‘you reap what you sow’. Secondly, even though something begins small, it is not to be looked down on. You may not see the seed when it is in the ground and sprouting at first, but once it comes up and grows, it cannot be ignored. Small beginnings may grow into large opportunities – like a few people praying and after some time watching the start of something new. Thirdly, there is hope. In the image of the mustard seed, the Kingdom of God is growing tall and big and wide enough to give shelter to the birds, who ‘can make nests in its shade’. The Kingdom of God is good news! It is the freedom that forgiveness gives us through faith, so that we can live our lives ‘to the full’, as Jesus says, bearing good fruit in peace and in joy. May our lives, then, produce a good crop of righteousness through the grace of God. Amen.
Second Sunday after Trinity Mark 3:20-end Genesis 3:8-15Who’s Who 2024 is the 176th edition of one of the world’s longest established reference books, brought up to date for this year with just under 500 new names. The latest annual update includes names from science, technology and medicine, as well as business and leisure, literature, art and music, and more. With almost 500 new names, it is probably an interesting read. But what makes a ‘who’? I suppose that, when it comes to an entry in the reference book, it is all about context and achievement. And we may be able to see why it might be helpful to have these entries, indeed for reference. But we all know that there are many other names that don’t make it into the Who’s Who, but who are, in their own right, still ‘who’s’…In the account of Genesis chapter 3, we find Adam and Eve, here called ‘the man and the woman’ after they have eaten from the forbidden fruit tree. Once their eyes were opened to what they had done and they realised that they were naked, they made coverings for themselves and went into hiding. But the Lord God looks for them – ‘where are you?’ he asks, and finds them and the whole miserable story of their disobedience comes out. It is interesting that the realisation of their nakedness is in the context of their downfall. Before, they had nothing to hide and they feel safe; now they do, and it makes them see themselves for the first time as they really are: fallible, weak, vulnerable, unworthy; especially in the company of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, holy God. It has an effect on who they think and feel they are.Identity is important. From the moment we are born, our notion of who we are is being formed in context: our parents and other family first deciding where we belong and affirming who we are. This is in the negative as well as the positive sense. Not every child, sadly, grows up in a loving and safe environment. Jesus grew up in a family who valued him. But in Mark 3, something else is going on. When his family heard what was going on with him in his role of teacher and prophet, they wanted to restrain him; to them, having known him in the past, he is out of his mind. They might have been afraid of what the crowds – and the religious authorities – might do to him. The scribes had been demonizing him, even though he cast out demons and challenged his critics, saying, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.’ It’s what often happens: when people don’t fit into a certain group’s category, they get labelled in such a way that they can be abused and others won’t take them seriously. The scribes tried to do that with Jesus, so they can safely side-line him. But the label is wrong. Jesus is the stronger one, who has overcome temptation and is bringing in the Kingdom of God. His reproof of being labelled is the most severe in the Bible: ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus says, ‘people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.’ – for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’ From the moment Jesus began his ministry – his baptism and temptation in the desert affirming his identity as God’s Son – his work has revealed him as the person he is: the Messiah, now reclaiming for God what had been lost. In other words, the real Strong One has arrived and finds his house being burgled, so he is taking action. God’s Kingdom, in which people will find freedom and a new identity, is being proclaimed and inaugurated. A believer will find his or her true identity through faith in Jesus. The scribes are wrong: there is no-one saner than Jesus, who will prove his power and his identity even more in what is to follow. He knows who he really is. And we also can know who we are, by hearing God’s word. How do we know who we are? By knowing whose we are. Amen.
First Sunday after Trinity Mark 2:23-3:6 Deuteronomy 5:12-15What was the Sabbath made for? We are reminded in Deuteronomy that the Sabbath was instituted as a day of rest, as a holy day to the Lord our God, but the rationale given in Deuteronomy is a bit different from the way it is mentioned in Exodus 20. Here, in Deuteronomy, the people are reminded that they ‘were slaves in Egypt, and that the Lord their God brought them out from there with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord God commanded them to keep the Sabbath day.’In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, it is the Pharisees who object to Jesus’ disciples plucking heads of grain as they were going through the grainfields on a Sabbath. In their eyes, the disciples might have been doubly at fault: travel and work (walking further than necessary according to Sabbath principles, and harvesting) being against the Sabbath rule. The very fact that they were there to observe, may of course raise the question why they had ‘travelled’ the distance on the Sabbath themselves…. They might have thought that what with all the different astonishing things that Jesus had been doing, he and his disciples needed watching. Mainly, I suppose, to see if this Jesus, who was such a different teacher, was a proper, loyal Jew. In his reply, however, Jesus doesn’t respond to that implication, but he simply summarizes the story of David who commandeered food for his soldiers (1 Samuel 21:1-6) when they were hungry, which is a detail that the story doesn’t say but is implied: ‘David entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Keeping the Sabbath was one of the Ten Commandments, and through centuries of Jewish teaching, as well as the prophets, this had been reinforced down the generations. It was even one of the things that set the Jewish people apart: it reminded them that they were God’s people. Jesus, more than anybody else, would know this. In fact, in his reply to the Pharisees’ criticism, he doesn’t deny that they are not observing the Sabbath. Instead, though, he pleads that there are special circumstances and a scriptural precedent in David’s story. Jesus’ words are also saying something else: by referring to David and the incident mentioned, he puts himself in the same league as King David, and more: assuming the title ‘Son of Man’. His words, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.’, refer to the new Kingdom now breaking in. In other words, Jesus is assuming his authority as God-given, for the purpose of the redemption and the renewal of humankind. He, as the Messiah, as the true representative of humanity, reshapes the rules, in the light of the work of salvation that he was about to perform. This work is to be God’s mighty act in the world on behalf of its people, as a new Exodus, as a new rest for a new creation. What is the Sabbath for? It is a gift of God to his people, to remind them of who he is; so that we may know how much he loves us and honour him. Amen.
