I had a friend who was from a very wealthy Egyptian family. If he was to be believed, which sometimes was a rather dubious proposition, but if he was telling the truth he was a descendent of King Farouk. Anyway, in his rather privileged upbringing he had his own cook who would ask him everyday what he would like to eat and then prepare it for him. He said that one day he grew very frustrated with the whole process and angrily demanded of his cook, “Can’t you figure out what I want to eat?” And I bring this up not really to address the perils of wealth or the goofiness of my friend, but rather to have a conversation about expectations of others and what it is that we believe they should be doing. And since this is church and since you probably knew that I would eventually get to God let me say that you were right, because I think we also need to think about what are our expectations of God and ask if those are pious and right expectations. The reason I bring this up is because of the seemingly odd story we have today in Mark’s Gospel. And I say it is odd because Jesus does not quite live up to the expectation that we might have for him as the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
The story goes like this (and I am skipping the mother in law bit that started it off). Jesus has had a very busy day of curing the sick and casting out demons and when the morning comes he is nowhere to be seen. So Simon and his companions go out and search for him and when they find him they say, “Everyone is searching for you.” Now we are not told why everyone was searching for him, but based on what we have in the previous few verses, it would appear that there are probably more sick to cure and more demons to cast out. But Jesus does not say, “Thanks for reminding me, I’ll be right there,” rather he says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” Which on one level sounds very nice – Jesus is going to spread the Gospel a little further, but it also begs the question about the people back in the previous town who were still sick or demon possessed? Mightn’t they want a little more of Jesus’s time? Aren’t their sick and their demoniacs worthy of a little more curing? And this is not really and easy question to answer. The reason it is not an easy question to answer is because no matter what we conclude is the right thing to do, someone is not getting healed. If we say Jesus should stay near Andrew and Peter’s house, what of the people in the other towns?, but if we say he should go out to the other towns, what of those people nearby? No matter on which side we come down, someone in the story is not going to be healed. And that seems unfair. But as we try and understand this let’s first start by thinking about it with a little background on the nature of the incarnation.
When God became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ, he accepted certain constraints by being fully human – he had to walk places, he got tired, he got hungry and so on. And as a result of this his ministry in many ways was very limited. If we are to believe the experts, the entirety of Jesus’s earthly ministry took place in an area of about 2800 square miles, which may sound like a lot but it is about the size of Metropolitan Atlanta. And in terms of population the only major city that Jesus visited was Jerusalem which depending on who you believe had a population of somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000. Which means it had a population somewhere between that of Ashland, Oregon and Davenport, Iowa. Both lovely cities, but hardly what we would call major metropolitan areas. And so even if Jesus healed and preached to everyone in Galilee and Jerusalem we are still talking about a rather small percentage of the total population, when you figure the City of Rome had close to a million people at that time. So we are not just saying that the ministry of Jesus was limited in terms of whether he chose to go to this town or that town, but in terms of its totality. Jesus came to a rather small, relatively obscure and unpopulated area of the world. And to top it off, he would spend only three years doing his mission. And so we find that we are not just up against a question of where and who Jesus should heal, but an even larger question about the particularity of God. And what I mean by that is God’s interventions on this earth are most often very localized phenomenon, to a few select people. Just look at the Old Testament - God came to Abraham, God came to Moses, God spoke to Noah and so on. All of these were not visits for mass audiences. And so what are we to make of God coming to the people to whom he chooses to come and what is the lesson that we are to learn from that?
To get to the answer I think we need to go way back, and by way back I mean to the Book of Genesis, in particular Genesis 1:26 when we hear, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’” The key line here is that we were created in the image of God, which has lots of implications, but one of those implications is that we are to want to do the things that God wants to do. We are to have the mind of God. And let’s go back for a second and look at some of God’s interventions on this earth that I mentioned previously. In every one of those instances God came and said I am going to do something and you are going to do something too. To Moses he first said that he had heard the cry of his people and that is followed by, “Now I am sending you to the king of Egypt so that you can lead my people out of his country.” To Abraham God promised to make of him a great nation, but also said, ““Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And to Noah God said he would save him and his family but also said, “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.” What all of this illustrates is that yes God comes to particular people, and says what he is going to do, but then also gives them a job. He makes everyone co-workers in the kingdom. And rather obviously since we are created in God’s image, working along side God is divine work and something that we should want to do, because we are made to do it.
And so now let’s move to our original question about Jesus and why he decides to go to another town and on top of that why he came to a rather small region of the world. The answer comes down to God loving us and to our being created in God’s image. God wants us to work along side him and build up his kingdom, because that is what we are made to do. God does not simply come in and tell us to sit back relax and he will fix everything, but rather he shows us a direction and asks us to “Come Labor On” as the hymn puts it. And in our day and age where we put a premium on leisure this may sound like an almost cruel and unreasonable thing, but remember because we are created in God’s image when we do not act in accordance with our nature things can go very wrong.
I was reading an essay by Arthur Brooks the other day entitled The Dignity Deficit which was about what happens when people who either do not work or work in fields that we deem unimportant. He writes, “The deep problem is this: Those who are poor in our country are increasingly being told, implicitly and explicitly, that they are not needed by the rest of society. And the result of so many people not being needed is a dignity deficit. When people are told, by everything from labor markets to trends in family formation, ‘You’re not necessary, you’re not useful,’ that will attenuate any sense of dignity. And that leads to a culture and an economy of despair. It leads to opiate and alcohol abuse. It leads to an uptick in suicide. And that’s what we’re seeing in our country.”
Being needed is part of what makes us human and part of what gives us our dignity. God is very needed and God has given some of that “being needed” to us. And so this morning when we see that Jesus did not get everything done, it is not a call to be disappointed in Jesus but rather an invitation for us to continue the work that Jesus has started. For in working with God we are displaying some of the divine that is in us, we are being told that our life is necessary and meaningful. As Brooks points out, those that are not needed sink into all sorts of psychosis. And so we have both a responsibility to be fellow workers with God and a responsibility to show our fellow man that they are needed too, so that we may all be God’s own both now and forevermore.