Unique Authority

I spent my young childhood years in York, PA, which is short drive west of the more famous Lancaster, PA. Quite often, as we would listen to the radio, we would hear commercials for Shady Maple Smorgasbord. As part of their annoying jingle, they sang that their buffet was 144 feet long. A while back they upgraded it to 200 feet long. Car loads and bus loads of people would descend and partake of this monstrosity. Whenever my grandparents would come from Michigan, they always planned a trip with us to Lancaster County to visit Shady Maple Smorgasbord. I always anticipated these trips, looking forward to their mashed potatoes and gravy.

Sometimes when we look at the accounts of Jesus life and ministry in the Gospels, we kind of treat them like a buffet. We think Mark has laid out for us a collection of self-contained stories, like the various foods on a buffet. “Jesus did this, then he did that.” Like a running commentary on his ministry. Mark, and the other gospels, are more like a carefully prepared banquet. Yes, there are a variety of courses, but they are all carefully prepared for us in a certain order. We don’t slop the stories on our plates at our will. We are presented with a beautifully arranged meal, complete with seven forks and a cheese knife.

This morning we will dine on six different courses, from 1:40-3:6. These are not a grab bag of healing stories. No, in every one of these stories, Jesus is asserting his unique authority as the Son of God against the religious leaders. These leaders, the Pharisees and the scribes, were to be careful guardians of God’s Law. Instead of focusing on obeying what God had written for his people, they carefully erected a system to protect God’s law. Instead of encouraging the worship and obedience of God, their system became a tradition they worshiped.

As the shockwave unleashed by Jesus spreads across the region, these religious leaders are shaken. They wonder who Jesus is and what he is teaching. It doesn’t take long to see that Jesus and these leaders will be at war, as Jesus attacks their dearly held traditions.

What I would like to do this morning is to read these six accounts one by one, and comment as I go. For clarity, I am going to label each story with the main character…even though we know Jesus is the main character.

1. The leper (1:40-45)
When we were in Guyana, we would go Christmas caroling around the holidays. The tradition was that the family we caroled to would provide food for carolers. That was great, but it got a bit hard to accept food after the 12th house. Sometimes the family would serve ginger beer. Don’t worry, it was not fermented in any way. It was simply, water, sugar, and freshly-squeezed ginger. If you’ve never had freshly-squeezed ginger, try it sometime. It looked like homemade lemonade, but it blazed a fiery trail down to your stomach.

This is how reading the story of the leper should feel. We read it, and it is like drinking homemade lemonade. But to the people of that day, it would have felt like drinking ginger beer.

The leper approaching Jesus was like driving on the wrong side of the highway. It was against the OT law, it was against the custom deeply ingrained in the society. Leprosy was a label for a variety of debilitating and disfiguring skin diseases, including what we call leprosy today. It rendered the person ceremonially unclean. They had to live outside civilization and cry “unclean, unclean” as they walked around. People who came into contact with a leper were unclean and had to undergo a purification process. To have leprosy was to be cursed to a life of isolation, cast away from society, friends, and family. Both the actions of the leper and the actions of Jesus were a social taboo.

But this leper was desperate, and Jesus was compassionate. Look at what Jesus does. He touches him. But instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper becomes clean. That is the awesome power of Jesus. He tells the man to go through the purification process commanded in the OT. The reason? To be a testimony to them…the religious leaders. I understand that to mean that it would be a witness to them of the healing power of Jesus.

Jesus commands the man not to say anything, but he does not listen. As a result, crowds mob Jesus when he comes to a town. Jesus, then, has to stay in the desolate places. In effect, Jesus trades places with the leper.

2. The paralytic (2:1-12)
After the commotion dies down, Jesus returns to his home base in Capernaum. He is teaching a crowd, as he normally does. All of sudden the roof starts crumbling, and four pairs of eager hands appear. The roofs of that day were made of wooden beams or branches, thatch, and mud. It was sturdy enough to walk on. This was a bit of chore to dig through the roof. The audacity of the four friends was quickly surpassed by Jesus’ words: “Your sins are forgiven.” Perhaps there was a connection between this man’s sin and his paralysis, but Mark does not give us time to dwell on it. He quickly points us to the thoughts of the religious leaders. They think it is blasphemous that a man forgives sins. Only God can do that. Exactly the point. Jesus reads their minds, and confronts their thinking.

Of course it is easier to say- your sins are forgiven. You can’t see that. But you can see a paralyzed man walk again. And that miracle is proof of the authority of Jesus. Jesus calls himself the Son of Man here. It is a term that only he uses about himself. Drawing from the OT, it shows his divine authority. In a few words, Jesus discredits the religious leaders and displays his power over sin.

3. The tax collector (2:13-17)
Taxes and tax collectors. I think we can understand the disdain the people of that day felt for tax collectors.
I never have met anyone who rejoiced to pay their taxes or anyone with overflowing gratitude for the IRS. Being a tax collector was good if you wanted to be rich, but bad if you wanted people to like you. Our text lumps tax collectors and sinners together.

As before, Jesus calls the unlikely to follow him. First fishermen, now a tax collector. Then, he eats with this tax collector and others like him? Unthinkable! It would be like a Baptist pastor going to a bar, and having a beer with some drug dealers. Scandalous. Called to task by the religious leaders (again), Jesus says- I came to save people like this: people who know they are sick. Jesus did not let the social norms of that day stop him from reaching people with his message of repentance. Nor should we. The question for us: are there classes of people that we do not associate with that need the gospel? Do we think them unworthy of our love and the message of Jesus Christ?

4. The bridegroom (2:18-22)
The questions keep coming, with the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees asking about fasting. There was only one fast prescribed in the OT law. But by the time of Jesus, some Jews were observing many fasts, some fasting twice a week. We have to realize that this question comes (at least in Mark) right after Jesus is having a feast with some sinners. Jesus and his disciples are feasting, those questioning Jesus are fasting.

Jesus says- my disciples are going to party while the groom is here. You don’t fast when you have a wedding celebration. In our day- you don’t start a diet right before Thanksgiving. You’ll miss out on Thanksgiving, Christmas cookies, Christmas meals, and the New Year’s meals. You start a diet after all those are past. Something new and exciting is here, and it’s Jesus. It’s not fitting to fast now, just as using a piece of unshrunk cloth as a patch is not fitting. Something new is here. If you try to contain it, it will explode, like new wine in old wine skins. Jesus says: yes, my disciples will fast when I’m gone, but now we celebrate.

5. The Lord of the Sabbath (2:23-28)
There are two ceremonies of huge importance to the Jews: circumcision of males and the observance of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was given by God to Israel. The command was to work six days and rest on the seventh. This God-glorifying command was surrounded by mounds of tradition by the Jews, so that they would not even come close to breaking it. Their regulations bordered on ridiculous. But Jesus, comes and touches the holy grail of their religion: the Sabbath. And they do not like it one bit.

The disciples were doing what was allowed by OT law- eating grain as they passed through a field. But the religious leaders understood it as harvesting. Jesus quickly responds with a story from the OT. We have to read carefully here. Jesus is not using this story as an exception to the law: “in desperate times, you can do what you need to do.” It is more of a precedent. And the focus is more of who did it, than what he did. David, the King of Israel. David did what was unlawful, but that’s OK because he was God’s anointed ruler. Jesus did not say- it was OK because he was hungry.
From David would come a ruler. Jeremiahs 23:5 puts it this way: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

Jesus, says, “Look, I’m the real ruler here. I am the master of the Sabbath.” Because Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, he can say in verse 27: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” What the Pharisees had twisted, Jesus was restoring to something better. The Sabbath takes a whole new meaning in the NT because of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.

6. The man with the withered hand (3:1-6)
Jesus drives home his point about the Sabbath, and gets the heart of the matter. The Jewish laws at that time, allowed people to help others on the Sabbath if they were in desperate circumstances. This man was not. Yes, he needed healing, but he was not in danger of dying that day. Jesus says: “What have you done with the Sabbath?! You’d rather keep your man-made rules than do good for anyone!” Jesus was ticked. It says he is angry and grieved at their hardness of heart. They had closed their heart to Jesus and his authority, and held tightly to their traditions. Jesus brought life to a disable man. The leaders figured out how to bring death to Jesus.

Application
This passage is not merely about the beginning of a religious quarrel 2,000 years ago. It’s about our hearts and how we respond to Jesus. Mark presents one man, Jesus, the Son of God, who has unique authority. There are two ways we can respond to Jesus, and two ways Jesus responds to us.

1. Hardness of heart
The Pharisees clung to their traditions they had erected around God’s Law. They had encircled God with all sorts of traditions and laws that by themselves were of no consequence. Their carefully-manicured religion, actually led them away from the God it was supposed to honor. Their laws had become their idol. And when you trample on someone’s idols they get angry. They want to kill Jesus! Jesus’ response is anger and grief at their hard hearts.

Can we do this? Absolutely. We can encircle Jesus Christ, his gospel, and his church with mounds of our tradition, that we can’t even see our Savior. Whether it be carefully-determined Christian activities or frenzied social action with a Christian label, we can block Jesus from our view. And slowly, we are more enamored by our tradition than by our Savior.

Then Jesus comes along, and he tramples on our traditions. He squashes our Sunday routine. We get angry. “Don’t mess with me, Jesus. I have things just the way I want them. I do my thing at church, isn’t that enough? Leave me alone.” Jesus is not content with your observance of what our culture calls Christianity. He wants you to follow him. We can reject him and plot to take him out.

2. Humility
The sinners and tax collectors came to Jesus as sin-sick people. They knew they needed a soul physician. They listened to Jesus’ call to repent and believe in the gospel. The social and religious outcasts had Jesus’ favor as they came to him in humility. They received the compassion of Jesus, and Jesus celebrates with them. He feasts with them. The cure for our obsession with our man-made traditions is to come to Jesus with humility. Repentance is the only remedy for our idol-worship.

Jesus will heal your sin-sick soul, and invite you to feast with him.

Are you feasting with Jesus, or plotting to kill him?