Versions of this sermon were preached in Upton, Welland, Hanley Swan, Hanley Castle, Ripple and the Hook Churches during 2018 and early 2019
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he travelled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
Someone did a poll recently asking “If you could spend a day with any celebrity living or dead, who would it be?” I thought the answers were quite revealing.…
Someone called Alyx said,
I think I’d like to spend a day with [actress] Emma Watson. She seems super intelligent and I just don’t think a boring conversation would happen?
Another wrote,
Freddie Mercury, absolute legend.
Someone else said,
[nb] When I preached this in Hanley Castle, someone interrupted to say,Hanging out with the author Tolkein would be really cool.
I had lunch with Tolkein once, and it was very interesting.
Then there was,
Frank Sinatra, love his music and would just to love see what he’s like.
And one person, presumably from Texas, said,
Y’all know it’s gotta be Jesus. No joke.”
And it would be fascinating to spend a day with Jesus, wouldn’t it? To see how he organised and used his time, and what his day-to-day priorities were.
Well our passage today from Mark’s gospel is a bit like a simple “day in the life of Jesus”. It’s almost as though Mark wants to finish off the opening chunk of his gospel with a summary of what life was like around Jesus.
Let’s start at the beginning of the day, v35,
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
That was Jesus’ normal daily routine. He’d begin by talking to his Dad. It’s how he equips himself for another day changing the world. And if Jesus needs to do that, how much more do we need to pray?
Now most people pray. A survey back in 2013 said that 85% of people believe in the power of prayer. But another survey suggests that only 31% of Christians actually do what Jesus did – and set aside a good chunk of time each day to pray. And that’s a shame because prayer is how God puts gas in our tank! It’s how we open ourselves up to his power and influence and how he empowers us to live for him every day. And when we neglect prayer, it drains us of the power of God. As the old saying goes,
Seven days without prayer makes one weak.”
So let me encourage you to do as Jesus did – and set aside time every day to pray. That might mean you start small. Start with just 5 minutes a day, and build it up slowly. And remember you don’t have to do it early in the morning – just find a time every day that works for you. Because no matter what time you go for, our Heavenly Father loves you so much he’ll be listening! But what do you pray about?
- Start saying sorry for what went wrong yesterday.
- And thank God for the forgiveness we have in Jesus.
- Then just enjoy spending time talking to God about what you’re doing today.
- Pray for God’s will to be done in people’s lives. Pray for friends and neighbours to come to faith. Pray for the sick. Pray for our churches. Use the prayer pointers on our noticesheet.
Pray for whatever is on your heart. Just like Jesus did.
So anyway, Jesus is praying, and v36, the disciples turn up and tell him,
Everyone is looking for you”.
And everyone was looking for him. Yesterday had been an amazing day. Jesus and his companions had turned up at Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum, healed his mother-in-law of a fever and then run a revivalist rally from the house, where loads of people were healed and many demons cast out. Nothing like this had ever happened in Capernaum before, and now everyone was looking for more of Jesus. So Jesus’ response is a bit of a surprise. V38,
Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he travelled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.”
You know I love the way Jesus has priorities. He’s not here to pander to the crowd. Instead he’s got a very clear sense of his mission, his purpose. And his purpose isn’t just to be the saviour of Capernaum, It’s much bigger than that. He walks away from needy people in Capernaum to preach the gospel in the nearby villages.
There’s a valuable lesson for all of us here. That if we don’t know what our priorities are we’ll never get anything done. Imagine if Jesus had just gone with the flow –
They need me in Capernaum” –
I bet he’d never have left there. There would always be some new need that arose there. And he’d only ever have been a one-town Messiah, not a whole world Messiah.
Of course when you set priorities like that, it means you have to disappoint people doesn’t it? Picture that moment Jesus says “No” to his disciples. They were probably more than a little irritated. After all, it meant they had to go back to Capernaum and explain to everyone why Jesus wasn’t coming back.
The moment you choose one priority over another, you are going to disappoint someone. At work. At home. At school. In your clubs. Decisions always disappoint someone. That’s why our government is finding Brexit such a hard task. We won’t all be happy with the outcome, no matter what the outcome is.
The thing is though, some people do go through their lives trying to avoid taking decisions. But that doesn’t seem to be the Jesus way. He has the courage to say “NO” to Capernaum so he can say “YES” to everyone else.
What about us? What are our priorities? Maybe that’s something we need to talk with God about in our daily prayer time?
So Jesus prioritises. But that doesn’t mean everything goes to plan. I love how the story develops from here.
Take a look at v40.
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.”
For all Jesus has a plan, it gets interrupted. I’ve found that a lot as a church leader. You plan out your time and then there’s a surprise interruption, and often it’s in the interruptions when great God things happen.
I remember a time in my last job when I was working on a sermon and the phone rang to say someone had wandered into church and wanted to speak to the vicar. If I’m honest, I wasn’t pleased to be interrupted. and muttering to myself about timewasters, I dashed round to church and found myself in a wonderful conversation with a young lad from a majority-Muslim country who wanted to become a Christian. And I got to lead him to Christ that morning. Despite all our planning, sometimes it’s the interruptions when the real work gets done.
Did you notice how Jesus responded to the interruption? V41, he was indignant! In other words angry! But he wasn’t angry at the interruption – look at how compassionate he is in the way he responds to the leper. His anger here is about the man’s leprosy, and how it effects him.
In Jesus’ day, leprosy wasn’t treatable. There were no hospitals or ointments. There was just exclusion. To catch leprosy was to be both cast out from society, and also to be cast out from any hope of cleanliness before God.
Put yourself in the leper’s shoes. For maybe ten years you’ve suffered with this living death of a disease. Your friends and family avoid you. Strangers throw rocks at you. And not once in that ten years of illness has anyone touched you because they know that if they touch you they become like you – ritually unclean. And then one day you meet Jesus on the road and he reaches out and touches you. How would that feel? If you’ve ever doubted the love and compassion of God – please see it here in this beautiful and risky act.
Jesus is probably the first person to have touched the man since he contracted the disease, and he heals him. But even more importantly – Jesus makes him clean again before God. And that’s the touch Jesus offers each and every one of us. A touch that connects or reconnects us to God.
When Jesus died on the cross he opened the way for us to be reconnected to the source of all life and hope in creation. If we want it. You see it’s not automatic. It something we have to choose to opt into. And like any choice, you haven’t made it, until you’ve made it!
That’s why Jesus invited people to follow him. It was a physical choice people had to make:
follow me and begin life again. Follow me and discover your purpose in life. Follow me and experience life in all its fullness.”
I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit a new beginning in life, the chance to blot out the past. There’s no one who wouldn’t benefit from knowing why they exist and what they were made for. There’s no one who wouldn’t be better off living life as its meant to be lived. That’s what our Saviour Jesus does for us. Isn’t he magnificent?
So there’s your day with Jesus. It began with prayer, it’s full of purpose and priorities, and yet it’s also open to interruptions so that we can respond with compassion when the need arises. That’s not a bad way to spend the day is it?
Why don’t we pray now and we’ll ask God to give us more days like Jesus’ day? Let’s pray.