Sermon Tone Analysis

Pray

Introduction

How do you view the healing miracles of Jesus?

Jesus does some amazing stuff when he’s on earth and we’ve read some of them today.

He makes blind people see, deaf people hear, he makes lame people walk and he even raises the dead.

And it happens all the time in the gospels…but today - where’s all this healing?

And those questions are asked today...

Why didn’t Jesus heal...?

Why didn’t Jesus heal my mother of cancer?

Why didn’t Jesus heal my father…And I can say the same thing...

Why didn’t Jesus raise MY dad from the dead?

Why doesn’t Jesus heal my daughter Naomi?

I suppose part of the answer to that question has to do with what we mean by healing, and we’re going to look at that today.

Were they misunderstandings of what really happened and Jesus didn’t actually HEAL anyone, he just helped them in their sickness?

Or were they actual miracles?

Where would you sit on that spectrum?

Are you a skeptic or do you believe?

Cos it does sound a bit far fetched, doesn’t it - So far in Mark’s gospel, and you saw some of it last week and we read it this week - Jesus is healing all these people, driving out demons, healing lepers and making paralysed people walk and loads more.

I mean, to someone looking in from the outside, you can just imagine what they’re saying here - ‘I can’t actually believe that you are gullible enough to be sucked in by this!

Nobody can do something like this.

People are healed through medicine - NOT by someone speaking a word or touching a hand - wise up!’

Maybe you’re thinking that too.

But that wouldn’t attract a crowd would it?

If Jesus WASN’T healing all these people then there wouldn’t be the following he had.

Crowds don’t follow people like Mark writes unless something AMAZING is happening…Unless you don’t believe Mark’s account of Jesus.

But if you don’t believe Mark’s account of Jesus, WHO IS JESUS?

Who is he to you?

I mean, all historians - Christian or not - believe that there was a man called Jesus who lived around 2000 years ago, and this man drew a crowd and changed peoples lives.

But is this Jesus just a nice man who said some nice things and helped people to reach into themselves and find their inner good and make the world a better place, or is this Jesus ACTUALLY God himself, and if he is what difference does that make to us?

Is this far fetched story writing or is there any truth to this?

Pause

Today we’re going through a lot of text, and you know me - I usually like to go verse by verse, as much as possible, but today we’ve too many verses to do that.

Instead we’re going to look at these passages about healing from a bird’s-eye-view.

So we’re going to take a few steps back and look down on these healing stories, cos there’s a pattern here that we might miss if we’re too close and it concerns our perception of what we mean by healing.

So we have a LOT of healing going on here with loads of incidental healing going on at the same time.

First of all, we have Peters mother-in-law who gets healed and I have SO many mother-in-law jokes right now that I have to refrain.

But Jesus touches her - he takes her by the hand and lifts her up and she recovers and ends up serving Jesus and the disciples.

The way I put it there and the fact that we’ve heard of Jesus’ miracles so many times we’re kinda desensitised to them - we should be going, ‘WOW’ right now.

But the point is that she served Jesus as a result of her healing.

And we’ll come back to that.

Peter’s mother-in-law served Jesus after she was healed

And after that, MANY people brought their sick to Jesus and he healed them - in fact, the whole city brought their sick.

And the next morning Jesus takes himself off to pray.

Now, at this point, the reader doesn’t fully know who Jesus really is - Mark has this ‘messianic secret’ that commentators like to refer to, where Mark reveals who Jesus is in stages, and you’ll see this as we go through the book....

But after this healing of all the sick in the city, what the reader sees is Jesus’ humanity here - cos Jesus is human…and like every other human, Jesus gets tired.

In fact, he is drained - spiritually drained, and probably physically too.

Ministry does that to you.

Helping people in their hour of need is so rewarding and worthwhile, but it is draining - and if it’s draining for Jesus, think about us.

Now, why do I say he’s drained?

Because Jesus takes himself off early the next morning to pray - to spend time with the Father - in other words to spiritually recharge...

So Jesus takes himself off early the next morning to pray - to spend time with the Father - to recharge.

In order to give out, Jesus has to receive from the Father

Pause

One of the things taught at Union College is the importance of taking time away to spend time with God.

They advise an away-day every month - not as annual leave, as part of work - to spend in quiet and in prayer and worship of God.

And that seems counter-productive - ‘you’re taking a day away to do nothing?

What are we paying you for?’ but think about it....Anyone who has a mobile phone knows how frustrating it is when the battery runs out - it renders the phone useless.

It becomes just a really expensive paperweight.

You need to give your phone a rest and recharge.

That’s like a minister.

A minster will run out of steam if he doesn’t recharge, and if he doesn’t recharge he is rendered useless - absolutely useless…either cos they’ve nothing to give or they’re off on stress leave indefinitely - and apparently there is a high percentage of ministers off on stress leave for that very reason.

Now, sometimes you can charge your phone and use it at the same time - that’s like our daily quiet time - when we meet with God every day to spend time in worship and prayer and reading.

That’s like using the phone while it’s charging.

But to get the most LIFE out of the phone you need to charge it overnight, or put it on charge for a long period of time without using it - you need to give it a rest.

That’s what an away day does.

It’s a time to take away from work and family and everything - to take yourself off to a quiet place and spend the day in prayer and worship and reading and sitting in God’s presence.

That’s what Jesus did and that’s what anyone involved in ministry needs to do.

And that’s what we’ve been TOLD to do by our leaders in PCI.

And if you’re presbyterian then that’s what you’ve got to accept that your minister needs to do this too, cos it’s coming from the top.

And it makes sense.

So I would recommend anyone who is involved in ministry to do this, especially Paul - otherwise he’ll be rendered useless - and we don’t want that.

And I’m not talking about taking a holiday - this is different.

So Jesus takes himself off and prays and then Peter says, ‘the crowd are looking for you - what are you doing?’

And Jesus’ response is strange.

Instead of saying, ‘OK, I’m coming to see them,’ he says, ‘OK, let’s go somewhere else.’

And you’ve gotta wonder why Jesus responded in this way...

Well, here’s the thing - the crowd have been healed, cos the whole city have been to see him with their sick.

Yes , they want to see Jesus and hear him, but Jesus has already preached to them and healed them and Jesus has a mission - to preach to other people and heal OTHER people, so off he goes somewhere else to find people who haven’t yet been healed.

Interestingly, in any church there are sick people - and I’m not JUST talking physically sick.

And there are those who HAVE BEEN HEALED through the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the church - be that the minister or an elder or whoever - which is awesome when you stop to think about it.

But there are so many other people who are sick and need healed - and I’m not just talking physically.

There are other people who NEED ministered to.

But there are those who have been ministered to and they want more and more - and if we had the resources then we would be able to do that, and we’d love to do that - but at the same, by doing that, those other people who are sick and need healed are missing out on a healing ministry from the church.

So I can understand why Jesus moved on.

The crowd may not have been happy - ‘Jesus hasn’t seen me in ages’, but I’d like to think they’d understand that Jesus had other places to go and other people to see and heal.

I’d like to think that those who had been ministered to welcomed the fact that they had experienced God’s hand at work and were excited to see God’s hand work in OTHER people through Jesus’ ministry rather than complain that THEY hadn’t seen Jesus in a while.

Pause

And so Jesus moves on and encounters a leper.

Now, lepers were outcast.

They were considered the living dead.

They wore black and shouted ‘unclean’ so that people wouldn’t touch them.

Touching a leper meant you would be unclean and also that you’d be a leper too cos it’s so infectious.

They couldn’t live in the city, they couldn’t attend worship - they were practically the living dead.

And another big cultural tag with leprosy is that it was the general opinion that you got leprosy if you had sinned.

Leprosy was divine punishment for sin - a bit like Aids in the 80s.

Now that was a perception back then.

It wasn’t reality, but that’s what they believed.

And this leper breaks protocol and comes to Jesus with faith - ‘I know that if you want to, you can make me clean’.

The leper breaks all cultural protocol and approaches Jesus - that’s a BIG no no.

If you’ve leprosy you STAY AWAY.