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SERMON
Of the four Gospel writers, Mark is the one who seems determined to tell the story of Jesus in the fewest possible words. But don't mistake his economy of words for a lack of substance. Mark was an artist. In fact, with just a few words he could call up a whole gallery of mental pictures. Today's lesson is brief - it's just three verses long. But it is only one of the words that he uses, and the mental picture that it creates, on which I want us to focus this morning.
So join me for the next few minutes on an imaginary journey. In your mind I want you to leave your seats and come walking with me on a dusty road that leads down the Jordan River valley from Galilee to Jericho. Along that road we come upon an itinerant rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus. As was common in those days, he was leading a band of people, heading south to Jericho, where they would turn right to head up a steep wadi that would take them the last thirteen miles to Jerusalem.
It was midday, I suspect, when this rabbi and his entourage stopped to rest and knock the dust and pebbles from their sandals. As they sat by the road, those followers closest to him (a dozen or so) began to reminisce about the early days of his ministry. They recalled how Jesus had led them about the province of Galilee, teaching and healing people, feeding their bodies and minds and souls, and patiently preparing this small band of closest disciples to carry on his ministry after he was gone.
In those early days of his ministry, the question on everyone's mind had been, "Who is this man?" Yet after three years, the popular vote was still largely undecided. Even among his closest followers there was anything but consensus. Some thought he was a good man, perhaps even a great man. Others suspected he was a prophet. And there were certainly those who hoped that he really was the promised Messiah. But even his chosen disciples were uncertain at best.
A turn of circumstances, however, was about to dramatically draw all this speculation to a head. This gentle rabbi knew that the time was fast approaching when he could no longer avoid the final confrontation with evil that waited for him in Jerusalem. The time had come to stop entertaining questions and give answer.
In all great drama there comes a moment of crisis - a moment filled with danger and opportunity. The drama of Jesus' life, as Mark records it, is no exception. For Mark, the pivot point of the life of Jesus of Nazareth occurs, of all places, at a rest stop on a dusty road northeast of Jerusalem. According to Mark, the watershed verse - the one sentence that divides the pastoral ministry of Jesus from the sacrificial ministry of Jesus - is found at chapter 10, verse 32.
And that brief incident that Mark records in those few words - that move without anything spoken, so subtle but so powerful that it makes me want to be there so I can see it for myself - was so dramatic that it was like a photoflash exploding light in a darkened room. For just one instant the people there saw Jesus as they had never seen him before. Jesus turned toward Jerusalem. And as he set out in that direction, Mark notes: "the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid."
The word that Mark uses here to describe the disciples' reaction as Jesus stood up and faced Jerusalem is the Greek word "ethaubounto." It means, "to be awe-struck, amazed, speechless." This is the only place in the Bible where it says that people, simply by looking at Jesus, were left shaken and speechless. And yet in his peculiar economy of words, all that Mark tells us is that Jesus headed out toward Jerusalem.
Now, the obvious question is: What did those people see to make them react the way they did? There must have been something about Jesus, something in his posture or the expression on his face, something so overwhelmingly evident that the people who looked at him were left shaken and knotted up inside, unable to speak. What was it?
I suppose this is where it pays to know a little Greek. In one Greek dictionary footnotes there is a notation under the word "ethaubounto." It refers the reader to The Iliad - Homer's classic study. In chapter 24 of The Iliad there's a remarkable scene. But in order to appreciate it you need to know the background.
Priam, the once-proud King of Troy, had been defeated in battle by the Greek, Achilles. All fifty sons of Priam had been killed in battle, including his dearly loved son, Hector. And in chapter 24 of The Iliad, we find Priam seated, his shoulders stooped, wrapped in his robes, now covered with mud and ashes, grief-stricken. Gathered about him are the fifty widows of his fifty slain sons. At their feet are huddled all their fatherless children, and all of them weeping bitterly as well.
Now, a goddess appears before Priam and says, "Go to Achilles. Go and claim the body of your slain son, Hector, so that it will not be dishonored - so that he can be properly buried. Take a ransom. Go and buy him back."
So Priam takes what little treasure he has left, puts it on a donkey and, accompanied by an old man, he goes behind the lines of the Greeks. Nobody recognizes him. Hardly anyone even notices the two old men. At last they come to the tent where Achilles is dining. Priam enters the tent without being seen.
He comes up beside Achilles, this Greek warrior who had killed all his sons. Priam falls to his knees and he begins to cry. He reaches up and takes in his own hands the hands of the one who had murdered his children, and he begins to kiss those hands. Achilles turns and looks down. He sees a king - on his knees. He sees a king - covered with the filth of mourning. He sees a king - weeping. He sees a king - pleading for mercy. He sees a king - broken and full of pain. He sees a father holding out a ransom and crying out for the body of his son. He sees before him unimaginable despair and grief. And the word that is used to describe what Achilles feels as he looks down at Priam is that same word, "ethaubounto."
Can you see the picture more clearly now? That is the way the disciples felt inside when, in that moment, they saw Jesus turn toward Jerusalem. Mark says that it had that kind of impact on them. Can you see him? Can you begin to feel what they must have felt - that sense of speechless helplessness - as they watched Jesus stand and turn toward the cross? What wondrous love is this?
Years later, writing to the little church at Philippi, St. Paul shared with them that same sense of profound wonder at what Jesus had done. He wrote: "He who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal." (Phil. 2:6-8 - J. B. P.)
It was Christ the King who humbled himself, who became a nobody, a nothing, a despised and rejected man on a cross, grieving the loss of his own dear children. Can you see him as they did? It was a King there - broken and humiliated, willing to suffer anything to save the fragile dignity of his fallen children.
Now, looking at Jesus in that stark light might tempt us to despair. And to end the story there would sound ominously like another Greek tragedy. But Jesus was no ordinary tragic king. There is more - there is so much more! Because Jesus was able to do what Priam could never do, what no one could ever do. In humbling himself as he did, he was able to take the place of his fallen children. He took your place. He took my place. He was able to take upon himself the full responsibility for all your selfishness and mine. By some mysterious transaction, he carried the full weight of every foolish thoughtless thing that you and I have ever done, or ever will do. And he carried that burden in his body, in his spirit - through torture and death - to hell. And there he buried it forever. His sacrifice was the death of sin and the death of death.
"And that is why," says St. Paul, "God has now lifted him so high, and has given him the name beyond all names; so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, whether in heaven or earth or under the earth. And that is why in the end every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:9-11 - J. B. P.)
His sacrifice was so conclusive, so utterly irreversible, that we who stand speechless watching him are faced with one fundamental question: If Jesus would do that for me, then what can I do for him? And that question, brothers and sisters, is one that we should be asking ourselves every day of our lives. Because every day we have the opportunity to answer it.
But on the record, Paul leaves little room for doubt about what our answer ought to be. He went on to write this: "So then, my dearest friends… be keener than ever to work out the salvation that God has given you with a proper sense of awe and responsibility. For it is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose." (Phil. 2:12-13 - J. B. P.)
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