In monkey society, conformity is maintained with a certain brutality. If a little monkey steps out of line, an adult, sometimes even the monkey’s parent, will bite it savagely, sometimes so savagely the little monkey dies. But if that monkey lives, it not only never again steps out of its place, but will turn and bite the next one who tries to step out of line.
Human society is not much different. We are defined by the communities in which we grew up. We may accept the definition or we might not. My aunt and my grandmother are examples. Both were born here and grew up here here in Deltaville. Both married and moved away. But my aunt loved Deltaville and returned as soon as her husband passed away. My grandmother never wanted to see Deltaville again, though she ended up coming back when my mother retired here and my grandfather had died.
Our communities assign us a place and firmly put us there. We are permitted a measure of individuality, but really only so much. We get plenty of monkey bites growing up to remind us not to transgress our community’s boundaries.
If we meet Jesus, and begin to follow him in earnest, we may find ourselves getting some monkey bites.
We really need to keep the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke out of our minds when we’re reading Mark. Mark has no angels visiting the relatives and revealing to them Jesus’ true identity. In Mark, Jesus’ family and hometown knows nothing of his Messiahship.
Mark suggests that when Jesus was baptized he was in essence commissioned by God to be the Messiah, Son of Man and Son of God, then driven into the desert to do battle with the devil, a battle he won to gain his authority over the devil’s minions, the unclean spirits that cause disease and madness. In other words, the Jesus that left Nazareth for John the Baptist and the Jordan was not the same Jesus who came back.
The biggest difference was his authority. He now acted very much like the son of an emperor, except that this emperor was God. Just as the son of the emperor was for all intents and purposes the emperor in terms of power and authority, so the Son of God was for all intents and purposes God. In Mark’s telling, we see the Pharisees really bristling at this, so much so that they accuse him of being possessed by the devil.
And we’ve already seen in Mark Jesus’ family trying to “restrain” him because they thought he’d gone insane. In response Jesus redefines his family as “those who do the will of God.”
But the difference is most striking when he returns home and preaches in the synagogue of Nazareth. There people remember him growing up; they remember that he was trained in his father’s profession, some kind of tradesman that worked on the many Roman building projects in nearby Caesarea Philippi. Now he was running around acting like he’s the Son of God. What?
Monkey bites ensued, and a remarkable thing happened. People who refused to acknowledge the change in Jesus could not receive its benefits: healing liberation. Jesus, who bore the authority of God, was nevertheless prevented by the unbelief of his familiars from helping them in any way. They were perfectly happy to love Jesus, as long as he remained the familiar Jesus, the one they shaped and formed when he grew up there. Otherwise they’d rather lock him up as a lunatic or just throw him out of town.
Jesus encountered God, God transformed Jesus, and Jesus’ people then rejected him because he was no longer the person they had shaped.
But this was not the end of the story. Jesus simply left his hometown (where he was nevertheless still able to heal some people), and went to surrounding villages, that had no history with him, and in those places, he was able to do all manner of deeds of power.
And then he turned and did something no son of any emperor would ever do. He shared his authority with his disciples, and sent them out to do the same deeds of power he was doing.
He made a point of leaving them vulnerable. The kind of town or village that took in the vulnerable to feed and house them was exactly the kind of town or village that could benefit from their ministry, while the kind that wanted to monkey-bite them back into compliance is the kind they would leave behind, being careful not to take anything at all from them.
If we truly engage the Jesus of the gospels, and not just the Jesus Paul knew, which is frankly very different, we will find ourselves changing. Like a person who commits to a long-term discipline of eating right and working out, we will find ourselves changed in fundamental ways. We will find ourselves becoming more peaceful, more joyful, more forgiving, more compassionate. We will not need to indulge in all the addictive behaviors so many in our culture are trapped in.
And the end of the discipleship road is an amazing reality: we are granted authority over the unclean spirits. Now I know some of us truly believe that there are personal evil spirits and I don’t wish to contradict them. I personally believe more in diseases of the spirit, traps of the mind and heart that cause people both physical and emotional pain.
Most of us will not seriously seek out a relationship with Jesus unless we are driven to, just as Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit. Many Christians have limited objectives in their discipleship. They hope to become a little better person, to have some peacefulness in their soul. But mostly they just continue doing exactly what they want, because living by their own self-will is working for them.
But those who suffer are the one Jesus came for, and not even for all of them. There are many who need the gospel, few who truly desire it, and it to these few that he comes with miraculous world-changing power. Once we have walked the path, and experienced the liberation, we come to the whole point of discipleship: the gift of authority, the ability to do for others what Christ has done for us.
Everyone who truly calls on the name of the Lord, who truly and faithfully follow him over time, sooner or later will find themselves empowered by something much greater than themselves. They will find themselves led to the right people at the right time with the right message. This story we read this morning ends with the disciples finding that so many people are seeking them out they don’t have time even to eat.
And so it is for those who have been given authority today, and so it could be for our church as well.
Amen.
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 and Psalm 48, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13
