We don't always
remember this in our day and age, but Jesus was a Jew. This seems
obvious when I say it, but we don't often think through the
implications of it. And one of the implications is that every
Sabbath day, he went to worship at the local synagogue, wherever he
found himself. Normally at home in Nazareth, but when he was on the
road, he went local.
And here, in Mark's
Gospel, Jesus is at the very beginning of his ministry. Mark tells
us that he has been baptised, and then gone into the desert to think
through the implications of this, to work out what it means to be
“God's beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased.” He was tempted,
and learnt what was and was not the right thing to do with his divine
power.
And then John, his
cousin, was put in prison and Jesus knew the time had come to start
his own ministry in good earnest. He came out of the desert, and
picked up Andrew and Peter and one or two others – we know from
John's gospel that Andrew and Peter had been followers of John before
this – and then, on the Sabbath, he finds himself in Capernaum,
about 20 miles as the crow flies from his home town of Nazareth. So
they all go to the synagogue there.
Now, one of the things
about synagogue worship was that – is that, I should say, as I
understand it is much the same today – is that you don't have to
have a trained preacher up there, but almost any adult – adult
males, in many synagogues, but some welcome women, too – can get up
on his hind legs and expound the Scriptures. And visitors were very
often asked to read the Scripture passage for the day as a way of
honouring them, and it was quite “done” to comment on it. You
might remember Jesus goes home to Nazareth at one stage and is asked
to read the Scriptures there, with rather disastrous results. But
not on this occasion.
What happens here,
though is equally unexpected. Someone with an evil spirit is there,
and the evil spirit recognises Jesus, and causes its host to cry out,
interrupting whatever Jesus was saying or reading, to cry out: “What
do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
“What do you want
with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
It's a good question,
isn't it? What does Jesus want with us? Why does he come,
interrupting our nice, peaceful church services? Why does he come,
interrupting our nice, peaceful lives? What do you want with us,
Jesus of Nazareth?
Of course, the answer
is going to be different for each and every one of us. And yet there
are some universal truths.
Firstly, I think, he
answers “I want you to let me love you.”
To let him love us.
That sounds as though it ought to be a no-brainer, but in fact, it
can be very difficult to allow ourselves to be loved. And we tend
not to look at it that way round, anyway. We think it's our business
to love God – I am not quite sure what we think God's business is,
but we don't always expect him to love us. And yet, how can we love
unless he loved us first?
There's a story you may
have heard before, told by the theologian and writer Gerard Hughes,
in which he describes an image of God that many of us may have grown
up with; a God who demanded our love and attention, and threatened us
with eternal damnation if he didn't get it. And we ended up telling
God how much we loved him, while secretly hating him and all he stood
for, but terrified of not appearing to love him, because of the
eternal damnation. We weren't told, or if we were told, we didn't
hear, the first bit, which is that God loves us! God loves us so
much that he knows quite well we can't possibly love him first. “We
love, because He first loved us,” we are told. His love comes
first. We need to let him love us. That's the first answer to the
question, “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
“I want you to let me
love you.”
And the second answer
is “I want you to let me heal you.”
Healing. It's a bit of
a vexed question, isn't it? We know that healings happened in the
Scriptures, and we know that they can and do happen today, but we
rarely seem to see any. We do see miraculous physical healings now
and again, and we thank God for them as, indeed, we thank God when
people are healed through modern medicine. But our bodies are going
to wear out or rust out one day, whatever we do. We aren't designed
to live forever on this earth, in these bodies, and they will
eventually come to the end of their usefulness to us. But Scripture
teaches that we will be raised from death in a new body, so it makes
sense to me that the parts of us that make us “us”, if you like,
are the parts that need healed. Our emotions, our personality, our
memories. Things that have screwed us up in our pasts, that we find
hard to get beyond. I believe Jesus always heals us when we ask, but
we usually get the healing we really need, not necessarily the one we
thought we wanted!
Also, while our
language differentiates between healing and forgiveness, Jesus
doesn't seem to so much. Remember the paralysed bloke whose friends
let him down through the roof? Jesus' first words to him were “Your
sins are forgiven!” which was what healed him. We need to be
forgiven our sins, we need to be healed of being a sinner, if you
like. We need to be changed into someone who can love God, and who
can step away from sin – and we'll never do that without Jesus, let
me tell you. We need to be healed so that we can become the person
God created us to be. “I want you to let me heal you.”
“What do you want
with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
“I want you to let me
love you.
I want you to let me
heal you.
And I want you to let
me fill you with the Holy Spirit!”
To be filled with God's
Holy Spirit. According to the Bible, this isn't an optional extra,
it's an absolutely central part of being a Christian. Remember the
believers at Antioch, who were asked whether they'd received the Holy
Spirit when they were baptised, and they were like, “You what?
What's the Holy Spirit?” and Paul had to re-explain the Gospel to
them. It turned out they'd only got as far as John's baptism of
repentance, not the baptism into a new life with Christ. So far as
Paul is concerned, receiving the Holy Spirit is an absolutely central
part of being a Christian.
Makes sense, really,
when you think about it. Because if we are filled with the Holy
Spirit, we are filled with God Himself, and can be loved and healed
and made whole, and God Himself can direct our lives, never forcing,
never compelling, but always asking and reminding us, and enabling
us. We need to be filled with God's Holy Spirit if we are to grow
and change into the people God designed us to be.
“What do you want
with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
Of course, at that time
the question was inappropriate, as was the follow-on of: “I know
who you are, the holy one of God!” because Jesus was only just at
the start of his ministry. He wasn't ready to become universally
known, and anyway, he could sense that that which asked the questions
had no interest in wishing him well. So he did the only possible
thing, which was to command the evil spirit to come out of its host,
which it did, and when the host recovered, all was well. But, of
course, stories like this spread around, and Mark tells us that
Jesus' fame in the area began to grow.
“What do you want of
us, Jesus of Nazareth?” The question still resonates down the
years, and I think the answers are still the same as ever: “I want
you to let me love you. I want you to let me heal you. I want you
to let me fill you with the Holy Spirit.” What is your answer?
What is mine?
Will you let Jesus love
you? Will you let Jesus heal you? Will you let Jesus fill you with
his Holy Spirit? Amen.
