Mark 1:29-39
February 6, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Knowing Answers
When I am driving to find a destination, I might go down this street or that one to see if I can find where I want to go. But when I am doing the same thing with Joy in the car, I am instantly “lost.” Stopping to ask directions is almost the very last thing I want to do because I don’t want to admit to her that “I don’t know.”
Not wanting to admit that we are lost and that we don’t know something is a reality that most men suffer through, particularly in their early years of adulthood. Maybe it’s a bit of over-confidence, a bit of machismo, or maybe just a bit of plain ignorance!
Knowing answers is an important ability to have in our society today. We need to know enough in our jobs to complete our work. We need to know enough about national and international news to engage in small talk. We need to know enough trivia to shout out the questions for the answers on Jeopardy and the answers to the multiple-choice questions on “Do You Want to Be a Millionaire?”
With information replacing manufactured goods as the number one commodity that we sell today, to admit to saying “I don’t know” is almost like saying, “I am underprivileged.” We don’t want to ever say, “I don’t know” because it reminds us that we may not be good enough.
Epiphany
For the past five Sundays, you may have noticed in the bulletin the heading that reads, “Fifth Sunday After Epiphany.” The celebration of Epiphany on January 6 marks the day when the Magi from the east came to bring gifts to Jesus and to worship him. They didn’t know what this star was all about. So they followed the star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright to find out.
After the day of Epiphany, the season of Epiphany begins. It is a time when the church celebrates the manifestation, the revelation of God with us in Christ. We are in this season of Epiphany until Lent and Easter.
But revelation is not always self-evident. Jesus is sometimes elusive. So in Epiphany, we must patiently allow Jesus to reveal to us who he is, rather than who we would have him to be. There are times when we may need to say, “I don’t know about this Jesus.”
Encountering Mark
In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Mark, we encounter a mysterious episode about Jesus. People can’t figure out Jesus.
Last Sunday we read how Jesus cast out the demons from a man with unclean spirits. Mark writes, “At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.” Then Jesus went to Simon Peter’s house where his mother-in-law was in bed with a fever. Jesus took her hand, lifted her up and she was healed. Later that evening, many people brought to Jesus people who were sick and possessed with demons. And he cured them all.
Jesus has rapidly become a success. Mark said, “The whole city was gathered around the door.” After performing two healings: the healing of the demoniac n the synagogue last week and the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law this Sunday, the whole city was talking about Jesus.
Good news travel fast. Good news especially about the cure of incurable illness, the healing of the terminally ill travel fast. Imagine if today it were announced by a doctor that she had just discovered a cure for AIDS. If you would come to her, she would gladly cure you for free. Do you know what the streets of our city would be like tomorrow if a cure for AIDS were found? That’s what happened to Jesus. The whole city gathered in front of his door.
Now look at what happens according to Mark. Before it was even daylight, Jesus got up the next morning and went out to a deserted place to pray without telling his disciples. Simon and the others sent out a search party to look for him. And when they did, they said, “We have been looking for you! We even stopped by every local gas station to ask for directions. Where were you? Everyone is searching for you!”
What is Jesus’ response? He says, “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go into the neighboring towns where I can preach, because that’s what I came to do.”
The disciples are confused over Jesus’ actions. And why shouldn’t they be? “We left our fishing nets to follow you just a few days ago and “Wow,” you have healed two people and look at the crowds! We didn’t know it was going to be this exciting and now you want to leave all your groupies waiting?”
I Don’t Know
From this passage, it seems that numbers, popularity, and success bother Jesus rather than please him. Why?
Jesus says that he must go out and preach, that is why he came. Preaching is fine; I do it myself. But why is preaching better than these miraculous healings?
Picture this: You have some pressing personal problem next week, some great pain in your life and you call me, as your pastor. When you call the church, seeking pastoral care, you get a recording, “The pastor will be unavailable all week, for this week the pastor will be working from Monday through Saturday on next Sunday’s sermon. Preaching is more important than your personal problems.”
Why was the preaching more important than the healing? And why did Jesus seem to avoid the crowds and seek time for lonely prayer rather than encourage the crowds?
I don’t know. Mark rarely explains things, unpacks them for us. Mark mostly reports.
After Jesus cured those who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons, it says in Mark, “he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.” If Jesus was so successful in what he was doing, why didn’t he want the demons to bear witness to Jesus?
At the beginning of this gospel, with the voice from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved” we thought we knew exactly who Jesus was. But now, with him acting strange, we’re not so sure. It’s enough to make us ask, “Who is this Jesus, anyway?”
Isn’t the function of a Messiah to do God’s work? Isn’t healing God’s work? Isn’t it a good thing that crowds of people are coming to Jesus?
I Don’t Know Faith
We are left with a bunch of questions, and I don’t think we like questions. We come to church to listen to Scripture so that we can have answers to our questions. We want things explained to us. Not to get more questions!
Just like the disciples and their companions went out to search and hunt for Jesus, we come to church searching for Jesus too. When Jesus hears that everyone is searching for him, hunting him down for answers to their problems, Jesus makes a hasty departure.
Unlike us with the full gospel in front of us to read, study, and believe in, the disciples didn’t have this. When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, we can read from Mark that “just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.” Then a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” You see. Jesus saw the heavens tearing apart and the dove descending on him and the voice from heaven. Those who were with Jesus at
the baptism did not see the dove or hear the voice. They had to wait for the identity of Jesus to unfold through Jesus’ work.
But we also see today that even having the whole gospel in front of us, we are still left with a bunch of questions. Like the disciples, we too, need to wait for the identity of Jesus to unfold for us.
We have been told the secret that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. But what sort of Messiah is he? He is the presence of God, but who is God? There is a space between us and the identity of who Jesus is. So patience is required. We need to be opened to what he has to reveal to us. We must be willing to have our preconceptions of Jesus rearranged if we are to receive him on his terms and not on our own.
This is the meaning of the Epiphany season when we celebrate the revelation, the manifestation of God with us in Jesus. Yet today’s gospel reminds us that sometimes, in order to have him revealed to us, he must also be concealed from us. Room must be created in our consciousness for him to reveal who he is rather than simply whom we would have him be.
So who is this Jesus who tells the demons not to speak about him? Why did Jesus not want to see the crowds? Why did Jesus imply that preaching for him is the reason why he’s here and not healing the sick and possessed?
The answer to these questions and many questions we may have about our faith is “I don’t know.”
Maybe Jesus didn’t want to become a popular leader giving people what they wanted because he knew they would become dependent on him. So he wanted to move on. Maybe Jesus preferred preaching than healing because there was still much to be said. Maybe Jesus sought time alone in prayer because, even for him, he needed further clarity about his mission, needed courage to walk the narrow way commanded by his Father.
Maybe those are the answers to explain Jesus’ strange behavior, but I really don’t know. All that makes sense, but it’s not stated in Mark. And as we come to the end of my sermon, there are still more questions, gaps and spaces between what we know for sure and what we don’t know.
How do you feel about that? Will you follow Jesus, even when you do not always immediately understand him? Are you willing for there to be gaps between what we know of him and what we don’t know?
When I was a junior high youth, I was asked by my pastor whether I would be interested in attending a baptism class. I turned him down because at that time, I wasn’t sure. I thought I didn’t know enough about Jesus. After a year passed, I was asked again. So fearing that now I “should” make a decision to be baptized since all my friends have already, I agreed. A few weeks after my baptism, I felt I had more questions than answers. I thought my baptism was not working for me. Maybe, I didn’t stay under long enough. I had more questions of faith because I thought I knew enough, but I didn’t.
Now I realized that to have a “I don’t know faith” is actually having a more mature faith than to have a faith with all the answers. I still have many questions about faith without good answers. Having faith is not based on understanding everything and to have answers for all of our questions. Here’s a story,
A young college student, considered to be an intellectual elitist, announced to a group of friends that he would believe nothing that he could not understand. Another student, who lived on a farm nearby, turned to the intellectual and remarked, “As I drove on campus today, I passed a field in which some sheep were grazing. Do you believe it?”
“Sure,” replied the young man.
“Well, not far from the sheep,” the student farmer said, “some calves were chewing on the fresh grass. Do you believe it?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Well, not too far down the road there was a gaggle of geese feeding. Do you believe this?” asked the student-farmer.
“I guess so,” came the reply.
“Well, said the student-farmer, “the grass that the sheep ate turn into wool; the grass that the calves ate turn into hair; the grass the geese ate will turn into feathers. Do you believe this?”
“Sure I do,” the too-smart student answered.
“But do you understand it?”
“Uh, no,” the intellectual student said, somewhat puzzled.
“You know,” said the student-farmer, “if you live long enough, you will find that there are a great many things you will believe without understanding.”
What We Don’t Know at FCBC
You might think that it’s funny for me as your Senior Pastor to be preaching on the topic of “I Don’t Know” on the day of our Annual Meeting when you would be looking for answers to questions about our future. But it is only when we are keenly honest about what we don’t know is when we recognize and respect the distance, the gap that is between God and us. We are not God, therefore, we don’t know everything about God. There lies more faith in honest doubt than in most creeds that we might have memorized to say.
I don’t know if all the money that were pledged to the stewardship campaign will come in, but I do have the faith that God can multiply five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people.
I don’t know when Michael Wong and Bill Leong come early on Sunday morning to set up our public address system that anyone will show up for worship. But I do have the faith that when two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, he is there also.
I don’t really know if after we have completed the retrofit and renovation of our church building that we will double or triple our membership. But I do have the faith that when we re-enter our church home, the beautiful surroundings will bear witness to God’s mighty power in our lives. Our renewed faith will bring many persons to know Christ as Lord and Savior.
And I don’t know if every time, I stand before you and share the message from the Bible through our life stories that your faith grows and deepens. But I do have the faith that when we recognize that “We don’t know” everything about God is the beginning of this honest doubt. Here lies strong faith.
In the long run, as we search after Jesus—sometimes for sure, sometimes not knowing what’s going on—the point is not to have answers, but to have Jesus. To have Jesus in all of his life-giving presence is better than having all the answers in the world.
In our “I don’t know faith” lies more faith in honest doubt than all the creeds and answers in the world.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, reassure us that your plan for the world is beyond our human understanding. Help us to trust in your promises of new life and hope. It is only when we kneel before you in deep humility is when we come to know you in our hearts. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.