Sermons from the Oldest Gospel
Citizens and Critics: Mark 2.13-22
Jesus came to build a kingdom. That is very clear at the beginning of his ministry: he came into Galilee announcing the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. That involved a battle with the Devil; the first round was fought out privately in the wilderness. We will see more of that later. It also involves human beings; his kingdom will be made up of them. In our last look at Mark we saw Jesus gathering his first followers and we asked what kind of leader he would be. His first Sabbath in Capernaum unveiled him as a teacher like nothing they had ever experienced. He had authority and he proved it by throwing the demon out of an out-of-control interjector, raising up a woman with a potentially fatal fever, and healing everyone the town could bring to him. I intend now to skip a couple of stories and focus on more of Jesus gathering followers and the sort of people they were, and how he dealt with them. You will see why.
Capernaum was one of the major centres of Galilee. Agriculture was big and there are remains of what must have been manufacturing and service industries. But what made it important was its position. One of the great international trade roads connecting Egypt, Damascus and Mesopotamia ran close to Capernaum and a spur road led north through Capernaum to Caesarea Philippi, the kingdom (tetrarchy) of Herod Philip. Borders meant customs and tolls, so Capernaum had a taxation office and a military presence to protect and enforce it. It would also have had banks and financial institutions.
Levi was a customs official; he was wealthy enough to maintain a large house. I don’t know what prior contact he had with Jesus. He was aware of course of what happened on that Sabbath at the synagogue and afterwards. All Mark tells us is that Jesus walked into his office and ordered him to become his disciple. And Levi quit his job and followed. That’s quite a thing when you think about it. There were no unemployment benefits back then; a good job was something you hung onto. But there was something about Jesus and what he was doing that gripped people.
Levi followed Jesus in the sense that he attached himself to his mission as a full-timer. Jesus was now his boss. He became one of the Twelve. We know him as Matthew. Jewish names can be confusing. I have a Jewish friend, let’s call him William Smith; his ordinary name is as English as that. But his full name is William Isaac Abraham Gershom ha-Levi Smith. Ha-Levi means the Levite; Matthew was descended from Jacob’s son Levi.
It says a lot about Jesus that Matthew immediately wanted to introduce his friends to Jesus. I don’t know how it is with you, but we have kids who don’t always want to bring their friends to meet us. But Matthew did, so he threw a dinner party and all his business colleagues turned up. Actually it is Luke who tells us that; Mark is ambiguous about which home they were in.
I am fascinated by business people. A businessman I know invited 30 heads of big companies he was doing business with to a dinner to hear a Christian speaker. They all came! If you are in a position that gives you some pull, use it!
But there were critics. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Who were these “sinners”? It is obvious from the way the Gospels speak that they were a recognizable class of people. We think of them as down and outs who Jesus befriended along with other marginalized types, but that is a mistake. Most of them were business people: their business dealings made it impossible for them to keep all the requirements of the law. A prostitute would be an obvious “sinner” but so would a wealthy merchant who traded with gentiles. And although they were seen as disloyal and beyond salvation, they had plenty of friends and money to help them along. So we shouldn’t pity them – not for that reason. They certainly weren’t down-and-outers. We get it wrong with the Pharisees too. They were an order of laymen who signed up to learn the law and to keep it scrupulously. What’s wrong with that? They were close to the ordinary people who accepted them as leaders in matters related to the law – more than the priests. They had their own scribes and lawyers. In their eyes what Jesus was doing was not helpful. He was giving the impression that God accepted sinners, which undermined what they taught. It raised a question mark whether he really was a man of God. I think most people at the time would have thought what they were asking was very reasonable. They admired the Pharisees for their zeal; they certainly didn’t see anything wrong in trying to keep the law. Also they didn’t like the people Jesus was hanging out with.
Jesus answer must have puzzled them. “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Notice that Jesus speaks like he is a man with a mission, “I have come.”
I think someone might have replied that certainly if they repented of their sins, maybe it was good to associate with them. But Jesus seemed to be putting the cart before the horse. He was associating with them before they repented. But then, if he didn’t, would they ever change? When I began my curacy my Rector referred a couple to me to marry. They were already living together and clearly were not Christians. I wondered should I send them away. But would that help them to find God? This is something which perplexes ministers and Christians. I’m going to come back to this, but Mark goes on to tell us about another question mark they raised over Jesus: he didn’t seem serious enough.
John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” It’s pure coincidence that we have this reading about fasting on the first Sunday of Lent, but it’s a good time to think about it.
Jesus didn’t fast. He did when he was in the wilderness, and he did the night before his death, but in between he didn’t fast. And this grabbed people’s attention. John the Baptist fasted and he taught it to his disciples. It was the right thing to do when you knew that judgement hung over the nation, and you wanted God to be merciful and save you. But from the moment John was arrested and Jesus came into Galilee announcing the kingdom of God there was no more fasting. Some radical change must have taken place.
Jesus tells us what it is, and what he says is mind-boggling: “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.” Why aren’t my followers fasting? Because they are at a wedding! You don’t fast at weddings. That’s true, but what sort of wedding are they at? And this is where it gets weird.
Hosea is one of my favourite Old Testament books. Hosea was a prophet seven to eight hundred years before Jesus. God told him to marry this woman, Gomer, and she turned against him and slept around and broke his heart! And God said, “That’s exactly what Israel has done to me: gone after other gods and broken my heart.” Hosea and Gomer had a daughter and God said to call her Lo-ammi (“Not-my-people”) because God was about to divorce his people and send them into exile; they would not be his people anymore. So Hosea had to divorce Gomer. And then sometime later God told Hosea to go and woo her back again and remarry her, because that is what he was going to do with Israel; he was going to make them his people again. Listen to what God says of faithless Israel:
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her…. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ … And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. And I will say to ‘Not-My-People’, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’
So God told Hosea he was going to reject Israel – they would go into exile – but then he was going to woo and marry them again. And they ask Jesus, Why aren’t you fasting? And he says, because I am announcing the kingdom of God and now we are at a wedding. That would have been sensational: the day of God’s salvation has arrived. But he also says, “and I am the bridegroom.” He might as well have said, “God is returning to remarry his people, and here I am.”
But Jesus wouldn’t say it outright. It was all in parables for those who had ears to hear. But when the penny dropped – well, come back to the incident we just looked at and think! Could Jesus dining with tax-collectors and sinners have anything to do with this wedding? Could it mean that God had forgiven them and was dining with them? Could Jesus’ conviviality be God partying with his forgiven people – some of them forgiven before they even hardly know it themselves? But if Jesus was God in disguise, and they were enjoying him and he them, then the kingdom of God has come. So is that how God woos his people?
Jesus warns that it will not all be plain sailing. The bridegroom will be taken away. This is the first hint of the cross in Mark. There would come a time when his followeers would want to fast, but not then, not when he was with them.
This raises the question whether fasting is a Christian thing? This is an important question for us to ponder, especially in Lent. I remember an old Muslim man coming up to me after our debate at the University of Cape Town. “Jesus fasted.” he said, “We Muslims fast, but you Christians don’t fast.” He had a list of things where he reckoned Muslims followed Jesus better than we did. And we have to give it to them, they are keen and put us to shame with their observances. But should we fast?
It all depends on whether we think Jesus is with us, or taken away. In John 16 he told his disciples that he would go away, and they would mourn, but then he would return and they would rejoice. And he said it was a good thing that he went away; if he didn’t, the Spirit would not come. John makes it very clear that he did return at the resurrection, and he has sent the Holy Spirit. So we have a double reason to celebrate. When I accept that I am a sinner and believe that Jesus died for me and rose again, and accepts and forgives me and promises me eternal life, and has given me the gift of his Spirit – that is a moment of great joy, and it never ends. Christian life is a life of joy. Even in suffering we rejoice, knowing that God is with us and that he is leading us to a great future. Islam is not like that. Muhammad made a mix of Judaism and Christianity. But he did not understand the gospel So there is not much joy in Islam.
So I would say that fasting is not a natural thing for Christians. But it is not wrong and can be very good when there is a matter for urgent prayer. Every time your mind returns to food, as it often will when you fast, you are reminded why you cannot eat, and you will pray some more.
Jesus continued: No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.
Jesus foresaw that what he was doing would continue, and that the culture of Judaism would not be able to contain the new wine of the kingdom of God. A piece of new cloth will not long suit an old garment. The first time it is washed the patch shrinks, and then as often as it is worn, it will pull at the edges of the patch and soon it will tear away. The gospel will create a new culture. I want to say a few about this culture before ending.
I could say something about drinking. This is another difference with Islamic culture. Muslims are forbidden all alcoholic drinks; the Bible says that wine is one of God’s good creations, so is not forbidden – only drunkenness. But this is getting away from what the passage is really about.
The big thing to learn is that Christianity has a culture of celebration and joy and eating together and hospitality. You may think, “Does it?” And often it does not, but that is because we have forgotten the Lord and his kingdom. But whenever Christianity is true to itself that is what it is. To what extent your church is modeling a Christian culture is something you should discuss. Churches often retreat to a life-style that is pre-Christian.
The next thing to say is that Christianity has a culture of acceptance. This really matters. Jesus says it is the sick who need a doctor, and that should be our outlook. We do not wait for people to prove their repentance before we hold out the hand of friendship. If you have the chance to befriend a Muslim refugee, do so. Care where you can, include them where you can. Do not withdraw because they are different, or become cold because someone you know has “come out” and has moved in with a same-sex partner. This is often the way God’s grace works: it is not conditional on conversion, it leads to conversion.
This is a huge subject. Jesus has opened it up for us. What is a Christian way of life? What is a Christian culture? What sort of forms and organizations and practices suit the new wine? You can carry on thinking and talking in your groups and families.
When I planned this series I messed up Mark’s order because I did not see its importance. While I was preparing this sermon I realized that the story of the paraplegic in Mark 2.1-12 should have come first, because it shows us the way into becoming a citizen of the kingdom. We have talked about what it is like for people who have been accepted. Perhaps we will be able to come back to Mark 2 later.