“The time has come,” Jesus said, “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (1:15)
That was Jesus’ great announcement at the beginning of his ministry in Galilee. And to the two pairs of brothers… “Come follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” (1:17)
Turn – Believe – Follow.
Jesus had arrived to announce a new kingdom and to confront people with the call to come out of exile and return to the LORD to the place where YHWH would dwell in their midst. So often in Scripture, ‘the sea’ represents the nations and the forces in rebellion against God. Jesus had arrived to fish people out of the sea and rescue them from their slavery to Satan. That visual image of people being fished out of the sea coughing and spluttering, lying dazed and confused on the shore, blinking and disorientated and in shock is a useful one to have in our heads as we encounter Jesus and his disciples fishing for people in Mark’s gospel. Our passage of Scripture today has people frequently in shock at Jesus’ fishing project.
As you read through Mark you need to know that Mark tells us three things that are embedded in the narrative from start to finish. One is the news that Jesus is the kingly Messiah, but secondly, that Messiah-ship is couched in the terms of Him being God’s suffering Servant (which is totally counter to people’s expectations of the Messiah). Thirdly is the fact that because of this mismatch of expectations, Jesus keeps his identity secret until the week before his crucifixion. You can see even in today’s reading Jesus silences the demons in the middle of their shrieking about him and he warns the ex-leper strongly not to tell people. And this is because people’s own plans for Jesus as Messiah are not in line with his mission that leads to the cross.
The demons seek to avoid their fate by trying magic formulas of control using Jesus’ name a bit like someone using a child’s full name when they’ve been naughty. But Jesus uses no formulas in response, just His Word to silence their incantations and defeat their power.
As Jesus announces the arrival of the kingdom of God and declares in word and deed his own strange kingly-role… as Jesus rescues people out of the sea and indeed even as he reclaims territory from the sea (a bit like a spiritual Dubai waterfront project), battle-lines are being drawn. Battle-lines are being drawn and people are confronted with the choice, the decision, to recognise their exile and turn and return, to acknowledge that they are drowning and adrift in the sea, or to resist the advance of God’s declared kingdom. In the end there will be no neutral territory, no sitting on the fence. Those called disciples, called to be followers have to choose to follow, to obey, to take up their cross. Those labelled the crowd, amazed by teaching, stunned by healings, shocked by exorcisms, drawn along by miraculous provisions, will in the end have to choose. And then the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law, the scribes, the supposed guardians of God’s kingdom, who time and again find themselves on the wrong side of the equation, will have to decide what to do with this challenge to their authority, what to do about this trouble-maker who claims equality with God. We will time and again meet these groups… the disciples, the crowd, and the authorities.
The questions, ‘What is this?’ (1:27) and ‘Who is this?’ (4:41) that crop up in the text confront us also with having to decide who Jesus is and whether we will accept the cost of following Him on His journey to the cross.
Mark has deliberately included these questions that were asked, and he has deliberately defined the different groups that encountered Jesus, so that we are drawn to ask those questions ourselves and choose ourselves how we will respond to His Kingship and His costly call to follow.
Battle-lines are indeed being drawn. The Satan is being confronted. Territory is being reclaimed from the sea. People are being fished from drowning. And the call is to join in the project or to resist, to turn to the Rock or to stick with the sea. Disciples, crowd, Pharisees… which group are you with and which side will you then choose? Those with power will have to lay it down, those following the masses will have to make a choice themselves, and those who are disciples will continually be challenged to choose between fishing for Jesus and the pressure to submit to the sea.
Under the surface of the account of the brothers returning home we can see the cost of the choice to follow and fish with Jesus. The presence of a mother-in-law is a give-away sign that there is a family. Simon and Andrew have family to care for, they have responsibilities and people to provide for. People may go hungry due to the brothers’ choice to put down their nets and follow Jesus. That’s a powerful challenge to us, many of whom are here in this country precisely to fish for our families and our futures. The costly challenge to put down our nets and fish with Jesus. And we see that though that choice is costly, Jesus doesn’t forsake those who are our responsibility. Simon’s mother-in-law is healed and that in itself is a sign of grace for a family that has chosen to put down their nets and join Jesus’ kingdom rescue project.
When it comes to the account of the man with the skin disease again we have Jesus confronting the seas, rescuing people from the waters of death and the effects of the fall. Again we have Jesus avoiding the pressure of the crowds and desire for a certain type of Messiah in his silencing of the leper. A silencing that the leper however decides to ignore. And under the surface of this account we have Jesus challenging the so-called guardians of the Law and what they think is God’s kingdom. Jesus confronts the inability of the Law to cleanse by touching someone who is unclean… the law of love transcending the code that only identified uncleanness but did not heal it. It’s not that Jesus’ law of love ignores the cleanliness law, rather his rule comes and fulfils it by His being the answer to the cry, ‘Who will rescue me?’ People misunderstand if they think Jesus’ law of love does away with holiness, rather, Jesus’ revolution of the heart, makes holiness possible. Jesus’ mission is not the acceptance of all that is unclean, rather it is the radical reaching out, reaching down, to make all clean who reach out to him, the fishing for those who know they are drowning.
Jesus then sends the man to go and follow the Levitical code in getting his healing checked out. In doing this Jesus demonstrates that he is not setting up a parallel system apart from the Temple, rather we will see later that He is fulfilling the Temple. And in causing the Temple authorities to testify to this healing, he is confronting them with the choice to acknowledge the healing and thus acknowledge His power as healer, and the arrival of the Kingdom of God. The battle-lines are being drawn, and the priests will have to choose whether to cling on to their usurped power or to testify that the Fulfilment of the Law and the Temple has indeed arrived in the person of Jesus.
In the midst of this is verse 41. In the NIV you will see that it says that Jesus was ‘indignant’. Most other translations say that he was ‘moved with compassion’. I just want to address this in a quick aside in relation to what we do with differences in biblical manuscripts. There are minor differences in the thousands of biblical manuscripts that we have access to. These differences are few and far between and they do not affect our overall confidence in the original text or in the key truths concerning the good news about Jesus. God is sovereign and he has chosen to use human authors, human language, and human transmission, and despite all the inadequacies of authors, language and transmission, God in His sovereignty is able to bring us His Word that speaks clearly and uniformly of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. We can have confidence in our modern English translations, though it is worth comparing translations in bible study, not so that we then randomly chose the translation we prefer, but so that we make sure we don’t put too much weight on a word or nuance that might not be warranted.
Here in the Greek manuscripts the more difficult reading is that Jesus was indignant. Scholars would say that it was more likely that copyists would try and smooth over this difficult reading with a nicer reading that Jesus had compassion, so they might say that Jesus being indignant was the earlier, more accurate reading… and indeed we can understand how Jesus would be indignant and angry when confronted with the reality of how the sea had engulfed someone’s life, how Satan’s rule had led to someone being broken and despised, how skin disease is a sign that there is something majorly wrong with the world that Jesus had come to challenge.
However, when we come to this difficult reading, there is such weight of evidence in favour of the reading that Jesus had compassion on the leper, combined with the fact that other instances of Jesus’ anger are not smoothed over, added to which the difficult reading could more likely come from a mistranslation from the Syriac manuscripts, that I think it is likely that the NIV committee might not have made the right decision in this case. I wouldn’t bet my life on it as the NIV committee is made up of very eminent biblical scholars. And I would still say that the most recent version of the NIV is for me still the best English translation of Scripture available. But even the KJV/AV/NKJV that is based on late and inaccurate manuscripts (manuscripts that have been surpassed by manuscript discoveries over the past two hundred years)… Even with the KJV, that frequently gets it wrong, we can be confident in its overall message, and most of the inaccuracies don’t even register, though once or twice you’ll get verses that are now not in modern translations such as the ESV and NIV because Codex Siniaticus and Codex Vaticanus among others have made it clear what the original text is more likely to be.
All this said, I plan on putting together a short info-sheet to help us to have confidence in the bible that we have in front of us countering the claim that our Scriptures are corrupted.
At the heart of this glimpse in 1:21-45 of two days in Jesus’ ministry, is a clear display of Jesus’ authority in word and deed. His authority in marked contrast to other teachers of the law. His authority that stuns the crowd. His authority over sickness where the Law of the temple is powerless. His authority in the face of other people’s wish to control. His authority even over demons.
Although Mark hasn’t told us the details, we know from Matthew and Luke that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness to gain power the easy way, through spectacle or through signing up with Satan. And when Jesus faces that pressure again, with the desires of the crowd and the misunderstanding of the disciples… time and again Jesus returns to the wilderness. Not maybe the wilderness of His 40 day preparation, but places that echo that time, a reminder of His choice to be obedient to the Father, a reminder of His defeat of those temptations. So Jesus in 1:35 turns away from the crowd and turns his face again to the wilderness to again rely on God and not on the cheap bread of the praise of men, to trust in God even in the face of opposition or subtle persuasion from the Satan. Because Jesus’ authority as kingly Messiah rests not in spectacle or selling-out or cutting corners, but rests on His reliance on the Father and Jesus’ costly obedience to the Father even along the road to the cross.
This direction in prayer and retreat is totally contrary to our own leanings that want our every desire satisfied through name-it-and-claim-it-so-called-faith or our leanings to a comfortable-middle-of-the-road-living. This discipline of Jesus challenges us to cut away from the crowd, to leave behind our comforts, to sacrificially pray and fast in demonstration of our desire to rely on God alone… not so that we then get our way, but so that we are redirected afresh to God’s ways. So that we can continue to fish with Him and for His glory.
We’ve covered a lot of ground in two days with Jesus over these verses 21-45. But even at this early stage we are starting to see that Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom cuts against what other people’s expectations are. His authority transcends the crowd, the teachers of the Law, sickness and even demon possession, and is not dependent on other names or traditions but is somehow in Himself. But with that, His authority is founded on His intimate relationship with the Eternal Father, and His obedience to the Mission of the Trinity that will lead Him on the costly journey to the cross.
As the church we have an imputed authority, to demonstrate and proclaim Jesus’ kingdom project. We also are to fish for people and to reclaim territory from the sea. That role of being fishers of people will be costly as it will inevitably cause conflict with the forces of the sea and it will cost us in regard to our families… it will cost us in regard to our livelihoods. But if we centre our lives on obedience to our heavenly Father, if we choose to live for Him and rely on Him through prayer, we will see God’s kingdom come in us and through us. And nothing compares to that.
