For the past two Sundays, our hearts have been turned—gloriously, graciously turned—to the observance and celebration of the biggest week of our church year.  Back on March 17^th, the last thing we heard from Mark was that the Pharisees had become so enraged—not exactly by what Jesus was doing but definitely by how he was doing it—the Pharisees had become so enraged that they “began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus” (3:6).  In one sense, the Jesus story is the story of people wanting him dead and out of the way, out of their way, and what God then does about that.  It’s an old, old story.

The focus of the Pharisees was upon perfecting godly living, living according to the law, as interpreted by the scribes, many of whom also happened to be Pharisees.  The Herodians, as the name implies, saw value in the reign of Herod the Great and his heirs.  Herod wasn’t Roman; as the Herodians saw it, Herod had constantly—one might almost say faithfully—worked to keep the full power of powerful Rome out of Judea.  After the death of Herod the Great, his kingdom was divided between his heirs, which means it was weakened, which means that Rome was able to exert more direct power in the region.  The Herodians wanted what many of the Jews had long wanted: a restored kingdom, glory days . . . well, they’ll pass you by.

What they didn’t want was Jesus.  Jesus was not their candidate for king of the restored kingdom.  It enraged them that this Jesus was starting to take such a hold in the thinking and hearts of the people.  Ugh, the people—what do they know?  Jesus was not an ally; he was a rival.  Herod was as bloody and brutal a king as any whom history records—remember how he handled news of the new king, born in Bethlehem?  Those who wanted a restoration of Herod’s kingdom seemed to have no qualms about adhering to his ways of getting things done: realpolitik.  Pharisees and Herodians didn’t typically have much in common.  As the old saying reminds us, though, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Jesus knew his life was in danger.  The moment he opened his mouth for God, his life was in danger, including at the hands of those who prided themselves upon their so faithful living for God.  Jesus never ran away from this threat: he aimed his life at Jerusalem all along, and, before that last journey to Jerusalem, Jesus also knew that the time had not yet arrived.  As he needed to, then, he would go off with his disciples, away from the explosive situations in which they found themselves so often.  How we all need a quiet place!

All that we hear Jesus doing, from this Sunday through the end of November, needs to be understood in light of this developing, pressurizing plot against his life.  All Jesus does needs to be understood in light of how actively and earnestly people with powerful political interests, powerful religious interests, were strategizing to get Jesus out of their lives.  We live in a nation where, by most polls, most people claim to be Christian—about two-thirds: down from about ninety percent, half a century ago.  Most of those two-thirds will say that their faith is very important to them.  But intolerance of Christianity seems to be on the rise: at least intolerance of traditional, historic, orthodox Christianity.  Our culture aims to get Christ out of our lives.  Oh, we can still have Jesus of course—their Jesus, their way.  A golden calf is still a golden calf, even when it has a Jesus face.

In what we heard today, Jesus is back in Galilee: home, familiar territory.  He has just healed a man with a useless hand.  He did it on the Sabbath, in the presence of many people, including Pharisees, there in the synagogue—the gathering of God’s people.  These miraculous acts of healing made an impression, as we can imagine!  People may not have been sure just what to make of it all—the strictest Pharisees were outraged, though even among their number were those who were perhaps reluctantly but somehow also hopefully coming to believe that God truly was with this man, Jesus.  That just made Jesus all the more a threat to the strictest, purest Pharisees.  The common folk, if I may call them that, understood Jesus was not doing things in the conventional, established way: he spoke with authority and acted with power.  He talked and acted like he knew exactly what he was saying, like he knew just what God meant.  The force of his character was undeniable.  Was this God at work?  Was it some terrible, devilish plot?  What was happening?

Whatever it was, whoever Jesus was, he drew crowds.  People wanted to see.  They wanted to see things happen.  We want to see things happen.  Where is that Jesus power, now?  Hidden away, deposited—in us!  As more people hear about this Jesus, the things he was doing, more began to come to see for themselves.  That’s the way it has to be: to encounter Jesus, people have to see for themselves.  You and I can’t engineer or synthesize that experience for them; it is a work of the Holy Spirit.  What you and I can do is continue to tell people about Jesus, about what Jesus has done for us, keep living a faithful disciple’s life, and keep inviting people to come see for themselves.

What has Jesus done for you?  I’m not talking about the dying on the cross part, or the glorious rising, though I’m certainly not discounting any of that!  How has Jesus been at work in your life?  What is different in your life because of Jesus?  I need to think about those questions myself.  I suspect that, when I can give a clear answer to those questions, people will begin to take more of an interest when I invite them to come see for themselves.  To the extent I have no good, clear answer to those questions, just vague feelings and worn platitudes, there won’t be much interest in what I have to say.  Just what am I offering when I offer Jesus?

For those of us who haven’t had the blessing of worshiping at Lakewood or another of the churches with a thousand plus in attendance, it might be hard to visualize the crowds constantly finding their way to Jesus, pressing in on Jesus.  Have you ever felt a little light-headed or anxious, out in a big crowd?  Or, in the press and push of the crowd, how can you find Jesus, or hear him, or see him?  Each of us needs to make room for Jesus, clear a space for Jesus.  The motive push, the force behind that, always comes from the Spirit.  Make room for Jesus.  There’s a daily prayer!  Father, help us today, now, to make room for Jesus.  Help us to keep making room for Jesus.  Help us to know that You are at work in our lives even in this very moment, clearing away the clutter and mess inside: all that so often crowds our hearts.  You are making room in us for Jesus to speak and act and live.  Amen!

It should always just knock our socks off that so many wanted Jesus.  Where are they, now?  Well, if Jesus were here, today, surely the people would be, too?  So, is Jesus not here?  You ask me how I know he lives.  Beloved, our world today offers many more venues and vendors for distraction and satisfaction than people had in the days of Jesus.  Just look at how our children and grandchildren live in the glow of their screens.  Just look at how we let them—don’t for a moment think I’m excluding myself!  So who, or what, is raising our children, teaching them what to value and what to ridicule?  I’ve only got you, and the children, if they’ll come, for an hour or so once a week.

Until the Spirit nudges them, people see no reason to come to church.  The mind doesn’t pull us to church; it’s the heart that pushes us there.  Concerned books have been written about those who have left church.  Books are being written now about the increasing number of people who never have been to any church.  We also do a wonderful job of assuring and affirming that people don’t need church to find Jesus: oh, they can find Jesus anywhere, anytime.  So they never bother to look, if he’s always available—they’ll get around to it . . . someday!  I want to pray to the lyrics of CCR: you better learn it fast; you better learn it young: someday never comes.  The time to seek Jesus, the time to live for Jesus, is always now.  That’s what we’re trying to work on, here, so that we can practice it, out there.

Those crowds want Jesus, want what Jesus is making possible, what Jesus is doing.  Peter remembered so vividly, and told Mark how Jesus “had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him” (3:10).  People want healing.  My hunch is that, in most cases, the healing people mainly want is physical healing: heal my cancer! Heal my heart disease! Heal my diabetes! Heal my kidney failure! Heal my auto-immune disease!  Make me like I was when I was twenty-two!  And if healing should happen—sometimes it does!—we’re so relieved and joyful!  And what change, then, do we make in our lives?  Oh God, if You’ll only heal me of x, y, and z, I promise I’ll . . . Let’s say the healing comes, or at least a long, welcome remission.  And those promises we made, on our knees, in tears?  You know how I know?  Old habits die hard!  God knows.  God can heal our bodies; of course He can.  That’s good healing, and it’s not the healing we most deeply need.  These hearts, these wills, our choice-making faculty, what we value and why we value it—so broken, so disordered.  Get this fixed, and everything else will begin to find its proper place, its proper relation.

Jesus heals bodies to remind people that God can, that God has power, real, visible, immediate power.  The kingdom is indeed for restoration, and wholeness.  Jesus came for a deeper, higher, greater healing: Spirit healing.  He came to heal what’s broken between me and you and God.  That’s the healing we need, whether our physical ailments are ever happily resolved or not.  So many of our physical ailments these days seem to be the result of our broken hearts, broken wills, broken choice-making faculty.  Society is no help: for a limited time grab a Big Mac for your snack attack for only $4.99.  Ask your doctor if Costalot is right for you.  That’s when my doctor told me about Quickafixium—may be habit-forming.

People could see the power of God as Jesus healed bodies.  Hallelujah! Amen!  But the deeper cry was the Palm Sunday cry: Hosanna—save us, please!  If my hand is crippled, I don’t cry out save me!  If my cholesterol numbers scare my cardiologist, we don’t cry out together to God, save, please!  If I enter this life, blind, deaf, weak, crippled, I don’t cry out save me!  Help me, yes.  Heal me, yes.  Restore me . . . maybe—that’s getting closer to it.  Save me!  I can only cry out save me if I realize I need to be saved, only if I realize the danger I’m in is so perilous—and close—that I need immediate rescue, that I’m lost, absolutely lost, without God.  Would you say that, without God, you are absolutely lost?

Mark and the other Gospel writers never shy away from telling us about the impure spirits, the demons, who lose their ever-loving minds when Jesus shows up.  Modern sophisticates that we are, such talk of demons makes us squirm a little, or smile knowingly about those primitives.  Silly ancient people.  But the spirits understand what the people don’t seem to get.  The people gather for the healing, so they can then go about their lives like before, but without the cussed burden of broken physical health.

Jesus brings them together for something else entirely, and the unclean spirits know it and scream out in terror: Jesus is here, Jesus brings people together, to save them, cleanse them, restore them to God.  This is the will of God.  In the Gospels, people often call Jesus the Son: Son of David.  Except for Peter, no human being calls Jesus the Son of God.  Only the unclean spirits call Jesus that.  They would know.  The people came to see the power of God: Zap! Pow! Bam!  Jesus came to be the presence of God.

Here, in church, in worship, today, we have both—the power and the presence—through our God-given faith, through whatever way it please God to use the reading, hearing, and proclaiming of His Holy Word, and today—specially, blessedly—we may know the power and presence of God through a taste of bread, a sip of juice.  Can such small, negligible things truly put us into contact with the power and presence of God?  Ask Jesus.  He will tell you.  He will show you.