Five years ago this Sunday, the first Sunday in March of 2020, was the last day that we would have public worship as a five-month old church. Without any warning on the following Sunday, we were told we could no longer meet; we would not see each other’s faces in person for another five or six months. What if I told you this morning as you came into the sanctuary ready for the joy of worship that we were going back to all of that, that I felt like it was best to just worship online, to not sit next to one another, to cancel Prayer Night and Connect Groups. We have come so far from those days just five years ago, and it would ruin all that we have if we tried to live like that again even just five years later. As we continue in the Gospel of Mark this morning, we see that that is what the religious leaders of the day were trying to get Jesus and His disciples to do. To throw off the newness of what Jesus was bringing and go back to the old way of living. Let’s quiet our hearts as we read our passage from Mark 2 this morning.

As more fires rage in L.A. there are stories of people having to flee at a moment’s notice; people being told they have only minutes to grab all of the things they cherish most. What would you grab in your house if you had to save something from the fire? That's probably an indicator of what you cherish most. We are going through a series on the Gospel of Mark, and Mark chapter 2 reveals to us what Jesus cherishes most; what He would snatch from a fire at a moment’s notice. Jesus cherishes people who are doubting and in need of mercy; that is what He would save from a fire. People are His treasured possessions.

The 18th century poet Alexander Pope once wrote: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” How do you deal with disappointment? As we live in this world, we develop expectations for life and we constantly approach God to fulfill those expectations; disappointment is the grief that we feel when those hopes and expectations go unfulfilled. In our passage this morning, the first thing Jesus wants to tell us is that the Kingdom of God has now come very near to where we are, and that the coming kingdom of God is going to change our expectations of how life works. What is the kingdom of God? A kingdom is simply all of the places where the king reigns. The kingdom of this world has been a place where sin, Satan and death reign; they are the temporary kings, usurpers to the throne, until the true king of this world returns. So the kingdom we live in now is characterized by shattered families, dead dreams, miserable work, and suffering and trials that turn our hearts and minds against the goodness of the true king rather than point us to Him. And now, Jesus says, the true king has come down. The king has set foot on the shores of this kingdom and is beginning to take it back; the first beachhead of the Kingdom of God has been established. But, surprisingly, the announcement of the kingdom comes mingled with disappointing circumstances.

We are starting a new series called “Seeing Jesus,” going through the Gospel of Mark together. Mark was written for one purpose: to help us to see Jesus. Mark is one of four gospels in the Bible, and at the time, a gospel was a new kind of writing. It wasn’t a biography, it wasn’t just a narrative, it wasn’t just a retelling of the life of Jesus. A gospel came about so that we could not just read about Jesus, but so that we could see Him clearly enough to see His uniqueness and beauty for ourselves and to let that seeing affect us. How did He talk? Who did He pay attention to and love? What made Him angry and disappointed? What made Him rejoice? We need to see Jesus clearly because our world sees Jesus in a myriad of ways; the political Jesus, the all accepting and tolerant Jesus, the angry Jesus, the distant Jesus. We need to go back to the gospels—to the testimony of those who walked and talked with Jesus—to see Jesus as He really is.