Jesus power and willingness

Mark 1:40-2:17. SHC. Remote. 28/6/2020. Hi I'm Chris and I regularly attend the morning congregation at Summer Hill. Today, I want to start off talking about being whole - whole as a person. For there are several aspects to our being and it would be great to have them in alignment. All aspects of our being - the physical, the mental or psychological, and the social all being in alignment and working properly so that we are whole. I once taught about something called the biopsychsocial model of illness. We want physical health and every body system working to achieve its purpose. We want mental and psychological well-being including wisdom - wisdom for understanding reality and wisdom for action. We want social well-being - to be in loving relationships. Since I was taught the biopsychosocial model, people have expanded it to include the spiritual, that there is also a spiritual dimension to our being that ought to be healthy and part of the whole. But is that true? Isn't the spiritual aspect a dispensable part of our well-being? And if spirituality is included, what kind of spirituality? In the Bible, spirituality is having a relationship with a personal God, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus. Jesus shows us that relationship with God is central to our whole being. And this is critical when we recognise that we aren't whole. When I was growing up, a thing I used to hear among extended family and friends when things went wrong, they'd say "at least you have your health". And then I worked in the health care industry and realised how unrealistic that was - we don't always have our health. And we aren't always wise; we think foolish things and make foolish decisions. And sadly relationships break down. But what's the fix? One answer is law. If we have the right rules, if we have the right processes and procedures then we can fix our problems; we can become whole and fix our bodily health, our thoughts, actions and relationships. Jesus came into a culture that had the law of God. It was a culture that had been shaped by God's rules. This is important to recognise because some see Jesus as a great rule giver and moral teacher. But Jesus didn't need to lay down the law; they already had the law from the time of Moses. What was Jesus' message? Lately we've been looking at Jesus in Mark's Gospel and saw that his message was that the kingdom of God is near. And this kingdom is to impact every dimension of our being. We are told in chapter 1 verse 34 that "Jesus healed many who had various diseases." In verses 16-20 he commanded Simon, Andrew, James and John to follow him and they did. Jesus is building a new set of relationships. But in the midst of this, there is something that can't be separated from those other aspects of what Jesus was doing - he was driving out evil spirits. The crowd was amazed in verse 27, "He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him." The spiritual dimension of defeating evil and restoring relationship with God is crucial in the life and the mission of Jesus. In the passage of Mark we are looking at today we are given three snapshots of who Jesus is and his mission, how he makes people whole. The first one is that Jesus is the willing healer in 1:40-45. It says a leper had come to Jesus. Leper is not a clinical diagnosis but it's a word that is translated this way because it sounds like the original Greek word lepros. So it's describing a skin disease of some kind. This man is desperate, on his knees, and listen to his request in verse 40: "If you are willing, you can make me clean." Hear the assumption of that request. The man knows Jesus is able. But he's not sure Jesus is willing. It is something that we don't appreciate when the public image of Jesus is little baby Jesus in Christmas nativity scenes or meek and mild sandle-wearing Jesus from video reenactments. Mark chapter 1 is showing us that Jesus had the reputation of being a very powerful man. This was the impression of people who actually met him. The crowds would flock to him to heal disease with a word and cast out demons with a word. The question for the leper was: Is Jesus willing? It's sadly not our experience of human nature that power and compassion go hand in hand. In history, the powerful ones have the reputation of being destructive. But we are told Jesus' response in verse 41. He replicates the words of the leper. "He reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Jesus is both able and willing. He is powerful and compassionate. Notice the variation in this healing compared to the earlier ones. He touches the man. This makes this episode more than a mere healing. This is because the law of God talked about these situations in terms of clean and unclean - which is why the leper was using that language. The Old Testament law in the book of Leviticus talked about cleanness and uncleanness and purity and impurity. Unclean things could be various diseases, bodily discharges and foods. The language of cleanness and purity related to being associated with God and his purity, his wholeness and perfection. If something was pure or clean it indicated something belonging to God and associated with him. Ultimately the langauge of impurity and uncleanness says that the presence of God cannot dwell with sin and its effects. It emphasises the purity of God - his wholeness and perfection. The OT law was concerned to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. The unclean is excluded from the worship of God since worship is about approaching the presence of God and living in his presence. So this leper would have been excluded from the temple and regarded as an outcast. It is an analogy of how we use purity and cleanness in other contexts. You know you can only wipe the benchtop down with the cloth so many times before it starts making the benchtop dirtier rather than cleaner. Purity is lost when associated with the impure. So likewise in Leviticus uncleanness is contagious. In Leviticus, if someone who is ceremonially clean touches anything unclean, then that clean person has now become unclean. So when Jesus touches the leper, according to Leviticus, Jesus ought to become unclean. But instead, the opposite happens, the unclean becomes clean. So this is more than a mere physical miracle, it is a kind of spiritual miracle because Jesus is able to do what the law of God cannot. The law couldn't transform the leper but Jesus could. This does not mean that Jesus rejects the law. He upholds and fulfills the law. He says in verse 44, "But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them." One of the duties of the priests is to pronounce a person who has contracted leprosy either clean or unclean (e.g. Lev. 13:17, 44). The priest could declare the leper unclean before the healing and the leper clean after the healing. But the priest couldn't change him from one state to the other. The law couldn't transform the person from one to the other. The priest and the law can only declare if things are whole and sound or if they are deficient and broken. They cannot transform. But Jesus can. And what's more the law its bears testimony to this. The priest and the law declare that Jesus cleansed the leper; that Jesus saves. Notice how Jesus' willingness here exposes another level of his ability and power that we had not yet encountered in Mark's gospel. He is able to restore and transform where the law cannot. He is more powerful than the law. This healing is just an image of what the kingdom of God is like, not the substance of it. For the healing doesn't change the man - for he disobeys Jesus by telling everyone about what happened. Jesus doesn't want to be advertised this way. Because the crowds coming to him sends the message that here is a great healer. But his message was deeper than that. He was declaring that the kingdom of God is near and that what he has to offer is more essential than healing. And this is what we see in the next passage. This leads us to the next episode in Mark where we see that Jesus is the divine-human forgiver in 2:1-12 The situation is that Jesus was indoors and a crowd had gathered like in a peak hour Japanese train, and like we heard in chapter 1, someone comes to be healed, a paralyzed man. It's such a memorable scene, the way Mark puts it, that you can picture a tighly packed space and then an opening develops in the roof and the paralyzed man is lowered in front of Jesus. Now this is where Jesus challenges us about our biggest problem. We might want to deal with all our problems without reference to relationship with God. But when the paralytic comes to Jesus, he says: "Son your sins are forgiven." For the paralytic and his companions and for the gathered crowd, those words must have seemed inappropriate and irrelevant. He had clearly come to be healed. But Jesus is highlighting the deeper and bigger problem - which is the need for forgiveness of sin. There is no indication here that the paralytic's condition was related to a specific sin. Rather, it's that sickness, disease and death in general and are the consequence of sin in the world. And Israel had the law of God that enabled them to identify sin. The law which included the ten commandments and the command to love our neighbours as ourselves said to Israel that they don't obey God and don't love their neighbours as themselves. And we too can recognise our own sin by looking at three standards. We can search our own conscience and see that we do not live up to our own standards. We can line ourselves up with God's law in the Old Testament and ask whether we dishonour our parents, murder, steal, commit adultery and covet. Do we avoid those things from the depths of our heart? And thirdly how do we line up against the example of Jesus who is the lived out example of someone who did obey God's law? But in this instance with the paralytic, people wonder whether Jesus disobeyed the law. We are told in Mark 2:6 that teachers of the law were there. And though the accusation is not spoken out loud, Jesus knows they are thinking it. The accusation is that Jesus is blaspheming, that he has offended against the majesty and authority of God. Because it's is only the one who has been offended that can do the forgiving. If someone harms you, I have no authority to forgive them. How much less does I have the authority to forgive someone for offending against God! Blasphemy is arrogant and lawless. It is only God who can forgive sins. Jesus rejects the accusation. But he doesn't reject the accusation by saying "you're wrong, other people can forgive sins, not just God". The teachers of the law are right in saying only God can forgive sins. And Jesus doesn't reject the accusation by claiming some misundertanding, by denying that he has the authority of God. But he rejects the accusation of blasphemy by saying that he does indeed have the authority to forgive. The implication is that he is indeed God. He doesn't merely claim this; he demonstrates it. He says in verse 9 "Which is easier? To say your sins are forgiven or to say get up take your mat and walk". The easier thing is to say your sins are forgiven since there is no way to prove it; forgiveness is not visible; can be demonstrate. The harder thing to demonstrate is to heal the man of paralysis. But Jesus is also saying, in verse 10, that healing the man enables you to "know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins". There are two important points here. The first is the connection between sin and sickness - and so the connection between the forgiveness of sin and the healing of the sickness. To say your sins of forgiven is the easier thing since it is just words. But as we've seen to actually forgive takes the power and authority of God. So how does the healing show Jesus can forgive sin; it's because sin in general in the world causes sickness. In Deuteronomy 28, the law of Israel had described the consequences for sin which included sickness, disease and death which is what Israel experienced in its history. But hundreds of years after the law was given, the prophet of Isaiah spoke of a future time of salvation and forgiveness. And in chapter 35, verse 6 it says, among other things, this time of salvation would be marked by the lame leaping like a deer. And that is what happened when Jesus healed the man; he got up and walked. It was evidence that Jesus could deal with the underlying cause, the problem of sin. But the other important point in verse 10 is that we can know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins. What's he talking about? The phrase son of man is a roundabout way of referring simply to a human being as in Psalm 8. I am a human being because I am the son of human beings. I derive my humanity from my parents. But the connection of the phrase Son of Man with the claim to authority makes us think of a specific Son of Man, a figure who is described in Daniel chapter 7: Daniel 7:13-14 "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. This figure is a human person. He is a son of man. But he is also a divine person; because he is worshipped by people of every nation. And what's more he is given authority. Jesus is that Son of Man with authority to forgive sins. He is the divine-human forgiver. We are being told that Jesus' humanity is crucial for the forgiveness of our sins. It is not something we understand till we get to Mark 10:45 where Jesus says "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Which comes about at the end of the Gospel story where Jesus dies in our place, taking the penalty for our sins. God the Son became a human being to die in the place of human beings, as a substitute and sacrifice. In claiming to forgive sins, Jesus is claiming to have God's authority. As a human being he is able to accomplish that forgiveness by dying in our place. Jesus is the spiritual doctor 2:13-17 Lastly we come to a section which speaks of the social aspect of our well-being. Here Jesus presents himself as the spiritual doctor. In chapter 1 Jesus had said to fishermen "Follow me." But the next time this happens, it leads to controversy, because Jesus tells Levi to follow him and Levi is a tax collector. The tax collectors had a terrible reputation in Israel. Ancient Jewish writings lists them with murderers and robbers. They were living off the productivity of others and the state backed up all that they did. The tax collectors' legitimacy was the coercion of the state. And Jesus calls one of them to follow him, a man called Levi. And it is not that Jesus pretends that Levi is some random bloke who just happens to be a tax collector as if it were incidental. Verse 14 says Jesus called him while he was sitting at the tax collector's booth. Jesus was publicly, explicitly unapologetically choosing a tax collector as his disciple. With this conversion of Levi, what follows is a wonderful picture of new relationship and fellowship. Mark 2:15 15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. Eating with someone is a picture of relationship and fellowship. Abraham had invited strangers to eat with him. Israel had its feast days to celebrate what God had done for them, in particular the passover meal which indicated their participation in the saving acts of God. Jesus commands us to celebrate our fellowship in his death by sharing in the Lord's Supper. The picture of the new creation is one of a feast. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the command to Christians and particularly church leaders is to be hospitable. Here we are seeing how Jesus is establishing a new network of relationships which we've come to know as the church. But once again this generates controversy with the teachers of the law in verse 16 - who question Jesus' judgment in eating with "tax collectors and sinners". For those who depend on law, there can be no mixing of the righteous with the unrighteous, of the clean with the unclean. The law identifies which is which and there is no hope for change. And what is more, to depend on the law like these teachers of the law it leads to the kind of arrogance and judgmental attitude we see here. For I must think I am on the right side of the law in order to write others off. But Jesus' response is simple and clear. Verse 17. Mark 2:17 Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." The whole point of Jesus mission is to call the sinners. Jesus was publicly and explictly choosing Levi a tax collector because that is why he came. The doctor is the image by which to understand what Jesus is doing. He is the spiritual doctor that brings renewed relationships. The forgiveness of sins that Jesus spoke about earlier finds its expression in the reconciliation between God and tax collector. Jesus' fellowship with the tax collectors is not an endorsement of their actions or saying their actions matter. For ultimately their forgiveness is not cheap - but at the cost of his own life on the cross. Jesus is able to do what the law cannot. The law can only condemn the tax collector; but Jesus came to forgive him. He has created a new set of relationships. When sinners are forgiven, at the same time, they are reconciled to God (vertical dimension) and with one another (also horizontal dimension). Jesus can accomplish this because he is both divine and human, God and human. Jesus is able and willing to transform every aspect of our being. And it is all based on a renewed relationship with God through the forgiveness of sins. Through his death for our forgiveness we have access to the resurrection in the new creation with no sickness or death. Through his death for our forgiveness we gain new relationships of mutual love and care. How should we respond? Mark 2:5 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." We should come to Jesus in faith, trust, reliance. Come to Jesus, trusting his indescribable power and authority - that he is God and is able to forgive. Come to Jesus, trusting in his willingness to forgive you - that he died for you, loves you and has come to have relationship with you and enjoy that with you forever. Come to Jesus and put your faith in him.