Knowing Jesus

Title: Knowing Jesus
Date: 17 Jan 2016
Preacher: Rev Enoch

When we meet someone face to face for the first time, what do we do in trying to know that person? We usually gather some first impressions by paying attention to the ways in which the person carries himself or herself, etc. But I believe many people go about this ‘get to know you’ process with themselves as a starting point. Such as you are on Facebook, I use Instagram, umm, you are too old for me. Something like that? Getting to know someone with our own interests and concerns as starting points.

In last week’s sermon, Rev Siow Hwee asked us to imagine ourselves as people who know nothing about the man Jesus, and with that as our starting point to figure out his main agent. In today’s text, what we went through as a good exercise on imagination was the very thing that the Pharisees and others did in real life. A new rabbi named Jesus pop up in the religious scene in the northern part of Israel; he could influence people for the good or otherwise. The Pharisee and others were concerned about what this new rabbi was trying to do. They therefore checked him out.

As to how Jesus was sized up? And how they did it with the interest and concerns that they had, Mark tells us through 5 encounters between them and Jesus.

The first encounter was about Jesus healing a paralytic who was delivered to him after the friends peeled off the roof of a house. The healing was a good thing to have happened, But Jesus of all things chose on that occasion to say to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven" (2:5). Sitting there were scribes, who were mighty in their theology. And when Jesus made that statement, they can’t help but said to themselves in their hearts, "Who can forgive sins but God alone? This new rabbi is blaspheming! "(Based on 2:7) So, the first impression that they gathered was, Jesus, a rabbi capable of blasphemy.

The second encounter did not allow Jesus to leave with the religious leaders a better impression. Jesus was seen in this round feasting at a celebration held by Levi the tax collector (We usually call Levi, Matthew). Anyway, Levi was regarded as a traitor because his job was to collect money from his own people on behalf of the Roman government. When a traitor holds a party, guess who would be cheering with him and who would hiss at it? Of course, it would the other tax collectors and people regarded as sinners that would party with a traitor; the ones who are ‘holier than thou’ would choose to stay clear of this fringed group.

And as the names suggest, religious people are the ones who uphold the law and sinners are those who break them. The two groups might interact with each other but to eat together was out of the question, because to people in Jesus’ time, eating together means identifying with and accepting what the other group does. How could a religious leader do such a thing?

So, seeing Jesus at the party, religious leaders began asking Jesus’ disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"(2.16). The impression gathered this time: Jesus did not uphold the religious purity observed in those days.

The third encounter was between Jesus and some people who had a question for him on fasting, the benchmark they used was the Pharisees and disciple of John the Baptist. The questioners may not have been fans of the Pharisees and John’s disciple, but the piety seen from Jesus’ group must have been substandard when compared to the other two for them to ask, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" (2:18)

Before the questioners’ eyes: Pharisees and John’s disciple fasting faithfully; Jesus’ followers eating meals happily. Jesus’ disciples must have looked relaxed in comparison, or probably closer to the thinking of the people, Jesus’ group wasn’t serious with fasting. The lack in terms of fasting would further discredit Jesus because fasting was something major to the people of Israel at that time. We will come back to this after we have surveyed the other two encounters.

The fourth encounter took place when the Pharisees caught Jesus’ disciples plucking heads of grain in the grain fields on a Sabbath day. It was perfectly ok to feel hungry and to eat on Sabbath. But Sabbath was about resting from work, and to gather anything from the harvest was considered as work. So, Jesus’ group had again invited trouble.

“Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.” (Ex 34:21) These are words from the Torah. The Pharisees therefore have ample reasons to ‘forget to be nice’ before Jesus this round. They questioned Jesus in an accusing manner, "…why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" The Fourth encounter ended up with them as a group that broke the law at will. Jesus did explain to them the rationale behind the action, he even declared that he is the Lord of the Sabbath, which probably only made them dislike him even further.

The fifth encounter was like the first where Jesus miraculously healed a paralytic. Once again, it’s was good thing to have happened; but the timing was again Sabbath, the ‘stop work’ day. This time, the Pharisees did not see the need to waste any more time on verbal exchange. I suspect they were thinking something like this to themselves on that very day, “Good, Jesus healed someone on Sabbath, kill him.”

Question, why did the ‘get to know you’ process ended up with such extremity? The way in which the religious leaders and the people reacted to the new rabbi can be put in another way: they began by questioning Jesus in their hearts. They then went on to verbally question the disciples, question Jesus himself, and question Jesus in an accusing manner. The last straw was another healing episode. This time, no question was asked, only a plot to destroy Jesus. [1] Heat arose consistently and speedily in the ‘get to know you’ process. Why?

Time to look a little deeper at the encounter on fasting to see why things turned out so badly in the end.

The question that the people asked carries some background that deserves mentioning. In Jesus’ days, there were only six regular fasts to be observed annually. The Pharisees however practiced fasting twice a week, on every Monday and Thursday. John’s disciples did the same probably as a way to follow John’s ascetic lifestyle lived in the desert. The number of annual fast practiced goes to say that the disciples were being accused of not observing, was way beyond the standard requirement.

So why did the two groups fast so frequently and why were the questioners bothered about Jesus’ group doing less? People back then fast in order to pray with a better focus, to show one’s religious commitment, as atonement for sin, etc. But there’s one reason for fasting that is more crucial for us here. Fasting was done to mark national tragedies, such as the captivity. Fasting, hence, serves as a symbolic act of acknowledging the nation’s sinful past, showing repentance and very importantly, pleading with God, moving him to restore the nation’s glory.

Some people think more prayers means higher chance of prayers being answered. The Pharisees probably adopted the same logic for fasting: fasting more frequently means being more effective in appealing to God to restore the nation’s glory.

Jesus’ group by not fasting and seen breaking the law, in the eyes of the Pharisees and the people, would then be doing the reverse of what religious people were supposed to do. And their slackness might suggest that the nation is not progressing in terms of purity and piety, which in turn slow down the process of God bringing glory back to Israel.

Now we see the reason behind the people questioning Jesus and the antagonism of the Pharisees. The people of Israel wanted to shake off the rule of the Romans, and Jesus’ group didn’t seem to be helping in asking God for it but instead poses a sheer stumbling block in the process.

The Pharisees, although may be well known for their religious pride, were in this case working hard for the sake of the nation. God bringing glory back to Israel was the concern they brought with them into the ‘get to know Jesus’ process. How will they therefore not be antagonized by a new rabbi whose actions seem only to prolong the days where Israel lived as subjects of the Romans Empire.

And so we see, the Pharisees weren’t simply the bad guys who were out to oppose Jesus. Yet their intention to kill also goes to betray their hardness of heart.

Some churches are observing at this point in time the season of epiphany, focusing on Jesus appearing amongst us as the light of the world. Our text today is about Jesus appearing, only to reveal the hardness of heart in religious people who bore good intentions. Friends, have we ever wondered if Jesus should appear and stand before us today, would our good intentions – for church, for ministries, for companies, for families, for friends, for neighbors, for society – be able to stand before Jesus? I supposed this is a question worth reflecting on as we embark on the new year.

More than enough is said about how Jesus was known to the Pharisees. But how was Jesus known to himself?

Jesus in answering the questioners described himself as the bridegroom, which goes to show that he knew and was declaring that he is God. In the Old Testament, God was the lover of Israel who will come and marry her in the end times. Isaiah 62.4-5 says, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

Jesus wasn’t against fasting in his answer to the people, for there will be a time when the bridegroom will be taken away and fasting would be appropriate (2:20). What Jesus meant was that it was the wrong time to fast when the question was asked, because Jesus the bridegroom, who is God himself, was in their midst. In other words, the pious can stop fasting as least for the time being, because what they were fasting for has come to pass in Jesus. The glory of Israel has returned, the wedding has started, and a new beginning has dawned.

What about this new beginning? Jesus used the parable of the unshrunk cloth and new wine to convey the newness. Of the two, the first parable grants extra clarity on what Jesus is trying to say. Using unshrunk cloth to mend a tear only involves an easy extra step: wet it, let it shrink, and it will sit well over the torn portion. What so difficult about that? But Jesus purposely skipped over this daily wisdom in telling the parable, his point is that the two– Jesus and the old way–really doesn’t go together. Fitting Jesus into the old way would in fact destroy the current system, like the old wineskin cracking up when new wine is introduced. The two parables are Jesus’ ways of saying that he is not here to fit into the old paradigms and old practices, he is not here to patch up or revive the old, but to do new things and to usher in the revolutionary rule of God.

I am altogether incapable of elaborating on this as pointedly as the biblical commentator James Edwards, so let me quote him, ““The question poses by the image of the wedding feast and the two atom-like parables is not whether disciples will, like sewing a new patch on an old garment or refilling an old container, make room for Jesus in their already full agendas and lives. The question is whether they will forsake business as usual and join the wedding celebration, whether they will become entirely new receptacles for the expanding fermentation of Jesus and the gospel in their lives.” [2]

That’s what the passage is saying to Christians. The passage is of course also speaking to the church as a whole, that is, to reflect on what we are doing. What the church have been doing were put in placed in time passed because they were necessary and the practices and tradition had been effective. Question, are the same practices as helpful today or are we by continuing in them “keeping the traditions but losing the connections” [3]?

God may not have set the trends we see around us today, but what is happening we believe is what God allows for now. In the present era with its forms and situations, God must be still doing new things. And that calls for the church to reflect on what she is doing, to perceive what He is doing, to join him in the wedding celebration.

[1] Tan Kim Huat, Asia Bible Commentary Series: The Gospel According to Mark, Manila: Asia Theological Association, 2011. 67.
[2] James R. Edward, The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to Mark, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002. 92.
[3] Tan, The Gospel According to Mark, 77.