Saturday 02 January 2016
- Bible Book:
- Mark
“They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’” (v. 27)
Psalm: Psalm 1
Background
Jesus was driven, he looked for trouble, or it found him. He andhis followers arrived at Capernaum on the Sabbath. He went to thesynagogue and burst onto the preaching scene. He went straight in,in front of everyone and started preaching; there was no sign ofthe rabbi. 'I'll be your guest rabbi,' he said. The congregationwere expecting the usual thing - 'Rabbi Akiva said, the midrash onthis portion is …' but he surprised them with his passion andauthenticity, he wasn't really any kind of rabbi.
This was his text (this is from the parallel reading in
God's anointed me
to bring good news to the ghetto
freedom to felons
sight to the sightless
liberty to the locked up
to tell everyone: God is on your side.
This was the entire length of his sermon: 'It's happeningnow!'
No one said a word, so Jesus himself stopped speaking andwatched them. Then someone shouted out, 'What areyoudoing here,"Jesus of Nazareth"? Come to shake everything up? I know you.You're God's Special One.' He had a 'devil' of a mental healthproblem …
'Enough!' Jesus commanded, 'You're healed!' The man shook,shrieked and was silent. The crowd went wild, they couldn't believeit. This wasn't what they came to synagogue for, if only it waslike this every Sabbath. But they didn't understand - how did he doit, where did he get his power from? There was no doubt though, hehad arrived on the scene, he had the power and he was incontrol.
To Ponder
- How would you have felt to hear Jesus read from Scripture, thenpreach a three word sermon?
- Should preaching be getting reactions like this? To what extenthave we tamed Scripture and the story of Jesus (or not)?