Silencing Demons Series

Hello and welcome - If you’re here for the first time today, I welcome you! You picked a great day to join us because we’re kicking off a whole new sermon series that’s all about the miracles of Jesus.

If you’ve spent any time in or around church, or even if all of this is somewhat foreign to you, you still probably have some level of awareness that Jesus performed miracles! There are a lot of stories about them in the Bible. And for those of us who know these stories well, over time they may become a bit “too familiar.” We’ve heard about Jesus healing people, and walking on water, and feeding the 5000 so many times that the miracles have lost a bit of their luster. They’re just things that Jesus did – cuz he was Jesus.

But what if we refreshed our perspective a little bit over these next few weeks? What if we dove back into these stories to recover some of the wonder and awe that eye witnesses must have experienced? What if we borrowed that iconic lyric from the Broadway phenomenon, Hamilton, and put ourselves in “The Room Where It Happened?”

My hope is that by imagining proximity to these events, and paying attention to the details, these stories of Jesus’ miracles might come back to life for us and then help us to see where Jesus is doing these same kinds of miraculous things in our own lives and communities today.

The scripture Lauren read just a few moments ago is the very first miracle recorded in the Gospel of Mark. No one really knows Jesus yet – at least not outside his hometown – and Mark chapter 1 finds him leaving the familiarity of Nazareth and venturing out into the region of Galilee.

Along the beach of the Sea by the same name, Jesus stops to talk to some fishermen. Within moments he has convinced 4 of them to come with him, simply by offering to teach them a different kind of fishing – fishing for people. Nets, tools, equipment, boats, a father and some employees are left behind…looking after them with disbelief, furrowed brows, hands raised in indignation, and probably a few incredulous words hurled after them. “Where do you think you’re going? What about these fish? What do I tell your mother when she asks about you??”

This group of 5 now make their way down the dusty road. Along the way they begin to consider what they’ve just done. Who is this man whose invitation to follow was so easy to accept? They likely knew of Jesus before this moment. Perhaps they had met him before. John the Baptist had been busy in recent months announcing Jesus’ presence among them and we know that at least one of them, Andrew, had been a disciple of John first.

Whatever their connection to Jesus might have been before, they’re now in close proximity, walking side-by-side headed into the town of Capernaum – the town they were all from and the place that would become the jumping off point for Jesus’ ministry.

It seems like they arrived on the Sabbath, or perhaps just the evening before. But the very first thing they do is what many Jews would do on the Sabbath – they go to the synagogue. Rather than this being a space for formal worship, like we think of church today, it was more like a gathering of people to hear the Torah, to listen to rabbis teach their interpretation of the scriptures.

You can imagine, a small group of people gathered under a stone archway toward the back of the synagogue, seated so that they might catch the fresh, summer seabreeze through the door. Mothers lay out mats on the hard stone floor, wrangling their children to sit and be still. As the room settles down minds wander to the sabbath meal… “did I remember everything, will there be enough with the in-laws joining us today?” Men stand apart positioning themselves close to teacher’s seat so they can hear. Teenagers, dragged there by their parents to improve their knowledge of Hebrew scriptures stare absent-mindedly out the windows, watching the empty sails of idle fishing boats flutter thoughtlessly against the masts, tilted, at rest on the shore.

They’d much rather be with friends, feasting on figs, hanging ripe from the trees.

There’s a new teacher here today though. One no one has heard before. Everyone saw him walk in, with 4 disciples already flanking him. They all recognized Andrew, Simon, James and John. They were locals. Someone whispers, “That’s Jesus – from Nazareth. I see his uncle from time to time when he comes to town to trade after the harvest.” “Is he going to teach Torah today?” a now mildly interested teenager asks.