2024-07-14 - Covenant CRC-Sermon Only - Joel Kok

Mark 6:14-29 

The Paradoxical Power of the Kingdom

Well, with gratitude for that prayer of illumination, I can invite you now to turn to the gospel of Mark, chapter six, verses 14 to 29. We're reading a somewhat unusual gospel story this morning that will reflect on and will trust the Holy Spirit to help us hear what God is saying here. So Mark six, beginning at verse 14.

Mark 6, verse 14, and reading through verse 29, hear God's word. King Herod heard about this, that is, he heard about Jesus and his twelve disciples healing people and doing some amazing things. So King Herod heard about this, for Jesus name had become well known. Some were saying John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.

Others said he is Elijah. And still others claimed he is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago. But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead. For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison." He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married.

For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled, yet he liked to listen to him.

Finally, the opportune time came. On his birthday, Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the girl, ask me for anything you want and I will give it to you.

And he promised her with an oath, "whatever you ask, I will give you up to half my kingdom." She went out and said to her mother, "What shall I ask for?" "The head of John the Baptist," she answered. At once the girl hurried into the King with the request. "I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter."

The King was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.

On hearing of this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in the tomb. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Well, friends, as we read what, again, I think is something of an unusual gospel story, gospel stories are supposed to be good news. As we read about John's disciples putting John's body in a tomb, I think we can wonder, what is our Lord saying and doing in this story?

And we can begin to answer that by saying, " The overall gospel truth that in this story and in all the stories of the gospel, what Jesus is doing is bringing the kingdom of God with all kinds of new life in ways that people don't necessarily expect it to happen. And so we can put it this way. As John the Baptist suffers a terrible death, what is Jesus doing?"

Well, Jesus is continuing in his way of the cross, which is going to lead to an even more terrifying death through crucifixion. And as the gospel teaches, when Jesus goes through that terrible death, that's how he defeats death because when he emerges from the tomb, Jesus is able to continue to work with even more resurrection power to continue to bring the kingdom and to continue to share new life. And so with that saving resurrection power, Jesus can lead the beheaded John the Baptist into a new life with Christ, which the gospel says is better than far. Jesus can continue to bring the kingdom of God to earth as someone who suffers for the world in order to save the world and to get a glimpse of that kingdom coming in unexpected ways to get a glimpse of happening at a time closer to our time We can listen to the story of a fellow disciple who went through a terrible time a while back And who died just a little over a month ago And this fellow disciple is named Jürgen Moltmann and we can pass on his story because he embodies paradoxical power of the kingdom coming with new life in all kinds of ways.

And so probably not all of you have heard of Jürgen Moltmann, but some of you may know that he died last month and he had reached the age of 98, thank God. And when Moltmann died, he was such a highly regarded Christian teacher. He'd been a little bit more famous some years ago, but he was still so highly regarded that the New York Times found it fitting to run an obituary about this Christian teacher because Jürgen Moltmann was the kind of Christian teacher who amazed people by teaching a theology of hope and what was amazing about that is that Moltmann began to develop that theology of hope when he was still a teenager, a young person suffering in a really terrible conditions .

And so to hear that part of his story, we need to go back to 1943, when Jürgen Moltmann, he was only 16 years old, but sadly he was living in Nazi Germany. And so he was forced into the German army as the German nation was beginning to suffer defeat after defeat. So here's this teenager, who has received no gospel or religious teaching at all in any meaningful way.

And what is his life like? He is seeing death all around him. And he's wondering, with no guide, he's wondering, "Well, where is God in all this stuff?" He's seeing death all around him. He's seeing some of his best friends burn to death as the bombs fall. are falling. And so he's starting to wonder, why am I still alive?

Why bother with life? It doesn't seem to have any meaning. So then he wound up getting captured by the Allies and he was a prisoner of war in Scotland. And while there, he got yet more bad news because that's when he learned more about the sheer cruelty that the German Nazis had inflicted on the Jews and many other people.

And so now he was down to having no hope at all and no reason to live. But then thank God, an American chaplain was working in Scotland and gave him a copy of the New Testament that included also the prayers that we call the Psalms. And so for the first time in his life, Jürgen Moltmann began to read the gospel and maybe because it was the shortest gospel, he began with the Gospel of Mark.

And can you guess when he experienced Jesus most intensely in the Gospel of Mark? What he says is that when he get to, got to Mark chapter 15, and when he read Jesus crying, "Eli, Eli, lama azavtani'" which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When he read Jesus praying that way, he experienced Jesus coming alongside him as someone who understood his pain, his suffering, as someone who shared in his feelings, of desolation.

And he puts it this way, he says, when he read about Jesus praying Psalm 22 from the cross, he says, "I became convinced that God was with me.' Where is God? What's he doing? 'God was with me,' Maltman said, especially when I was living behind barbed wire. And that barbed wire was the fence of the prisoner of war camp in which he was.

And still Jesus was coming to him as he read the gospels. As he prayed the Psalms. And then further, thank God, he does begin to get the hope in a little bit of a more clear way. Because as a young man, he eventually got transferred out of the prison camp into an educational camp. And when he was there, people began to bring him some food.

They were having mercy on him. And thank God, some of the people in the United Kingdom began to teach him more about the Gospel.

And that's when this suffering young man began to develop a theology of hope for which he became known decade after decade down to our time. And the key to that hope, the heart of that hope, flowed from this insight that he received from Jesus through the Word of God in the Gospels. What Maltman says, what learned is that you need to see the central truth of the gospel that it has both the cross and the resurrection.

Because neither one makes much sense without the other. And so in order to trust that God will bring this kingdom that's going to make all things new, in order to trust that God can transform us into new people who can live out that good news, Maltman emphasized That message comes from the Bible, which the Spirit makes alive in us.

That Word of God is how we can be inspired to have hope and to love life. He says, that's what happened to me. So with Maltman's testimony in mind, with the idea that hope flows from God, when we see both the cross and the resurrection, we can go back to our gospel reading and we can continue to ask. What is God saying to us in this very sad story?

What is Jesus saying to us when we read a little bit about John the Baptist being killed, but we, we have this fairly long gospel reading that's centered around this king called Herod. Also Herod Antipas, he's sometimes called. And I think for us to hear what Jesus is saying to us through the story of Herod, What we can do is look at Mark 6 verse 20, because there we see Herod was not completely bad and evil.

He was a complicated person, as just about everyone is, because what we read in Mark 6 verse 20 is that Herod, he liked to listen to John the Baptist when John spoke the word of God to him. And this is interesting because even though Herod had arrested John the Baptist, because John spoke the word of God as a word of judgment against Herod.

Even though Herod arrested him, still the word of God was so powerful that Herod, he feared and revered John the Baptist. He protected him from people who wanted him dead. Because Herod could tell, even with all his troubles, Herod could tell that through John he was hearing a righteous man and a holy man.

And so an initial biblical truth for us to see here is that even though Herod felt perplexed about what those words of God from John meant from him, still, he liked, in fact N. T. Wright says he enjoyed listening to the word of God, John. And then, when we get to the even sadder part, where we see Herod feeling forced to behead John, in that sad part of the story, What we can do is connect Herod's story to our own stories, to all of our stories, as we, like him, listen to the Word of God and sometimes feel perplexed and can wonder what it means for us.

And I think for us to hear the Word of God coming to us in ways that can perplex us in our complicated lives, What we can do now is connect Herod's story, not only to our stories, but also to this story that Jesus tells. called the parable of the sower, which is a story about the word of God. So as you may remember in the parable of the sower, which you can find in Mark chapter 4, Jesus describes a sower, which is another word for a farmer, and the sower is sowing or planting seeds in all kinds of ways.

And in Jesus parable, Jesus says those seeds, those little things, That stands for the Word of God bringing a whole new world into this, so again, that's the paradoxical power. So those seeds are the Word of God, and they fall on four different kinds of soil, which Jesus is explaining. That means they interact with four different or various different kinds of lives.

And so just to review that briefly, the first soil that Jesus mentions is a path, which is a hard path. It's been beaten down by people walking it all the time. The seeds just sort of bounce on there, and the Satan can just take them away. They don't seem to do anything. That's soil one. And in soil, too, the seeds can begin to get started, but it's such a rocky ground that the soil, the seeds can't really put down roots.

And without roots, you're not going to grow and bear fruit. And then there's a third soil, which is a soil with all kinds of, um, with all kinds of weeds. And those weeds start to choke the seeds when they start to grow up. And what Jesus explains is those weeds that can choke, choke the seed, those weeds represent the deceits and the desires of this broken world.

And it's those worldly deceits and desires that Jesus describes as soil three, those desires that choke what God wants to happen. I think you would agree that's where Herod gets stuck. And that's what a lot of us can think about too, as to what's our biggest obstacle to hearing God's word. I think I think it's like weeds that can choke the word of God.

Now, thank God, Jesus goes on to describe a fourth soil, which is a good soil where the seed can take root and bear fruit. And that's of course where we want to wind up is in that fourth soil where the seeds bear fruit that multiplies 30, 60, even a hundred times. But to get there, we can, again, we can look at Herod stuck in the ground.

Third soil and we can think is there any thing that we have in common with Herod as he Likes to hear the Word of God, but he really can't live it out very well because he's got these other concerns these weeds these Desires and deceits of wealth that he needs to hang on to that he feels Led to hang on to that checks leads him to ignore and can lead us to neglect And here I can share.

I think that third soil is a primary issue for, my guess is, for almost all of us. And I'll confess, the third soil is what I struggle with the most. Because even though I get paid to study the Word of God, that's a part of a pastor's life. I get paid to study the Word of God. In my neglect, I can just focus on the sermon passage.

And I can just think, well will they like this? Will they like this? Will they like this? And that can lead me to neglect what God is saying through the whole Word of God. That can lead me to neglect what Jesus is saying to me more directly. Not to bring out in a sermon, but to guide me in my life. And that's the kind of struggle a pastor can have.

That's what can lead us into, into soil three. And again, I would suggest all of us have some version. of Soil 3. So you're not paid, most of you, to study the Word of God. Jesus wants you to be the fourth soil, hearing the Word of God. And so ask, what, what are the weeds choking that? What's interfering with that in my life?

And then please know that Jesus is putting that kind of question before you, because he wants you to have life. He wants you not just to listen to the Word of God every once in a while, but to listen to it and let it take root. in a way that gives you the life that you really need. So, we want to move from Soil 3 to Soil 4.

And to do that, In relation to our gospel reading we can get help from this amazing fellow disciple now john the baptist You see john the baptist is a fellow believer And one thing he does with us. I mean jesus praises him as much as he praises anybody who ever lived But one specific thing we can mention about john the baptist is he really can help us Hear the word of god in a life giving way when we see that john the baptist had an honest faith In relation to the Word of God, he had a faith that would seek understanding by not denying, but instead looking at the hardest questions that come.

And then what he did, instead of just letting those questions lead him away from Jesus, he took his hard questions directly to Jesus. And you may remember he did that when he first got put into prison by Herod. And so as John winds up in prison, he can remember that he had been preaching about Jesus.

He'd been saying, the one who's going to come after me, he's got more power than I have, he's going to baptize with the Holy Spirit, he's going to bring the kingdom, he's going to make everything right, and what's happening? John's in prison, under a very corrupt, and so is he suffering in that way, what does he do?

He brings his questions. He brings his laments, his protests, directly to the Lord, which is what the Word of God, especially in the Psalms, tells us to do. And so from prison, John sends some of his disciples to Jesus, and he asks them this honest question. They say to Jesus, John is wondering, Are you actually the one who is to come?

That is, are you really what I said you were, the great king who's going to make everything right? Or, are we waiting for someone else, Jesus? Because Boy, I just don't see everything going right, the way you're doing things. And then Jesus receives that kind of question, that kind of protest. Jesus receives it with grace and with truth.

Because Jesus is able to answer that in a way that is so helpful to all of us. What Jesus says is, well, go back and tell John what you hear and see. Tell John that the blind are receiving sight. The lame are walking, and then he talks more about the healing that he's doing. Jesus says, tell John too that good news is being preached to the poor.

So even though Jesus isn't just ripping the world apart and to make it right instantly, he's working like seeds, he's, he's beginning in ways that seem small and weak, but these things are going to grow, they're going to keep growing. So tell John that the good news is coming to the poor and all kinds of other people in that way.

And then Jesus adds, and blessed is the one who does not take offense at me. And that's Jesus saying to John and to all of us, Blessed are you if you understand that I'm going to take the way of the cross. I'm going to take a way that involves suffering, in a way in which we overcome evil, not by clobbering it, but instead by loving with a suffering love that is willing to bring forgiveness and seek reconciliation and seek justice in all those loving ways.

So Jesus says, Blessed are you. If you don't stumble over that paradoxical way that I work, blessed are you if you don't reject me for taking and calling you to follow me in the way of the cross. And friends, with those words about how he's bringing the kingdom to the paradoxical power of the cross, What Jesus is saying to us is blessed are you, if you really believe that, let it sink in, take root, and bear fruit.

Blessed are you if you practice love and justice, even when that includes pain and being called to the hard work of forgiveness. Blessed are you if you seek peace amid all the conflicts going on in the world. And what Jesus says in addition to that in Mark chapter 8 is He says to all of us, Blessed are you if you know this, if you try to stay in soil three, if you just try to keep the life that you want in just the way you want it, Jesus says in Mark 8, you're going to lose that life inevitably.

But if on the other hand you give me your life in soil four, if you follow me in the way of the cross, that's how you're going to get life. And so that's where I could picture myself as a chaplain. going to King Herod and his wife Herodias later in their lives. Because what happened to Herod is he tried to hang on to life as he had it.

Well, he did for a little while, but eventually Emperor Tiberius said, Herod, you're a failure. Get out of here. You're embarrassing. He sent him to France, which back then was called Gaul. So Herod, who had tried to keep the life that he wanted, he wound up in shame and desolation in Gaul. And that's where I could hope to be a chaplain, saying to him, Herod, Jesus was right when he said if you try to hang on to your life, you're going to lose it.

But it's not too late to give your life to Jesus in a way that's going to lead to life. And friends, that is true for every one of us, whether we are young or old, whether we're going through one of the best times or one of the worst times in our lives. If we give our lives to Jesus to live out soil four, then his word is going to take root and bear fruit.

And we are going to share in his life. And just to conclude that kind of message. We're going to turn back to Jürgen Moltmann for one more part of his testimony to Jesus. So again, as he was saying, look, see both the cross and the resurrection so that your suffering doesn't make you think Jesus isn't even there or caring about you.

See both the cross and the resurrection because when you see both those gospel truths, here's what you can know about God. God weeps with you now so that finally you can laugh with God in a celebration. That'll go forever. So friends, please know that is the gospel of Jesus being crucified and then rising from the dead.

What that means is Jesus not only weeps with you as God the Son, Jesus also dies for you. So that you can celebrate and flourish with him forever and ever in the kingdom that he will ultimately again be bring through the paradoxical power of the cross. That is the resurrection power that gives us life.

Let's pray about that and then we'll sing.

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for not only teaching the way of the cross, but for taking that way yourself so that you could rise from the dead with a power to give us new life. And Triune God, we thank you for all this good news. Father, we thank you that you give us your word by giving us your Son as the word made flesh.

And then you help us listen to and live by that word by giving us your Holy Spirit. We thank you for John the Baptist being able to teach baptism with the Holy Spirit, even though he didn't fully understand it. And we don't either. But we can trust you to make it all come true. Because we offer this prayer in Jesus name