A New Start
Mark 1: 14 – 19
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 05 January, 2003

ALTHOUGH 2002 had its difficulties, I’ve also had a sense that we are moving, that we have returned to where we were when we struck out on new paths back in 1999.

Over the next few weeks, we will look at setting an agenda for our mission. We will look at some Biblical models to guide us in this.

Today’s, topic is Jesus’ own agenda, how he set the scene. Next week, we will see the breadth of that agenda. Later we will look at some basics of how we can put that agenda into practice ourselves.

I called this sermon “A New Start”. Maybe I should call it, “Reinventing the Church”. How do you feel about reinventing the church? Did you know that the Reformers demanded a church, “Semper reformata, semper reformanda” — in plain English, a Church ”Always reformed, always being reformed”? Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and the other greats expected that every generation would reinvent the church, maybe several times in each generation, if need be.

We must reinvent the church! The world isn’t hearing our message. We must change until it does!
You know the old saying, “I can’t hear what you are saying because of what I see you doing.” That’s how it is today. Our feeble voice says, “It’s all about grace, you know!” But louder voices say, “There ought to be a law against it! God will judge you!” And then the world sees multimillionaire Televangelists and paedophile priests and all the seemingly meaningless pomp and ceremony, and says, “What was that you said about grace?”

Let’s be in the forefront of what God is doing in our day. Let’s put everything up for grabs except what the Bible strictly spells out as neccesary for a living Church. Let’s review the religious trappings of 20 centuries one by one, and cast aside those not relevant to us today, and reform those that are.

Mark 1: 14 – 19 is a key passage in the entire New Testament. It declares the arrival of the Son of God and the beginning ot Gods kingdom. It is the announcement of a new start, a new beginning for earth.

Let’s keep verses 14 and 15 before us:

MK 1:14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”

This passage tells us five basics about setting the agenda. It tells us where, what, when, why and what to do. It tells us where Jesus began, what he did, what time it was, why we need to do something about it, and, finally, how we should respond.

WHERE TO BEGIN
I once had visions of this church becoming a big church. For various reasons that didn’t come about, and I am not sure now that it was such a good idea. We do need to be bigger than we are, though. Dinosaurs were big, but they didn’t last. There’s a balance between size and economic viability.
Jesus certainly began small. He started out with 12 disciples and a handful of supporters. He had around 200 supporters when he was crucified, and still that core group of 12 — 11 of them, anyway.

But, more importantly, he began in Galilee.

For a Jew in Jesus’ time, Galilee was definitely not the happening place. For a Jew, Jerusalem was Marrickville, it was the centre of the world. It was the religious centre, it was the political centre.

Yet Jesus went about as far away from Jerusalem as you could go wthout actually leaving Israel. It was like wanting to change Australia so, instead of starting in Canberra or Sydney, you start in some political hotspot like Baan Baa or Nimmitabel.
There’s a lesson here for us. We might be in Marrickville, but we are not in Canberra. But we are in the right place for us. Galilee isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind. People around here don’t expect to have a big influence on the world. But we can.

One of the fascinating stories of the church in mission is what happened in India.
The Catholics arrived pretty early, and they tried hard to live with the ordinary people and reach out to them. But gradually they started putting more of their efforts into changing the rulers, the Brahmins, the Zamindars who owned the land. They improved conditions for a few people, but really they didn’t do a lot.
The Anglicans were legally banned from
working in India, so they hired Lutherans to go instead. The Lutherans did tons of vital research, but didn’t change very much either.
Carey, Marshman and Ward arrived from the Baptist Missionary Society, determined to live and work among the poor and reach out to them with the gospel. They did good work in that area, but they still put more effort into the educated people and the wealthy people. You could almost say that their biggest impact was to spark of a reform movement among the Hindus, the Brahmo Samaj. Great stuff, but not really bringing the gospel to the people.

After a while the Anglicans were let in. Almost by accident, their work moved from the rich people to the poor people of South India.

And revival broke out!
That revival transformed the lives of the people who came under the rule of Jesus. And it also affected the political scene.
Think! Rulers can only rule while the people support them.Whether change comes from the ballot box or from a gun, rulers who don’t respond when the people speak eventually get thrown out. Change the people at the bottom, the people at the top must change.

Jesus began with the people at the bottom, because that was bound to challenge the Sanhedrin and the Romans.

In 1958, a 42 year old African American factory worker named Rosetta Parks decided not to give up her seat in a Montgomery bus to a white person. She was arrested and punished. The pastor of the Dexter Street Baptist Church decided to go in to bat for her, and called on black people to walk with dignity rather than catch a bus and be degraded.

100 years of negotiations at the highest of levels had done nothing to change the discriminatory laws in the US. But Rosetta Parks and Martin Luther King did it.
Here’s the story: Jesus came into Galilee.

WHAT HE DID
Jesus came declaring the good news of God. Some translations say, “Preaching the gospel of God.”

That’s not a wrong translation, but words like “preaching” and “gospel” are too religious today to convey what Jesus really was doing.
The word used for “preaching” means much the same as we would mean if we talked about a TV Announcer “reporting” news.

Jesus didn’t arrive with a five point sermon printed on an A4 sheet folded in half. He came with a news flash. It was the same as if we were watching the Channel 2 News and the reporter said, “This bulletin has just been handed to me. The Treasurer has just announced a cut in taxation rates” or “...A bomb has been found at Centrepoint and the centre of Sydney has been evacuated. Travellers are warned...”
Jesus came with a news flash. “The following bulletin has just been handed to me. God’s rule has recommenced on earth. I’ve been given the task of starting it.”

So Jesus didn’t come with a copy of Do You Know the Four Spiritual Laws? When he came declaring the gospel of God, it means that he came with a happy announcement about God. In Greek, the word for Gospel is evangellion. Ev means “good” or “happy” and angellion means “message” or “report”.

So Jesus came with a happy newsflash about God’s new work.

So often all that people ever hear from the church is bad news. Someone once asked an African American pastor, “What is the difference between black preaching and white preaching?” He thought for a while and replied, “Black preachers are glad, white preachers are mad.”
What do people hear from us? “God is angry with women who have abortions.” “God hates homosexuals.” “God doesn’t want people to get well by using foetal stem cells.” “God will punish drunkards and drug addicts.”

Let’s hear some real good news!
“God can fold in his love even someone who ended a baby’s life in an abortion.” “God’s plan is not for homosexual practices, but he still redeems homosexuals.” “God wants people to be well and to live full and productive lives. How can we put into practice all the good things we know about foetal stem cells without wantonly destroying human life?” “The gospel frees drunkards and addicts and brings them to purposeful life in Christ.”
Tell people good news! We’ve got too much law and not enough grace!

WHAT TIME IT IS
In 1972, Gough Whitlam’s Labor campaigned very effectively against the Liberal – National coalition using the slogan, “It’s Time!”
We’d had 23 years of Coalition Government, ever since Menzies was elected in 1949. Menzies was a true Liberal, so was Gorton. But Holt was a dolt and he drowned; and McMahon was more noted for his ears and his wife’s dresses than anything else. We desperately needed change.

Jesus came to the world after thousands of years of Satan’s rule. Jesus arrived in Galilee saying, “Its time! Satan’s days are closing! God’s kingdom is in reach!”

The world needs desperately to hear that message! They might not want to hear precisely those words, because they have heard those words before, and they don’t trust them. But we can tell them the gist of those words, tell them there is hope, tell them that God is still in charge, that even the worst things that might happen are not out of his hand or beyond his reach. Tell them that God loves to bring strength out of our weakness and life even out of our death.
Jesus said, “The time is here!”

WHY WE MUST CHANGE
The answer is simple. It’s because God’s kingdom is near.
The Greek, once again, is informative. It implies that the Kingdom of God is reachable. It’s more than just near, as though it might still be centuries in the future. It is at hand, close enough to reach out and touch.

It’s not about the Kingdom’s being near in time. It’s about the Kingdom’s being near in space. Jesus is the King. He brought the Kingdom with him. If you want to find God’s Kingdom, find the King God sent and anointed!

And, because the Kingdom is in reach, there is no time to delay. Now is the time to act — God is doing a new thing right now!

I am a great believer that the Church needs a Holy Spirit–inspired, God–loving, devil–hating revival. And I don’t believe we can entirely create that for ourselves. We can create healthy conditions to lead to revival, but, in the end, revival is God’s sovereign act.
A good way to create revival conditions is to begin doing what Christians should do.

That means meeting regularly with your brothers and sisters, but it might not mean “Church” in the conventional way. It might mean spending a lot of time together as a team, planning what we will do next to spring the Kingdom on Marrickville. It might mean working out who you are, so that you will know the people you can best reach out to. Jesus did most of his good work along the road and in paddocks.

SO, WHAT MUST WE DO?
Before we can begin doing things the way they should be done, we need to stop what we have been doing and start again with a new organising principle.

I think it was Dennis Bennett in Nine O'Clock in the Morning who told the story of how revival began in his church.
He was a rather ordinary, stick-in-the-mud Anglican vicar, doing what had to be done because it was the Anglican way.
They sent him to a new church, and he met some people who told him how the Holy Spirit was doing something new, changing people’s hearts from within.
Bennett didn’t entirely believe it. But gradually he saw that things just weren’t going to work if he kept on with his routines.
He went into an empty Church and set it all out before God. He repented. He decided to let the Holy Spirit rule in his life and in the church God had put him in. He believed the good news his church friends told him. He began putting into practice.
And God began to renew his work in that church!
Bennett gave up the old organising principle of Anglican routines. He submitted to God’s organising principle, that the Holy Spirit must be in charge, that the Other Comforter, here with us until Jesus returns, must direct and inspire Christ’s Church to the glory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

FOR US TODAY
The principles are clear.

Our focus always must be the people on the fringes — perhaps not just people from boarding houses, but certainly people who need to hear that God’s time has come.
Our message must be clearly delivered: God has brought good news into the world.
Our message must convey the urgency that now is God’s time, that former things have already passed away, and God is making all things new.
What we do and what we say must be Kingdom–focused. We are Kingdom people: let’s live as we are.
And, we ourselves, must repent and believe the good news, so that our lives are totally organised around the Lordship of Christ and his rule in our hearts.

Let‘s do it! AMEN!