Sunday Morning Greek Blog

I preached this message January 28, 2024, at Mount View Presbyterian Church. It’s based on the Gospel passage for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany in Year B of the Liturgical Calendar.

When was the last time you were in a hurry to finish up a task? Sometimes, we have deadlines to meet and need to ensure everything gets done just right. Those who like working under that kind of pressure may feel like they’re more focused and some extra adrenaline kicks in to help them get the job done quickly. Others may not like being in a hurry so much. They get flustered and may make mistakes or miss important items they need for whatever they’re preparing for.

The Gospel writer Mark gives us the impression that Jesus is the kind of person who was always in a hurry, and he seemed to thrive on the urgency of the situation. Now some of you might say, “Come on, Scott, how could you know Jesus was in a hurry?” Well, I’ll lay it out here for you.

The verses at the beginning of Mark’s gospel set the theme for Mark’s gospel. Listen to Mark 1:3, quoting Isaiah 40:3:

3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.’ ”^[1]

The Greek adjective for “straight” means what it says: a straight road unhindered by obstacles, the shortest distance between two points. What is of note for us today is that the adverb form of that verb, often translated “straightaway” or “immediately” in older translations, is used another 41 times in Mark’s gospel, with 10 of those occurrences in Mark’s first chapter alone, and three times in our passage this morning. Mark is letting us know that Jesus is wasting no time in embarking on that straight path, and he has no intention of stopping any time soon.

A quick recap of Mark up to our current passage will help set the stage for talking about Jesus as an authoritative teacher, and how that translates to you and I teaching with authority. Jesus’s cousin John is in the wilderness preaching about the coming of the Messiah when who should show up but Jesus himself. John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan and “immediately” as Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirt visibly descended on Jesus. Mark then gives just a brief statement about Jesus “immediately” going out into the desert and being tempted by Jesus.

After Jesus returns from the desert, he begins preaching a simple message in Galilee, “Repent and believe the good news!” His reputation begins to grow to the point where, in vv. 18 and 20, Simon, Andrew, James, and John all “immediately” leave their fishing boats to follow Jesus. His new followers give him a sense of legitimacy (not that he needed it) in the eyes of the Jews. His “official” ministry had begun.

So now that Jesus has laid the groundwork for his ministry, he returns to his hometown Capernaum, and “immediately” at the next Sabbath synagogue service begins teaching the good news. “Immediately” upon finishing, a man with an unclean spirit cries out that Jesus is the Lord’s Messiah, and Jesus casts out the unclean spirit. In the last verse of our passage today, we see that the end result was that news about what Jesus had done and his teaching with authority “immediately” spread throughout Galilee.

So what does it mean that Jesus “taught with authority”? Aside from being the Son of God and having a direct line to his father, we can be pretty certain that he was a regular at synagogue service growing up, so he’d heard the stories and wisdom literature of the Old Testament and the priest’s or rabbi’s exposition of those scriptures. He grew up in a carpenter’s home (probably not in poverty), so he certainly learned a trade like all other Jewish boys would have, and he had friends that he interacted with. Even as an adolescent, he had already begun to understand and empathize with human condition so that he was no stranger to our sorrows.

The synagogue was also the center for education, at least for males, in the local communities, so Jesus would have likely had a solid education as well, including some Torah training. But he had to bide his time, because 30 was the age a male was considered fully qualified to teach of his own accord in that day.

What Jesus did NOT apparently have in that day was a connection to any of the rabbinic schools who would have trained rabbis to go out to the local synagogues to teach. Nor did he have any letters of recommendation from the Pharisees or Sadducees of his day to further bolster his legitimacy. But that was okay, because he challenged all of those groups to reconsider many of their legalistic interpretations of the Old Testament and, being an outsider, he couldn’t get stripped of any of the privileges or prestige enjoyed by those groups. He was his own man. He knew what his father wanted of him, and he knew how to get there.

In those days, it was important for a teacher to have both an aura of authority and a group of followers. Without followers, people would not give him a second look as teacher; they’d think he and his message were irrelevant. And without authority, especially the authority of his miracles, it would have been easy to dismiss him as a phony and charlatan.

The difficult part of that combination is maintaining authority, because this was a huge barometer in a culture built on the principles of honor and shame. You’ve probably noticed in the Gospels that when someone tried to challenge Jesus’s authority or trap him in his words, he has a couple different ways he responds. With the average person, he tends to be more compassionate and sympathetic with his response. He knows what kind of religious legalism they live under and how that makes them feel inferior.

We see this especially in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus starts with the Beatitudes and transitions to challenging the “authorized” teaching of his day. “You have heard it said that,…but I say to you….” This is speech seasoned with salt, if you will, speaking the truth in love and compassion.

With most of the Pharisees and Sadducees, however, it’s a completely different attitude. At times he comes across as downright snarky and perhaps even a little belligerent, at least from our own perspective, when he challenges their legalistic platitudes and nitpicky “requirements” they claim to discern from God’s law. Why did Jesus, whom so many see as a man of peace, respond in this way to the religious leaders?

In a culture of honor and shame, if someone challenged your authority or demonstrated apparent hypocrisy in your teachings and you couldn’t defend yourself against those charges, that usually meant you were done for as a teacher or as an advocate for whatever it was you were promoting. Jesus knew that, of course, so when he responded, he made sure that he not only got his point across but that he also destroyed the argument of those challenging him. After all, he was calling people to follow him, so he needed a compelling reason for them to abandon their current teacher if they weren’t on the up-and-up and a compelling reason to follow him instead.

Jesus employed not just words and wisdom in his teaching, in his defense of his ministry, and in his rebuttals against the religious leaders of the day, but wonders and miracles as well to back up his authoritative words. Like the famous baseball player Dizzy Dean said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it!”

We see, then, that Jesus’s authority as a teacher comes not only from being the Son of God, something that was not necessarily obvious to anyone who saw him, but also from the wisdom and knowledge he gained from a human perspective and his ability win over followers. But being the Son of God, he had an advantage that you and I typically don’t have when it comes to authority. He could do the miracles.

So how does that impact us today as we live out the witness of our faith and teach others about the Word of God? If you’ll remember when I was here a few Sundays ago, I said that Epiphany was a time for us to introduce people to Jesus. How can we do so with conviction and authority as the body of Christ?

One of the first things I heard about Bible colleges when I went to seminary after getting a degree from UNO was that, for all intents and purposes, a Bible college education was essentially equivalent to having grown up going to Sunday school every week and paying attention along the way. You and I are long past our Sunday school days now, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t learn from the Word of God. Regular study of God’s word, individually and collectively in groups, will always help us “be prepared in season and out of season”[2] to share the hope and encouragement of the Gospel.

I don’t know of any Bible colleges, seminaries, or churches in general who require preachers or members who want to join to fast for 40 days and nights as Jesus did! But there is value in practicing such spiritual disciplines as fasting for a short period, as you are able,[3] and prayer. Such disciplines, when done regularly, give you the spiritual “muscle memory” to develop a Christlike mind set and worldview. You will find that not only will you recognize God’s voice more clearly than ever, but that deciding to do the right thing or avoiding the bad thing will become a more natural choice for you.

You and I may never do anything close to what Jesus did when it comes to miracles, but believe or not, Jesus did give us a means of working miracles in the lives of others. It’s a little verse that says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Of all the ways people turn their lives around when coming to faith in Jesus, I can say with great certainty that it’s not just our words but how we made others feel. You’ve heard the saying: “I may not remember what you said, but I remember how you made me feel.”

One of the best stories in the Bible that makes this point is the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8. The religious leaders had brought her into the temple courts and stood her up before the crowd Jesus was teaching to. They were adamant that the woman must be stoned to death for her sin. Jesus takes his time to answer. John says Jesus bends down to write something on the ground, what we don’t know. Then Jesus stands up and says, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.^[4]” Then Jesus bends down again and continues writing. That was it. Jesus won. With one simple statement, he destroyed the logic behind the action the religious leaders wanted to take and telegraphed a clear message of compassion and forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery. I’m sure those religious leaders never forgot how Jesus humbled them, and some of them may have genuinely had a lasting change of heart. The woman, of course, was relieved that she was spared from the stoning, but Jesus was clear that she should not continue in her life of sin. She seems to have had a change in heart as well, as we see here later on in the gospel story. That’s the miracle of love and speaking the truth in love.

Finally, your ability and authority to teach has nothing to do with any of your innate biological makeup. The New Testament is clear, when read in the proper cultural and biblical context, that men and women could and did have teaching responsibilities in the early church. I don’t believe anything has changed in 2,000 years of church history to overturn that precedence, in spite of what some have proposed at times. I have studied this quite thoroughly and have written about it elsewhere if you’re interested. (Qualifications of Male and Female Leaders in the Church (1 Timothy); The Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians as Background for Understanding 1 Timothy 2)

We can have confidence to speak and teach the Word of God with authority as we invite people to church and introduce people to Jesus. As you go out the doors this morning, the world is your mission field. Let’s let the world know that Jesus lives and reigns in our hearts. Amen.

---

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[2] 2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV).

[3] Disclaimer: Please consult with a medical professional to ensure this would be appropriate for your health situation.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.