Coping with Success

9.30am Sunday 27 July 2008

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-9; Mark 3:7-12; Acts 5:12-16 TNIV

In many respects, very little has changed in two thousand years. What happened back in Jesus' time is still the same today. People flock to where miracles are happening.

Try and imagine the scene as depicted in our reading from Mark this morning. It says, first of all, "Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake."[1] We know where Jesus "withdrew" from because previously he had been in a synagogue on the Sabbath where he had healed the man with a shrivelled hand. It was a good thing that Jesus did for this man. The problem was that he had done it on the Sabbath, and as we saw two weeks ago, the Pharisees took issue with him about it because they believed that healing on the Sabbath, unless it was a matter of life and death, was work and, therefore, strictly forbidden. To flout this law as Jesus did was encouraging others to do the same. However, Jesus had chosen to ignore the petty rules and regulations with which the Pharisees had hedged about Sabbath observance. He healed the man, which led to the Pharisees determining to get rid of Jesus. People could not make light of the Sabbath Law as Jesus did. They sincerely believed that Jesus must be stopped, and the sooner the better. The strength of their determination to carry this through is seen in the fact that they joined forces with the Herodians, a political group interested in maintaining the power and authority of the Herods and the rule from Rome. They collaborated with those who ruled that land. While both the Pharisees and Sadduccees opposed Jesus Christ because they viewed him as a competitor for religious leadership of the people, the Herodians opposed Jesus because they viewed his growing popularity as a political threat to their Roman masters. The Pharisees would never have sided with the Herodians in normal circumstances, but it shows how far they were willing to go to plot Jesus' death. It was for this reason that "Jesus withdrew with his disciples." Things were hotting up and it was becoming increasingly dangerous to minister in the synagogues. From that time on Jesus preached outdoors. We see in the passage we read this morning that he is by the lake. At the beginning of Chapter 4 we read again of him teaching "by the lake."[2] In fact, in Mark there is only one other reference of Jesus being in a synagogue after the healing of the man with a withered hand, and that is when he went back to his home town of Nazareth, which we will read about when we come to Mark 6.

The growing opposition of the Pharisees was one reason why Jesus moved his ministry to the outdoors. This has happened to other Christian preachers down through the centuries. Being unwelcome in the church of their day, they have been forced to withdraw as Jesus did and take their ministry elsewhere. Paul encountered opposition from those within the Jewish synagogues throughout the Roman Empire and was forced to find where he could preach the Gospel. John Wesley had the same experience in the eighteenth century. As an ordained Anglican minister, he had no desire to leave the Anglican church, but its pulpits were barred to him because the church hierarchy forbade him to preach outdoors. This picture is of Wesley preaching outside St Andrews Church. It was there where John Wesley returned one day in the 1840's and asked the current rector permission to deliver a message in the old church. When he was denied he told the rector that he would deliver the message on the only free piece of land near by. It was six feet from the door of the church that John Wesley climbed on top of his father's grave and once again gave the message of "you must be born again."  In his journals he wrote: "I am well assured that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father's tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit." About preaching outdoors he said, "To this day field preaching is a cross to me, but I know my commission and see no other way of preaching the gospel to every creature". Another was William Booth, who when parishioners objected to drunks and prostitutes attending their churches and sitting in their seats when Booth was preaching, he had to withdraw and find other places where his eager enquirers would be welcome.

Another reason that necessitated Jesus withdrawing was the size of the crowds who were now flocking to hear him. It would have been impossible to fit so many people in a synagogue. Most synagogues were relatively small buildings, of sufficient size to accommodate the several families of the town. Mark tells us, "...a large crowd from Galilee followed" Jesus and his disciples. But it was not only from Galilee they came. As word spread far and wide about this new teacher in Galilee and the amazing things he was doing, people from all over Palestine came to him. When you consider the places that are mentioned here, some would have travelled days to be there. From Jerusalem alone it was a journey of one hundred and sixty kilometres. Idumea, the ancient realm of Edom, was further south again, between the borders of Palestine and Arabia. Transjordan was nearby, the area east of the Jordan river, but Tyre and Sidon were in the opposite direction, on the Mediterranean sea coast in what was then Phoenicia, and now Lebanon. All these latter were in addition to the "large crowd" from Galilee. In fact, because of the crowd Jesus asked his disciples to have a boat handy. The situation was getting out of control. As more and more people were getting healed, the sick people were not waiting until Jesus got to them but "were pushing forward to touch him." Thus he was in danger of being crushed. (Blank screen)

As I said at the beginning, nothing much has changed in two thousand years. People still attend healing meetings in large numbers, and travel long distances and queue early to make sure they get a seat. When Rodney Howard Browne was in Auckland a few years back people came in their busloads to hear him. The same happened when Benny Hinn was here a short time ago. Before my time at St David's in the Fields Delores Winder conducted meetings here. She had experienced a miraculously healing from a back ailment that had required her to wear a plaster cast. Following her healing she felt called to minister to others with health problems both physical and spiritual, and the fruit of her ministry during her visit to St David's in the Fields is still present today. Often it is people who have experienced healing who are called by God to such a ministry. Cecilie Graham was one, Craig Marsh, the son-in-law of Arnold and Helen Neal is another, Erna Parr another. Erna's story is an amazing testimony to God's grace. Erna, like Delores Winder, had a chronic back problem, and was told by her specialist that there was nothing more they could do to help her. In that time of deep despair God brought across her path a young man who invited his pastor to pray for her. She was sceptical about it making any difference, but left it to Fred, her husband, to make the decision, thinking he would have nothing to do with it. To her surprise, he could not see any harm in having someone pray, and a miracle happened that transformed their lives. Erna bore testimony to her healing for the remainder of her life. It led her and Fred to a preaching and healing ministry that took them the length and breadth of New Zealand in their little aeroplane. Erna also made numerous trips overseas to preach and pray for people's healing.

While I confess to being uncomfortable with some of the practices of modern day healers, I am deeply convinced that healing is part and parcel of the good news Jesus brought, and there will always be a place for healing in the church's ministry. To neglect it is being unfaithful to the Gospel. Jesus came to save people, and the word 'save' means to make whole in body, mind and spirit. Our two other Bible readings bear this out. Isaiah, speaking centuries before Christ, prophesied that healing would accompany the ministry of the Messiah.[3] The Gospels are full of accounts where the words of Isaiah are fulfilled - the blind received their sight, those in bondage to sickness and disease were freed, and people enslaved in the darkness of demonic powers were released, as we will see in Chapter 5. Jesus, in training his disciples, sent them out to do exactly as he did. They were to "drive out all demons and to cure diseases, ...to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick."[4] This they did, and continued to do after Jesus' resurrection. In Acts 5 we read, "Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed."[5] Healing is an essential part of the Gospel Message. Many of you can bear witness to that.

What can we learn from these readings today? In the church and its ministry there must be

1.      Evidence of God's POWER at work. The church should do more than just talk about the power of God; it should be a community that exhibits some evidence of the power. People want to see reality. They are naturally drawn to where there is clear evidence of God at work. We all know that wherever there is fire, a crowd gathers. It is like a magnet. People gather to see what is happening. This is just as true with the church. People want to see reality, and where there is clear evidence of the power of God at work, changing lives and making people whole, it naturally draws people. At the same time we need to acknowledge that large crowds are not necessarily the mark of a successful ministry. In Mark the crowds converge on Jesus because of what they have heard, but it is probably fair to suggest that they were more interested in what "he did" that in what he said. Crowds by their very nature are seldom able to grasp truth, and in this passage in Mark we can detect a reserve on the part of Jesus to his growing popularity. The parable of the sower in the following chapter will underscore the deceptive nature of enthusiasm the springs up quickly but fades equally as fast. What Jesus looked for was mature faith and commitment. He knew that the crowds understanding of the Messiah was far from reality. Only the evil spirits had any idea of who Jesus really was. But note how Jesus silences their voices. The ravings of demons can never be the source of divine revelation. Their confession may have been formally correct, but it was hostile and ill-timed. It was not a confession of faith, but of fear. It illustrates the truth that we must know him rightly before we try to make him known. Jesus knew it was going to take time, even for his own disciples, to grasp the truth as to who he really was. Although those who came for healing may not have understood Jesus correctly, he did not refuse those who came to him for help. And neither should we, but we should be wary of measuring success by numbers. It is easy to get caught up and carried away in the hype of the moment, but it is what remains several years from now that really matters. The evidence of changed lives and healed bodies encourages people to come to Jesus. He alone can make you and I whole. Do you need his touch today? Are you willing to come forward as these people did? Jesus invites you to come. You will not be disappointed. The Bible encourages us to ask for his help in our times of need. James says, "You do not have because you do not ask God."[6] Jesus said, "Ask and it will be given to you..."[7] "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."[8] God's power is able to immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Ask today?

The second thing that we can learn from this passage is that we see in Jesus'

2.      A readiness to CONFRONT EVIL wherever he found it. The church should be a community that does more than just confess Jesus' name, which is no more that what the unclean spirits did in this passage in Mark. The church has the task of standing up and confronting evil in the arena of life. Thomas Aquinas is reported to have had an audience with Pope Innocent II and came upon him counting a large sum of money through the sale of indulgences. The Pope boasted: "See, Thomas, the church can no longer say, 'Silver and gold have I none.'"[9] Aquinas responded, 'True, holy father, but neither can she now say, 'Arise and walk.'" One may ask whether the church confronts the powers of evil today.

The church (is often) silent and helpless before the evils that corrode the souls of men. It is much easier to retreat into a shell of comfortable Christianity. David Gushee's sobering account of those few righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the holocaust is disturbing because it documents how few Christians confronted the evil that swept Europe. What Hitler did could not have been accomplished without the complicity and acquiescence of a nation that was predominantly Christian. Gushee documents that of the three hundred million under Nazi domination, 90 percent were Christian and 60 percent would have described themselves as "very" or "somewhat" religious before the war. But the number of those who acted to save Jews was less than 1 percent. One of his conclusions is particularly disturbing: "The irrelevance of Christian faith for many self-identified Christian rescuers in so-called Christian Europe is an extraordinary finding." Some of the rescuers took action "despite some of the teaching they received at church." Lech Sarna, a devout Polish Catholic, was tormented after his attendance at church. He lamented, "I am sure to lose in both worlds. They will kill me for keeping Jews and then I will lose heaven for helping Jews." There were a number of non-believers, such as Oskar Schindler, who helped to save the Jewish people from "the final solution" that the Nazi's were implementing throughout Europe.[10] We have a responsibility for the moral formation of one another, especially our youth, so that they and we can recognise evil when it appears and be willing to challenge it regardless of the cost.

There is always the temptation to retreat from the world or to overlook the evil in our midst. We have been sent by Christ into the midst of an evil world to confront evil head-on with the power of God. Through the cross Jesus broke the hold of the evil one. He stated before his death, "...now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."[11] He calls us as his church to proclaim his kingdom, to enforce his victory in the world, that God's rule may be on earth as it is in heaven. He calls us to come to the cross, acknowledge our sin, receive his forgiveness and the gift of his Spirit, then take up our cross and follow him.