296 Hype and Humanity

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Hype and Humanity”, originally shared on January 31, 2024. It was the 296^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The hype machine is rolling out for the Super Bowl. Jesus embodied just the opposite behavior. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The Super Bowl is coming up in about 10 days. Ticket prices as of today are $8,333.00 for the cheapest seats from Ticketmaster and more than $47,500.00 for the most expensive.

   Of course, it’s not a real Super Bowl since the Green Bay Packers aren’t playing in it, but that’s just my opinion. 😊

   And then, “Saturday Night Live!” did their cold open last week with sports casters lamenting that the next day, the conference championships, were the last day of football season.

   When someone pointed out that the Super Bowl was still happening, the consensus was that the Super Bowl isn’t about football; as one character explained, “it’s about commercials, and Usher (the half-time show), and people who never watch football asking how many points a touchdown is worth.”

   He has a point. It’s a heavily hyped cultural event.

   By contrast, the tickets for Super Bowl 1 were $12 each, and adjusted for inflation, about $110. The Green Bay Packers played the Kansas City Chiefs in the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the game didn’t even sell out!

   The hype is a huge part of our culture.

   It’s been noted that you can tell a lot about a culture by looking at its great municipal buildings, the ones that define a city, the ones that locals invest in and point to with pride.

   In the Western world that has been its great cathedrals, then its museums and universities, then its commercial buildings. Today, it’s our entertainment centers, our amusement parks, and our sports complexes. They are what we point to, what we hype to gain recognition.

   That’s why it’s so shocking when we read the Gospels and see Jesus actively discouraging the hype.

   For example, in Mark 1:29-39, the Gospel text that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, and nobody mentions it at all. Even Peter’s mother-in-law just gets up and goes on about her business.

   Here it is in Mark 1:29-31,

²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

   First, I want to say, isn’t that typical? 😊 The woman has literally just gotten over a fever that had left her bedridden, but does she get a break? No. She’s got at least 13 hungry men to serve!

   Second, that evening, a crush of sick and possessed people came over and he cures a bunch of them. Does he use this opportunity to get word of mouth going about who he is? Does he tell the disciples to get their contact information for future follow-ups? 😊

   No. He discourages it!

   We see it in Mark 1:32-34,

³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 

   Jesus offers an objective standard for what is good, and all of our fallen Creation is subject to him and to his power.

   When Jesus performs miracles, as in the Gospel text we are looking at today, he isn’t suspending the laws of physics. Jesus points us to the perfect, harmonious world that God made for human beings, and to the perfect, harmonious world that is coming in the second advent of Jesus Christ and the new Heaven and the new earth. Miracles show us what that was and what that will be.

   One of my favorite sports quotes comes from the comedian Gary Shandling, who once reflected on Leo Durocher, the ruthless coach of the Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers, and who said, “Nice guys finish last.”

   Garry Shandling said, “Nice guys finish first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where the finish line is.”

   We know. And we have no fear of it. In fact, we long for it, because we know that that finish is the beginning.

   I heard about someone who took a different attitude about the end. He said, “I live every day as if it were my last. That’s why I never do laundry. Because who wants to do laundry on the last day of their life?” 😊 That’s all the world without Jesus can offer.

   Humanity was created for a living relationship with the one true living God, but we rejected it. Sin is that separation from God that resulted. Jesus, in his miracles, points to the perfect relationship with the one true living God for which humanity was created!

   The demons live in a different world than the people; they are an external threat to people without Jesus.

   But they have no power over anyone where Jesus is.

   Jesus is in control of His narrative, and he will decide how and when people will come to know him.

   That day will come ultimately on the cross.

   Meanwhile, this fallen world is not the way it was created to be because evil enters the world when people defy God. And people regularly defy God.   

   There are people in this world who believe that the world is not divided between the good and the bad, because they recognize no base for good. Instead, they believe that the world is divided between the bad and the weak. They live as those who believe that you must be bad to survive, and you must be the badest to succeed.

   There is no good without God. There can’t be.

   If humanity decides what is good, then humanity can exchange evil for good. When there is no absolute, external source for defining what is “good” then anyone can decide that “good” is whatever serves them. It can be revised at any time and used for their own ends.

   When I was in seminary, there was an adjunct professor named Rev. Otto Bremer teaching there. When Pastor Bremer was in seminary, he was also a student at the Harvard Business School.

   Professor Bremer told the story of how he was working on a project on corporate social ethics during that time. He was visiting companies and asking about whether they had social policies and how they observed them.

   He said that when he introduced himself as Otto Bremmer, a seminary student, the corporate officer would go to a file cabinet, remove a folder and hand Otto a piece of paper. The officer would say, “Here are our corporate social policies. We are committed to being good corporate citizens.”

   But, Professor Bremer said, when he introduced himself as Otto Bremmer, a student at the Harvard Business School, the corporate officer would say that they had a policy sheet in the files for people who got nosy, “but,” the officer would say, “we both know how things work in the real world.”

   If we devise the tests to measure what is good, then everyone will believe that it is they who are good, because everyone passes the tests that they write for themselves.

   One of my favorite college professors taught a philosophy course, and he would spend the last few minutes of most classes engaged in what I would call “cracker barrel philosophy”.

   He made the observation during one of these moments, that he believed that most of the world’s evil, and probably all of the very worst evil human beings have done, was devised by people who in their heart of hearts believed that they were doing good.

   Of the many things this observation means is that humanity’s greatest need isn’t just to be better. It’s to have a Savior.

   We have the Savior in Jesus Christ. It means that we must repent and be transformed, born again, as a new Creation, by the great grace of God and live in it.

   How can we live in that relationship and be transformed by it. One way is by spending quality time with God. Jesus demonstrates this in the following verse, Mark 1:35?

³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

   This raises a question? If Jesus is God, who is he praying to? Yes, this is one of those weird Trinity moments. But whatever else it is, I think that Jesus if offering us an example. Like Baptism and the cross, Jesus is modeling the behavior that points us to new life.

   I went to an Eagle Scout award ceremony once where the speaker said, “Character is what you do when there is no reward for doing the right thing and no punishment for doing the wrong thing.” Character is what you do because you believe it is, simply, the right thing.

   Jesus didn’t hire a PR company to make him popular. He went to a deserted place to be alone with God.

   Jesus was so far away from people that his disciples had to go looking for him, in the end of this text, Mark 1:36-39,

 ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” ³⁸He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” ³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

   When was the last time you lived in a place where everyone was searching for Jesus? Probably the place where you are right now. They just need someone to name the Name. Someone like you.

   Jesus could have stayed and been a hero! But he left to proclaim his message that the Kingdom of God was at hand, to repent and believe in the good news.

   Jesus got out of town at the height of his popularity! Why? To reach more people.

   Rain is coming to Southern California, and everyone is preparing for it. In some places it will bring life, but in other places it will bring destruction.

   All we can do is make sure that the things we need are built on a solid foundation.

   Jesus is coming to judge the world and bring in a new heaven and a new earth. How can we be prepared?

   All we can do is to look to Jesus. We can never be good enough, but we don’t have to be.

   We have a Savior, and we proclaim Him: crucified, risen and coming again.

   There is no hype in Jesus, only the cross. Jesus offers humanity new life in him, our true selves in that for which we were created, a living relationship with the one true living God

     Receive Him into your heart today.