24 Hours

Scripture: Mark 1:21-39

Structure:

• Introduction
• Communicating with confidence
• Caring with wisdom
• Communing with God
• Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone.

There are 24 hours in a day. That’s 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds.

How do you spend that time?

The answer will differ from person to person and from day to day of course but if we say the average person works 8 hours, sleeps for 8 hours, spends about 2 hours eating & drinking, around 2 hours shopping or doing housework, maybe 30 minutes to an hour on personal care (depending how long you take in the shower and how many times you have to go to the toilet), and say 30 minutes to an hour travelling places. Then that leaves maybe 2-3 hours of spare time. The remains of the day.

Today marks the beginning of the annual Tranzsend prayer and self-denial campaign. Tranzsend is the sending and resourcing arm of the New Zealand Baptist missionary society. In two weeks’ time, on the 28 March, we plan to collect a special offering to support the work of New Zealand Baptist missionaries. On the table in the foyer are some A5 sized brochures explaining a little about Tranzsend, with a detachable bookmark to remind us to pray for our mission workers. You are welcome to take one per household after the service.

Please turn with me to Mark chapter 1, verse 21, page 45 near the back of your pew Bibles. For the three Sundays of the self-denial campaign we plan to look at different aspects of Jesus’ mission from the gospel of Mark. In this morning’s message we read how Jesus spent 24 hours, one day, near the beginning of his ministry. From Mark 1, verse 21, we read…

²¹ Jesus and his disciples came to the town of Capernaum, and on the next Sabbath Jesus went to the synagogue and began to teach. ²² The people who heard him were amazed at the way he taught, for he wasn’t like the teachers of the Law; instead, he taught with authority.

²³ Just then a man with an evil spirit in him came into the synagogue and screamed, ²⁴ “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are—you are God’s holy messenger!”

²⁵ Jesus ordered the spirit, “Be quiet, and come out of the man!”

²⁶ The evil spirit shook the man hard, gave a loud scream, and came out of him. ²⁷ The people were all so amazed that they started saying to one another, “What is this? Is it some kind of new teaching? This man has authority to give orders to the evil spirits, and they obey him!”

²⁸ And so the news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere in the province of Galilee.

²⁹ Jesus and his disciples, including James and John, left the synagogue and went straight to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever, and as soon as Jesus arrived, he was told about her. ³¹ He went to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up. The fever left her, and she began to wait on them.

³² After the sun had set and evening had come, people brought to Jesus all the sick and those who had demons. ³³ All the people of the town gathered in front of the house. ³⁴ Jesus healed many who were sick with all kinds of diseases and drove out many demons. He would not let the demons say anything, because they knew who he was.

³⁵ Very early the next morning, long before daylight, Jesus got up and left the house. He went out of the town to a lonely place, where he prayed. ³⁶ But Simon and his companions went out searching for him, ³⁷ and when they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

³⁸ But Jesus answered, “We must go on to the other villages around here. I have to preach in them also, because that is why I came.”

³⁹ So he travelled all over Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

I’m not sure this was a typical day for Jesus but it was certainly a full day. At a guess he might have spent about 6 hours communicating with people, maybe 6 hours caring for people and probably around 6 hours communing with God. Which left him with roughly 6 hours for everything else, like eating, sleeping, walking, washing and toileting. 

It’s impossible to be certain about these numbers but what we do know for sure is there was no screen time in Jesus’ day.

I don’t hold this pattern up as an example for us to follow necessarily. Most days we should be aiming for more than 3 or 4 hours sleep. If you tried to follow Jesus’ example in Mark 1 every day you would soon burn out.

The point is, Jesus’ mission appears to have consisted of three main things: communicating with people, caring for people and communing with God. First let us consider Jesus’ communication. Jesus communicated with confidence.

Communicating with confidence:

When I pack the car to go away on holiday I always put the larger, less flexible, items in first. So the suitcases and chilli bin go in before anything else. If I can get the suitcases in, then I have confidence I can fit everything else in as well. Shoes and sleeping bags and raincoats and miscellaneous stuff like that can squeeze in the corners and gaps.

Communicating is like packing a car. Some topics are more important than others and if they are left unsaid that’s like leaving the suitcase of essential items behind. But once you have said the big stuff, the stuff that is weighing heavy on your mind, then you can have confidence that the other things will fit as well. The less bulky topics of conversation can be fitted in around the main suitcases.

There may be something important your family needs to discuss. You don’t try talking about those big issues when you are in a rush trying to get everyone off to school in the morning. You wait until a time when you can all sit down together, around the table at dinner, to talk things through in an unhurried way.

By the same token there are often little gaps in the day when you are walking or driving somewhere and are able to say something small but significant. How was your day at school? How was that meeting at work? Do we need milk? Life has felt quite full lately. Shall we try and get away this weekend?

I remember the day Robyn and I were married. We were being driven by a friend of my grandfather’s, Mr Ken Pike. Ken was a lovely guy and he used the time to make conversation with us. One of the things he said was, ‘Never let the sun go down on an argument.’ In other words, make it a priority to communicate. Don’t let the seed of bitterness or resentment take hold. 

A big part of Jesus’ mission was to deliver a message; a suitcase of ideas if you like. He needed to make sure that packing that suit case in the boot of people’s minds was his priority.

I estimated before that about 6 hours of Jesus’ day was spent communicating. Some of that would have been formal public speaking, when Jesus preached in the synagogue in the morning. That was like the suitcase that he had to get in first.

But much of the communication would have been informal personal conversations with people, perhaps while he was walking to and from the synagogue or while he was having lunch at Simon & Andrew’s place.

Some of those informal conversations would have been significant but Jesus had to get the suitcase of preaching & teaching in first. His suitcase of ideas set the agenda for the little conversations that squeezed in the gaps of the day. Indeed, Jesus’ suitcase of teaching has set the agenda for the past 2000 years.     

Today’s Scripture passage doesn’t tell us exactly what the content of Jesus’ preaching and conversation was but we get an idea from reading all four gospels. Probably it was about the Kingdom of God, the centrality of love, the dynamic between repentance and forgiveness, the importance of grace and the need for faith.

At this stage, Mark is more interested in pointing out that Jesus communicated and taught with authority. I take this to mean that Jesus spoke with confidence. Jesus’ words were original, they were his own words and ideas, and not someone else’s. More than that though, Jesus’ words had the ring of truth. They were not light weight. They had a substance and meaning that resonated in people’s hearts, minds and experience. Jesus’ words carried an eternal significance.

Verse 22 says that people were amazed at the way Jesus taught. Unfortunately, amazement is not really an adequate response. The obedience of faith is a better response to Jesus. In other words, we need to move beyond amazement to trust. The kind of trust that is willing to put Jesus’ words into action. When we do that, understanding follows. Not just understanding what Jesus’ words mean but understanding who Jesus is.

Last week we heard the story of Rosalie Macgeorge, the first New Zealand Baptist missionary. Rosalie left New Zealand in 1886 to reach women in Bengal. Most of her mission work centred around communication. She spent her first two years learning the language and most of the next two and half years talking to women and children about Jesus and the Bible. It was hard graft.

Communicating who Jesus is along with the content of the Christian faith is not easy in our land today. Like Rosalie Macgeorge and other overseas missionaries, we have to learn the language of contemporary New Zealand society. We have to find words and stories that are original and authentic to who we are. Words that relate and resonate with people.

It seems the church has lost something of its authority too. That means we have to build trust and confidence in the gospel by living the message we preach.

Caring with wisdom:

If the message Jesus preached was the suitcase, then Jesus’ wise care for people puts handles on that suitcase. Communicating and caring go together.

In today’s reading from Mark 1 we are told Jesus did two main things to demonstrate his care for people. Jesus cast out demons and he healed the sick. In other words, he cleansed people and made them functional again.

Ironically the demons recognised who Jesus was (the Holy One of God) but Jesus silenced them. Jesus did not give the demons an audience. It is not for evil spiritual beings to dictate the agenda.

People these days, people like us in the Western world, are heavily influenced by a materialistic mind-set. We find it difficult to accept anything non-material or non-physical. The fact remains there is a spiritual realm all around us which we don’t see but which is nevertheless very real. Christian mission is engagement in a spiritual war.

It’s not that Jesus or his followers go out looking for a fight. Rather, when one proclaims truth and does good, evil reacts in a defensive way. As Bono says: ‘Darkness gathers around the light’.

Once again Mark emphasises Jesus’ authority. After seeing Jesus cast out a demon the people in the synagogue remark how even the evil spirits obey Jesus.

Following the morning synagogue service (which was sort of like Jewish church) Jesus goes to Simon and Andrew’s house for lunch. As soon as he arrives Jesus is told that Simon’s mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever. Without saying a word Jesus takes the woman by the hand and the fever leaves her. In this case Jesus is not casting out a demon, he is healing a physical illness.       

The woman responds to Jesus’ care for her by showing care for him and serving them lunch. As is so often the case in the Bible, it is a woman who shows us the right kind of response. We are saved to serve.

After sunset the people of Capernaum brought to Jesus those who were sick or demon possessed and Jesus cleansed and healed them. The people waited until sunset because it had been the Sabbath day, a sacred day of rest, and the Sabbath ended at sunset.

By this stage it was after six at night. I imagine Jesus was quite tired and yet he summoned the energy to care for people where they were at.

A couple of things we note about Jesus’ care for people. Firstly, it was personal or one to one. Jesus did not apply a one size fits all protocol or procedure. He didn’t perform a mass healing. He dealt with people on an individual basis. This means he treated each person according to their need. The man screaming in the synagogue received a different kind of care to Simon’s mother-in-law who had a fever.

Dealing with people on a one to one basis like this is not efficient. It is time consuming. But it also makes the person receiving the care feel particularly loved and special. 

The other thing we note is that Jesus’ care for people was wise. Although Mark doesn’t put a great focus on the wisdom of Jesus’ care we know from a wider reading of the gospels that Jesus cared in a wise way, a discerning way.

Jesus had the ability to accurately diagnose the problem at a glance. So his care was wise in that it treated the cause of the issue. We also know that Jesus was careful not to create dependencies. Jesus empowered people to be restored to inter-dependent relationships with others in the community.

The key to caring for people in a wise way is understanding what the individual can and can’t do for themselves. Jesus did not do everything for a person. Jesus’ care addressed the thing that person could not do for themselves. That’s wise. That’s empowering care.    

We are not all able to do great things. We might not have the ability to drive out demons or heal people miraculously, like Jesus did, but we do have the capacity to care in practical ways, like Peter’s mother-in-law did when she waited on Jesus. Often it is simple acts of care and concern (small things done with great love) that communicate most powerfully the Christian message that God is love.

You may remember, from last Sunday, the power of Rosalie Macgeorge’s care. How when she asked for some goat’s milk for herself, she made sure the mother would not reduce the small boy’s share of milk. And how this impressed the small boy so much that, as a grown man, he later became a follower of Jesus.

After a full and busy day of communicating with and caring for people, Jesus spends probably the better part of six hours communing with God.        

Communing with God:

In the old days of sailing, before satellite navigation and radar technology, sea captains set their course by the stars and by hand drawn maps. If you were heading for a small group of islands in the pacific you had to be pretty accurate with your bearings or you could easily sail right past the very place you needed to stop for water and provisions.

Navigating by the stars meant staying up late at night. We don’t know what time Jesus got to bed that evening. If people didn’t start turning up at Simon’s house until 6pm, then they probably didn’t leave until maybe 10 or 11pm. Verse 35 tells us that Jesus got up very early the next day, long before daylight. If daylight was around 6am then that means Jesus was up in the early hours of the morning, maybe 1 or 2am. That doesn’t leave much time for sleeping.

Verse 35 tells us that Jesus went out of town to a lonely place, where he prayed. On this occasion at least, Jesus felt that communing with his heavenly Father was more important than sleep.   

We know from reading the other gospels that Jesus often went off by himself to pray and commune with God. However, Mark’s gospel only mentions three occasions. Here at the beginning of his public mission, then in the middle of his ministry (after the feeding of the multitudes), and finally in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion.

Each of these three times marks a significant stage in Jesus’ journey to the cross. On each occasion Jesus needed to keep his perspective and get a bearing (not from the stars) but from God.

Mark chapter 1 describes the beginning of Jesus’ mission and the passage we heard this morning describes one day in particular when Jesus became famous and popular. The risk with popularity and fame is that one can be carried away by the adulation of the crowd and, in the process, lose perspective and direction.

Just as the sea captains of old needed to get up in the middle of the night to navigate by the stars, Jesus needed to spend time communing with God, in prayer, in order to stay on track and not lose his way.

The band Six60 have a song ‘Don’t forget your roots my friend’. It’s about remembering where you come from, who you are and where you belong. It’s about staying on track through life and not losing your way.

Taking time apart to commune with God was Jesus’ way of remembering his roots and his purpose. God the Father is Jesus’ roots and bringing in God’s kingdom (His reign) was Jesus’ purpose.

In order to stay true to God and his mission, Jesus needed to keep moving around preaching the Kingdom of God to other people. He could not allow himself to be side tracked or domesticated by the people of Capernaum. Jesus was not a people pleaser. He was a God pleaser. It made him unpopular and misunderstood at times but it resulted in our salvation.   

In some ways this single verse about Jesus going to a lonely place to pray is really frustrating. I want to know how Jesus did it. How did he get close to God? How did he find that intimacy of communing with God? How did Jesus hear God’s voice with such clarity and find his direction? Mark doesn’t give us an answer. Jesus’ communion with God is cloaked in mystery

All we know is that it involves slowing down and setting apart time (a decent amount of quality time) to be with God. Now, in my experience, setting apart sacred time to listen to God does not automatically guarantee that you will hear God speak. Sometimes you hear God clearly and sometimes you don’t.

Whether you hear from God or not, there is still value in making time for him. If nothing else, it restores our perspective and reminds us that we are not in control. God is. 

Conclusion:

This morning we have heard about three aspects of Jesus’ mission: communicating the suitcase of God’s message with confidence, caring for people with wisdom and making time to commune with God.

Communicating, caring and communing. These are not three separate things. They are all inter-related and overlapping. Caring for people gives credibility to our communication of the gospel message. And communing with God keeps us faithful to God’s mission and message.

The other thing that needs to be acknowledged is that Jesus is out of our league. Compared to us Jesus is a spiritual superman. He was able to do what he did as an individual but we can’t. We need to take a team approach to mission. We shouldn’t try to do it all on our own.

Whenever someone is baptised I’m conscious of the many people who have contributed to that person’s decision to be baptised. Whenever someone becomes a Christian it is usually because more than one person has cared for them and communicated to them the love and truth of Jesus in different ways.

It is God’s mission and it is our part to be available to serve him as He requires. In order to serve most effectively we need to stay close to God. We need to be still and commune with him.   

The musicians will come now and lead us in the song: Be still and know…

Questions for discussion or reflection:

What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?

• How do you spend your time in an average day?

• What was the communication like in your home growing up? What is it like now? Are you happy with your communication? If not, what would you like to change? 

• How often is Jesus (and his ideas) in your conversation?

• In what ways was Jesus’ care wise? Who do you provide care for and how do you do this? 

• Why did Jesus sacrifice sleep (at the end of a long and tiring day) to commune with God? Why is it important for us to make time to be with God? 

• Thinking of the three aspects of Jesus’ mission (communication, caring and communing) which do you think you are strong in? Which aspect(s) do you need to develop?

• What is your part in God’s mission?