The good news of God, of which Jesus Christ is the source and substance, is so contrary to logic, so abrasive to finer sensi­bilities, so disarming in its stark plainness, so scandalous to sophisticated minds that ministers who stand before cultured, technologically-oriented congregations find themselves sorely tempted to preach upon the distant implications of the Gospel at the expense of the immediate essence of God’s mighty redemptive venture on man’s behalf in the earth. Mark’s ac­ count of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the first and the shortest of the synoptic Gospels, will tolerate no ministerial meanderings into the byways of trivia or excursions into second-rate issues. It concerns itself with the Gospel in its distilled form.

Written, as were all the gospels, from the Easter side of Jesus’ life, Mark’s narrative makes it clear that the Christ of faith and Jesus of history are one and the same and that in him the crisis point of history has been reached. Recorded from memory and taken from the verbal accounts of eyewitnesses (in Mark’s case that eyewitness was presumably Peter), the resurrection forms the crux of the story and provides the basis for faith validating all the rest of the deeds of Christ.

Proclamation, not chronology or biography or portraiture, is Mark’s intention. This explains the story-like character of the document. The chronological and geographical problems that emerge in the book are resolved by remembering that Mark wrote more to make a point than to reconstruct events in precise detail or, for that matter, in exact sequence. The point Mark wanted to make was that “Jesus is the strong son of God whose mighty deeds, once wrought upon the earth, can still be repeated – are still, no doubt, being repeated – among his followers.”^[1]George Arthur Buttrick, Ed., The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abing­don Press, 1956 ), Vol. 7, p. 633.

The motif of the book surf aces early and is in evidence from first to last. In contrast with Matthew and Luke, who develop and elaborate the lineage, birth, and early childhood of Jesus, Mark launches at once into the life of Christ, begin­ning not with his birth and upbringing but with his public ministry. Mark’s introduction is spare and uncluttered, his desire evidently being to get at the salient issues of the Gos­pel with dispatch and without encumbering detail. The book’s motif is further reflected in the stuff of which it is composed. Mark’s report focuses not so much on Jesus’ verbal teachings as on his decisive actions and those events which reveal the nature of Christ’s mission and accomplishment. Ernst Kase­ man in his Jesus Means Freedom asserts that “Mark’s Gospel is peculiar in that it gives much less prominence than the other Gospels to Jesus’ sayings and proverbs. Apart from the story of the passion, the story centers on Jesus in action.”^[2]Ernst Kasemann, Jesus Means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), p. 55.

The action orientation of the book could serve as the thread for a sermon based upon the entire document. The accent of such a message would fall upon the idea that the Gospel is more than a word or a combination of words, and more, much more, than some vapid, detached philosophy of life. In its essential character, the Gospel inheres in and is derived from the action of God in Christ and, in turn, the doings of Christ in the world, primarily his sacrificial death and his final triumph over man’s last enemy. In concert with this unmistakably clear emphasis of Mark, a preacher could very well show that the ongoing work of Christ through his people is done infinitely better through meaningful actions than through words that are of ten meaningless, or at least unclear, mouthed to people gathered in an oddly designed building insulated from the agonies of a world bent upon its own destruction. To this point Colin Morris speaks with telling effect, when in his Include Me Out, he says, “Your theology, fancy or plain, is what you are when the talking stops and the action starts.”^[3]Colin Morris, Include Me Out! Confessions of an Ecclesiastical Coward (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968), p. 30. Such an accent is desperately needed at this present time when the church and its people seem intent upon turning away from active engagement in redemptive ministry in favor of a narcis­sistic preoccupation with personal experience and ephemeral feeling.

 

Action Through Miracles

No homiletical treatment of Mark would be adequate with­ out some concentration upon miracles. 209 of the 661 verses in the book are occupied with reporting occurrences which reflect Jesus’ transcendence over natural order. At the present moment there is such fascination with the possibility of break­ing through the shackles of the mundane and the immediate that people are eager to hear some affirmative and sensible word on the subject of the transcendent and the miraculous. This fascination, despite its sometimes bizarre manifestations, reveals a felt need on the part of many people in our jaded, flat, and despairing culture.

In an introduction to a series of sermons on the miracles recorded in Mark, William E. Hull perceptively observes, “Despite an aching need, many in our generation see miracles as a scientific problem to be explained rather than as a spiritual power to be experienced. In the Bible, however, the key issues concern not whether or how there can be miracles but what God did and why it happened.”^[4]William E. Hull, Church Chimes (Shreveport, Louisiana: First Baptist Church, January, 1978), Vol. 4, No. 4, p. 1.

People waiting for some clarifying word about the mean­ing of the miracles performed by Jesus need to know, as Bruce Metzger states it, “These deeds (miracles) are not regarded as interference with the so-called laws of nature, but as tokens of a new order of life inaugurated by the coming of Christ.”^[5]Bruce Manning Metzger, The New Testament, Its Background, Growth, and Content (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 132.

In general terms the miracles could be used as a basis for showing that (1) the creation of God, although governed by order, is not a closed system and is susceptible to change, (2) the Creator is not captive to his creation and he can as he wills and wishes   intrude to suspend or alter so-called order and (3) God acts decisively in human affairs and intrudes upon natural order to meet actual need and not to attract attention or to prove himself able and worthy to doubting mortals. True enough, miracles become persuasive evidence of Christ’s unique power and signs of his mission, but basically they are to be viewed as acts of concern for those whose lives were without hope apart from divine intervention.

Shorn of their detail, sometimes mystifying, the miracles assure beleaguered pilgrims that in every conceivable circum­stance there is a way out, that no situation is hopeless. Ser­monically, every miracle should be examined with a view toward discovering its meaning in the contemporary   scene, so that those who listen may sense that they are not being exposed to a bagful of windy improbabilities but are offered promises of lively hope.

Possibilities for treating the miracles abound. The follow­ing are not fully developed sermons but germinal ideas in the form of titles and starting lines deduced from the miracles stories.

From Chaos to Order
(Mark 1:21-28)

Even a cursory reading of the New Testament will   show at once that people of the time believed strongly, perhaps universally, in the existence of demons. The world into which Jesus came was a demon-haunted world. Whether Jesus con­curred with the people in their belief in the reality of demons is not clear because the question is not discussed. But this much is certain – he took seriously the effects produced by the belief in these beings and acted without arguing the case to bring help and healing to riddled and bent victims.

Modern man with his scientific mindset finds it difficult, if not impossible, to believe in the existence of demons as entities that occupy space, having form and substance. But he cannot deny that pervasive presence and results of demonic behavior, behavior that is destructive both to persons and to the structures and institutions in which people live. Fear, worry, anxiety, insecurity, inordinate self-interest, all demonic in character and consequence, plague us still, and will until they are exorcised by the Other who to this day comes with his word of authority over all unclean things, saying, “Be silent and come out of him” (v. 25).

The Touch of the Master’s Hand
(Mark 1:40-45)

To be sick is of itself bad enough, but to be regarded as untouchable because of being sick is unbearable. Leprosy in Jesus’ day was without cure and therefore so feared that those afflicted were required when being approached to cry out, “Unclean, unclean!”

In the dramatic encounter between the leper and Jesus the shame of sickness, the touch that heals and the news too good to keep constitute the dynamics of every event of similar na­ture.

“If you will, you can make me clean,” announced the leper, revealing that he knew that he was not only unwell but, from what he perceived from the treatment of the world outside himself , he was also somehow unfit to be whole and healthy. Shame provoked more pain in his soul than did sickness in his body. And to this day, the ill of body, institutionalized, isolated, and insulated from the world of well people sense, perhaps incorrectly yet maybe correctly, that due to their illness they are in fundamental ways different from their peers. The Lord Christ sees sick people differently – may God be praised!

“And he stretched out his hand and touched him,” is more than a rhetorical way of reporting the sequence of elements in the encounter. Halford Luccock has observed that nothing less than a personal touch with the person in need would satisfy Jesus. Here is a word of approach and technique des­perately needed by those who, following in the way of the Physician, would bring help and healing to a world of people sick of the body, mind, and spirit. There is no substitute for the outstretched hand. The gift of wholeness is more of ten than not transmitted by the touch.

Salt and light are we. The value of salt and the effective­ness of light depend   in large measure upon their proximity to the object they would preserve and illuminate. Harvey Cox is sure, in his The Seduction of the Spirit, that footwashing would be a tradition worthy of recalling from the distant, rural past, if not for ceremonial reasons, then because we   would   at least touch one another with compassion and in that touch find ourselves strangely healed. Only in one or two instances do we have record of Jesus healing people at a distance.

“But he went out and began to talk freely about it.” This, despite Jesus’ plain instruction that the leper was to tell no one. Why did he not keep quiet? Because he was a rebellious, disobedient, strong-willed soul? No, not likely. He spoke be­ cause he could not keep his silence. He could not stay his tongue.The news too good to be true was also too true to be kept. It is ever so.

Let a loved one recover from serious illness and one can­ not keep from telling those he meets about it. At war’s end the report of the cessation of bloodletting and flowing tears is not circulated by some secret code in hushed tones. Rather the headlines scream, the war is over, the war is over!

Let one be touched by the Master’s hand and he will, with­ out prompting, “talk freely about it, spreading the news.” Always.

Instruments of Grace
(Mark 2:1-11)

Here is a case fraught with mystery. To what extent was the paralytic’s malady connected with and caused by his sin? In ways that we know about but cannot reduce to analysis the body is affected by the spirit, the flesh by the soul. Flesh and spirit are aspects of human personality, not compartments sealed off from one another. Therefore, the body is sometimes wracked with pain because the spirit reeks of evil. But not always. All who have lived for any length of time and watched with a discerning eye know that some terribly bad things hap­ pen to some terribly good people. Whether one suffers because he has been sinful or because he has been saintly or because he has been both or neither, this much we know: Human personality is unitary and one of its aspects cannot be touched without all of its parts being affected. The Gospel, with its word of hope and healing, addresses itself to all that a person is – body and soul and mind – and proceeds from the inside out to make life new and fill it with promise.

But despite its mystery, here is a case through which a profound certainty shines, and that is that divine deeds are accomplished in many instances through human means.

It is true that of ten in one clean stroke God has without aid performed his feats of power, achieving thereby his pur­pose in the earth. With a word, his own decisive, other-than­ human word, God spoke creation into being, calling order out of chaos. Of his will, not ours, God, for reasons of delight to himself, made us in his own image, breathing into us the breath of life, a breath that we couldn’t begin to originate. Unaided, God set the stars in the heavens and determined the course of the sun and the moon. With a command God parted the Red Sea until “the waters were a wall unto the people on the right hand and on the left.” The Bible is brimming with reports of God’s solitary acts upon the earth and among men, and life is full of evidence that God of his own initiative can work works miraculous in nature, marvelous in our eyes, without our hands and feet and tongues and brains. But the question is, will he? Not often.

The nameless men who bore their paralyzed friend into the presence of Jesus belong to a long line of unpretentious people who by their willingness, not their worthiness, have been instruments, channels, tools through whom God has wrought his miracles in the earth. In that company belong such people as Susanna Wesley whose prayers and patience gave to the world through her sons, John and Charles, the sure word of  the Gospel and songs of life eternal, and Monica, mother of Augustine, who would not give up until her son, wayward and obstinate, was borne to sainthood by a sea of tears. It was this same Augustine, perhaps remembering the unrelenting love of Monica, who said, years later “Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.”

The Disturbing Comforter
(Mark 5:1-13)

The setting of the drama, the sickness of the central figure the sounds in an eerie place, the solution to the problem all add up to make the story of the demon-riddled man of the Gerasenes seem far away, remote and disconnected from our time. But on closer reflection, stripped of its exterior crust, it yields much that is to an amazing extent reflective of modern time with its torn, tormented people and its distorted sense of values.

The man among the tombs filled with 6,000 foul spirits symbolizes contemporary man who, hollow, jaded, forlorn, finds himself in the midst of confusing signals about himself asking, ever so pathetically, “Who am I”? His feeling, sadly enough, is that he isn’t a man at all but that he is some kind of mob – a mob of cowards and heroes, a mob of angels and demons, a mob of beings bent on death but craving to live. Identity he seeks, confusion he finds. Wholeness he clamors for, splitness he gets. Seething with ambiguity, ashamed of his dividedness, he spurns too often his only hope and in his delusion says to his one hope, “I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” Divided man cannot clearly see that he cannot see clearly and thus with his split vision tries to flee from the presence of the source of his peace, all the while asking, “What have you to do with me?”

The tranquil, respectable, ostensibly prosperous villagers represent to a disquieting degree the great masses of mod­erately decent people of this earth who, though regretful about the tearing maladies which afflict the world, and ap­propriately respectful of Jesus, would like to see changes made for the better if only the   transaction   could occur with a minimum disruption, disturbance, and dislocation.

At seeing the demoniac “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, . . . they were afraid, and they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.”

Afraid of Jesus, the peaceful warrior, the gentle physician, the tender shepherd, the kindly teacher? Yes! And for reasons good and proper. For Christ comes not only to comfort but also to disturb. Mark it: To disturb! John Baillie is right when he says that some have sought Christ only as a complacent ally of their own ambitions but have found him a consuming fire.

Christ comes always as a disturbing presence to the greedy. When men care more about collecting dollars than dispelling demons the presence of Christ always provokes consternation and the request, albeit courteous and polite, that he leave their neighborhood quietly but quickly.

To both the demoniac rendered split by legion spirits and to the villagers made insane by their greed, Christ came to bring peace and wholeness through integration and to strike turmoil among the dollar conscious by announcing that greed is itself a form of mind sickness.

Solitude and Storms
(Mark 4:35-41)

There is, it is plain to see, a rhythm that throbs at the heart of all reality. Nature reflects it and is in tune with it: light follows darkness, darkness the light. Seasons, with the regularity of a clock’s beat, return in predictable rotation, each at its appointed time and always in the same and correct order. Planting precedes the harvest, harvest follows planting.

Human existence, too, moves to a patterned cadence. There is, truly, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Who can deny it? Who would?

Jesus, our mentor in all things human and divine, knew about and lived not in conflict but in easy accord with life’s rhythm. Solitude and storms, polar points of human experi­ence, were part and parcel of his life. And ours!

1. The solace of solitude -“On that day when the evening was come, he said unto them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And he left the crowd” (v. 35).

Crowds! From the first, or at least from the time word got out that he was different and better, there were crowds. “And he went home and the crowd came together again, so that he could not even eat.” “And he began to teach beside the sea and a very large crowd gathered about him.” “Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed.” “And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.” Crowds, crowds, crowds! That word forms a refrain that recurs with maddening repetition in his story.

His response? To tum a deaf ear, a cold shoulder to the cry of the crowd? No. His response was to seek repose in soli­tude, in quietness, in silence. Strength needed for survival in the noise and den of the hectic crowd was recovered in rest from the routine.

Colin Morris perceptively observes that “serious things have to be done in silence, because we do not have words to measure the immeasureable. In silence men love, pray, listen, paint, write, think, suffer. These experiences are all occasions of giving and receiving, of encounters and forces that are inexhaustible and independent of us.”^[6]Colin Morris, The Word and the Words (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975), p. 148. When harangued with­ out and harrassed within Jesus, wisely, left the crowd. There is keen wisdom here!

2. The certainty of storms. “And a great storm of wind arose and the waves beat into the boat” v. 37).

It is common knowledge now that the Lake of Galilee was notorious for those freakish storms which, out of the blue, break upon it without warning and with terrifying suddenness. They sometimes interrupted the fairest day, the most serene calm.

One would gather by listening to the gospel as it is cur­rently packaged and dispensed commercially that a believer’s life is a peaceful voyage across the tranquil sea. The huck­sters of easy religion would have us think that, given sufficient degrees of devotion, the way of discipleship is without excep­tion the way of success, prosperity and plenty. Not so! Into the finest of lives on the clearest of days storms can and do erupt with devastating fury bringing suffering in their wake.

The finest exemplars of the faith knew this, for “some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword: they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Hebrews 11:35-38).

And these storms, unpredictable but certain, cannot be chosen. They just arrive.

3. The calming presence – “And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be Still!’ ”

The way of the Lord is positive, not negative. That is to say, its essence is not an absence but a presence. It has not to do with the absence of strife but the presence of peace. It does not concern itself so much with the avoidance of pain but the acceptance of comfort. It does not flee the conflict of life; it rises above every tumult in triumph.

Think not, then, that God’s highest good for you is to spare you from storms but to shape you by them and, finally, thanks be to God in the highest, to save you through them.

G. Studdert Kennedy, the lyrical and lamented chaplain of the “war to end all wars,” said it best:

Peace does not mean the end of all our striving,
Joy does not mean the drying of our tears
Peace is the power that comes to souls arriving
Upon the gate where God appears.^[7]G. Studdert Kennedy, The Unutterable Beauty (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1927), p. 13.

The foregoing is sufficient to show how points of entry may be found for preaching on the miracles. Other miracles which demonstrate the power of Christ over all tyrannical powers are the healing of the woman with a flow of blood, Mark 5:25-34; the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Mark 5:22-24, 35-43; the feeding of the five thousand, Mark 6:30-44; the deliverance of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, Mark 7:24-30; the healing of the deaf-mute in the Decapolis, Mark 7:31-37; the restoration of sight to the blind man of Bethsaida, Mark 8:22-26; the driving of unclean spirits from an epileptic, Mark 9: 14-29; the recovery of sight by blind Bartimaeus, Mark 10:46-52.

 

Action Through Men

The world into which Jesus came and in which he lived was, like ours, a world of people, real people – people with flaws, people with feelings, people with pasts, people with futures, people with sin and sin’s scars. These very real people play a prominent role in the action-centered ministry of Jesus. They appear before the beginning actually begins and con­tinue through until the end and even afterward, and reveal, strikingly, how people become not only recipients of divine action but its agents as well. These people of many kinds and with varied backgrounds constitute a rich source of material for the development of sermons which speak to life as it is actually lived.

Since most people identify more readily with other people than with principles and abstractions, sermons based upon the figures in the story will appeal strongly to many, especially if those sermons touch down at places that are vital to life.

The first person encountered in Mark is John the Baptist (Mark 1:2-8). No run-of-the-mill, garden variety, average man, John the Baptist offers encouragement to many people who sense, and for reasons good and real, that they are out of sync with their peers and are, therefore, not in the beautiful people category. God can use eccentrics. The plain truth is that those who have been most productive of good and who have contributed most dramatically to the betterment of man­ kind, as well as to the Kingdom of God, have not been what would now be called well-adjusted people. Rather they have been creative misfits who have lived with tauntness in such way as to make them somehow different and other.

Saul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, Francis of Assisi, Luther of Germany, Wesley of England, Williams of Rhode Island, Teilhard of France, and the Baptist of the Wilderness would all be regarded in our day as maladjusted men, but they must also be classified as benefactors of all mankind. Though eccentric, they served in such way as to put the world in their debt.

Ordinary men (Mark 1:16-20) are part of the picture too. Simon and Andrew, James and John, are noticeable at first only for their extraordinary mediocrity.

In a sermon entitled “Disciples in Clay,” Peter Marshall considered what would have happened had there been an examining board to choose disciples. Peter would have ap­peared before them smelling of fish, an uncouth person, not at all refined or cultured or educated. He was blustering, blundering, clumsy, impulsive. They would not have passed Peter. James and John would have appeared before the board as boastful and impatient, most unsuitable people. And An­ drew? He was nobody.

Like Michelangelo’s unhewn rock every man is seen by Christ as having an angel buried somewhere deep within him waiting to be set free. Peter and Andrew, James and John are our witnesses.

Tainted men are also redeemable by the call of Christ and, consequently, useful instruments of God’s grace. Levi is our example. Levi was a tax-gatherer (Mark 2: 13-14). Tax-gather­ers were a despised lot, and not without just cause. Tax­ gatherers extracted from people as much as they could pos­sibly get and lined their pockets with the surplus that re­mained after the demands of the law were met. People of the day ranked tax-gatherers with “adulterers, panderers, flat­terers and sycophants,” Barclay reminds us.^[8]William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954), p.46.

People in general saw tax-gatherers for what they were; Jesus saw them for what they could become. In Mark’s account of the encounter between Jesus and Levi, the report is given in dramatic understatement: “He saw Levi, son of Alphaeus.” This means more, infinitely more, than that Jesus merely “laid eyes” on the man famous, or infamous, for his greed. Surely it must suggest that he, Jesus, saw beyond present actuality to future possibility. He saw what Levi could become. History justified his vision.

Living In the Active Voice
(Mark 10:35-45)

The moments prior to any event of consequence are alive with tension and apprehension. Seconds before entering the chapel for the wedding, the groom, if he’s normal at all, will turn to the minister and ask, “Why the clammy feeling in the palms of my hands”? And the athlete, whether a profes­sional with years of experience or a rank novice with no mem­ory to f all back upon, will without fail battle a swarm of butterflies in the pit of his stomach just before the whistle blows or the gun sounds.

In such moments irrational things can and of ten do hap­ pen. It is when one is absolutely preoccupied with what is at hand and in the offing that he is most likely to blurt out what is truly on his mind. He has no time then to measure his words or to consider their consequences.

Get the setting. Remember the situation. Jesus has just told his followers again that he was marching to a sure death. The disciples, denying it with vigorous protestations before, are now about ready to believe it. On their trek toward Jerusalem where the torment was certain to occur, with time running out, James and John, good men, early followers, faithful friends, reveal in a moment of stress what has been lurking in their minds, unexpressed, a long, long time: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Translated that simply means that ostensibly humble men had aspirations of grandeur. Servants here they dreamed of being masters there. The ten chided and scolded the pair for their ambitions. Jesus didn’t. He understood and took the occasion to have the two understand, not that they were wrong to be ambitious, but that they were ambitious for the wrong thing. They wanted a seat of honor; he wanted them to have a post of service: “But whoever would be great among you must be a servant.”

Their ambition was to reach a place, finally, where they could live as passive receivers. Christ, having better things in mind for them than that, was eager for them to live their lives of active engagement in his name and for the benefit of   others.

Common to all languages is voice. By voice one can tell whether the subject is active or passive, whether it acts or is acted upon. Common to life, too, is voice. Some act. Some are acted upon. Some receive only. Others give. Although it is a hard thing for acquisitive spirits to believe, those who live in the active voice, concerning themselves mostly with what they can give and not with what they can get, earn a place of respect in minds of men and, finally, honor in the eyes of God.

When asked who had made the greatest contribution to his life, Benjamin Mays, long-time president of Morehouse Col­lege, surprised some by saying it was not any well-known person or persons, but his sister who picked cotton so he could attend classes, a teacher who, though largely unknown, taught him to read, and a black minister who could neither read nor write but who had affirmed him when he needed someone to assure him of his worth. “These people,” May says, “are re­membered best by me because they chose to live their lives in the active voice.”^[9]Television Interview, The Today Show of N.B.C., Fall, 1971 May their tribe increase!

Triumph and Tragedy
(Mark 11-15)

One of the most effective sermons a pastor can offer his people is a synopsis, largely without comment, of the Passion narrative. The story becomes the sermon. The medium, in this instance, is the message. The logical time for such a sermon is Palm Sunday, but it can be given at any time. Sometimes the effect of the sermon is heightened by preaching it at a time other than the season expected.

To preach such a sermon the preacher will need to com­mit to memory but report in his own words the events of the last week, recounting them in sequence and in detail as they occurred. Having never thought through the matter before people will listen with rapt attention and will leave the service filled with “wonder, love, and praise.”

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. In all candor it is holy only in retrospect. In actuality it was more hellish than holy, though it started with bright promise.

Sunday was a day of triumph (Mark 11:1-11)
Monday was a day of cleansing (Mark 11:15-19)
Tuesday was a day of preaching (Mark 11:27)
Wednesday was a day of preparation (Mark 14:1-11)
Thursday was a day of communion (Mark 14:12-26)
Friday was a day of suffering (Mark 15)
Saturday was a day of silence.

Nothing is said in the narrative about Saturday. The day was as silent as the borrowed tomb in which Jesus lay. It would seem that God, silent in the presence of that awful agony, was inactive. Not so! Silent Saturday, because of what we know about the day that followed, reminds us that God is often at work performing his mightiest deeds when he is most silent and least visible.

 

A Miscellany of Texts and Titles

He Identified With Us (1:9); The Father’s Affirmation (1:11); Institution or People? (2:23-3:6); The Sin With No Pardon (3:20-30); The Family of Good (3:31-35); Are You Listening? (4:1-9); The Real but Invisible Kingdom (4:10-28); You Get What You Give (4:24-25); Betting on a Sure Thing (4:26-29); Freedom to Fail (6:7-13); Saving Solitude (6:30-32) The Presence that Dispels Fear (6:45-52); Truth, not Tradition, Matters Most (7:9-13); It’s What’s Inside that Counts (7:14-23); Life’s Crucial Question (8:27-30); First Count the Cost, Then Follow (8:31-38); On Saving Your High Moments (9:2-8); Doubt that Leads to Faith (9:14-24); One Pus One Equals One (10:2-9); Deadly Security (10:17-22); Pity the Poor Rich: (10:23-31); Produce or Perish (10:12-24); Flowers that Fester  (11:15-17); God’s Great Gamble (12:1-11); On Being a Citizen of Two Countries (12:13-17); The Nub of the Matter (12:28-31); He Knows What We Give (12:41-44); Love Isn’t Thrifty (14:3-9); “Is It I?” (14:17-25); Betrayal Is Always from Insiders (14:43-52); The Begin­ning of the End (15:16-47); The End of the Beginning (16:1- 8); Too Late: (15:42-47).

So much for the preparation of material for sermons. There remains the important task of preparing the preaching for the task of delivering the words he has found in the Word. It is imperative that the preacher have a clear understanding of his role and function as the proclaimer of the actions of God in the world. The herald of the “good news” must guard against uttering that news in such a way as to leave the im­pression that what he is declaring belongs to ancient times and bygone days. His task is to give the story, old but ever new, life and breath in the current scenes where men and women struggle to find meaning to life’s puzzle and hope in the presence of despair.

Leonard Griffith speaks to that very point when he says, “We must not read the Gospel in the past tense. To be sure, there once lived a man named Jesus of Nazareth who went about doing good. This same Jesus, however, because God raised him from, the dead, lives forever as the physician of men’s bodies and souls, performing even now the mighty works that he performed in Galilee and Judea long ago. The personal ministry of Jesus is a present reality. What he did for the sick and suffering in the days of his flesh he does here and now for all who are humble enough to receive him by faith. The Gospels contain no mere historical record of dead encounters; rather they offer to every man the present possibility of a living encounter with the Christ of God.”^[10]Leonard Griffith, The Crucial Encounter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965), p. 15.

The preacher’s assignment is not to conduct a tour through a museum of religious antiques but to function as a vital link between the everlasting God who cannot die and mortal men who must.