Mark 1:35-39 * January 22, 2006 * World Mission Festival * Prof. Paul Wendland

Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place

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 traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. (Mark 1:35-39)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus:

This is a no-frills mission sermon, folks. I don’t really have very many profoundly different things to say. So this is going to be straight and to the point.

“It’s about choices!” people say. And who can argue that making good choices is one of the keys to a happy life. We can describe what good parenting is by saying that it happens when parents train their children to make good choices: about what they eat, about who they hang out with, about doing homework, let’s say, rather than playing that video game.

Fair enough, but it seems to me that sometimes, we are presented with a false choice, a false decision. Sometimes people act as if we are faced with an either/or when really it might better be called a both/and. For instance: a person might say about serving a pastor, “is it better for him to be behind a desk, or be out among people?” Is that really an either/or? Don’t you need both? I mean, you need for him to spend some time in study and prayer. You need to be behind a desk to do the administration work that any congregation has. On the other hand, you also need pastors to be out with people, visiting the sick, and so on. If you have all one or all the other, you’ll have problems.

People might bring up what I think is a false choice when it comes to doing mission work too. “Either we fund our own budget/or we support missions.” Isn’t it both/and with a congregation that has a healthy perspective on God’s grace? Or maybe in a more subtle way, people can say, “Why send missionaries overseas? Why go to all that trouble and expense? It seems more and more to be, well, unnecessary. Here we have the whole world seemingly beating a path to our doorstep. The last thirty years have witnessed a tide of immigration to this country the likes of which we haven’t seen since the early years of this century. To the point where over one in ten of the people living in America today are foreign born. We don’t have to go overseas any more to do world mission work. We can do it right here at home, as the saying goes, in our own neighborhoods.”

But I guess I see that as a false choice: either we do world mission work at home, or we do it overseas. I would say, “Why not both?!” And I say that because of what Jesus says in our text—these few words: “Let’s go somewhere else.” In that short phrase, we get a glimpse into the heart of God. And we learn that God’s heart is a restless heart. He’s restless, ‘till all his people find rest. And his restlessness drives us on to help others share our joy, the joy we’ve found in him.

To understand what Jesus means by it, you first have to know that Jesus had spent a big day in the bustling seaside town called Capernaum. He had preached a powerful sermin in the synagogue—and everyone knew from the minute he started speaking that there was something different about this preacher, ‘cause he preached as a man who knew exactly what he was talking about, with perfect authority. But not only was his word of preaching powerful, there was also a demonized man in the synagogue, making a big noise, disrupting everything, calling out, and Jesus just said, “Quiet! Come out of him!” And the demon did! As if that weren’t enough, he went to Peter’s house, and Peter’s mom was sick with fever, and he just took her by the hand and she became better. As soon as the sun went down to end the Sabbath rest, the whole town showed up at his door with every kind of wheeze and sneeze and sad disease imaginable. And he healed them, no matter how sick they were.

So, the next day, what does he do? He gets up early to avoid the crowds, doesn’t want to disturb anyone, wants some time to talk to his Father in prayer alone before the next day comes. Wouldn’t you know it! Peter hunts him down, tracks him down, finds out where he is. Oh, and he’s excited. Because he’s joined himself to the right Master, you see. This Jesus has become a big success. Wow, what a splash he has made in Capernaum! He finds Jesus and he says, “Everyone’s looking for you!”

That’s when Jesus says, “Let’s go somewhere else.” What?!! What do you mean, Jesus? Why go camping when you can sleep in your own bed? Why condemn yourself to dusty roads and sleepless nights and bad food and no privacy. Why go to them when, hey, you wait long enough, and they’ll come to you. Can’t you just hear Peter thinking?

But, no, that’s not Jesus’ way. “Let’s go somewhere else, because that’s why I came.” I didn’t come here to be a big success, I didn’t come here to be comfortable. The heart of God is a restless heart and it’s not prepared to wait until people come to him. He’s got to go to them. See, because the heart of this man is beg enough to hold a world full of sorrow. The shoulders of this man are strong enough to carry a whole universe of sin. “Let’s go somewhere else!” Hear that love in his voice!

It took a love just that strong to find us. You see, we were all born with restless voice inside our hearts. This restless voice that says, “I want, I want, I want,” and when you ask it, “What do you want?” it never answers. It just says, “I want, I want, I want.” Our endless desires of our self-centered heart. It never led us to look for the real God, the true God. No, we always looked to shut that voice up with false gods. And no matter what we put in there, we were still left with this great gaping emptiness. The voice drove us down these dark alleys, these twisted ways. Each one led into the arms of an idol; dead gods that cannot help us, that cannot speak, that cannot save.

And it doesn’t matter if you were born in Beijing, or Baltimore, if you call Appleton your home, or Milwaukee, or Mwembezhi. There’s no man, no woman, no child, no one in all the world that hasn’t heard that voice. We all like sheep have turned astray, we have turned eveery one to his own way.

But the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. That’s why he came, and that’s why his great heart is restless, why he says, “Let’s go somewhere else.” He knew we’d never find him. If it were up to us, we’d still be groping about in the dark. So he came to find us. He went to the next village, and the next, and the next, and, on and on his long, eager strides carried him, ahead of the pack, as the disciples hesitated and shrank back in fear. He went on to Jerusalem. Driven by love, by the sheer love of us. “Let’s go somewhere else,” he says.

Oh, you’re going to go somewhere else alright, Jesus! Somewhere where you don’t by rights belong, to the shame of the cross, to those bitter hours of darkness, to the full weight of God’s eternal wrath on all our sins. But I know why you’ll go. We all do. You’ll be wounded for our transgressions, you’ll be bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brings our hearts peace, you will bear.

Isn’t this the message that called our hearts into the most perfect rest? From our living death to a new and eternal life? From dark despair to a living hope? When we weren’t looking for him, he found us, and claimed us, and made us his own forever. And still he calls to us each day, no matter what our burdens, no matter what our sorrows. “Come to me, come to me, come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” God’s great heart is a restless heart and he’s restless ‘till all his people find rest. We know that. That’s why we’re here.

And when he’s found you, when he fills your heart with peace in the forgiveness of sins, he makes you restless. He becomes a living, busy, mighty, active, living Being within you. He drives you on. You see his love now burns within us, and he cannot rest ‘till all his people find rest. And that includes more than you and me. His restlessness drives us on to help others share our joy, the joy we’ve found in him. Listen, he doesn’t say, “Let ME go elsewhere,” or, “Sorry, I’ve gotta go, see you!” No, he says to all of us, “Let’s go—LET US—go elsewhere…for that is why I have come.” Why do we do outreach in this congregation? Because the love of Christ that found us drives us on to find others. And, it doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to say, “we’ll stay here,” or, “we’ve gone this far, and that should be good enough.”

In fact, it’s not possible. Once he’s won your heart, once you find his love that did not rest and that knows no limit, then you really don’t have any more, a thousand blind alleys to choose from, nor a hundred demon voices that trouble your mind with futile desire. There’s only one voice: his. And only one way: the way he walks when he calls you to follow him. No false choices. No either/or’s. It’s a both/and.

That’s why he came. That’s why we’re here.

Amen.