Good morning! It’s great to be back with you! We were off for a quick vacation in a warm place we won’t talk about right now! It was just a week, but I missed two Sundays and I forgot to have them put in the bulletin that I was on vacation. When I got back, I heard that this question was being asked: “Did Dan give up preaching for Lent?!” I’ll tell you, I get no respect!

It is the 4th Sunday of Lent already. And if it seems like Easter is coming early this year, it is. March 23rd. I had to look this up. Pay attention. Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring equinox (March 20). AND it is based on an ancient lunar calendar that Jewish people use to date Passover, and thus it moves all over on our Roman calendar system. That’s clear, right!

Lynne Blessing sent me something last week that said Easter hasn’t been this early since 1913. And that it can only be one day earlier than this year. The last time it was March 22 nd was in 1818, and the next time it will be isn’t for nearly 300 years. That will give you math-type people something to ponder this morning.

In the meantime, the rest of us are going to look again into the gospel of Mark, and I just want to remind you of one thing before we do that, and that is simply the title of our series. We called it “The Gospel of Mark: Following Jesus.” And I want to encourage you to hold onto that word “follow.”

This gospel is really characterized by the creation and the formation of people who follow Jesus. Not people who are vaguely spiritual, not people who want to be religious, but people who are Following Jesus.

Reading: Mark 3:7-19

One thing should be certain, by now. Whatever else Jesus is, he is someone who attracts attention. The guy is a magnet. He attracts disciples, followers, large crowds, sick people, sinners, demons and opponents. Jesus attracts attention. One of our jobs as we look through Mark together is to figure out why.

This is the fourth time in a few short chapters that Jesus has withdrawn from larger populations and gone towards the Sea (of Galilee). And it’s the third or fourth time that a crowd of people go looking for him and find him.

In this case, the crowd is really diverse. They are from a broad range of locations, north, south, east and west. Those locations include people from Jewish areas, from Gentile areas, and from mixed areas where ethnicity and religious backgrounds vary wildly. In addition, we’re told a little later that the crowd will also include Jewish legal experts from Jerusalem.

Not everyone is interested in JESUS, of course. But there’s a lot of talk going around. People being healed, demons cast out. Jesus has some notoriety, has aroused some curiousity. He may have some benefits that people want, so they travel to see him, to hear him. They are interested in what he could do, and probably not so much in who he actually is. I mean, really, most of them will soon go back to their lives and resume what they were doing.

The one group who seems to get exactly who Jesus is and have a clue to why he has come…are the demons. The spiritual forces who have taken hold of human beings. They keep calling out things like “I know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth, Holy One of God” (chapter 1) or in this story, falling down in front of Jesus and saying “You are the Son of God!” They know Jesus, they understand something of why he has come yet Jesus continues to silence them.

It seems that it is not yet time. Not yet. He still has things to do before his truest purpose and identity is made clear in the last week of his life. But for now, it’s starting to get a little crazy around Jesus again, so he again withdraws to a different place.

I wonder if you have any place where you go, some special place that seems to be especially important to you, where you think better, where God seems closer, shows up, where you find yourself praying more easily, “Thin places” the Celtic Christians called them where heaven and earth get very close.

I have a couple of those places. One is walking the beach up on Whidbey Island. I can go on a walk with nothing particular on my mind, and many, many times something significant will happen. I’ll pray, or sing, or start to cry or find some thorny problem get clarified and come home feeling like I’ve been close to God. Often those places are outdoors, but not always.

Last Sunday night, Anne and I went to the 9:30 pm Compline service up at St. Mark’s Cathedral on Capitol Hill. We’ve done that sporadically since we were in college, but hadn’t been there for awhile. 30 minutes long, all the congregation does is stand up one time. A small men’s choir chants and sings the service, mostly out of the scriptures.

I sit there in the quiet, lights are low, and those massive pillars of the Cathedral rise up, and the voice speaking scripture rings out into that huge space, my heart quiets, my mind calms and I almost always leave feeling like I’ve been with God. Now, I believe sincerely that God is with us all the time. And yet, there are these sacred places where He seems more palpable.

Jesus “went up the mountain.” That’s all it says. He went up the mountain, we don’t know how far, we don’t know which mountain, and it doesn’t matter because “the mountain” is a place where things happen. Even visually, people tend to think of God as being “up there,” and when you’re on a mountain you are closer to “up there.” Divine revelations, visions, experiences often happen in the Bible on a mountain.

• Moses talks with God on a mountain. The ten commandments are given on the mountain.
• Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on the mountain.
• God found Elijah hiding on the mountain and revealed himself to him.

It happens all over. It happens in Mark.

• Jesus goes up a mountain to pray.
• God reveals Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah on a mountain.
• His final week starts at the Mount of Olives as he enters Jerusalem, the same mount where he most clearly describes for his disciples what will happen, and goes to again after the Last Supper just before his arrest.

Even Jerusalem itself encompasses “ Mount Zion.” For the reader of scripture, the appearance of “Mountain” is like a flashing neon sign saying “they’re in a sacred place, pay attention, something significant will happen now!” And we are not disappointed here.

On the mountain, Jesus “calls to him(self) those whom he wanted.” This is unusual, in that Jewish rabbis didn’t “call” disciples. Disciples found the rabbi and sat at their feet, desiring to be students. But Jesus is different. Jesus takes the initiative. Jesus calls…and “they came to him.” Linguistically, this is a double movement. They move towards Jesus. AND they leave what is behind. That is, they left behind what they had known, left behind their previous lives…to follow Jesus.

That sounds unusual to us. It is unusual. Mostly we are concerned with fitting a little Jesus in around all the other stuff we have to do in our lives. Soren Kierkegaard was a Christian, and a Danish philosopher in the 19th century who got himself in a lot of trouble for continually challenging those in the church of his day. He thought that the cozy relationship between the church and the state in Denmark birthed very lukewarm Christians. He once noted:

“Christ consistently used the expression “follower.” He never asks for admirers…His whole life on earth, from beginning to end, was destined solely to have followers and to make admirers impossible. To want to admire instead of to follow Christ is not necessarily an invention by bad people. No, it is more an invention by those who spinelessly keep themselves detached, who keep themselves at a safe distance…Admirers are only too willing to serve Christ as long as proper caution is exercised, lest one personally come in contact with danger…The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe…Not so for the follower.”

Jesus called to them, and they came to him. For Kierkegaard, to follow Jesus was something costly and risky. And I can’t help but wonder if we are not often simply admirers, fitting in some Jesus around the edges so that life as a Christian doesn’t actually look much different from life without Jesus. But for these people following Jesus, they were taking a huge leap.

I looked at a funny little video clip last week. It was from a church in Washington, and it showed a pastor standing in a big pool of water, getting ready to baptize a couple of young men. The first boy, maybe 10 years old, stepped down into the pool, covered his nose, the pastor spoke the words of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lowered the boy down under the water, raised him up, people clapped and cheered.

The camera went back to the pastor, readying himself for another boy, also I’d say about 10 or 11. Suddenly you see the pastor’s mouth open wide, his head turn and then you see the boy rocketing through the air and doing a full out cannonball into the water! Water went everywhere, pastor, bible, camera, microphone, and was clearly unplanned. But I thought: perfect! He’s leaving everything behind, and throwing his lot in with Jesus in a huge leap of faith. Beautiful. I wish I’d done that. (I wish we’d do that).

Now, verse 14 is really interesting. In our pew Bible it says Jesus “appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles…” Now, believe me, I’m not a Greek expert, but this word is weakly translated as “appointed.” More literally it’s Jesus “made 12.”

He made the twelve. Like God “made” the creation, he “made” heaven and earth, and like he told Abr(aham) “I will make of you a great nation.” Jesus “makes” the twelve.

You get the impression that nothing is happening by accident here, don’t you? Jesus goes to the mountain, he calls those he wants, he makes the twelve and he names them apostles, literally “ones sent out.”

Now, the job description is actually quite simple. I was looking at a few of our staff job descriptions the other day. Some are fairly detailed: “provide incredible pastoral care, give life-changing mentoring, teach scintillating classes, convert 50% of the neighborhood you live in,” stuff like that! No, of course they’re not like that, but just like many of yours they can be pretty detailed. But not for the twelve. Here’s their job description:

• be with Jesus
• be sent out to proclaim the message and cast out demons.

That’s it. Be with Jesus. Be sent out for ministry.

And it seems like no accident that it’s in that order. These 12 are responding to Jesus, taking the huge leap into the baptismal pool, leaving old lives behind to pursue life as a follower and the first thing they do is spend time with Jesus. They walk the roads with him, they watch him with people, they share meals, soon Jesus will send them out for some trial ministry work, they sit with him when he is criticized, they laugh, they talk, they learn. They are loved by Jesus, they are with him.

AND he will send them out.

Who are “they?” Very ordinary folks. As far as we can tell, a couple of radicals called Zealots itching for a military confrontation with the Roman oppressors occupying their lands. Some fishermen. An out of favor tax collector. A couple of brothers who get nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” for their temper tantrums and egotistical outbursts.

Simon, nicknamed “Rock” (which might apply as much to his constant failure to grasp what was going on as much as to him being a firm foundation). Simon Peter, James & John, Andrew (brother of Peter), Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew (Levi), Thomas (the doubter) , another James (maybe the brother of Matthew), Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus. Some of them appear in other places in scripture, usually in minor roles. Some never appear again except for these lists, just drifting off into history.

What you have, in other words, is what we are sitting in this room. A bunch of folks, most of us pretty everyday people who aren’t going to be famous or remembered many years in the future or written into the history books. What you have here is the beginning of a new people, a people called the church of Jesus Christ. And Jesus will equip them and train them and charge them with this impossible job: utterly change the world.

For such an assignment you would think that God might send the best minds the world had to offer, or the most persuasive leaders, or at the least a cast of thousands and thousands. But no. A cast of twelve, most of whom have been long forgotten, are supposed to change the world.

I had a hard time last week imagining our world being changed. Everything I read, every time I heard a news story seemed to be another piece of pain. Gang deaths up sharply in our city. An article about the pain of Afghanistan. Hard news in Kenya. 1% of the adults in our country in jail…1%! Terrible things in Sudan. But somehow, I don’t think it was so different in Jesus’ day. It was a bitterly difficult world. And into the fray Jesus calls a cast of twelve ordinary folks and says “Change the world with me.”

This building was built in 1929. Astonishing things have gone on here. People have been healed. People have been found by Jesus Christ and had their entire lives change. Commitments have started in marriage, visions have been received, comfort felt, things have started in this place that have changed the world. Who built it? Who were the movers and shakers, who made the biggest contributions? We could probably still find out, blow the dust off of some ancient minutes or tax records. It wouldn’t mean much, in most cases. Just anonymous, everyday people. Changing the world.

Our 18 elders met last month and we spent half an hour in this sanctuary that night, simply praying. Walking around by candlelight, balcony, pulpit, choir loft, row by row, seat by seat, simply praying. Asking God to send his Holy Spirit upon every person who comes here, for healing, for decisions, for reconciliation, for ministries, for forgiveness. It’s gone on here for years and years, everyday people praying, prayer upon prayer, bringing others before God, people we have no idea who they were. Changing the world.

A friend leaves a lucrative career to start schools in a poor country far away.

A small group intentionally invites people from wildly different life situations.

A group of folks flies to Mississippi to help rebuild houses and lives.

People give their lives to making friends with kids on the streets of Seattle.

We partner with a village in rural Honduras.

Youth leaders here at Bethany give hours and hours of time to mentoring my kids and yours, middle schoolers and high schoolers.

Some friends open their home and family to a person who’s never had one.

Someone risks their job and career because they won’t operate dishonestly, someone else notices and asks them why.

All costly things. All ordinary people, changing the world. It doesn’t take a cast of thousands or a million dollars or a movement or a media campaign. It takes some people, ordinary people, who are called by Jesus to follow. Who leave other things behind. Who go to be with Him. And are sent out by Him.

Now, there’s a great reality check in the second half of chapter 3. We won’t get to read it this morning, but the very first things that the newly appointed, newly-made 12 experience is opposition to Jesus. Scribes from Jerusalem call Jesus a demonic. His own family thinks he has gone crazy.

Perhaps it is right then it hits the twelve that this isn’t a game. That being a follower of Jesus is very different from being an admirer. That being a follower of Jesus isn’t just fitting some religiosity in around the edges. That following him means cannonballing into the pool, holding nothing back. That followers who take on the job of changing the world will be opposed on many fronts. Perhaps it made them go back and look at the job description again for a follower:

• be with Jesus
• get sent out in ministry, kingdom of God ministry. Ministry that changes the world.