If You Build It....

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

July 22, 2018

I.

After his disciples return from their missionary journeys, and after the gruesome death of his mentor, John the Baptizer, Jesus seeks a quiet and secure place to go for what we would call a time of debriefing.  They have a lot to talk about.  Mark does not tell us how successful the disciples’ mission is, just that they reported back what they had done.  

I wonder if this isn’t because Jesus is less concerned about measuring the success of what they were doing in terms of how many new disciples they gain, and more interested in the quality of their discipleship.  In other words, their job is to do what Jesus told them to do.  Whether it works or not is completely up to God and not their concern.  

It reminds me of the most famous words of Mother Theresa, who, when asked if she wasn’t concerned that her ministry among the poor in Kolkata wasn’t very successful, quips that “God doesn’t call us to be successful; God calls us to be faithful.”  God calls on us to trust and follow and obey.  Whether this achieves our desired results is immaterial.  All we are responsible for is what we are responsible for: our own words and actions.

Discipleship is not a means to some other end.  It is itself the point.  Doing it is its own reward.  We’re not trying to get anywhere or achieve some goal.  Even the Kingdom of God is not an objective.  Rather, the Kingdom of God is realized in discipleship itself.  When we follow Jesus we are manifesting God’s Kingdom.  Even if completely unsuccessful by the world’s standards, even if we’re fewer and fewer in number and poorer and less influential, nevertheless if we are obedient to the Lord it is enough.   

So they all get into a boat intending to sail to a deserted place for a retreat.  Sometimes we need a little distance.  We need perspective.  We need a break from the pressing demands of discipleship.  A time to reflect, assess, recharge, pray, and share experiences is often necessary.  We cannot function for long in discipleship without reconnecting with Jesus and with other disciples.  Without that we burn-out.  Jesus himself would regularly go off alone for prayer.

Any cohesive entity needs boundaries, just as our bodies need skin.  In the early church only the committed, baptized disciples were permitted to share in the Eucharist.  You can’t go to an AA meeting unless you’re an addict yourself.  Building and maintaining a group identity means at some point closing off outsiders, especially toxic and hostile influences.  We can’t be sent unless we are first gathered.

But as they sail along, people see them from the shore, word gets out, and crowds show up.  In this passage we hear about two incidents of this.  Jesus’ reputation at this point is that he attracts a large number of people wherever he goes.

Obviously, Jesus has something that the people value, something that makes a big difference in their lives, something that changes for the better the way they look at the world and the way they actually live.  Jesus does not set out to be popular; but he has become so as a by-product of his ministry. 

II.

Mark is careful to point out the diversity of the crowds.  He says they come from villages, cities, and farms.  This makes it a multi-class group.  Some commentators suggest that the crowds even include both Jews and Gentiles.  We know that there are include men and women, and even children, in the crowds.

In other words, this is not a movement limited to one class or one group of people.  Jesus infamously reaches out even to suspect and outcast groups, like prostitutes and tax collectors, showing no anxiety about who that might offend.  Granted, not many of the elite ruling class in either government, the economy, or religion tend to show up, except to challenge Jesus.  They were doing fine and had no need of his message.  They certainly didn’t want the social order overturned as Jesus implies is necessary.  But at the same time, they do sometimes come to Jesus for healing, and when they do, Jesus heals them without question. 

If you have what Jesus calls “the ears to hear,” that is, if Jesus’ message resonates with you and speaks to you, you are welcome.  

And Jesus tends to do his work publicly in the local market-places, which is interesting because he appropriates the places of commerce and business to basically give away his teaching and his healing.  It would be like going to the mall and setting up a kiosk with free merchandise.  He uses the market-place to establish a kind of anti-market-place.  He takes the area intended for buying and selling, and transforms it into a place of freely giving and freely receiving.  He exemplifies a sharing model.  

The Lord does two things with these diverse crowds in the market-places, Mark tells us.  He teaches and he heals.  

His teaching is not just the passing along of information.  It’s not merely facts and dates and statistics. We know that what Jesus teaches is thought of as “new,” and that it carries its own authority, which is considered more authentic than the derivative authority they are used to from their religious leaders.

Mark includes very little of actual instruction from Jesus.  In Mark Jesus says almost everything in the form of parables.  Parables are deliberately difficult to understand, which is a point he makes back in chapter 4.  This begs the question of why people would go to such trouble to gather to hear someone relate parables they did not understand.  Mark’s point is to let Jesus’ teachings be visible and apparent in his actions.

And the main actions of the Lord that Mark tells us about are his healings.  His healing is an outward, tangible expression of his teaching.  In Mark we get this more indirect view of Jesus’ message; we hear it in the parables, and in his responses to others’ questions, and we see it in his healing ministry.  

III.

Jesus is moved to set aside his intention of finding a secluded space for a retreat because he is filled with compassion for the people who come out to him.  Compassion overrules Jesus’ agenda for taking his disciples on retreat.  He has them land the boat, and he ministers to the needs of the people.  

Compassion ought to overrule just about everything, as we see in Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan.  Indeed, we see this in Jesus’ ministry generally as his healing work gets activated whenever someone in need approaches him.  Jesus automatically identifies with individuals in their brokenness and pain, and that identification itself unlocks the trust within them, enabling them to be restored to wholeness.

Compassion is the key to Jesus’ ministry.  Therefore, it is also the key to ours.  It is God’s compassion, God’s loving identification with us, God’s overflowing mercy for us, God’s heartbrokenness at our suffering and lostness, God’s gift of grace and forgiveness, that is expressed in the Incarnation in the first place.  It is not our achievements and skills and triumphs that bring God close to us so much as our failures, defeats, losses, and hurts.  

It is like with our own children.  We gush with joy and pride when they do something excellent.  But there is something deeper and more gut wrenching we feel when we see them struggling, lost, confused, or broken.  The word that Mark uses for compassion here is literally that: it says Jesus is “moved in his guts” when he sees the people coming to him in their need and pain.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd,” he says, meaning that they were vulnerable and liable to be attacked by wolves.

This kind of empathic response we see in Jesus is an indication of the true humanity we share with him.  We cannot ignore, we cannot but be moved by another’s suffering.  It touches and affects us deeply.  

Most of the time we have to block out the suffering of others just so we can function.  This is when we are locked in our own egocentricity and not accessing our humanity.  When we step over a homeless woman, or are barely conscious of the people injured in a car accident as we pass by, or even when we hear of the parents and children separated at our own border, or of civilians being bombed in Yemen, or Syria, or Gaza, or any of the constant flood of horror and misery that technology now allows into our daily experience, and don’t react to or worse react only with careless judgment, condemnation, or rationalization, then we are rejecting Jesus himself.  We are separating ourselves from God’s compassion and forgiveness, and from life.  

Compassion has always been the place where we identify most with God.  Compassion without prejudice, without conditions, and without limit: that is the example of Jesus and the calling of every disciple.

IV.

It is this compassion that is the big attraction for people.  That’s why they come to Jesus, even way out in the middle of nowhere.  His compassion is active and effective.  

It is commonly and accurately said that the church has to go out to where the people are, and this is true to Jesus’ ministry.  He has just sent his disciples out in twos to the villages of Galilee.  

At the same time, when the word gets out, people come to him. 

There was that movie years ago called “Field of Dreams” in which Kevin Costner has this odd vision that if he just builds a baseball field on his farm all these dead players would come back to life and play there.  “If you build it, they will come,” his little girl tells him.

I think it is the same with Jesus.  If Jesus builds through us a house of compassion, a place of acceptance, forgiveness, and love, a temple of peace and joy, will they not come?  If Jesus builds by us a place of healing and renewal, where people are built up and brought together, will they not come? We are the Body of Christ and individually members of him.  Why aren’t people coming to us in droves as they came to him?

Well, we have a lot of bad history — and bad current events — to live down, for one thing.  Christians have a miserable reputation, and unfortunately it is mostly deserved.  Historically, Christians are often notorious for having nothing whatever to do with what Jesus is about, and even for working for all kinds of evil things that Jesus rejects.  

But through it all there is always Jesus Christ.  Remarkably, he still has a sterling reputation.  And he is the One we need to be.  He is the One we need to follow, trust, and obey.  The more in tune we are with him and his mission of boundless compassion and healing, the more the love of God is allowed to pour through us into our world, the more we will find people coming.

It’s not easy.  It’s not something we can decide to do.  But we can let go of ourselves and fall into God’s grace, so that God’s goodness and forgiveness and justice emerge in us.  So that Jesus himself may emerge in us, and through us into our world.

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