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JESUS AND THE ANXIOUSLY FEARFUL
Mark 4.35-5.43 – 8/5/11
SCARY THINGS
Do you like scary movies? They’re not my favourite – although I do remember a couple of good ones – the
first Jaws movie, and one called ‘Dead Calm’ with Nicole Kidman before she was a big star. But they are
not really my thing.
What about scary rides – the big dipper, the octopus and worse? I like them. I don’t know what it is, but
the bigger the fear factor the more attractive they are to me. Mind you, I find them pretty terrifying – but I
just have to have a go. Bungee jumping and stuff like that. Trying to prove my manhood or something –
perhaps?
But whether we thrive on it or not, fear and anxiety is part of the way we are as humans. It plays a
significant part in our lives, and it has even shaped human history.
Fear has been responsible for all sorts of misery. From the relatively trivial fear of, say, losing a sporting
contest, right up to death itself. I’m not a psychologist, but fear often seems to go with the belief we might
lose something precious – whether it’s bragging rights in that sporting contest, the loss of personal
property, or the loss of life itself. And fear has caused war after war too. The so-called war on terrorism –
which is not really a war – is based on what? Fear. Fear of terrorist attacks. 9/11 has succeeded in
creating a huge amount of fear. And now that Osama bin Laden is dead, fear of reprisals is uppermost in
many minds.
But fear has caused good things too. Fear of disease has driven research into ways and means of defeating
that disease. Fear of failure drives us to prepare or study for exams. Fear has driven exploration –
Australian was colonised because of the fear of running out of prison space in Britain. Fear & anxiety runs
thru human history and it runs through our lives too.
Fear and anxiety are a feature of our passage today. In each of the four incidents recorded by Mark, fear
and anxiety are not just present, but very significant to the whole narrative. We are going to look at that in
moment and think about how our own fears and anxieties relate to our life of faith in Jesus Christ.
RETURN TO MARK
This morning we are returning to Mark’s gospel following a 4 week absence. So, what can you remember
from the last sermon, and for that matter the 5 Mark sermons before it?
Jesus has certainly been busy, travelling all over the countryside, healing, performing miracles of various
kinds, including exorcisms, and teaching in the midst of both popular acclaim, and increasing opposition
from the religious authorities.
But Jesus has really been about is summed up by his own words in 1.15: “The time has come,” …. “The
kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” In Jesus the kingdom of God is near, so turn
your life around and follow him. And how has Jesus shown that the kingdom is near? It’s been partly by
the healings and miracles and so on, but mostly through his preaching and teaching. Remember what
Jesus said to his disciples in 1.38: “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there
also. That is why I have come.” Above all, Jesus aim, prior to the cross, was to preach & teach about the
kingdom of God.
And teaching and the KoG was the focus of our last sermon on Mark too. Remember the 4 parables of the
kingdom – the parable of the sower, the lamp on a stand, the growing seed and the mustard seed?
And yet the ironic, and sad thing is that people, on the whole, did not take Jesus’ teaching on board. Jesus
himself said that they were hard of hearing when it came to understanding the parables. People were
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more interested in miracles and healings and the spectacular, than puzzling over a parable. Well if you’re
more interested in the spectacular, then you’ll be pleased to know the spectacular makes a comeback this
week. That Jesus doesn’t just say difficult things, but in today’s passage does amazingly and incredibly
difficult things.
But, but … it’s all done in the context of fear and anxiety. This common human state is clear and present in
all four spectacular incidents today. So what can we learn, and what should we do with all of this? We’ll
see.
FEAR, ANXIETY AND A STORM
In the first incident in today’s passage, Mk 4.35-41, after teaching all day with the 4 parables just
mentioned, Jesus decides to sail over to the other side of Lake Galilee. Probably so he could proclaim the
kingdom there as well. But this is no straightforward journey. You are probably familiar with the story.
Lake Galilee is well known for storms. But this one appears especially fierce as even the experienced
fishermen among the disciples are unable to cope. In v37 we read that waves were breaking over the boat
and it was in danger of sinking. But during all this Jesus sleeps peacefully – perhaps the sleep of a very
tired man.
But the disciples are anything but peaceful. Obviously afraid for their lives they wake Jesus with the
reproachful words v38 – Teacher, don’t you care if we drown? The subtext there seems to be why have
you allowed us to get into this trouble?
But with astonishing power and authority (or not so astonishing if you realise that Jesus is both creator and
sustainer of the universe), Jesus calms the wind and the waves with a single command.
But this display of power and authority causes the disciples to replace one fear with another. They were
afraid during the storm, but now they are even more fearful of Jesus’ supernatural power. At one level
they are right to be afraid – we should ‘fear God’. But at another level they obviously haven’t properly
grasped who Jesus is, as they ask one another ‘who is this?’
So having performed no small feat in calming the storm, it’s Jesus’ turn to reproach the disciples. V40
“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Fear and a lack of faith go together. Although fear is
not in every instance a lack of faith, very often in the Bible fear and faith are seen as mutual exclusives. It
was because of a lack of faith that the disciples feared they were about to drown, and it was for a lack of
faith they were rebuked. ‘Do not fear’ is most common command in the Bible, occurring as far as I could
work out, over 120x (do not /don’t fear, / fear not / do not / don’t / be afraid / do not worry / do not be
anxious 122x).
Before you dismiss the disciples as hopeless, how would you have handled that situation? Or more
realistically, how would you handle things if faced with say a situation in which your life is on the line?
How would you react? With fear or with faith? Put that in your back pocket for a moment and we’ll pull it
out later.
FEAR, ANXIETY AND EVIL SPIRITS
So, after an eventful voyage, Jesus arrives on the eastern shore of Lake Galilee and is immediately accosted
by a man with and evil spirit. The man is in a terrible state, as 5.3-5 makes clear. Also clear, even though it
is not spelled out, is that people are afraid of the possessed man – and not without justification.
In v8 Jesus commands the evil spirit to come out of the man, which in turn causes the man, or more likely
the evil spirit, to shout – v7 - What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God
that you won’t torture me!” On the one hand the evil spirit rightly recognises Jesus as the ‘Son of the Most
High God’, but he is wrongly fearful of being tortured by Jesus.
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Jesus then asks the evil spirit what his name is (I don’t know why). That brings the reply “My name is
Legion, … for we are many”. No wonder the man is out of his mind – he is possessed by a veritable army of
evil spirits! Then Legion begs Jesus not to send them out of the area. Again, I am not sure why the evil
spirits ask this, but the point is that the evil spirits are fearful and anxious. Again they show their anxiety as
they beg Jesus (v12) to send them into a herd of 2000 pigs feeding on the hill nearby.
So as if to demonstrate the magnitude of the man’s problems, and the magnitude of the miracle, Jesus
gives permission for the evil spirits to invade the pigs. And the result is 2000 pork barrels floating in the
water.
The man has been cured. But fear doesn’t go away. It just changes. The local townspeople, on seeing the
man dressed and in his right mind, like the disciples, fear Jesus because of his supernatural power. And not
only that, they fear Jesus because he has brought them economic loss with the demise of the pigs. So they
plead with him to leave the area. (They also seem to care not one whit that the man has been cured). So
there is a lot of fear and, not much faith among the locals. They are driven by fear.
Again, before we disparage these people, might we too be driven by fear? When I am cruising along
Gilmore Street in the car, what drives me to obey the 50km/h speed limit? I try to obey the limit partly
because I’m trying to honour God by being a good citizen. But there’s also fear. Fear of being booked.
Why do you lock the house or the car? It’s a reasonable precaution. But it’s also fear of loss isn’t it? Why
do you put your kids in a certain school? Because elsewhere you fear they might not get the education
they should. Why do you work for a living? Partly because you fear starving otherwise. And why don’t
you bear witness to Christ, why don’t you tell others about Christ when you should? Fear. Fear of all sorts
of things- looking stupid, rejection, fear of saying the wrong thing. And why do people now, like the
townsfolk in this incident, drive Christ out of their lives? For fear of having to change their lives. Fear.
Again, we’ll come back to that.
FEAR, ANXIETY AND TWO MIRACLES
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Jesus journeys back to the western side of the lake where he encounters the 3 and 4 ‘fearful’ incidents.
Somewhat unusually, given the general opposition of the religious authorities to Jesus, Jairus the
synagogue ruler approaches Jesus. A synagogue ruler was a layman – not a priest, Pharisee or teacher of
the law, but the man in charge of the day to day running of the local place of worship.
Jairus himself is anxious and fearful. Understandably so. His daughter is very ill and so, v23, he pleads
earnestly for Jesus to come and heal her. He is fearful, and yet he comes to Jesus in faith. And even
though faith and fear are usually opposites, in this instance I think you can see that faith and fear can coexist to some extent.
Jesus goes with Jairus, and along the way, he heals a woman with bleeding (menstrual bleeding I’d
imagine) and in doing so deals with still more fear.
As Jesus pushed through the crowds, he asks “Who touched my clothes?” The disciples, still lacking faith in
Jesus think he’s dreamin’, since any number of people in the crowd were touching him. Again the disciples
are being faithless and dull-witted in contrast to those, like the woman with the bleeding, who with much
less knowledge of Jesus, displays much more initiative and faith.
The woman with bleeding had faith that Jesus could help her – everything else had failed – and now she
believes that just touching his cloak will be enough. And so it is. With just a touch she is healed.
Somehow Jesus feels the power has gone out from him, and so he asks ‘Who touched me?’ The woman
knows she’s the culprit and as v33 tells us, ‘trembling with fear’ spills the whole truth to Jesus. Was she
fearful that Jesus would punish her for the taking the liberty of touching his clothes? Maybe. But it’s more
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likely that she’s fearful because coming and telling Jesus the whole truth would be a terribly embarrassing
thing for her to do. Even now, and more so then, it is very difficult to publically admit to such a personal
problem. But she humbly falls at Jesus’ feet and tells him everything.
But isn’t humility essential before God? Shouldn’t we also be willing, like the woman, to confess our
deepest needs humbly before Jesus? Most certainly. We have no reason to be proud before him.
Jesus tells the woman, v34, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.” That doesn’t mean it is her faith itself
that has actually healed her, but rather that her faith has led her to the powerful healer Jesus. It’s like
going to see a doctor. You believe the doctor can help you. The faith is in going to see him. But the doctor
is the one who heals, not your faith. But without the faith that led you to go and see him, healing would
not have happened. So with the woman and Jesus. Her faith led her to Jesus. But it was Jesus’ power that
healed.
As Jesus speaks to the woman, word comes through that Jairus’ daughter has died. ‘Don’t bother Jesus
anymore’ say the messengers – meaning that they think that death is beyond the abilities of even a
powerful healer like Jesus. Again there is a lack of faith in Jesus, albeit understandably so.
Jesus’ response? v36: “Don’t be afraid, just believe”. Again we see the close company of the two
opposites, faith and fear. Believing is not being fearful.
So Jesus takes Jairus, plus Peter James and John with him, and going to Jairus’ house tells the assembled
mourners, the child is not dead, but asleep. At this Jesus is greeted with scornful laughter. Not much faith
there either. And was she asleep as Jesus said or dead? No doubt dead.
Going in to the girl, with PJJ and her parents, he takes her hand (normally touching a dead person would
render one unclean – but Jesus doesn’t worry about that) and says “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little
girl, I say to you, get up!”). And in classic Bible understatement her parents and the disciples were
completely astonished. I bet they were!
We had some friends who named their daughter Talitha. There are a few Talithas around these days.
Talitha’s father was telling me, before they named here Talitha, that they checked to make sure Talitha
meant ‘little girl’ and not ‘get up’. Then again, maybe ‘get up’ would be an appropriate name for a teenage
girl prone to sleeping in.
This is a stunning miracle – to raise the dead. And yet Jesus does not want anyone else to know about it.
v43 reports that he gave strict orders to keep it quiet. Undoubtedly because he had even more important
things on his agenda than raising dead people to life– odd as that might sound. He wanted it kept quiet
because he didn’t want the clamour for the spectacular to hinder bringing the kingdom near in his
preaching, and particularly in going to the cross.
But having said that, in raising the 12 year old girl, Jesus shows that the greatest fear, the fear of death can
be conquered. And in doing this he also foreshadows his defeat of fear in his own death and resurrection.
FEAR AND ANXIETY NOW
And yet despite Jesus’ defeat of death, fear and anxiety continues to stalk the human race. It is still
everywhere. We see plenty of evidence of this as people go to extraordinary lengths to protect
themselves. Why? Because they are fearful of so many things. Fearful of germs? Then get Glen20 and
spray them out of existence. Trouble is, resistance to germs is lowered. And so people get sicker and need
more medicines to help.
We are fearful of crime and criminals, asylum seekers and foreign invasion. So we invest in all kinds of
security measures. We have to protect our children, hence the child protection legislation, which is such a
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pain. We must have safer cars too – how could we possibly choose one with only 4 airbags – isn’t 6 the
minimum for safety? Increasingly we live in a nanny state – don’t do this, and you mustn’t do that
otherwise you might hurt yourself. Occupational Health and Safety laws make things safer, but also mean
that a lot less gets done. And then we have helicopter parents who hover around their children so as to
protect them from all harm – to the detriment of the child’s development.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that all these things are wrong, and it is not good to have
safer cars and or to protect our children. Some of it is sheer common sense – or as the Bible puts it, good
stewardship of that which God has entrusted us.
On the other hand, underlying much of this ‘protectionism’ is a lack of faith in God. People go to great
lengths to protect themselves because they are fearful. Fearful because they believe this life is all they
have, so they’d best make the most of it. Anxious to preserve life to the nth degree. We have to protect
ourselves they think, because God can’t or won’t. It’s a lack of faith. Less faith, more fear.
As Christian belief has dropped in so called western developed societies, so has fear and anxiety about
preserving our life has increased alongside measures to protect it. As faith falters, so fear flowers.
And Christians can be sucked into this, because this is the environment in which we live, it is the air we
breathe. You’d better help yourself, protect yourself, because God won’t.
Again, I am not saying that we shouldn’t take reasonable precautions – for instance taking out some
insurance, or by endeavouring to live healthily. On the other hand, don’t go over the top. Don’t believe
that being insured to the hilt can really protect you, don’t agonise over having deadlocks on all the doors.
This stuff doesn’t really matter. Don’t be driven by fear and anxiety as so many are. And as those in our
passage today were. Instead trust God, put your faith in Christ. As Paul says in his letter to the Philippians
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your
requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus. (4.6-7). And take to heart these words of Jesus in the sermon on the Mount (Mt
6.25-33) :
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you
will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the
birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life ?
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“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or
spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how
God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not
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much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall
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we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father
knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.
Do not be afraid, the apostle John tells us because the perfect love of God in Christ drives out all fear (1 Jn
4.18).
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CONCLUSION
In Mark’s gospel we see that Jesus is bringing the kingdom near. In the events of Mark’s gospel it’s early
days in that process, since it is still happening now, 2000 years later. But in bringing in the kingdom, we
see that Jesus drives out fear. As the kingdom nears, fear recedes. And the bringing of God’s kingdom
took a giant and decisive step forward when, in love, Jesus drove out the fear of death through his own
death and then resurrection.
We believe that. And so we must live in light of that – not in fear, but by faith in Jesus Christ.