Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:07] We're jumping into a new series today that's gonna. It's gonna span a couple months actually, is we're gonna go all the way through the Gospel of Mark together.
[00:00:16] Some say verse by verse or section by section. We're gonna go slowly all the way through this. And why do we do that? Well, it's to help us all understand a bit more context of the scripture that we read. It's. It's normal to pull out different passages of scripture or this verse here or this line here in order to illustrate a point about who Jesus is. And that's all great and we'll continue to do that. We'll even do that in this series. But there's something powerful for those of us who are using scripture to try to follow after Jesus as best we can. There's something powerful for us to dig deep into the text and look at the full context and read every line. So not just grab, this is my favorite story and this is my favorite phrase from Jesus, but instead what came before that, what comes after that, as well as what is in that. So how does this whole thing created together? And the Gospel of Mark is a different one from the other gospel. So you've got Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Those are the beginning of the New Testament. And they are considered the gospels written by disciples of Jesus or people that are kind of adjacent to disciples of Jesus. And this one's different in that it is very, very much a fast paced, action packed version of the Gospel. It doesn't have the birth of Jesus. It doesn't have the genealogy of Jesus. It doesn't have the Sermon on the Mount. It tries to get directly as quickly as possible into the actions of Jesus. And so in Matthew, it's a little bit like TV shows in a way is kind of how it works in my mind. I just jumped into my fourth run through of the show Lost. Any of you guys ever watch lost? Yeah.
[00:01:52] There's 12 of you that are just as excited as I am.
[00:01:56] This was a show that was just. It was still when network TV was a thing, streaming wasn't a thing. And so Lost was kind of this sci fi mystery cliffhanger kind of show. But the difference between that and how those shows are now today is that they had six seasons and almost every season ranged between 20 and 26 episodes that lasted 45 minutes each. Holy cow.
[00:02:21] And you can actually find blogs and podcasts from the writers and stuff that are like, we hit season three and we were like, we have nothing more to talk about, but we're making tons of money.
[00:02:30] So how do we get to the end of this thing and keep some integrity intact?
[00:02:35] So it was just so different right from how that show would be a 13 episode thing on Netflix nowadays. It would just look and sound completely different. And these gospels actually look and they sound very different. Matthew very much is like a lecture course or, or a Bible study. It's meant to be gone, go slowly through it. It includes that Sermon on the Mount. There's a lot of kind of long form storytelling that Matthew has. Luke is kind of the documentary form. It takes a little bit more of the emotion out compared to Matthew, but it still has this kind of long form documentary style thing. And then there's John, who John is the feeler of the group. How many of you guys have a feeler in your friend group? And you know, Matthew begins with. And this is the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And Mark begins with. And we'll read it in just a moment. This is a good news about Jesus, the Messiah. John comes in to the stage and he asks for the lights to be turned down real low and a spotlight on him. And he goes. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
[00:03:42] In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
[00:03:49] And John kind of inserts this stuff all throughout. It's about this real love story. It's about the love of Jesus that he had for John, that he had for the disciples, that he has for us in this world now today. And Mark very much is the movie version. There's a short trailer and then it's all action from here on out, all the way to the very end of the gospel.
[00:04:13] And a lot of people believe that it was written this way because it's actually written or dictated by one of Jesus disciples named Peter. So the book is called Mark because often this book is attributed to John, Mark who was one of Peter's disciples. Peter couldn't write or couldn't read and so he would dictate to someone. He dictated. This gospel is kind of the idea and that Peter was a little bit fast paced and action packed, himself a little bit emotional. And this, there's this idea that Peter would have wanted his telling of the gospel to be that quick and very action based. And so here it is, this is how it begins. In Mark, chapter one, verse one, it says this is the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. And it began just as the prophet Isaiah had written, Look, I'm sending my messenger ahead of you and he will prepare your way. He has a voice shouting in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord's coming. Clear the road for him. So it begins with this prophecy from Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40. Those are the prophecies that are that are quoted right here. Says this messenger was John the Baptist. And he was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan river. His clothes are woven from coarse camel hair and he wore a leather belt around his waist. And for food he ate locusts and wild honey. John announced, someone is coming soon who is greater than I am so much greater that I'm not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:52] One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and John baptized him in the Jordan River. And Jesus came up out of the water. He saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, you are my dearly loved son, and you bring me great joy. The Spirit had compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan. For 40 days he was out among the wild animals and angels took care of him. Let's pray one more time and jump all the way into this. Jesus, we just thank you for your presence here among us. We thank you for that dynamic love that exists in the gospel that exists in this gospel. I pray that we would be changed because of what we read here. That your spirit would be with us, Lord. That it wouldn't just be the exercise of going through church again and reading old, ancient texts that has become wrote to us, but instead that it would be living and active, that it would pierce our souls. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:06:48] So as always with, with this scripture, we're trying to get a better understanding of Jesus as we go along, right? We're trying to follow after Jesus. It exists inside of the word that we call of ourselves. We call ourselves Christians, which is a little Christ. It's a smaller version that's trying to live up to this idea of the bigger version. We're trying to speak like Jesus and walk like Jesus and live like Jesus. And so as we walk through the gospel, we. We don't need to just read the text, but we need to even try our best to kind of feel and watch how Jesus moves through the world. And at the very beginning of this gospel, Jesus does something that still kind of breaks my brain a little bit, and he makes the decision to get baptized.
[00:07:34] Now, we believe in baptism here, and if you haven't been baptized, we would love for you to get baptized next time we have that available. We would love for that to be the next step in your journey as a Christian.
[00:07:46] But you and I aren't like Jesus, right? Like, we're trying our best, but Jesus is God come to earth. Now, maybe one of you is God come to earth, but I talk to your spouse and they say no.
[00:08:04] And so it makes sense for you to get baptized.
[00:08:08] And with Jesus, I'm going, this seems like a waste of time.
[00:08:13] Why do you need to do this? And John the Baptist even feels the same way. Jesus comes and is ready to get baptized. And John's like, I think you should be dunking me.
[00:08:22] This is backwards and interesting and maybe wrong, but the more you read through it and the more I hang out and spend time and listen to people that are smarter than me, I've come up with five reasons that I believe that Jesus gets baptized.
[00:08:39] And it's a powerful thing when you know kind of the ins and outs of all this. So I'll just go ahead and start with the list. The first thing that happens when Jesus gets baptized, he does it to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus explained to John the Baptist that his baptism was necessary to fulfill God's plan. It also happens in Matthew 3:15.
[00:08:59] It symbolizes Jesus full obedience to the Father's will.
[00:09:08] Full obedience to the Father's will.
[00:09:12] We are called also into this same obedience, not just being obedient to the idea of baptism, but being obedient to the will of God. Now, what does that look like in our lives? Well, it can look like sometimes making this checklist of ways that we should behave and who we should be. The problem is, is that sometimes our checklists, right after we write them, have flaws in them.
[00:09:33] We don't always know exactly what to put onto the checklist. And so sometimes we accomplish every one of our goals, and then we realize that one of our goals was unnecessary or maybe even a negative in the place.
[00:09:45] Anybody ever done this? Achieved a huge goal in your life, and then that achievement leaves you feeling more empty than you felt before.
[00:09:52] And there's this idea of man. I did everything that I could in order to accomplish that thing. And maybe the goal itself missed the mark.
[00:10:00] So it can create this difficult relationship that we have with obedience. And what I would help you understand today is that obedience with God is not knowing every single answer, every single time a question is asked to you. But instead it's this submittance to the will of God that ultimately this world does not belong to you, but instead it belongs to God. And that as we move through the world and we make decisions and we try to love people and we're engaged in difficult and wonderful and beautiful relationships, that we are actually going to mess it up often. But ultimately our hearts need to be postured in a way where we say God is God and I am not.
[00:10:37] And I'm submitted to his will over the long term as Jesus is submitted to the will of God as he's baptized. The second thing that happens when Jesus is baptized is that he identifies with humanity.
[00:10:51] By being baptized, Jesus aligns himself with sinners, showing solidarity with those he came to save. It prefigured his ultimate act of taking on humanity's sins at the cross.
[00:11:04] So if you're coming with this understanding, even right at this moment, a lot of people aren't completely sure when Jesus arrives for his baptism. But if you're coming with the idea that this is God who has come to live among us, it would have been very difficult to reconcile that he would get baptized to identify with sinners or those he came to save.
[00:11:24] Because up to that point, God was considered someone that kind of used people as pawns. It wasn't quite so relational. And especially in mythology, you talk about the Greek and Roman mythologies, these people definitely disconnected as far as possible this idea of God or the gods from the people itself. And so Jesus coming to identify with us, the sinners, would have been confusing for some. But then those who stuck around long enough and followed after Jesus would have began to understand that this is not just some other made up God. Instead, it's a God that has chosen us to live with us and to identify with us. Because this is a God that doesn't just create, but it's a God that loves.
[00:12:06] And that's the difference.
[00:12:09] God is not satisfied with creating only and ruling only, but instead is satisfied with loving and relationship.
[00:12:19] The third thing is this. Jesus inaugurates his time of ministry.
[00:12:25] Up to this point, roughly around 30 years old, Jesus had not begun what we would call his formal ministry. He worked with family, he worked as a carpenter, he learned inside the temples and he read, but he had not started his ministry. And this begins with his baptism, signifying his readiness to carry out this mission.
[00:12:49] I, I've. I, for some reason, can really mark a few times in my life where I've been incredibly cynical about ceremony or even the beginning of a new year. You know, I remember as a kid, it's like, oh, this is fun. Like, my daughter was so into New Year's this year and last year, she's seven years old and, you know, she hit about 11 o'clock and she's on the couch just trying her best, you know, like, I can make it.
[00:13:15] And then she fell asleep and went to midnight. I tried to wake her up and she wouldn't. She wouldn't have. She got mad at me, actually. So that's good.
[00:13:23] But I remember as a kid, you're like, this is so fun. And then, you know, I think I gained. I just gained, like all of us, through so much wisdom. Right around the age of like 20, 21, 22, I was like, I don't understand this. Why do we do this? We don't celebrate the turning of the clock or the calendar in any other day. What is the significance of this? It's nothing. It's just another day. Why do we make resolutions? Why do we think this is such a big deal? Why do we celebrate it? There's nothing to celebrate because I've learned about the world, you know, whatever I would have said back then.
[00:13:56] And now, the more life I live, the more I think, oh, I think these moments where we take an opportunity to begin something new are actually really beautiful and wonderful and gifts from God.
[00:14:08] That the sun goes down and then it rises again. It begins a day, it ends a day.
[00:14:14] We are gifted with the opportunity of a new year, a new time to embark on a new journey, a new way of being, a new thing that we want to get good at or something that we want to leave behind. These markers and ceremonies actually can have great significance for us. Of course, you can begin a new journey at any moment of any day, but it's helpful to even have the calendar on your side when choosing to have a new start. And Jesus chooses to have a new start in this powerful, powerful way through baptism. The fourth thing is this. He identifies not only with humanity, but he identifies with God. At his baptism, the heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and God declared, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, affirming his identity and his mission.
[00:15:08] I've done stand up Comedy a couple times just to see if I could do it. All right. Not interested in a career change. That's way too hard.
[00:15:18] But I did get a small taste of what I've seen in comedians, and that is people laughing at your jokes over the course of five minutes might be the most addictive drug in the whole world.
[00:15:31] Because what you hear when you're on that stage and you tell a joke and people laugh, you don't hear, ha, ha, ha ha. You hear, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life. And I want to hear you tell jokes all night. That's what you hear.
[00:15:44] It's amazing. There's nothing like it. And you start rolling and you get going, and it's exciting and it's fun, and it's regular, consistent, instant gratification and affirmation that what you're doing is funny. I think it was Jerry Seinfeld or somebody that says that standup comedy is the most pure art form because they laugh or they don't. You're good or you're bad. There's no in between. And when you're good and they're laughing, there's something about it.
[00:16:11] It's this affirmation that we get. And we actually get a similar thing over the course of our lives where we find people in our lives that will encourage us. They will fan that flame of talent that we have, or that passion that we have, that ability, that vision that we can see that nobody else can see. And sometimes we find that person or those people that will fan that into flame. And it's this incredible moment that happens where the vision that God has for our lives or the mission that God has for our lives is a affirmed by a parent or a loved one or somebody that's been around a little bit longer than us. And what God does in this moment to Affirm Jesus after 30 years is such a beautiful thing that I hope that we can take on in our world. Of course, we're trying to be like Jesus throughout this entire story of scripture. But I hope that we can pick up this attribute that God has of being an encouragement to people around us instead of this zero sum game of in order for me to feel successful, I need you to feel unsuccessful. We actually fan into flame the gifts and the talents and the abilities and the mission that God has in each and every single individual in our lives.
[00:17:24] So he identifies with God, not just humanity. He also identifies with God. And it happens through this encouragement and affirmation. Finally, the fifth one, it creates a Model for believers. Jesus baptism serves as an example, underscoring the importance of baptism as a public declaration of faith and commitment to God.
[00:17:45] Again, if you haven't been baptized, we would love for you to get baptized because it is this public proclamation of I am choosing to follow after Jesus. And I'm also aware that I can't do this alone, but I have to do it in community.
[00:17:57] Sometimes we'll have people ask us, which I totally understand.
[00:18:01] I would love to be baptized, but can it be a private baptism? And we gently say that's not how baptism works.
[00:18:10] We don't do private baptisms because it's a very public thing. It's a public declaration. Again, we need community. And oftentimes baptism is an entry point into this. Hey, we're all in this together and we're going to try to figure it out as best we can.
[00:18:26] But ultimately, what I think Jesus is doing through all of this, this is kind of the umbrella or the, the tie that binds all of these things, is I believe that Jesus is establishing through this closeness in relationship with this, with us again, identifying with humanity, identifying with God, fulfilling righteousness.
[00:18:48] What I believe he's doing is actually creating authority in the world.
[00:18:54] Now, I say authority and I don't say power. And I do it on purpose. And it's because this, this thought that this story that I heard about a sociologist named Max Weber, he's a German sociologist, he was pretty early in the field, so it's like late 1800s. He's having these theories and thoughts and he has some new ideas about power and where power comes from. And Weber proposed that there's a difference between power and authority. So power is the ability to coerce.
[00:19:23] If you do what I tell you because you do what I tell you because you have to, that's power in the New Testament. Rome is a good example of this, or Caesar is an example of this. Make everyone to return to your hometown for a census and attacks because you have to, because I told you to. Power tells you what to do.
[00:19:44] Now he says authority believes is different than that because authority comes from a different source. It doesn't come from your genealogy to be able to sit on the throne. It doesn't come from your size or your strength and muscles. It doesn't come from military might, which was the common way you got power. In the time that Jesus is talked about here in this gospel, you had to overthrow a government or you had to be born into power. But instead, Jesus begins to take authority as a king because Jesus is the King. That's ultimately what this book is trying to point toward.
[00:20:19] But he takes authority and not simple power. And here's a really good example, I think, that illustrates the two. This is a newspaper article sent to me from a friend, Rick Russell, who's a pastor at Mountain View Fellowship in Redmond.
[00:20:35] It's from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and it says this. It says, the tiny woman in the white robes with blue trim didn't look as though she could bring a group of businessmen, attorneys and government officials to its knees. But she did.
[00:20:48] And it happened in a place called Norristown. The tiny woman, of course, was Mother Teresa.
[00:20:55] This group now admits that they never stood a chance against her.
[00:21:00] In Norristown began in 84 when missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa, moved into a convent in Norristown. The idea and the reason they moved in was to help the poorest of the poor. And so they created a soup kitchen and a shelter. But some in the borough and the neighborhood were apprehensive. The neighborhood was beginning to change, and it worried people like Ronald Share, whose law firm was just a block away. The mission property was not zoned for buildings other than single family homes and office space. Warned the planning and zoning commissions. A fight erupted, and the government commission voted down the ministry. And then Mother Teresa actually came to town.
[00:21:45] She asked to meet with the group of government officials to determine what had been done to allow the shelter to continue to operate or what could be done to allow the shelter to operate. Sam Vallone, a member of the borough City Council at the time, was among them. He said, I've met two presidents, and I was awed by the significance of their office. And then here comes this little old lady who had no office, but she had sacrificed so much of her life for humanity.
[00:22:10] The group met for about an hour. Mother Teresa opened the meeting with a prayer. She was humble, direct, soft spoken, and barely spoke above a whisper.
[00:22:19] When I left, Vallon said, I felt like I was 3ft tall.
[00:22:24] It wasn't long after that that Vallone uttered a statement that echoed around the streets of Norristown. I want to make it clear that Sam Vallone will not go on record as voting against a saint.
[00:22:36] It wasn't long before the others followed. And this is my favorite quote from the article. It says, I guess it wasn't nice of us to fight against Mother Teresa, so we kind of gave up, said Ronald Scher.
[00:22:50] Scher's partner, Benjamin Zuckerman, was the spokesman for those who opposed to following the shelter to continue to operate on Delcombe street in Norristown. The zoning board eventually granted the convent the special exception needed to operate. The shelter, which still serves between 50 and 70 meals a day, has facilities to house 25 women and children overnight.
[00:23:10] Now, I would ask you, what did Mother Teresa have, and does it look like power in the definition that I shared earlier?
[00:23:20] Was she of physical stature?
[00:23:23] She's a small woman, no muscle, no loud voice.
[00:23:32] Did she have the law on her side? No. Specifically, she had the law against her.
[00:23:38] Did she have the money or the foothold in the community as other businessmen in this law firm had? No.
[00:23:45] They had all been there. They all had the money.
[00:23:49] But what happens when someone who has given their life in sacrifice for humanity walks into a room? No matter who is in it and no matter what laws they have, no matter how much money they have, what happens is what happened with Jesus back at the beginning of this Gospel of Mark. There is an authority on their life because of the sacrifice that they have given for so many.
[00:24:15] And what do you know? But that authority allowed the poorest of the poor to be ministered to in this neighborhood.
[00:24:24] And so I want to do a couple things as we close here in this moment today, as we walk through the Book of Mark, look for these places where Jesus actually denies this conventional power and he embraces the authority given to him through humility and sacrifice. Again, he is God. He does not need to be baptized to go through a human ceremony of obedience in order to be justified or to prove who he is. And yet he does, because of this connection he wants to have with you and me in the seats today, this relationship, in this love that is expressed through this slow movement and gaining of not just power, but of authority.
[00:25:02] So we're going to watch Jesus and see how he does so in all of these stories.
[00:25:09] But I also want you to take on the challenge today as we head into 2025, that if you have been seeking power, leverage bigger muscles in the world today in order to shape and to move it toward your way, or even what you believe to be God's way, I want to ask you to push back against power and coercion and instead embrace humility and sacrifice that will instead give you authority that is divine.
[00:25:38] It means that we don't have to have every law on our side. Again, we all come at those things from different perspectives, and some are difficult to draw conclusion on exactly who is right and who is wrong. We don't have to hold all the right political offices. We don't have to have all the right business owners. We don't have to have all these things. Instead, Jesus has equipped us not with these places of status or of power. Instead, he's equipped us with an opportunity to be humble in spirit, to be sacrificial in our living, and to look out at the entire world as Jesus did as he enters into heaven and say, all of these people, all across this massive spectrum of experience and success and thoughtfulness and safety across this huge spectrum, I choose to love every single one to die, for every single one to be baptized, for every single one to live my life in humility for those who had never returned the favor. This is the way that the church not not the way that the church gains power, but instead the way that the church gains authority.
