Key Scripture: Mark 8: 22-26

We have been going through a series called ‘This Beautiful Mess and The Shocking Embrace of God’, based on the book of Mark and John Burke’s book, No Perfect People Allowed. What we’ve been hearing through the gospel of Mark is how extravagant, how outside our box, how compassionate, how shockingly embracing Jesus was of the worst and the least in society.

I. The Shocking Embrace of Jesus

He is filled with compassion while embracing the demon-possessed.
He embraces the paralyzed and forgives His sin.
He embraces Matthew, the scoundrel, and Matthew’s friends, whom others called sinners.
He defends His disciples against the religious leaders were attacking them about keeping the rules.
He embraces the man possessed by legions of demons.
He embraces the crowd who had no food. He had compassion on them, seeing them ‘as sheep without a shepherd’.
He embraces a Gentile woman- a person considered a dog by the Jews, and heals her child.

II. Mark 8:22-26 “And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to Him a blind man and begged Him to touch him. And He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when He had spit on his eyes and laid His hands on him, He asked him, “Do you see anything?” and he looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid His hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And He sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

In reading through Mark we could fall into an easy trap and read it as though this is just another miracle that Jesus performs.
We must not fail to see that Jesus treats each person as a unique individual with a unique make-up, needs, and dignity. The way Jesus deals with people was not with a one-size-fits- all attitude.

Some He touches- some touch Him
Some He speaks to, some He never even sees.
To some He says, “Don’t tell anyone.” and to some He says, “ Go show yourself.”
And to some, He spits on.

I want us to hold on to these words from the text:

Brought, begged
Took by the hand, led away
Spit on him, touched him
Opened his eyes
And this question, “What do you see?”

II. What do you see?

Rodney’s story of a woman who worked days as a hairdresser and nights at a bar, as a lap-dancer. Invited to church by a client who was a Christian. She came to church dressed provocatively, sat on the front row and asked questions that were distracting to the pastor, until he learned that she was asking how the pastor knew these things about her and why he was talking about her. She became a Christian and invited some of her other friends, like the owner of the bar and the bouncers. Their way of dress and conduct in church were distracting, but the pastor encouraged them in their growing relationships with God, accepting them where they were. We need to see others as Jesus sees them.
What do we see?

Do you see a woman inappropriately dressed for church?
Or, do you see someone who is desperately in need of knowing the mercy, forgiveness, and compassion of Jesus towards all people?
Do you see someone who has no business being in the front row because she is a distraction to you (or to your husband, or your sons or daughters), as someone who is making it impossible for you to worship?
Or do you see that her sitting in the front row is the absolute best place for her to be?
Do you see someone who is distracting to the pastor because of her whispering and fidgeting?
Or do you see that the Holy Spirit doesn’t need to tell us what He is doing; that we need to trust that He is doing something in people’s lives?
Do you see someone who is immoral?
Or do you see someone that is in the need of love and acceptance by those who are the hands and voice, and heart of Jesus now? (His people)
Do you see yourself as the hands and heart and voice of judgement or of healing?
Do you see someone who, the second time she comes to church, brings her lap-dancing friends and the bouncers, wearing inappropriate t-shirts that cause you to think, “ If I wanted to see this, I could have stayed home and watched t.v.”?
Or, do you see someone who is a friend of Jesus, not because her life is all cleaned up, but because Jesus is the friend of sinners?
Spitting was, and still is, an expression of contempt, derision, and mocking. Would you spit on someone in your heart because of what you see?
Or do you desire to do what Jesus did- take what men use to express scorn, and turn it into a means of healing?
Would you take this woman by the hand and lead her aside, to rebuke her for her dress?
Or, would you take her by the hand and lead her aside so that you might have the privilege of bringing hope and healing into her life?

III. Seeing Jesus At Work

One of the hardest things for any of us to do is to trust in the work of Christ in our lives and in the lives of others.
We must not fail to see that it is the desperate who find Jesus, and it is Jesus who finds the desperate, and gives to them what He alone can give. Being in a place of desperation is the number one criteria for finding Him.
Jesus leads the man away from the crowd so that He might more intimately minister to him.
The remarkable thing about this miracle is not in the spitting but that it comes in stages. There are three verbs that Mark uses to communicate the progression of how this man received his sight.

1.He “glanced up.”

Jesus caused the man to look up, to keep his eyes from being down. He caused him to lift his head up.

2. “I see men who look like trees, walking”.
a. The man gets some degree of discernment, some perception, but not clearly

“He saw everything clearly.”

a. “Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

The point of this whole series is to help us see the struggle that our culture has:
With trust
With tolerance,
With brokenness
With aloneness

IV. Creating a Culture:

My goal is to provoke us to see:

1. How we, as a church, as the hands and voice of Jesus, can create a culture – a new community, of dialogue and of taking off our masks, and losing our ‘need to pretend’, that helps others to trust.
2. How we can see where others are coming from, and create a culture of acceptance that removes the ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality, because we realize that we are all seekers and sinners in need of God’s grace and mercy. We are all seekers after God, we may just be in different stages of seeking.
3. How that the very honest question about other religions and cultural issues have a question behind the question.

The question of “What do we think about gays?” has a question behind it. It is asking “Are you one of those hateful and exclusive churches?” or “Are you one of those Christians who condemns everyone else?” Our culture and media feeds into this idea, but we have to remember who the people were in Jesus day. Who were those who pressed in to seek Jesus?

               b. We have to ask Him to make our hearts like His heart toward others, to love them as He did.
        4. How we can create a culture of humility in seeing and speaking about truth?
           5. A culture that says that truth is relational and incarnational- Truth that has skin on it.

We are representing Jesus to others.

6. How we can create a culture of hope for broken people; of striving to bring people out of sexual brokenness and into sexual wholeness and healing from addictions. There are broken, hurting people in the world and this is all they know. Jesus came to reach out to such as these.

Example- a 14 year old girl who went out on dates with different boys and always had sex with them. It was all she knew, it was just what they did.

How we can create a culture of connection- of being the family that perhaps some have never known.

V. Laura’s story NPPA- page 193-196

Laura was a seeker:

Who knew about truth, but never knew the truth.
Who grew up a missionary’s kid, whose parents translated the Bible.
Who rejected all that her parents stood for because it felt cold to her, and nothing but an exercise in self-discipline.
Who plunged herself into a counter-culture lifestyle, seeking love and acceptance.
Who longed for a community of people who really cared for each other and the world, because she had never experienced real community.
Who thought Christians were the enemy.
She came to a church that met in a theater because it felt safe. She sat in the back and did not engage with others for a long time. Others valued her anonymity. She never felt judged.
She cried every time, and went to church like this for years.
During a crisis time in her life the church reached out to her and began to meet some of her needs.
She began to read her Bible, and to open her heart to Jesus because she saw a Christian family living out their faith. She had many negative stereotypes of Christians. It was their openness of showing their own struggles that helped her. She began to realize that everyone struggles, and she saw a true community of faith.
When we look at other people, we need to ask ourselves, “What do I see?”

Discussion questions:

Why is it so difficult to see our own faults and sins, and so easy to see it in others?

Do you more often see yourself as having a heart and voice of judgment or of healing?

Why is being in a place of desperation so often necessary to our finding Jesus?

What are some things that we, as a church, can do in order to create a more open, accepting, healing culture?