At the edges

In ancient times it was regarded as the northern-most city of Israel and of course fortified against attack from whomever would approach from that direction.

The tell, or mound, of the ancient city is testimony of the many times that the city was built and burned and rebuilt over the centuries especially because it was at the edge of the country.

And then a few feet further on I stood at a series of zigzag trenches left from the pre-1967 years of constant skirmishes with the Syrians, when the Israelis never knew when the artillery shells would start zinging across the open field in front of me.

Life on the edge was very uncertain, but that was where the Israeli soldiers needed to be.

One of the key illustrations in the Divine Drama, our Bible Study series by Dr. harry Wendt, has a map of the Holy Land with a big circle drawn on the Galilee region, indicating that to be the area where most of Jesus’ activity takes place.

Then also there are arrows out in several directions: to Tyre and Sidon to the northwest, to Dan and Caesarea Philippi in the northeast, to the Decapolis in the southeast, and the large arrow to the south indicating the final trip to Jerusalem.

Why does he bother with those places at the edge?

Doesn’t he have enough to do at the center?

Aren’t there enough people to listen to his preaching in Galilee?

Aren’t there enough sick people to heal?

Aren’t there enough disciples to call and to train?

Why does he bother with Tyre and Sidon?

Why go to Caesarea Philippi, as we will hear next week, that place which had had pagan temples for untold centuries?

That’s even beyond the edge at Tell Dan!

Is Jesus attempting to get away from things?

That might be our idea, but clearly it is not Jesus’ plan.

He is at the edge of typical Jewish territory, or even beyond it,

to demonstrate his willingness to engage whatever is there,

to begin a process of transforming that wilderness into more territory for the kingdom of God,

to make what is strange and foreign a new outpost of familiarity.

And if one tries to plot Jesus’ itinerary on a map, it is clearly impossible.

The grouches have said that the Gospel writer must never have been in Israel, or is relying on inaccurate sources, blah, blah, blah.

Mark isn’t trying to give a travelogue; rather, he is pointing out all of these fringe areas that Jesus intends to touch as well as the core area of Galilee.

The message of the Gospel is not going to be limited to the home-town crowd; it is going to have a world-wide reach, and that reach is going to get started right away, even before the resurrection.

Remember, in Mark’s telling of the Gospel, that the one who gives the true confession at the cross is the foreigner, the Roman soldier: “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”

So Jesus is sought out by the wrong sort of someone – a woman, a Syrophoenecian woman, an outsider, a gentile dog, and he changes her life, completely.

Down toward the Decapolis, another place at the edge, he encounters a deaf man and says to him “Be opened” and he hears and speaks and no one can shut him up about what has happened to him.

Why is Jesus doing these things?

He is reminding us that when we follow Jesus, we need to get ready for unexpected circumstances, for people that we didn’t expect to meet, for situations where we need to respond in ways that open up the Gospel.

This morning we’re going to ask several catechetical students to confess the Apostles Creed together, out loud.

They’ve tagged along with the rest of us Sunday after Sunday all of their lives, but this morning they say it just the few of them.

It is to remind them, and to remind all of us that the occasions will come when we have to use words, actions, or a combination of words and actions to say what we believe in at-the-edge situations.

We may not need the exact words of the creed, but we must be able to clearly articulate the faith of the creed in a particular setting.

And we do not know when those situations are going to pop up!

A man walked up to me out of the crowd on July 4 as we are busily giving away water and popcorn, etc, to passersby and said “Why should I bother with a church, this church, or any church?

How should I have answered his question? What would you have said?

What will you or I say or do when that casual conversation comes along one day, when someone throws out a hint that he or she really wants to talk about something significant but is afraid to really say so for fear of being ridiculed?

Perhaps it will even be more pointed when we need to figure out what

to say or do when someone walks up to us and says “My best friend just died”?

At that edge of a conversation, will you or I try to avoid it, or just let it pass, or will we encourage the questions and wrestles with them together, in the name of the Lord Jesus?

It would be easy to always refer people to “experts”, but sometimes what is needed is not particularly experts, but fellow travelers.

Today... and every day... we’re praying for the Word to come

--and be active among us all,

--among the catechumens,

--and among those who have not yet been touched by the Word.

Let’s be clear about this:

these places at the edge are dangerous; there can be disaster here as well as success.

There is a very prominent Bible scholar, Dr. Bart Ehrman, who lectures widely and brilliantly on all sorts of subjects about the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, the New Testament Apocrypha and other ancient literature.

I’ve used some of his materials.

The problem is that in the process of learning all of that stuff, he lost his faith.

He has piles of information, but no faith; so what is the point of all of that study?

That was a disaster at the edge of all of those technical research questions being asked.

O Spirit of the Living God, don’t let that be the outcome with us!

speak and heal our mortal blindness;

deaf we are: our healer be;

loose our tongues to tell your kindness.

Be our Word in pity spoken,

heal the world, by our sin broken. [WOV#716]

Those are the things that will, by the gift of God, be happening first at the core of our being and then also at the very edges of our lives,

where there is danger and opportunity,

where the Holy Spirit will yet lead us in making new disciples,

at the place of action,

where things happen,

at the edge. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.