Watershed
Mark 6 is
a watershed chapter in Mark. This is the
chapter where Jesus is officially rejected by His hometown, He sends out His
disciples, we hear about the death of John the Baptist, the disciples return
and experience the feeding of the five thousand, and then we get the famous
walking on water story. This chapter has
a ton of great stories. But there is one
theme that holds them all together: Jesus and society.
Remember
what I said a few days ago about the parables.
Jesus uses parables to weed those who are genuinely coming to learn from
Him out away from those who are coming just to see some miracle and have
someone do something for them. Yes,
Jesus came into the world so that the “world might be saved,” but Jesus knows
that people must receive the free gift of God’s grace. This chapter shows us quite bluntly who is
and who isn’t interested in coming to God.
Nazareth
We begin
in Jesus’ hometown. They are amazed – astonished,
really – at His teaching, but they can neither believe it nor believe in Him. All they can see is the little
carpenter. All they can see is how
“normal” the rest of His family is. Never
mind that His half-brother James will become one of the prominent leaders of
the church and His half-brother Jude is likely the author of the letter in the
Bible that bears his name. They reject
Jesus because Jesus does not fit their mold.
Actually, their rejection isn’t much more different than the rejection
Jesus felt among the Gerasenes a chapter earlier. Jesus cannot be controlled and put into a
box. So He is rejected by society.
Sending Out the Twelve
Jesus then
sends out His Twelve. He gave them
authority over the unclean spirits. I
love how this story follows the story of Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth. Jesus is rejected, and twelve “little
Jesuses” go out. That’s the church,
people. No evangelist is going to be
able to get into every single place in this world. We will all be rejected. Every single person – no matter how
charismatic they are – will eventually rub someone else the wrong way. We need each other. When one of us gets rejected, someone else
can take their place and do what that first person might have been unable to do
– unable because of society’s choice, not because of a fault in God’s power. Society might be able to reject God’s
authority working through Jesus, but it cannot stop it from working and it most
certainly cannot stop it from being real.
John’s Interlude
The next
story we have is the story of John the Baptizer’s death. Clearly this is a foreshadowing of Jesus’
death. John stood up for the faith and
was persecuted like the Hebrew prophets in whose shoes he walked. John was killed because he stood up for the
faith. It will be no different for
Jesus. What does Jesus say? The world will hate us because it has already
hated Him. {See John 15:18-9 or John 17:14 if you are in doubt of the Biblical
assertion of this principle.}
But what
is really neat is how this trio of stories goes together. Jesus is rejected, twelve mini-Jesuses go
out, Jesus’ death is foreshadowed. Mark
is telling us a truth here. It is okay
that Jesus dies on the cross because His disciples are able to carry the
message for Him! Jesus does not have to
be the sole message-bearer! Since He
doesn’t have to worry about who is going to take the message to the world, Jesus
can be the sacrifice that God sent Him here to be – which is something that
none of us can do in His place. Mark’s
point is that the rejection of Jesus is one of the linchpins to God’s
plan. It is now okay for the plan to go
forward because Jesus has His evangelists and disciple-makers. He can die for our sins with confidence
because there are people willing to carry that message out for Him.
Feeding the Masses
We now get
to the feeding of the five thousand. Notice
how this story is set up? The twelve
return, and Jesus wants some alone debriefing time. So they go out in the boat. But the crowd is not interested in humbling
themselves to Jesus’ will. They don’t
care whether or not Jesus says it is okay for them to come. They walk to the other side of the lake and
are there when Jesus gets off of the boat.
What
happens here? In spite of their
self-mongerish lack of humbleness, the crowd gets some great teaching. They get a great miracle. But who follows Him? We are not told of a single one.
With a bit
of luck, hopefully the seed was sown and some of this crowd did come to follow
after Jesus’ death. But we are not told
of a single one who became obedient to Jesus’ teaching. The truth is that even after a day of great
teaching and a powerful miracle there were not many – if any – who were willing
to change their life. Here is another
sad story about the world and their desire to submit to Jesus’ authority. The world may think Jesus is a pretty neat
show of power, but not neat enough to warrant giving up their life.
Walking On Water
We finally
come to the story of the walking on water.
Notice that in Mark there is no account of Peter’s journey out of the
boat. That is because Mark has a very
clear point. The story of Jesus walking
on water is a story about the centricity of Jesus, not the courage – or as I
believe, foolishness out of disobedience – of the disciples.
Look at
what happens. Jesus tells the disciples
to get into the boat. Here is yet
another story where Jesus intentionally directs His disciples to get into a
situation that He knows is going to be dangerous. Then Jesus goes up and prays and then begins
to walk across the lake – unaffected by the storm. The disciples, on the other hand, are worried
for their life.
What can
we learn? Humanity – even the strong and
faithful among us – has a fairly fickle faith.
We are easily distracted from having our gaze be upon Christ. The disciples had been commissioned, had a
successful ministry on their own for a time, and came back to Jesus only to
experience a powerful miracle. They
should not have been so easily frightened into forgetting who is in control of
this life! But they were.
We all
are. They didn’t do anything that I
haven’t done. I’ve had plenty of times
when I’ve lost faith when I had every reason to maintain that very faith.
As I said,
this story is about the centricity of Jesus to our lives. He should be our focus always. But sometimes we are like the world. Sometimes we lose our focus. Sometimes we don’t have what it takes to
“wake up with our mind stayed upon Jesus.”
The really
cool part is that even though His disciples show their humanity, Jesus does not
abandon them. He comes to them and
teaches them. He demonstrates the
foolishness of their humanity so that they can learn from it. He loves them. He continues to march ahead with them into
God’s plan. When they get to the other
side, it’s ministry as usual – healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of
heaven to anyone who will listen.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment