connecting

A Beautiful Mess
Phil Schaefer
1/11/09

 

Introduction:
          As I was praying and preparing for what the Holy Spirit might be giving us to teach on in this new year, I was led to a book titled No Perfect People Allowed, by a pastor in Austin. It’s subtitle is Creating a Come As You Are Culture In The Church. I began doing a New Testament survey to see if there might be a book of the Bible that would highlight some of the things in the book. I quickly found a New Testament book that I thought would work wonderfully. It was the book of Mark.
          What really encouraged me was that shortly after that Aaron Williams told us that he and Donnie Berry were going to do a Bible study in their Sunday morning college class on the Gospel of Mark. The same day I pulled out of my mailbox a package containing a commentary series that is being sent to me monthly, and it was the Gospel of Mark. I just couldn’t see this as a coincidence. It was the Lord making it clear to me what I was to teach this year.

  • In No Perfect People Allowed, Burke identifies 5 main areas that he has found to be real issues in the Post-modern mindset that we live in today.
    • They are: trust, tolerance, truth, brokenness, and aloneness. He says that these areas more than ever are being affected by our culture.
    • He opens by giving the stark and painful reality in which our culture exists- the reality of our Post-modern experiment, a reality that touches all of us today.
    • Authors Howe and Strauss, in The 13th Generation wrote, “All the diagnostic experts keep pointing backward to the era of the 60’s and the 70’s as the fatal hour when everything started going to hell.”
    • This began when a generation decided to test what life would be like living out the philosophy, “if it feels good, do it.” And for over 30 years, we have been living out the consequences of this philosophy. Or, as Burke put it, “America went out for a three decade binge on self, and now our country is vomiting up the consequences uncontrollably.”
    • We live in a day in which what used to be prevalent only in the inner city now exists in suburbia and on Main Street, U.S.A.
    • We have grown accustomed to the all familiar stories of neglect, of physical abuse, of sexual molestation, of drug abuse, porn addictions, eating disorders, anger issues, of violent crime, abortion, S.T.D’s, Aids. And of sexual addictions passing from one generation to another. All of these have left people broken and desperate.
    • We live in an age of ‘Community Aftershock’, in which the seed of life has accelerated at an unmanageable pace. Air travel, technology. Global business, have uprooted whatever the fibers were that allowed people to live with a sense of community- a sense of belonging.
    • We live in an age of  ‘Information Aftershock’, in which 24/7 news, the internet, 24/7 television, 420 channels to choose from, live events of wars, or whatever is breaking news, create a sense of non-stop violence and crisis, upheaval and tragedy. (I know people who say they are addicted to CNN. And my son, Philip announced that he was going off of Face-Book because it was so time consuming, and was taking over his life.)
    • We are constantly bombarded by statistics, and they never seem to be positive:
  • At one time a majority believed that parents should stay together for the sake of their children. Now that number is 20%.
  • For those under 40, it is more likely that 30% will have had an abortion.
  • More than 30% of women will have been sexually molested.
  • 60% will believe that living together before marriage is the best way to prevent divorce, and 50% will already have lived together.
  • Most will be sexually active, and the thought of waiting until marriage will be totally foreign. ( I have changed the way that I do marriage counseling because of this.)
  • Most men will have struggled with pornography because:
  • It is more culturally accepted.
  • All it takes is a click on a computer to get it.
  • 20% will have struggled with substance abuse. And a growing number of people will develop addictions of all kinds just to try and cope with reality.
  • Prescription medications for coping will increase, not only because of science, but also because of anxiety, depression, ADD, and ADHD.
  • All of this is just numbers until we attach a name and a face, then it means so much more. It is a real person with issues of brokenness, pain and mistrust. We live in this world that is a broken mess.
    • Besides these types of changes there are those things that are

                     trendy, that at one point meant something altogether different:  

  • At one point being gay meant being happy.
  • At one point men with earrings were either pirates or gay.
  • At one point tattoos were what sailors got when they went to exotic ports-of-call. Today the average conservative housewife has a tattoo.
  • Gay civil unions and the fight for gay marriage will continue in the political arena.
  • This is our culture in it’s current and evolving state.
    • Our children and our children’s children will continue to be    shaped by the existing realities that they grow up with, and in many ways will find those things either easy to accept, or will view them as the norm.
    • Against this backdrop, the average person will have a strong perception that Christians are only against things, but will have no sense of what Christians are for.
    • These are not merely the realities of those outside the church. They are issues of those inside the church, as well.
    • You are probably sitting there thinking, “This is depressing. Who wants to hear this? I would rather ignore these things, and hope that they don’t happen to my family.”
    • But the truth is, these things, in one way or the other, are already affecting our families. And we can either ignore them, close our eyes and hope they go away, or we can look to God and to His Word to see if there is a parallel to our day.
  • To see if this ancient book has relevance to what we have to wrestle with today.
  • To see if there is an answer and a hope.

 

  • I want to be very up-front. As I have done this study on Mark’s Gospel, and as I have pondered the issues that No Perfect People Allowed addresses,
    • I am full of hope. I don’t think I have been this encouraged in reading the gospel and who God is and what He can do in our lives, and what He has done for us, since the first day when I opened the Bible 34 years ago, and it blew me away.
    • We need an understanding of where our world and culture is, to understand what God has done for us.
    • I am encouraged for our church. I am encouraged because I think we are a group of people who, even with all of our imperfections, have this profound sense of the call of God on our lives, and on this church. And on the work that God has put in our hearts for our city, and for people groups and individuals, and for other countries.
    • I am encouraged for those whom we will engage in the days and years ahead because as:
  • We are being healed,
  • We are growing in trust,
  • We are growing in God’s heart in accepting others,
  • We can lead others into healing, trust, and knowing God’s heart.
    •  This is the Beautiful Mess. We already have stories of our own to tell. We have powerful stories of deliverance and hope and healing, and the faithfulness of God. These things are an ugly mess, but when God comes into your life, your story becomes a beautiful mess.
    • We need to hear our stories- stories of your wrestling with God, and how God has taken your ugly mess, and made it a Beautiful Mess! ( write out your story, and send it to me. I will not use your name.)
  • Mark pictures the Christ as an active, energetic, swiftly moving, conquering deliverer. He is a ruler over the destructive forces of nature, over demons, over disease, and over death. This is the Beautiful Mess.
    • Mark is the shortest of the Gospels. It has the least amount of commentary. The stories move from scene to scene with very little explanation. Mark is not so interested in history, or biography, or chronology, or geography.
    • Reading the Gospel of Mark is like reading a mystery. There are all these pieces that Mark puts out there as clues. We have to walk through it in order to see it in perspective. These people didn’t know who Jesus was, they were clueless. How often do we see the hand of God, except in retrospect?
    • Malachi was the last of the Prophets to speak. For 400 years, Israel had waited in silence to hear from God.
    • And Mark breaks the silence in this way:
  • “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1)
  • something new is being launched here. God is doing ‘an epoch-making event”.     
  • Just as in Genesis1:1, “In the beginning, God.”
  • “Of the gospel” means more than ‘Good News’. It had a meaning prior to that of ‘ an epoch-making event’.
  • It means ‘ a happening which would change world history’.
  • Mark is announcing an event after which the history of the world would never be the same again.
    • This account is about:
  • Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God.  1:1
  • Whom the prophets foretold. 1:2
  • Whom John the Baptist is the forerunner delivering a specific prophetic message. 1:4 & 7-8
  • Whom the Spirit descends upon. 1:10
  • To whom the Father speaks. 1”11
  • Who was tempted by Satan. 1:12-13
  • Who overcomes.  1:14
  • Who announces from the very beginning, nothing less than the in-breaking of God’s rule into this world. 1:15
    • Eugene Peterson calls this “the Good News.”
  • This ‘epoch making, world history changing, never to be the same, event.
  • Namely, that God is here- right now.
  • He is on our side, actively seeking to help us in the way that we most need help.
  • God is on the scene, passionate to save us.
  • That is what Mark is telling us. When He came, He changed history, and it’s never to be the same.
  • This is the Beautiful Mess!
    • Mark is saying that God is making a new start, a great step forward. It is new because something that was never before has come into play. Everything is going to change.
    • Mark presents this two-fold thrust:
  • Who Jesus is.
  • How I should respond to Him?
    • The gospel is history.
  • It cannot be changed. We cannot ignore it, or re-arrange it, and we cannot erase it.
  • It is earthy. It’s about God’s commitment to human affairs, all the mistrust, intolerance, untruth, brokenness, and aloneness of all our lives. This is the Beautiful Mess!
  • Mark’s gospel is a challenge. It’s not written to inform. It was written to challenge us and to change us.

                     4.  We must ask:

  • What is our part?
  • How we should respond?
  • What is our role?
  • What does it really mean to be a disciple of Jesus?
  • How can we rightly and effectively live out this kingdom of God in our present culture?

Discussion questions:

  • Can you give an example of what kinds of things that happened in the 60’s and the 70’s that changed our culture in America?
    • How do you think that living in an age of “Community Aftershock” (air travel, technology, global business) and “Information Aftershock”  (computers, technology, 24/7 news, t.v. etc.) is affecting our lives today? Is there a problem in this area that you have had to deal with or need to deal with?
    • Why, as Christians, is it necessary to have an understanding of all of these negative statistics in our culture?
    • Why is it possible for us to have hope and encouragement in the midst of this “ugly mess”? Why can we call it a “Beautiful Mess”?
    • Why is the coming of Jesus Christ, as announced by Mark in 1:1, considered to be such epoch-making, world-changing, Good News?