You know how there are people who say that, but you know they are lying? You know that they really love being the ones who bring the bad news? People like that aren’t trying to be mean, they really think they are doing a service. By bursting your bubble, they are injecting a dose of reality, making sure you don’t get carried away. You need to be realistic, they will say.
In Jesus’ day, people like that were called, or at least Mark, the writer of our Gospel calls them, “Scribes from Jerusalem
So what was so dangerous about Jesus? He’s a revolutionary of sorts, but Jesus isn’t raising an army or promoting terrorism—his strategy is far more subtle. Jesus gives people ideas, small things to do as acts of integrity. Jesus tells people, for example, that when someone slaps them on the cheek, instead of responding in kind and being drawn into another’s violence, they should turn the other cheek. He tells them that if they are forced to walk one mile, to walk two, just to make a point. Jesus invites people to think differently about their enemies, to learn to love and understand. With these new behaviors, Jesus is introducing a whole new reality, a new community with new allegiances and values—he calls it a family in today’s Gospel. He speaks of a place where value is not set by price, where the powerful are not the most important, and where belonging isn’t based on heritage or background. It’s a new identity he proclaims, and for the scribes, that can’t be good.
What Jesus offers can best be named with a four-letter word, not a bad one, but a dangerous one. The word is hope. He is claiming that the way things are isn’t the way they have to be. But hope is more dangerous than any dream could be. Jesus isn’t calling for optimism, claiming that the glass is half full. Hope calls for action, because hope claims a power behind its vision. If people were to respond to Jesus, to live out this new identity, serving this new community, he promises that they will know nothing less than the presence of God in their midst, being inspired by nothing less than the God’s Spirit.
No wonder the scribes are so worried. They rush down from Jerusalem
Can you hear their bad news echoing down through the centuries? Be realistic, there’s nothing you can do. Don’t get involved—you’re too busy. There’s nothing important you can do. Go shopping. Watch TV. Hate to bring bad news, but this is really as good as it gets.
Remember, they’re only saying this for our own good. After all, do we really know what would be best for us? Look at Adam and Eve. There they were in Paradise —how could things be any better? But they just had to listen to the snake, who told them how things could improve, and then look what happened! Think how different this would have turned out if Adam and Eve had had a scribe from Jerusalem
Or look what happened to Jesus: believing his message of hope, he heads on over to Jerusalem
The Bad News is realistic. It is the way of the world we know. Yet somehow here we are, sitting here as we so often do. Today we are surrounded by our hopes—little prayer flags. We wrote these two weeks ago. If you read them, you will find all sorts of prayers— for our country, our church, families and friends, and for ourselves, all expressing a hope that God will do something. What were we thinking?
Could we be thinking that the scribes bearing their bad news don’t know as much as they think they do? On that Friday, maybe the scribes missed the point—that it wasn’t the power of death and the bad news that was revealed on the cross, but the reverse: the Good News of the victory of life, of God’s reversing the judgment on Jesus. Maybe what we know is that hope did not die on the cross; Jesus’ words are not a dusty memory, but alive with the Spirit’s power of life and presence. It’s important that we understand—these words aren’t just meant to make us feel good about ourselves—Jesus doesn’t give graduation speeches. Jesus calls his disciples to change the world by bringing in that new reality of God’s presence. These prayers that surround us aren’t just wishes or desires, they are hopes, and that is something more. Each prayer is a door—we have hundreds of doors—opening our lives to the Good News of a new awareness of God’s presence.
Probably the next thing we should consider then is what this new presence looks like. Sometimes it’s not easy to spot. There are times when God’s new creation looks like we would expect: those happy coincidences when everything works, when the diagnosis changes, and when healing is known. But sometimes God’s blessings aren’t so obvious. Sometimes they look like a closed door, when the only option is the one you just couldn’t take, and then you take it, only to find that it is exactly what you need to discover your giftedness and strength. God’s blessings, as Jesus tells us, can look like mourning or even failure, somehow opening the door to new life.
That’s why we need each other. We need to help each other recognize God’s presence in our lives and in our world. We know that we can’t just sit here, surrounded by our hopes, we have to go out into the world, see God’s presence, and do the work of being on God’s side. But if we go out into the world and talk about what we see of God’s presence and possibilities, many people out there won’t believe us. They will think we are crazy, just as they thought Jesus was. They may even think worse.
But if you come here and talk about what you’ve seen, we’ll believe you. That’s why we need to go out into the world, to seek and serve Christ’s Kingdom, and bring a camera. We might see God’s presence in a place where change is needed, where things are not as good as they get. We might know the reality of God’s new creation in the calling to act and to serve. But wherever you see the Kingdom, we need pictures.
Take your camera out there—there’s got to be something to see. Find something that reminds you of the Good News, that we are God’s people. That’s the picture we need to see.
Mark 3:20-35
Genesis 3:8-15