Jesus Is Not Safe
Text: Mark 1:14-39
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
February 12, 2023
In the The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which is the first book of C.S. Lewis’ series called The Chronicles of Narnia, the children who have walked through the wardrobe into the wondrous land of Narnia, find themselves in a strange land. As they wander they end up in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Yes, talking beavers. That’s what happens in Narnia. As they have tea with the beavers they get informed about the workings of Narnia. They are told about the King of Narnia who is a great lion named Aslan. Aslan represents Jesus Christ as those who have read the books or seen the movie know. One of the children, Susan, hear about this lion and it makes her understandably nervous.
Susan asks, “Is he—quite safe?” I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” Mrs. Beaver responds, “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” Lucy worries. And Mr. Beaver answers, “Safe? . . . Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King I tell you.”
We have been reading the Gospel of Mark in our Sunday morning Adult Class. (Raise your hand if you have been in the class. I am so impressed with the thoughtful observations and insights people have in our class.) I thought I would take a Sunday to bring a sermon from the Gospel of Mark to go with our class, which has been full of great discussion as we all grow in knowing Jesus.
Though it is the second Gospel in the New Testament, Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written. He wasn’t writing a biography. It isn’t really a book to be sold in stores. Many people see Jesus’ life as a story. But stories can often be for entertainment. Mark is writing good news. A Gospel. These stories weren’t written to entertain or divert attention but to convert people.[1] It is a Gospel, an account of good news, good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
No one had written a Gospel before. There are no such things as Gospels in any ancient history. You don’t find them. Mark was the first. And he writes it to get people to see and decide for Jesus based on what Jesus said and did.
It is the briefest of the four Gospels. It moves fast and is action-packed. And this Jesus, the Son of God, is out of hand. He is not safe.
Many people – the churched and the unchurched – have a picture of Jesus as meek, mild,
welcoming to children, compassionate toward the sick. He wanders though Jerusalem and Galilee doing wonderful things for people. Jesus is a spiritual giant. A moral example. Someone who inspires us to better our lives.
You will get none of that in Mark.
Many people, and I again include the churched, have never read the Gospel accounts of Jesus, which are the only reliable, firsthand accounts of the Lord. You can watch The Chosen all night long, but Jesus is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And in Mark he is not safe to be around. If he calls you to follow him, buckle up.
He calls four fishermen, Simon and Andrew, James and John, to leave their boats and nets and follow him as his disciples. And it says they immediately do this. James and John’s father Zebedee is left in the boat to manage by himself. What must he have been thinking as he watched his sons get out and go with this Jesus? Is Jesus wrecking family businesses?
Jesus goes to the synagogue for Sabbath worship and the demons begin to cry out. Three times in the first three chapters of Mark we read of Jesus freeing people from evil spirits. Demons manifest themselves, they talk back to Jesus, they recognize Jesus.
Our culture has a problem with evil. We don’t want to believe it’s real, although by the looks of the number of movies and television shows evil and darkness sells. I believe evil is real. I believe the source of evil is Satan and that just as there are angels so there are demons. I don’t comprehend it all. I think we are desensitized to so much of the demonic because of our western, rational, scientific upbringing. I also don’t think we have to fear that demons lurk around every corner, every sickness, or every problem. Sometimes people call something demonic when it isn’t. But I think the forces of darkness are real and we see them more than we may want to admit.
Jesus shows up and the demons feel threatened. Who does this? It’s like there is a battle going on for this very world. Like the battle between two kingdoms, two powers that want to reign. But Jesus shows his authority over the kingdom of darkness. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus drives out many demons and does not let the demons speak because they knew who he is. People were stunned when they saw Jesus confronting the demonic. They asked, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” There’s nothing safe about someone whose very presence exposes evil.
Jesus is healing people with a touch, driving away fevers, cleansing people with leprosy. He is drawing crowds. Huge crowds. People wanted to be healed, delivered or to hear him teach.
He would be teaching beside the sea of Galilee and there were so many people that he had to get into a boat and teach from there so as not to get crushed and pushed into the water.
One time there were so many people around the house where he was that some men who had a paralyzed friend they wanted to bring to Jesus for him to heal got up on the roof, made a hole in the roof, and lowered the man down on his pallet. Jesus said to the man that his sins were forgiven, and he healed the man by telling him to get up and walk. Again, people said, “We’ve never seen anything like this.” Come to think of it, I haven’t either.
All of this stirred up the religious authorities. Jesus was teaching about what you could or could not do on the sabbath. Only God can do that. Jesus was forgiving people’s sins. Only God can do that. Well? The Pharisees and scribes accused Jesus of being possessed by evil. How else do you tell evil spirits to come out and be quiet? Jesus said that they were guilty of calling the work of the Holy Spirit a work of Satan, which is to blaspheme the Spirit.
Jesus was stirring up the religion of the day. He wasn’t following the rules. He didn’t say the rules were wrong, he just said something bigger than the rules was present. That something bigger was himself. Christ was so unsafe that after healing the withered hand of a man in a synagogue on a Sabbath, it says, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”[2] The Pharisees and the Herodians didn’t even like each other, but they found a common cause in their hatred of Jesus. You don’t get killed for being a nice, religious person.
One of the other people Jesus invited to follow him as a disciple was a man named Levi, also called Matthew. He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were dishonest. They extorted money from people for the Roman government. They were shunned from society. And Jesus invited Levi to follow him. Jesus isn’t safe in his relationships.
Then he had dinner at Levi’s house with other tax collectors and sinners. And some of these people were following Jesus. The Lord was opening himself to some unsavory characters. He was putting his own reputation at risk. The Bible teachers asked those closest to Jesus why he was eating with these people and Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
When Jesus sees Levi, he sees, “not just a member of a disreputable profession: he sees a human being, with his gifts, his potential, his errors, and his wounds.” He isn’t saying that he approves of the lifestyle of some of those around this dinner table. He just says they are like sick people who need a doctor. Jesus says the whole reason he came is to seek and to save the lost, not play it safe with those who are already spiritually-fit.
Imagine going into a hospital and criticizing the nurses and doctors for being near sick people. Jesus said he came for those who aren’t making it, who need grace.
There are people and lifestyles that I’m not sure about. But I am sure that these people need Jesus. Do I approve or disapprove of certain people? Hard to say. I don’t always approve of myself. But I do want Jesus to be present to people who might be considered immoral, problematic, different. Why are there so many more people outside of churches on a Sunday morning than inside? Why do some people feel out of place in a church? Are churches health clubs or hospitals?
The only way the unwell will be made whole is by coming near Jesus, hearing his teaching, and being with him. And a lot of religious people today – Christians – are very uncomfortable about that. No, Jesus is not safe. He will welcome all kinds of people who look different, are a little sketchy, who maybe don’t think God could be interested in them.
The religious leaders want to build barriers. Jesus wants to reconcile, transform, and build bridges. Do these people change? We don’t know. But Jesus is willing to be with them in hopes that they understand who he is.
Jesus will teach a parable about a farmer who throws seed everywhere in hopes it will grow. Not all of the seed makes it because some of it falls on a hard path and gets taken away, some doesn’t take root, some gets choked out because it falls amidst weeds. But some falls on good soil and produces a crop. Jesus is like that farmer, throwing seed everywhere and to everyone. What grows depends upon the heart of the person. He is throwing his teaching and healing everywhere in hopes that people will come to God.
Another time Jesus entered a house, again a crowd gathered, and he and his disciples were not even able to eat. His family heard about this and it says, “the went to take charge of him.” They said that he was out of his mind.[3]
His very own family tried to get him because they saw and heard the things he was doing and saying and thought he was nuts. Let’s get him and take him away and try to calm him down.
But Christ cannot be tamed. It’s like God has shown up and the world is disturbed that he is too near. Yet, no one can stop him. So they nail him to a cross. Bury him. And then, well…he’s not even safe in a tomb.
Dorothy Sayers was a mystery writer in England between the first and second World Wars. She was also a believer in Christ. People in her day were saying that churches were empty because Christianity is too dull. Dorothy Sayers said, “The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of [people]…this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and the hero. If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore – on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe.”
Sayers said, “We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah (that is one of the titles for Jesus in the New Testament), certifying Him ‘meek and mild’” and made him like a household pet. But to those who knew him, he was a “dangerous firebrand.”[4]
Jesus gets into a boat with his disciples to go to the other side of the sea of Galilee. A huge storm comes up, tossing the boat, scaring the disciples for their lives. And Jesus just sleeps in the stern. They go to him and say “don’t you care that we might die?” Christ gets up and tells the sea to be quiet and still. And Mark tells us, “Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.”
“He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’”[5]
What did people make of him? How did they account for him? Religious leaders think he is ruining religion. His family thinks he’s nuts. His disciples can’t figure out what he talking about sometimes, and aren’t sure what to make of him.
Why do some people get Jesus and others don’t? The demons know exactly who Jesus is: the Holy One of God. Everyone else, not so much.
And really, the question isn’t what will we make of him. The question is what he will make of us. Do you want to drop stuff and follow him? Do you really want to get in a boat with him? Follow him into the crowds? Jesus isn’t to make us nicer, help us do more good, or give us a more comfortable life. He is none of that. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who has come to absolutely annihilate all that is evil, and bring the reign of God. He came to reclaim what has been lost. Jesus Christ came to call people to God. Jesus came to build the very road to God.
Someone said, “Those who are really serious about their religion and want to become the kind of person that God wants them to be are the ones most in danger.”[6] Could be.
For those of us who have placed our life in his hands, there is no telling what will happen, where he might lead us, the challenges that will come and the blessings that will follow. No telling what he might ask of us. Will he ask us to serve? To forgive? To change? To confront? To give up something? To take up something?
Is he safe? Heck no. But he’s good, I tell you. He’s the King. He’s our King.
Prayer: King Jesus, I pray that you would reign in the lives of those who are in this place this morning. May we know what you came to do, what you said, what you did, and how you call us to live. We ask for the Holy Spirit to guide our steps as we follow you. Give us the courage to follow you every day of our lives. Amen.
[1] Stumbling Upon God, Burdon, pp.3,4
[2] 3:6
[3] 3:20-21
[4] This quote can be found at “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged” in Christian Letters To A Post-Christian World: A Selection of Essays (Eerdmans: 1969), p.15. Jan. 1, 1969
[5] 4:38-41
[6] John Claypool, quoted by Mike Yaconelli in “Dangerous Wonder,” p.107