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A New Family – Mark 3:7-35

Throughout Mark, Jesus has been blowing up the religious and social structures and expectations. People continue to flock to him and His message about the nature of the Kingdom of God. In the previous chapter, Jesus points out that the Pharisees and other religious leaders have their understanding of the Sabbath upside down. “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.” Rather than a restrictive, claustrophobic thing, the truth of God bursts out into a more abundant life.

What do we have upside-down? Where does God want us to burst out rather than be restricted.

This passage has a chiastic structure, where topics come up in order, a crux is reached, and then the same topics are addressed in reverse order. Here, it proceeds: Crowd / Family / Scribes / Satan / Scribes / Family / Crowd.

The point of the broader passage is that Jesus does not fit within the structures of this world. The story opens with a literal problem of people fitting, as the crowds press on around Him and His disciples, so much so that they don’t even have room to eat. Then His family comes, clearly seeing Him as the black sheep of the family, off doing something completely insane, who needs to be taken charge of.

Then the religious-political structure of the day rears its head, responding to the disruption Jesus had brought both when His words and miraculous actions. If they accept His actions at face value they also have to accept His words, and that’s not something they are willing to do. So, naturally, they blame it on Satan.

This is what Jesus addresses at the crux of the passage. He has been out there forgiving sins by the power of the Holy Spirit, and if someone denies the power and efficacy of that grace and forgiveness, how can they accept it? It’s not Jesus who is evil, but the leaders who are seeking to keep the people from the truth of God.

The metaphor of the “strong man’s house” sits at the center of the passage, an understanding of the world as being in the midst of a cosmic struggle. Jesus offers victory in that struggle, and a world more vast and varied than that imagined by the scribes or His family or the crowds.

When was the last time we recognized that vastness? When was the last time we embraced the unknown that Jesus sets in front of us? The “I don’t know” moments are opportunities for God to show us things beyond what we could have imagined.

Jesus reveals some of this by showing a new mode of kinship. The nuclear family structure becomes subsumed into the broader family of God, those around us who seek to know and do God’s will. The world around us seeks to divide and label us, but Jesus seeks a unity and reconciliation that swells beyond our fragile human structures.

We live in an era of division, suspicion, assumptions and disunity. What can we do with all the opinions, all the expectations, all the news and anxiety and claustrophobic restrictions of this world? All we can do is lay then at the feet of the One who calls us brother and sister.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, October 29, 2023

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Jesus Does Things Differently – Mark 2:13-22

Food is an important part of any culture, with customs and expectations. Food interacts with our social lives, our cultural lives and thus our spiritual lives as well. Jesus was very active with His mealtimes and used who He ate with and how He ate to subvert the prevailing ethnonationalist religion of His day. Paul would later call this out even more directly, but Jesus moved more subtly and subversively.

In this story, we read about Jesus sitting down to eat with Levi and many other tax collectors. Tax collectors were outcasts because of what they did (collected taxes), how they did it (skimming money off the top), and especially who they did it for (the hated Romans).

Many of us have experiences of eating alone and feeling left out. This feeling is a microcosm of the pain and loneliness of humanity that Jesus came to save. Jesus addressed this directly when criticized for eating with these sinners and outcasts – He came for the sick, not the healthy. The catch there is that we are all sick. What separates us on one hand is whether we know we are sick or not. On the other, if we are privileged in our lives, society may not consider us sick, in the way that the poor and oppressed clearly are.

Jesus’ break in protocol cut against the expectations of those around him. Who are the people around us where social interaction would have the same level of impact?

Then Jesus gets criticized from another direction. This time it is not the religious establishment, but his fellow subversives. John’s disciples leaned towards putting on a show of suffering and fasting, while Jesus was constantly eating and drinking with all manner of unsavory sorts. Jesus prods them to be human. Often times, in various circumstances, we feel the need to set ourselves apart and stay aloof from those around us, from the enjoyment and fun that others are having. But Jesus poured Himself into those around him and called His disciples His friends.

As a church we try to emulate this and to be a “centered set” rather than a “bounded set.” The latter means there’s a clear boundary between those who are in and those who are out. A centered set, though, is more about the direction we are oriented. Bounded sets can work but often begin pulling in more than they were originally designed to – culture ethnicity, social group can all designate someone in or out. A centered set is risky because it gives access even to those in the fringes but may be uncomfortable for those near the center but heading in a different direction.

So the message here is to be human, living our lives intertwined with and among the people that surround us, and living in such a way that it points all those around us to the source of our identity.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 22, 2023

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Healing and Forgiveness – Mark 2:1-12

In the words of the immortal Marshawn Lynch, the story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is “all about that action, boss.” He went on a “healing tour” of the region, and despite urging everyone to keep things quiet, he drew so much attention that he was forced into the outskirts and lonely places – yet the people still kept coming.

And so in chapter 2 we see Jesus back in Capernaum, so mobbed by people that he was unaccessible to the a paralytic man who wanted healing. But this man had such close friends that they hoisted him up to the roof of the house and dug through that roof to lower him down to be healed.

And what Jesus did was not quite what anyone expected. He forgives them man of His sins. This causes grumbling, though, from legal experts who note that only God can forgive sins. So to underscore his authority, Jesus heals him at all.

This story is in part about the relationship between sin and suffering. Jesus came to do away with both, and while sin is clearly his priority, the man came to him without being forgiven, without having dealt with the sin he is forgiven of. He had to come to Jesus first.

We also see here some of why Jesus was trying to limit the crowds. When the crowd becomes a mob, there for what they can get, the person of Jesus can be lost, and those in true need are kept to the outskirts.

Jesus is addressing a couple of systemic issues here. First, by treating sin and suffering as separate issues, he is addressing the “purity culture” of the time, the concept that suffering itself was caused by sin and that misfortune is in fact punishment for having done something wrong. Second, surrounded by the crowds of the common people, many of them trapped in cycles of debt and taxes, and also being watched by the priests with the authority to forgive debts, he pointedly heals and forgives freely, drawing a contrast between his heavenly kingdom and their earthly one.

Jesus came to give forgiveness freely, to knock down the obstacles people put in between people and God. He came to undermine the authority of religious leaders who put themselves in the place as gatekeeper, doing out forgiveness in tiny drips. Jesus wants it to flow like waterfalls.

We can take comfort in this also, whatever we are struggling with. If we come to Him, no obstacles of roof or religion or authority can keep us from His love and goodness and forgiveness.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, October 8, 2023

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Demons and Healing – Mark 1:21-28

Mark has been a whirlwind so far – John the Baptist is leading a revival in the desert. Then Jesus comes to be baptized and in that process the Son is received and rejoiced in by the Father and the Spirit both visually and audibly. From there, Jesus heads into the wilderness for 40 days of “basic training” and temptation by Satan. From there he comes out ready to enter the fray, but not before he enlists his first disciples, straight from the fishing boats.

And from there he heads to Capernaum where the fun begins. This was a village of about 1500 people founded in the second century, where Peter had a home that eventually became a church. It served as a home base for Jesus.

Specifically, Jesus headed to the synagogue. This was a combination religious center and community center, a place for teaching but also eating and hospitality and discussion and much more.

This is what Jesus steps into with an authority that took everyone off guard. He was That Guy, speaking of every moment of history as if He was actually there, speaking of God as someone He knows intimately. The Greek for how he spoke was exousia – out of His being.

Then all the sudden someone screams out and interrupts. Given the level of activity in the synagogue this may have been less disruptive than it would be in a church with a more formal structure, but it still would have been an interruption and disruptive.

The shouting man knows who Jesus is, identifying Him by name and hometown and His role as messiah.

While we may not see much of this sort of thing in our educated western church, in the global church and especially in other more pentecostal traditions see it a lot. But we do see evil in our communities, from drugs to oppression to hatred to abandonment. We see those around us captive to evil just as much as this demon possessed man in the synagogue.

We may not be Jesus, with His level of authority, but we have His love within us – we can speak His words, we can offer up our prayers, we can be His hands and feet.

Back to the story, Jesus commands the unclean spirit to least, and that creates even more of a stir than the man himself. The news spreads from there and prepares the way for the rest of His ministry. The Greek word often translated “amazed” can also be read “in fear of” – a fear that blends astonishment and respect, a recognition of something that cannot be controlled by the spiritual powers of the world, let alone the religious or secular authorities.

As we go from this place, may we also come to Jesus with our maladies and our unclean spirits with a recognition that He has the authority to address them in ways fat beyond what we can understand.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 1, 2023

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Letz Go!!! – Mark 1:16-20

Previously on “Mark”: After hundreds of years of silence God spoke to the people of Israel through John the Baptist, proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. Many people come to the desert to repent. In the midst of this surge of changing hearts, Jesus comes to be baptized and begins His ministry, with a stopover in the wilderness. He opens His ministry with a call to trust Him and believe His words.

Where we pick up the story, Jesus is calling His first disciples. But what does that word, which we throw around a lot, really mean? The concept is more like an apprentice than like a student in a classroom. This is someone learning alongside a master craftsman or a rabbi as they lived and worked together.

Where Jesus diverged from your typical rabbi is that typically disciples were recruited by “inbound” methods, attracting followers on the strength of their skill with their craft or words or theology. Jesus, though, is all about “outbound marketing.” He came directly to those he wanted to call and gave the invitation – “Follow me.”

And the disciples did – they left behind their old lives, their families, their homes, their businesses. They let go of livelihood & security and & a normal daily life to follow Jesus. Now, it’s important to note that this is a unique context – very few of us are specifically called into itinerant preaching ministries. But we are all called to something. And we don’t need to wait for us to hit rock bottom. God is always working, even when we are doing well enough to, say, have hired workers in our fishing business.

But we should consider what we are clinging to and what we are putting ahead of our identity in Christ. Often we put our secular roles first. But first of all, we are followers of Jesus, and we take that identity into our workplaces, our families, our relationships, our hobbies. Mark calls out the specific things that the disciples left, and we have specific things in our lives that we must also subordinate to our own call to be disciples.

Even though we are not called to be wandering preachers, we are called to find our identity in Jesus. Like the disciples, we are called to be followers of Jesus first, and everything else comes second. We should resist the temptation to make our work and our activities the main element of who we are.

Jesus is asking us not to hold anything back. We tend to hold things back and negotiate with God. “Right now, I want to do this thing, and later on I’ll do what I want.” But we should know that God is seeking our good in addition to His glory. We are not on opposing sides here. Jesus did not tell his disciples to drop their nets – He said “follow” and they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that what He was offering was better than what they had.

Discipleship is a relationship and a journey. Discipleship means turning to Jesus to find our direction and our identity. When we let go of whatever we are clinging to – cynicism, resentment, idols of all kinds – Jesus offers abundance and changed lives.

This is the Kingdom of God, this is what Jesus was proclaiming – and still does, through His body. This is why we are here, this is why we worship and this is why we do what we do.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood WA, September 24, 2023

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The Gospel of Mark: the Way of Jesus – Mark 1:9-15

This gospel was written by John Mark who was a teenager during Jesus’ ministry, not a disciple or apostle. His two names are Hebrew and Latin, which implies that his family may have been important or wealthy – in Acts it’s noted that a church meets in his mother’s home.

This is the same Mark who runs away and loses his clothing in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was also a close friend and disciple of Peter, and it is likely that Peter is the source for most if not all of this gospel.

Mark is also the cause of the split between Barnabas and Paul in Acts. Mark was Barnabas’ cousin, and Barnabas wanted to take him along on their second missionary journey. Paul, though, considered Mark a flake because he had abandoned them in an earlier situation. The dispute became so heated that they ended up parting ways. But later on, Mark and Paul did reconcile – in his final list, Paul instructs Timothy to bring Mark along “because he is helpful to me in my ministry.”

This should be a comfort to us if we have ever messed up or failed someone, or if we have been rejected for ministry whether for good reasons or bad. Mark went through the same thing and ended up with his name on a Gospel.

Maybe for this reason, the gospel also focuses on the theme of the mistakes and ignorance of the disciples as a whole. There is a regular motif of the the disciples urging Jesus towards secular power and material success. This is utterly natural – their culture and ours, our entire species, is focused on upward mobility and the accumulation of power and possessions, especially when looking at those in authority. But Jesus came to turn that upside down – He is powerful and authoritative over both people and the elements of nature, but also humbles Himself among the most lowly in society, and ultimately becomes the Suffering Servant prophesied by Isaiah.

The book of Mark starts with a bang. Rather than starting at the very beginning – of Time in John, of Jesus’ lineage in Matthew or Jesus’ earthly life in Luke, Mark jumps right in at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with another fulfillment of a prophecy of Isaiah – the “voice crying in the wilderness,” John the Baptist, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

John was baptizing people in a long Jewish tradition of Baptism – this was not a Christian invention but a way for Jewish people to recommit themselves to the instructions of Yahweh and the looking forward to the promised Messiah. Our practice of Baptism descends directly from this tradition.

So the Gospel of Mark begins with this core notion of confession and repentance, as scores of people come out into the middle of nowhere to listen to a wild man urge them to stop doing what they are doing. This is the beginning of revival, revival that will find its culmination in the person of Christ and the Church as His body.

But it starts here, as John baptizes Jesus now as a sign of repentance but as a signal that things are about to change. The heavens are rent open and glimpses of eternity shine through, the Spirit descends like a dove, the Father speaks audibly, and the Son rises from the water to begin His work.

And, of course, that work starts with 40 days alone, enduring both physical and spiritual oppression, before returning to civilization in the wake of John’s imprisonmentsaying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!”

As in those days, God is calling us back. Whether back after Covid, back after a time of wandering, back after outright rejecting the gospel.

But the church in America today is not providing the experience we see John leading in the wilderness. We cannot preach the good news until we have experienced it, we cannot lead others to the living water in the desert until we have drunk from it ourselves.

Are you ready to return? Are you ready to trust the gospel and live it out in love and service, following in the footsteps of your savior as told to us by Mark?

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood, WA, September 10, 2023

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Vashti the Prophet – Esther 1:15-20

The Old Testament is full of prophets speaking “truth to power”, advocating for the marginalized and oppressed. Today we’re going to look at one of those prophets that often go overlooked – Queen Vashti of the Persian Empire.

Queen Vashti’s refusal is prophetic because it reveals the injustices of patriarchy in the Persian kingdom. Her denial threatens not only King Xerxes, but the entire Persian Empire and its family structures, revealing the fragility of masculinity and its systems. What unfolds are the layers and manifestations of toxic masculinity: rape culture, victim-blaming, and patriarchal protection.

Bianca Mabute-Louie, Inheritance Magazine

King Xerxes is having a drunken, debauched gathering of nobles while his wife Vashti is having an “alt-party” – he demands that she come and appear to them, but she refuses. She asserts her own autonomy and control over her own body. In response, not only the king but all the nobles explicitly see this as a challenge to not just the king but the entire system of patriarchy that is at the heart of the empire. And so this goes from a simple issue of the king’s harem to a decree to all the lands of the empire codifying the patriarchy and enforcing the idea that husbands rule their households just as the king rules the empire.

We see images of Christ in this story – Jesus’ truth offended those in power, and He was killed for not going along with the systems of oppression that were embedded in His culture.

And we are called to the same thing in our day! At the expense of our own reputation, at the expense of church growth, at the expense of any earthly benefit, we are called to advocate for the oppressed, whether by government, economic systems or sin.

One of the things this means is putting aside our preconceived notions about what roles are appropriate for what people, about what men and women do, what leaders do, what strength looks like and what weakness looks like. Often we put aside the true gifts we are given in favor of who we think we are supposed to be, with expectations and assumptions built by our culture, our family of origin, even our churches. But Christ calls us to be who He made us.

This is particularly true of how women have been treated in the church, where leadership is often seen in the same way that the Persian nobles saw it. But in reality, both men and women are made in the image of God, and God is described in feminine and maternal terms all across the scriptures. God as father and God as mother are both metaphors that speak to the transcendental truths of a God that is far beyond us.

So let women come into the fullness of what God has called you to be. Let men do the same, even when counter-cultural. Let us look within ourselves and see where we have assumptions and expectations that put others in the role of serving us, where we take the role of Xerxes to the women in our life, or others who we see as less than us in anyway. God is doing a work in us and will continue to sanctify and forgive as we seek to serve Him and the others in our lives.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 5, 2023

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Jesus Napped – Ecclesiastes 4:5-6

The Kohelet here writes about a balanced approach to rest, both noting that laziness is wrong and self-defeating but that rest itself is vital.

We see rest throughout scriptures, starting in Genesis where God Himself models rest in the creation of the universe, to Exodus where God promises to bring Moses rest by way of His own presence, to the gospels where we see Jesus napping on a boat while the a storm rose up.

There are a few principles we can use when we look to build an intentional practice of rest. First, we should set aside time to do things other than those that are designed to “move the needle” or “get ahead” whether in our career or school goals or earning the approval of others. For some, mowing the lawn may be a restful activity, for others it is an extension of anxiety about social approval. Grocery shopping can be a peaceful activity or it can be work depending on how you are coming to it.

At the same time, we should understand that the presence of anxiety does not mean we are not being restful. Rest itself means priorizing our mental and emotional health – so it can encompass getting counseling or even medication. Just as we go to the doctor while still trusting in God for physical healing, we can do the same for our mental, behavioral and brain health.

This can be countercultural, as even in the church we absorb much of society’s pressure to work hard and get ahead. But we are called, even commanded, to prioritize rest.

Not only that, but we are promised that the small patches of rest we are able to scratch out for ourselves here on earth will find their fulfillment in the ultimate rest offered us when we meet our creator face to face.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, July 2, 2023

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Competition – Ecclesiastes 4:4-16

Competiton is a natural state of humanity, and isn’t necessarily even a bad thing. Good runners get better when competing against other good runners. But as followers of Jesus, we cannot let competition get in the way of the command to love our neighbor.

Even outside of our specific religious commands, though, Ecclesiastes describes how this focus on competition can turn into a life alone and isolated from one another. We see this in the story of the childless man who nonetheless works himself to death in isolation. We see this in the story of the arrogant king who will take no advice.

That story calls back to the beginning of the chapter, which laments the oppression and evil of the world, to the extent that the Kohelet calls the dead and unborn better off than the living.

As a church, we have a different priority than competition with others, both corporately and individually. Our purpose is to love God and love others, and that toil is never wasted.

— Sermon Notes, Alison Robison, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 25, 2023

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Get Up and Go – Acts 8:26-40

The story here is a story of two people in the the margins of empire, outsiders like immigrants and minorities today. One of these is Philip, one of the seven deacons set up to manage the food ministry for widows and orphans. When his fellow deacon and marginalized person, Stephen, moves from managing the ministry to teaching, he was killed, which scattered the church, including Philip.

Philip went up to Samaria, where he had incredible success in ministry. But God sent an angel who instructed him to get up, leave all the success that he had been having, and head out on a road into the wilderness.

That’s where we meet our second character, the Ethiopian eunuch. Like describes him in remarkable detail compared to most biblical characters, which must be for a reason. This person is about as different as it is possible to be from Philip. He’s from outside the empire, he’s dark-skinned, he’s a sexual/gender minority – but he is also a very powerful person in an important nation, wealthy enough to be driven in a chariot and read his own personal scroll of scripture. Despite all this, he is coming from worship in a place that he cannot even fully engage in because he is both a gentile and a eunuch.

Phillip’s last job was running a soup kitchen – again, these people are about as different as it is possible to be. But God tells him to go and “glue himself” to the chariot, where he finds a wide opening for the gospel. “What is this scripture about?”

And Philip takes that opportunity, and the eunuch in turn takes the opportunity to be baptized immediately – after which God transports Philip elsewhere, his job accomplished.

God is still calling us to participate in these sorts of activities, but there are reasons we resist. We like to be competent and do things in areas we understand. But Philip glued himself to the chariot of a foreign eunuch-treasurer just like Jesus glued himself to the flesh of humanity. Philip got up and went, heading into the wilderness, just as Jesus came to earth.

Where and to whom is God sending you?

— Sermon Notes, Tim Hseih, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, June 4, 2023