York Minster

Who then is this

Date: 17th June 2007
Preacher: The Revd Canon Jeremy Fletcher

Remarkable as it may seem, I’m old enough to have taken my exams before they were called GCSEs. I’m young enough for them to have been O levels rather than school certificate though. In 1975 I did a Scripture O level, and the key text was mark’s Gospel. I find it hard to encounter anything in Mark without it being filtered through the notes of my Scripture teacher, and much of it I still hear in his voice.

So I knew instinctively that chapter 4 was the place where Mark loaded all the sayings and parables of Jesus that were about his general teaching, and that, unlike the other Gospels, there were no further parables: Mark’s structure had a different purpose. Last week we had the parable of the sower. Today there were various sayings and parables, about lights and lamp stands, about giving and receiving, about harvesting, about planting s small seed and producing an enormous tree, and so on.

Mark tells us that this was how Jesus taught: story telling, often at a simple level on the surface, would unlock the deepest truths of the Kingdom of heaven. When a story is told we are invited to join in, to become a part of it: the audience is as vital as the teller and the tale. It’s a wonderful parable in itself of the way the church can tell and be part of a story when we include people in our telling, when we open up possibilities for people as they hear. It is when we declare and make propositions that we exclude people: to offer a story is to open the door, and it is up to people themselves if they come in. Or, in Jesus’s words: “if you have ears, listen!”

The disciples are in a privileged position, of course. They are able to ask that the stories which have enticed them have their deeper meanings unlocked to them, and they gain deeper understanding, perhaps so that they can go and teach in the same way. Imagine being drawn into a story and being able to ask the teller about different elements, perhaps about what happened next. Your would feel uniquely privileged, and the possessor of superior knowledge.

That’s what makes the episode which follows on from the teaching material in Mark so wonderful: it shows that, for all they think they have got to know something about Jesus, they actually know very little. It’s the time when they are on the boat and it looks like they will drown because of the storm. For all their knowledge of what Jesus has been saying to the crowds, for all their inside knowledge, they still have something to learn: that Jesus is far greater than they can imagine, that their knowledge is limited, that if they thought they had got this belief and following business taped, they had to think again.

For a start they couldn’t see how, even with jesus in the boat, they could survive. And then, when he made it better they realised that they didn’t know who he really was at all. “Who then is this?” they say, and you can hear the fear and awe in their voices as they say it. “Who then is this” could be the subtitle of Mark’s Gospel: the whole of the narrative hinges around the declaration in Chapter 8 made by peter: “You are the Christ”. Mark shows us Jesus both human and divine, challenging Jews and Gentiles, poor and rich, religious leaders and community outcasts alike: who do you say that I am.

For all their proximity to Jesus, the disciples have to answer the question themselves: “who then is this?” You can see why some followers wanted to slink away: this was too much. The stories were a way in to understanding, but as they got close they realised that this man would demand more from them than they were prepared to give, and that they could not reach understanding through their minds and imaginations alone.

I think that this has much to say to us. Many battles in the church are waged by people who think that they have enough knowledge to declare that someone else is wrong. Mark 4 tells me that as soon as I think that I know something, I will be challenged to recognise that God is greater than my grasp of him. Mark gives us further examples of Jesus’s power in chapter 5 – he conquers spiritual forces, and illness and even death. It is not that we should not learn: of course we should. But our knowledge of God is always in the context of God’s greatness, and if we think we’ve got it, we haven’t. There is a humility required of us.

I’m also clear that we will learn about God, that we will encounter Jesus, in all sorts of ways. That’s where my O level teacher was only partly right. I could give you the essay he taught us to write on the Kingdom of God even now. It had various facts and statements in it. But it didn’t get anywhere near the experience of welcoming in the Minster Pilgrims, with Willow the Border Collie at their forefront, yesterday. It didn’t allow for the beauty of the stone they brought, and what I learnt from watching it being carved some weeks before. We learn in stories and experiences, as well as in propositions.

“Who then is this?” they ask. The Jesus who walks with us, and includes us in his story. The one whom we know and yet will never encompass. May we follow with such joy and imagination that his story is ours, and ours includes all the people we meet, so that we hold out a welcome, not declare that we are right. For to Jesus is due all praise and glory, now and for ever.

Amen.