"Living Through It: Dig Deep"
Believing the good news
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Text: Mark 1:14-20
James Michener's great book, Covenant is the history of the Afrikaner people from their arrival in South Africa right through to when it was written in the 1970s. This epic coverage of the Afrikaner people, their travails, their errors and their desire to follow God, is one of the great classics of 20th century. It contains a very profound scene that depicts people digging the soil. They get below the initial crust on the top and go down one layer to what is known as the “yellow soil.” Adam Small, the great South African playwright, described it in a play as the “orange earth.” If you go to parts of South Africa, you will see this yellowy-orange, clay-like substance that covers the land.
What was incredible about this yellow clay was that those who were digging in it found something precious - diamonds! Although there weren't many, they were significant in size, so much so that people continued to dig in the yellow clay. Although they had to dig large amounts of the clay to be able to extract just a few diamonds, they felt it was worth it. It was hard work under the sun, but digging in the yellow clay brought them these gorgeous, shining crystals that pleased them so much. The diamonds didn't have the value then that they do now, but the workers knew that they were precious.
Someone came along and said, “You know, you should dig deeper. You should go beyond the yellow clay. Dig down further and see what you can find.” So they dug down to the next layer, which is like blue earth. As they went down, they were astonished by what they found: More diamonds than they could ever have dreamt of! In fact, in one day's digging in the blue clay yielded more diamonds than digging for a year in the yellow clay! They were astonished at what they were able to find. Digging deep was difficult; it required a lot of work because the clay was hard. This was the beginning of the foundation of the diamond mines of Kimberly in the Orange Free State. But they had to dig hard, dig deep to be able to find the thing of real value.
Mark's Gospel is unlike any of the others because it is fast-paced and active. It gets right to the heart of things very, very quickly. Mark begins by saying right up front, “This is the message of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” This is what this Gospel is about: The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Within 14 verses of the first chapter we already have this announcement, we have the arrival of John the Baptist, we have the baptism of Jesus himself, followed by the temptation in the wilderness, and then the verse that begins today's reading. In just 14 verses, we have the earliest beginnings of the life and ministry of Jesus. It is fast and to the point. Jesus bursts on the scene and with his opening words he says, “The time is at hand, repent and believe the good news.”
Jesus understood that something historic was happening. Mark understood, in the writing of his Gospel, that this was a moment of great significance: Right here, right now, something remarkable is happening. But, it is not just the fact that something remarkable is happening in the arrival of Jesus that is so earth-shattering. What Jesus is saying here is that he wants people to understand that they must now do and see something deeper than what they have seen before.
What has happened before was on the surface, it was superficial. That doesn't mean that it has no depth or importance of its own. The people have been trying to understand God, please God by the law, do things to appease God, and to atone for their mistakes. But now something dramatic is happening, something deeper. “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” says Jesus. What does he mean? Why is it important for us right here, right now?
First of all, the time in which this occurred was very significant. Jesus understood that the Kingdom of God was central to everything he was doing and saying. Particularly in Matthew, Mark and Luke's gospels, the Kingdom of God is the central motif. It works its way all through Jesus' teachings, through his parables, through the statements that he makes about himself, through declarations he makes - “The Kingdom of God is at hand, the Kingdom of God is within and the Kingdom of God is around you.” There was a sense in Jesus that his very presence was doing something powerful about the presence of the Kingdom of God.
One of the problems we have when we talk about the Kingdom of God is that we all have our own conceptions of what it is like. Most of us have one great theme that we think of, one thing that attracts us to the Kingdom of God. We all do it - I do it. In many ways, the Kingdom of God is the breaking forth of harmony where there had been disharmony. The harmony between God and ourselves is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Harmony between ourselves as human beings in the world is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Grace and forgiveness are manifestations of the Kingdom of God. A sense of inwardness - that the Kingdom resides within each and every one of us - of prayer, meditation and going deeper within ourselves is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Social justice, a new society, the belief in a better world, a world of justice, of hesed, of Torah, this is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. Hope for the future that believes in the apocalyptic work of God is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God.
Part of the problem of the divisions within the Church is that we have often concentrated on one aspect of the Kingdom and ignored the others; we think that our aspect is the most important one. But that is what the cults do. Cults focus on one aspect of the Kingdom of God, but not on its totality. Some will look at the relationship between one another, and brotherly and sisterly love, but think nothing of salvation and their relationship with God eternally. Others will think only of the future and what it will bring, and life in heaven, but don't care for the here-and-now and the need for social justice.
In Jesus' mind, the Kingdom of God was all of the things that mattered. It was more than the sum of all the parts. In Jesus, the Kingdom of God was breaking forth in his very presence. The reign of God on earth as it is in heaven is manifested in what he is saying. To use the words of the immortal poet, Eddie Van Halen, “Right now… it's your tomorrow.” Jesus understood that he was breaking into the world in a powerful, and unique and special way.
But more than that, by declaring that the Kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus was saying, “This is also good news.” Pessimism was rife in the land when Jesus arrived in Galilee. The Romans were ruling things. The temple authorities were subject to the power of Roman governance and the monarchy was corrupt. Many people who look at the sociology of first-century Israel will tell you that the economy was in trouble. The people had been subjugated by the Greeks, they had a Maccabean revolt, and now they were subject to the Romans. The religious leaders were trying their best. I really believe that the Pharisees were trying their best to renew a sense of faith and commitment to the law and people, but it wasn't working. There was social inequity and corruption, as we can tell from the talk about taxation, and the problem of giving to improper sources. There was clearly poverty among the people of the lands. It was a devastatingly pessimistic time. And then, Jesus comes, and he says, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news!” Get ready! Something marvellous is happening! It is good news!
All around them, even the philosophers of the day were pessimistic. Take Seneca, one of the contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. Seneca often resonates with me. I like Seneca in many ways, but he was a pessimist. He believed that if you had high expectations of life, they would come crashing down. So he said that the root of anger, the root of problems in life, the root of depression was the fact that people had an overly optimistic view of life. Because of their optimism, they became discouraged and bewildered because things went wrong. Isn't he a joyful chap?
He said, “We are just like dogs in a cart.” I love this! He likened people to dogs who are tied with a rope to a cart. The rope has a lot of room in it, so the dogs think they have a lot of freedom to run around. The only problem is that when the cart, which is fate, starts moving, each dog has to go with the cart, because even though there is some slack in the rope, the dog is still ultimately tied to it. If the dog thinks that it can go in any direction it pleases, it will strangle itself. So what is one to do? Just go along with the cart? Have a little bit of freedom, have a little bit of movement, but basically, you are stuck. You are going wherever fate leads you.
In fairness to Seneca, it wasn't all dark. He believed in reason. He said that we have a reasonable power and ability to make decisions as free people, but let's be clear, even in our freedom we are still dragged along by forces over which we have no control. It sounds okay; it is about how to live within the boundaries of life. But there is nothing transformative; there is no good news here. It just says, “adapt to a bad situation; if you do that, you won't feel terrible when those bad things actually happen.”
This is the 250th anniversary of Robbie Burns. I can't think of anybody who fits in with the thinking of Seneca better than Robbie Burns. Now I am having some fun here, so give me some room! This is what Robbie Burns said of himself: “My life reminded me of a ruined temple. What strength, what proportion in some parts; what unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others is my life!”
This explains the Scotts perfectly, doesn't it? Even Robbie Burns felt that life is dour and dark. No wonder he drank so much! There is a foreboding that life is in ruins; pessimism rules. I know you will go running to the book store to find positive thinking books to try to offset all of this. Maybe there is some virtue in those optimistic books. But the Bible goes beyond optimism and pessimism. Jesus doesn't talk about being optimistic, nor does he talk about being pessimistic. Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” In other words, “Here I am in your midst,” and I am paraphrasing him, East of Eden. I have come into this place where there is disharmony, pessimism and darkness to transform it.”
The arrival of the presence of Jesus Christ was to bring the Kingdom of God into the midst of East of Eden If there is one thing that I can say that I think is wrong with people's spiritual lives today, which is manifested in our culture, it is that it is superficial. It is not that people don't care. It is not that people don't want to know God. It is not that people don't have compassion for their neighbour. It is just that so much of it is superficial. The knowledge of the Word of God is abysmal! The understanding of the power of prayer is minimal. The walk with God is like a dog being pulled on a cart, but without any sense that there is responsibility to live your life regardless of the direction in which it is being pulled. We are superficial. I would say to you, my friends, dig deep to understand the Kingdom of God that is here right now.
As a schoolboy in Bermuda, one of my friends owned a lovely boat - or his father did - and this boat was very fast. So my friend and I decided to take some of our school friends with us and show off just how quickly we could go in this boat. We took it out on to the dangerous waters of the south shore of Bermuda. There was only one problem. Like many islands, and there are many of them in the Caribbean and in Australia, coral reefs had developed around it, and they are often just a millimetre or two below the level of the water. When the sun is shining and you are on a boat, as we found out, all you see is the reflection of light off the water. You see nothing below the surface. All you see is the bright, sparkling water.
My friend and I, showing off with our friends, decided to put the motor down and put the accelerator up and give them the thrill of a lifetime! We were bombing along the south shore of Bermuda at maximum speed, wind in our hair and sun on our faces, and we were feeling so good. Then, all of a sudden, there was a grinding and a crunching and a munching sound that makes me think a dentist is nothing! Even to this day, I can still feel and hear the sound of that grinding in my inner ear! We had struck a coral reef… at maximum speed! The blades went north and south, the steering ceased, the bottom of the boat was gouged to death, and we sat there humbly, rowing our friends back to shore in a leaky boat wondering what Daddy was going to say.
Our mistake was that we were superficial. We looked only at what the eye could see, and not what was deeper and more important. That is like our spiritual lives, and when we are that superficial, when our knowledge of God and our walk with God is so much on the surface, we lose so much. Jesus said, “Well, then repent.” He used the word in Greek - metanoia - “turn around” or “change.” Go in another direction; dig deep. To the disciples who he called when he said, “Follow me,” he was saying the same thing. “Repent and believe the good news. Turn around!”
I learned something from the lobster fishermen when I was in Nova Scotia. They told me there were certain times in the year when they could not fish the lobsters. Lobsters have to shed their shells, and they go through this shedding process quite a few times. If they don't shed their shells, then they grow inside them and they suffocate and die. But for a time, before they get their final shell, their bodies are exposed. It is then that they are at their most vulnerable. Predators can come along and the sea can throw them against the rocks or the coral reefs, and until they get that final shell, they are not safe. When they get it, they can withstand everything - except humans who put them in pots and serve them up at Red Lobster - but that's another story!
The fact is, they need to shed their old shell in order to get the shell that will make them safe. Repentance is letting go of that old shell that would stifle us in order that we might have the real shell that will be our safe and our permanent home. It requires change, it requires risk, it requires commitment and digging deeper, but it is worth it. Finally, Jesus says, “Believe.” You don't have to do anything specifically: you have to believe that the one who came is sufficient to take you back home.
In Browning's incredible poem Karshish, he tells the story of Lazarus. He says that Lazarus was a man, who was strong and physically able, who died and then came back to life. Browning then has this incredible line: “This grown man had eyes that were now like a child.” He believed, and he was able to see the world in a whole new way, like a child, able to see the power of God, the workings of Christ, the new life and the new hope.
My friends, we live in a time when many people feel the pain of living “East of Eden.” They feel the pessimism and the rejection. They have hope for a better day, maybe through a better and a new President. They are waiting for a promise, they are hoping for better times, but in the midst of all this, Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and it is that Kingdom, that reign of God, that is ultimately our great source of light and life - for now and forever more. Take the time to dig deep and you will see how wonderful it is! Amen.