Talking About Jesus
Mark 1:29-39[1]
I ran across a surprising statement this week. Comedian and
Actor Russell Brand was quoted in an article as saying, “My personal feeling is
the teachings of Christ are more relevant now than they’ve ever been.”[2] If you are
at all familiar with Mr. Brand, you may find yourself equally surprised. If
you’re not familiar with him, he is this generation’s version of Howard Stern.
He made a career as a “shock jock”—basing his comedy on extremely vulgar and crude
antics. Which, of course, explains his success among adolescent and young adult
males! I would have to say that, not knowing Russell Brand personally, he’s the
last person from whom I would have expected to hear about the importance of
Jesus.
But then, if you think about it, that might not be
so surprising after all. When it comes to actually talking about Jesus publicly
I would say that we have “delegated” that role to celebrities. But the fact
that we don’t really know them personally makes their “testimony” shallow at
best and merely sensational at worst (Mr. Brand is promoting a new book). Those of us who have been around
the block a few times have been stung by celebrity evangelists. They may
flourish for a while, but it seems that their true motivation is always about
themselves. I have no way of knowing whether that’s true in this case. But
then, I think that’s part of the problem.
Our gospel lesson for today is about the importance Jesus placed
on carrying out the task of publicly telling people the good news. After a
hugely popular reception to his ministry of healing in Capernaum, Jesus up and
disappeared. In fact, he had gone out of town to pray alone—perhaps to have the
strength to resist the temptation to bask in his success! That this was an
issue he faced is, I think, illustrated by the fact that Peter and the others
“hunted him down”—most likely because they wanted him to come back and continue
to draw crowds where he was.
But Jesus responded in a very strange way. He said, “Let us go on to the neighboring
towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came
out to do” (Mk. 1:38 ). In effect, instead of staying in Capernaum
where he already had a receptive audience, he felt that he must be going,
leaving behind the crowds to preach his gospel message elsewhere! For him, it
was more important to fulfill the task of publicly spreading the good news than
to stay in a place where he was apparently a big hit!
I don’t know about you, but this interesting episode from Jesus’
life makes me wonder what we’re missing about the importance of talking about
Jesus. It would seem that Jesus viewed his preaching of the good news as
something so vital that he would leave behind crowds clamoring for healing. I
think we might be excused for wondering why he would do that. At least part of
the answer was that Jesus saw himself as the one appointed by God as the messenger
of “the good news” (Mk. 1:14 )
that “the kingdom of God has come near.” It would seem that Jesus insisted he
must be going to other places because were many who still had not heard his
message.
In our day, we may not think Jesus made a smart choice. We place
a value on actions rather than words. But the words Jesus was speaking were no
ordinary words. It would seem that he viewed speaking the gospel publicly as one
of the important means of spreading God’s kingdom and bringing freedom and
peace and new life to the people of his day. Rather than being “mere words”
that have little or no effect, Jesus believed that his preaching of the good
news was crucial. And so he told Peter and the others that he had to spread the
word elsewhere.
If that is true, it means that we have an important task to
fulfill. The good news still has not been fully proclaimed. There are many in
our day who have no idea that “the kingdom of God has come near.” And even if
they did have an awareness of that, I doubt that they would understand the
implications for their lives. In order to address this problem, we have to give
substance to Jesus’ message that “the kingdom of God has drawn near.” I think
we do that by first learning to live our lives in the freedom and peace of the
kingdom ourselves. But we have to go beyond that. We have to find a way of
putting our experience of that freedom and peace into words, words that we
speak to those around us.
We may not like to hear it, because we much prefer to stay in
our “comfort zones” than to take the risk of talking to anyone about our faith.
But just as Jesus knew that he must be going to other places to tell the good
news about God’s kingdom, so we must leave behind our personal comfort. I don’t
think we have to make it all that difficult. It’s a matter of simply sharing
our experience with faith. Many of us may think we’re not qualified to do that. But the truth is that one of the most
powerful things we can do is to simply speak out of our experience of living
the Christian faith. And each of us can do that. Just as Jesus knew he had to
spread the word, so we must be going to share the good news with our world. The
place to begin is to start talking about Jesus.
[1]
©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 2/4/2018 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
Jesse Carey, “The Second Coming of Russell Brand,” RELEVANT Magazine, Oct. 8, 2017.
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