Being the church… popular, loving, adaptive

 

Today we have rather a strange gospel reading (Mark 6:3-34, 53-56), not because of what’s in it, but because of what’s not – you will notice in the verses that a big chunk from verses 35-52 are left out, and they’re pretty important verses too – they include an account of the feeding of the 5,000 and of Jesus walking on water.

But what we have is also important – and it perhaps draws us closer to the character and appeal of Jesus. And there a number of qualities to focus on.

The first is his popularity with his followers. The disciples had been sent out on a mission, teaching, healing and listening and now they had returned, and they returned excited to tell Jesus all that they had been doing. We’ve come to the end of another school year and one of the great joys of watching some of the end of term concerts and events is watching the children proudly having the chance to show their parents what they have done and what they’ve learnt, and you can almost sense the disciples feeling exactly the same way as that !

And it’s then that we recognize the second quality of Jesus shown here, and that is his compassion. He knows they’re excited, he knows they need to share some of what they’ve done, but he also knows they need to rest !

Again using the example of children, it seems that occasionally they have boundless energy, but there is a time, even though the child may disagree strongly, that the parent has to tell them to rest, to be still - not just for peace and quiet the adult might get (!) but because the child needs it!

Jesus understood this well. He would be calling for a lot of commitment from his followers, and he needed them to be ready for the work they had to do. He took them away to a quiet place, the sort of place that we could all do with visiting sometimes, just to think about our lives, our priorities, our faith…

The compassion of Jesus was incredible, but the best laid plans don’t always work out ! As they took the boat to the deserted place, people recognized them, and they hurried there to see Jesus – there are times when even he must have just felt like closing the door on everyone, times when he must have felt like just telling everyone to go away, but, if there were, we never really heard about them!

And this provides evidence of the 3rd aspect of his character that I wanted to think about today, and that is his willingness to prioritise need. The disciples were tired and needed a break certainly, but here was a load of people who needed Jesus – we’re told he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus saw their need and he devoted his attention to every one of them there - A lady called Joan Jones, who surprisingly with a name like that, was not Welsh, tells a story about her second year of nursing school when they were given a test. She breezed through the questions until she read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the nursing school?" Surely this was a joke. 

She had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would she know her name? She handed in the paper, leaving that question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count towards their grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." 

Jesus gave the best example of that attention and care throughout his earthly life. Every person was important to him and every person remains important to him.

So we have thought about his popularity with the disciples and with others as well, his compassion for all people and his willingness to assess and respond to need where it is most important. And they are all, it’s pretty obvious to say, great examples for us to follow.

Firstly popularity – well that’s not something we should particularly be craving at the expense of other things, but arousing the interest of people so that they will come running to find out more, as they did for Jesus, is something we should be concerned about.

The Church today varies considerably in its popularity level depending on who we talk to. There are some who have no interest at all, some who have an interest for a special occasion or for Christmas, harvest or Easter. Others will obviously be more interested, but whatever level of interest there is in the Church this must pale into insignificance as we ask people to consider the popularity of Jesus.

The Church must find ways of being popular not to fill our buildings or to look good (important though those things are), but to point people to Jesus, and we do that, not by compromising the gospel message. Jesus spoke out strongly when he needed to against injustice, against apathy, against greed or corruption, and the Church that does that will be a Church that is noticed.

But of course gimmicks and great buildings, attractive worship and so on mean very little in the overall scheme of things – It is the way we live and the compassion we show that can make a real difference, and we do that every day. There’s the old joke about the Church being what is left after the Minister has left town, and the building has burned down, and whilst it may be a joke, there is an element of truth and that is our real challenge – to be the body of Christ living out his message every moment of every day of our lives.

It’s about displaying the care, Compassion, interest, love, that Jesus showed - the sort of qualities that never wrote anyone off, that never refused someone another chance if they asked for it, that never looked at the world with cynical eyes, but rather with hope and with belief.

And the third thing that we learnt from this passage about the character of Jesus was his willingness to adapt to different situations when the need arose and as we think about that we have to realise that we have to do the same.

One obvious example is the place of Churches in our communities – there was a time when people would automatically come to Churches as a place of comfort, rest or seeking some sort of renewal. They would also come to the Church for help with practical problems but now we have to be out looking for need – people won’t come automatically to us, but we can surely see need all around us, and to that need we must respond.

We live in an incredibly fast moving technological world – some people like it, some don’t, but it certainly can’t be ignored. The rate of change in everything it seems is enormous. Change management has become a major business! 

The world is changing very fast and sometimes in very strange ways, but the qualities that the world needs most, and that people actually admire most of all don’t change, and they are not qualities that can ever be tested in a science lab, or taught about in theory alone – they can only be witnessed in the actions of people like you and me – they are things like honesty, courage, penitence, forgive, morality, love, faith, humility, grace, sacrifice, commitment mercy, loyalty, compassion, kindness and truth. 

That is us being the real church - we will make mistakes, we will be far from perfect at times, perhaps lots of times, but we need to be that authentic, compassionate, loving influence that Jesus is… he is our model to look to. Our model to learn from. Our model to trust… and to do that we need to focus on building our relationship with him day by day… 

Trusting in Jesus who is with us always and seeking his strength and his wisdom, may we be seen to be the real Church, the body of Christ, working in the world today and sharing the gospel message which is about hope and about new life and about love and compassion - it is a message that is not just attractive and relevant, but one that is essential for the world today... AMEN