Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction/Kid’s talk

In the reading we just heard, Jesus responds to the disciples’ argument over who is the greatest by taking a child and demanding that his disciples should welcome such a child.

If the disciples did not receive such a child, then they would have nothing to do with Jesus.

If they did welcome a child, then they would receive both Jesus and the Father.

What does welcoming a child have to do with anything, though?

To understand that, we have to understand how ancient Jews saw children.

While children were seen as a blessing from God, they were absolutely subject to their parents.

The fifth commandment, the first that turns to our relationships with other people, tells us to “honour our father and our mother.”

The word honour here means to give weight to our parents, it is translated as “glorify” when it’s talking about God.

But it wasn’t just the parental relationship that demanded respect, but also age.

Elders were the natural leaders—their extra age was taken to indicate extra wisdom.

Because of all this, children were at the bottom of society.

Welcoming a child, as if they actually mattered, as if they were as important as anyone else, was therefore a really weird idea.

What might an be equivalent today?

In our culture, which idolizes tolerance and minorities, it’s hard to find a group that is considered low status.

But let me tell you a story.

This is a rather ugly story, and not a terribly happy one.

But bear with me.

Early this year my brother, Perry, had to hold a funeral for a father who had killed himself on Christmas day.

It was a tough funeral because the guy’s family were a tough bunch.

The Christmas before, this guy and his brother had got into an argument and beaten each other up so badly that they had ended up in hospital.

This guy’s life was such a mess that people were relieved that he had only killed himself and not killed his family first.

In the funeral, his family had to be placed on one side of the church so they wouldn’t beat up the wife’s family on the other side of the church.

And they sent the hearse off with the clashing of beer bottles and shouts of strange encouragement.

These people are what we would call complete rednecks.

These are the sort of people that I grew up with, at school, in town.

These are the sort of people that the TV and newspapers and radio love to hate, and they tell us that they’re stupid, they’re ignorant, they’re rough, they’re violent, they swear every second word, and they are insufferably proud in the midst of the wreckage of their lives.

And these are the people that Jesus came to serve and to save.

These people are on the bottom rung of society.

These people are the children we are supposed to welcome!

Now, how about you?

Who do you know who is like that?

Who is the most unpopular kid in class?

Can you think of anyone?

What can you do to welcome them in Jesus’s name?

Think about that as you go to Kid’s Church with Nicole & Wendy.

The World’s Way

A bit over a week ago a young man reacted to his concerns that his culture was being destroyed by foreign invaders.

Over the preceding years he had traveled in Europe and been repulsed by the way that immigration, especially Islamic immigration, was changing European society.

Boiling over, he decided that it was up to him to do something about it.

So he chose two mosques, in a quiet, backwater city, and he embarked on a massacre of the innocent men, women, and children attending Friday prayers.

His frenzy was cowardly, purposeless, and evil, guaranteed to fail in achieving his declared goals and to cause great suffering.

The world’s reaction was unsurprising.

The terrorist was condemned by those he claimed to be representing, namely, Western societies, which call endlessly, and hopelessly for a mystical union of all peoples.

And he sparked dire warnings of violent reactions from many, including a president of one Islamic nation.

Should any of this surprise us?

Should any of this shock us?

Unfortunately, no.

The human condition is one of strife, hatred, envy, fear, and bitterness.

Genesis 6:5 reveals the untamed heart of humanity:

But we do live in an era when the atoning sacrifice of Christ--the act of the son of God to take away the sin of the world—echoes through the nations.

Even so, those hearts who have not been dedicated to Christ are still held in thrall to sin.

Death is ultimately all they know.

Equally, the hope for some mystical union between people who disagree on the very fundamentals of reality is only an empty promise.

Where then, is humanity’s hope?

Is there a third way that actually works?

The way of Christ

The ninth chapter of Mark marks (pun intended) a turning point in the gospel.

Having extracted a confession of his true nature (the Messiah) from the disciples, Jesus now resolutely turns his face towards Jerusalem and the cross.

Much to the confusion of his followers.

This chapter begins Jesus’s extended explanation of how God’s kingdom really works for his followers.

It starts with glory, but it ends in humility.

The transfiguration

A week after telling his confused disciples that he “must suffer many things and be rejected … and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Jesus takes the inner circle of three, Peter, James and John, and climbs up the slopes of Mt Hermon, rising far above Caesarea Philippi.

Here they see Jesus’s true nature, his divinity, shining through his flesh.

And they see his importance, as the foundational representatives of Israel, Moses and Elijah, confide with him.

Surely this glory is what they can look forward to!

This is more like it!

But after the moment has faded away, and they are making their way back down the mountain, Jesus tells them to keep this momentous experience a secret, until after he has risen from the dead.

Reminded of Jesus’s dire predictions, and puzzled by the the experience, including the appearance of Elijah, they ask him,

You see, the Scribes took Malachi 4:5-6

And had built an eschatology, a theology of the end times, in which this was a central element.

They expected Elijah to come just before the day of the Lord to declare God’s intentions, and to call people to God.

Then, on the day of the Lord, God would restore Israel to its glory and remove all the foreign and sinful influence.

But where then, did Jesus’s ideas of suffering and death fit?

If Jesus was the messiah pointed to by Elijah, why would he die?

Jesus’s answer fits theme of this chapter.

After reiterating his claim that the prophets had predicted his suffering, he points out that Elijah has come, and he, too, has been treated with contempt.

He is speaking, of course, of John the Baptist, who has been executed by Herod.

Jesus’s point is simple: the scribes’ idea of the end times is all about the triumphant conquest of God, ushered in by Elijah and performed by the Messiah.

But if Elijah has been rejected and executed by the political system, what does that say about the accuracy of the scribes’ expectations?

As that sunk in, the three disciples must have been feeling that everything was going downhill, not just their bodies.

And when they reached the foot of the mountain, it was to yet more sad news.

Exercising power

While Jesus and the three have been up the mountain, a man has come to the remaining disciples with his demon-possessed son.

The disciples, in their swagger, have tried to cast out the demon, but it has shocked them by resisting, and everyone is in a tizz over this.

Jesus is frustrated, unsurprisingly, but he wastes no time dismissing the demon with a single sentence.

Afterwards the disciples come and ask him “Why could we not cast it out?” (Mk 9:28).

The response Jesus gives has puzzled many down through the ages,

It is worth noting that this verse is found in most manuscripts (our ancient copies of the Scriptures) as “anything but prayer and fasting,” but textual critics have become so used to removing “and fasting” from similar verses in the NT that they do so here.

This is despite the fact that the “fasting” in this verse is found in reliable, rather than unreliable manuscripts.

In any case, Jesus’s point is simple: you can never cast demons out—it is only my spirit in you (the Holy Spirit) that has authority.

So without prayer (seeking God and aligning ourselves with him) and perhaps fasting (placing God above everything else, even our physical needs), we have no power.

Just because we are Jesus’s disciples, that doesn’t give us some magical power to go and do what we want.

Jesus’s power doesn’t “rub off on us,” so to speak.

No, Jesus’s power dwells in us, it lives in us, because it is alive.

It is a person—the Holy Spirit.

And because the Spirit is a person, he gets to decide how his power is used, so we need to listen and align ourselves with him, thus prayer and fasting.

The same is true today, of course.