A Beginning that Grabs You

The Power of Story

We all love stories; stories are memorable. If you want to remember something and you're not able to write it down, then a story is a really good way to do it. Stories vicariously draw you in; they allow us to experience something that might otherwise be out of reach. We get to love the characters or maybe dislike the characters. We get to try them on, to put ourselves in their skin, to experience things as they might have done.

Stories for a while allow us to suspend disbelief. As we immerse ourselves in the story, we don't worry so much as whether we believe it or not; we just embrace it. If God wanted to speak to people, He could do it in any number of ways. God could write a knowledge of Himself directly into our brains; He could do that if He is God. He could present us with propositions; He could present us with laws. God has spoken to us in many and various ways as it says in the scriptures, but most often he comes to us via a story.

By story, I do not mean fiction. Stories can be true or not true; just to say it's a story doesn't mean it's fact or fiction. We could relate, for example, the recent Ashes campaign. We could do it statistically: we could number the runs that the Australians scored more than the English; we could look at the strike rate of the bowlers; we could have looked at who took the most wickets. But usually, we'll tell a story of that innings or that delivery; we'll tell a story about it. At least, that's what the highlight reels show.

Maybe we humans prefer to learn from stories; perhaps it's wired into us. The way we're designed is to learn from stories. Stories help us to make sense of things; they're a way of learning something, a way of accessing something that we couldn't otherwise access.

The Gospel of Mark

In Mark's gospel, we are invited into the orbit of Jesus of Nazareth as he walked the earth around about two millennia ago. We see Him from the perspective of a close circle of friends and followers. Principally it's John Mark whose source was Peter the disciple. We get to witness His miracles, we get to listen to His teaching, but we also see the drama and the opposition that mounts against Him. You may already know how the story ends, but you're still drawn into it and the way it unfolds.

Mark is a great story. A great story is memorable; a great story doesn't leave you where you began. A great story teaches you something, but it also changes you as you let it do its work on you. As you came in, hopefully you received one of these beautifully set out cards. I'm hoping you might take that home with you and use one of your fridge magnets to put it on your fridge. You might turn it over and put it this way so you can actually see where we're heading between now and Easter. If you look down there it says "Mark: A Great Story."

I'm hoping you might look at it and read ahead to the passages that we're going to be dealing with. I've got it under a bunch of headings: Mark is a great story; it's got a beginning that grabs you; it's got a quest, a hero, action, adventure, drama, villains, and heart. A great story has a twist, escalating tension, a dramatic pinnacle, a climax, and a rescue. This great story has a weird ending and then, finally, "What's your story and how does your story join to this story?"

If you want to invite a friend to church, this would be a great series to invite a friend to. If you think your friend is not too keen to come to church, invite them to watch it online. Send them the link and say, "This is what we're doing." You might, when you go to work on Monday and people say to you, "What did you do on the weekend?" say, "We heard this really interesting talk about how stories make meaning." Let's just see where that takes you; you might end up in a really interesting conversation.

Great Beginnings

Today, as you'll see, February the 1st, a great story has a beginning that grabs you—a beginning that gets you in. Do you remember this opening line? It's a very famous opening line: "It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times." A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens.

What about this one: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Pride and Prejudice—thank you.

What about this one: "All children, except one, grow up." Peter Pan—very good, I didn't know that one.

And what about this one: "It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks were striking thirteen." 1984—George Orwell, very good.

A great story has an introduction that gets you in. Perhaps you remember sitting in the cinema somewhere around 1977 and the screen went black and words began to scroll up the screen: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." Then the music from John Williams hits you in the face and you saw that Star Destroyer that seemed to go on forever. You remember watching Star Wars: A New Hope. A great story gets you in; it is that memorable.

The Arrival of the King

Mark begins with these words: "Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him." You might read that and think to yourself, "I've read it before and it doesn't really mean much to me or resonate. I know it's there in the Bible." It sounds all well and good until you realize that Mark is quoting from Isaiah chapter 40. Isaiah is talking about the God of the universe, the Lord of the universe—the one who cups the waters in his hands, the one who weighs the mountains on the scales, the one who brings presidents and princes to zero. That Lord is coming.

This is the kingdom of God coming. Before you start thinking about perhaps the earth and some comet approaching the earth emblazoned across it, the kingdom of God in some Spielbergesque way, it turns out that the kingdom of God is something else: it is the Lord of the universe coming to the earth.

We get John the Baptist early in these verses, who is the weirdest person. There he is out in the desert, preaching and baptizing. Verse six says he wears camel hair, which is odd, and he eats locusts and wild honey. I did have a student once say to me, "Sir, you should taste them, they're delicious." I said, "I'll take your word for it, I don't really think I will."

There he is, wearing camel's hair and eating locusts and wild honey, and it's really a picture of someone who's coming from outside of this world. He's a prophet; he's bringing the message of God to the people, but he's so otherworldly. He comes baptizing, which is all about a new start; something new is beginning. He says, "I can baptize you"—literally, he's going to put them in the Jordan River and make them wet. In the sweaty, dusty, and hot world of the ancient Near East, you could picture this as a sign of refreshment and cleansing.

Then he says one greater is coming who'll do this inside you. He'll cleanse you on the inside; he'll cleanse you inwardly; he'll cleanse your heart; he'll renew you. Next, the one he's speaking of, Jesus, comes to be baptized and suddenly heaven is torn open. John says that the spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. I don't know what that would have looked like, but John notices that and there is a voice from heaven saying, "This is my son whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

You think to yourself, "I've got to watch this person." If this is the introduction—this is the Lord coming—I've got to watch this person. Then we read of Satan tempting him and angels. This is not a slow start to a story. I know sometimes you read things and you think to yourself, "I wish this would get going." I think I tried reading Tim Winton's Cloudstreet about three times. I got to page 30 or 40 and thought, "I don't know what this is about," and started again, went and made myself a cup of tea, and tried to come back to it again. Once I got into it, it was great, but this is a page turner from the beginning, isn't it?

The Kingdom is Near

Verse 14 says: "The kingdom of God is near." It's not like it's "coming soon," like those weird people with sandwich boards who walk around saying "the end is nigh." It's not that it's coming soon, but its proximity; it's close to you, on your doorstep, in your face. The kingdom of God is right here.

It turns out that Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is near because the king is here. He is the king, and again and again through this gospel, Jesus shows that He is king. He shows what the kingdom of God is like: it's marked by compassion and kindness; it's marked by authority—good authority, not bad authority. It's marked by restoration; he starts putting all the brokenness back together again. There is someone who runs the place; there is someone who loves the place. It's the king.

Verse 15 says: "Therefore because the kingdom of God has come, therefore repent and believe the good news." That's the message; we'll come back to this over the next few weeks. Repent and believe the good news doesn't mean to try harder, to pull up your socks, or to put your best foot forward. It doesn't say "say a little prayer" every now and then. It doesn't mean to give lip service to the king but not really treat him as the king. To respond to the king is to take seriously his authority, put away your resistance, and believe the good news.

The king is someone you respond to. This is a story you can't ignore; it's going to be very hard to ignore this story because it makes such majestic claims of each one of us.

Sense-making and Disruption

People who study the way literature works say that the process of sense-making starts with disruption. Think about that: something is going against the flow, against expectations. You think it's going to be this and this and this, and all of a sudden it's something different and people react with surprise.

Unexpected events make stories interesting. I have a weird interest in how our brains work and process various things. I'll just be a nerd for a moment: when we get a surprise in a story, our bodies react biologically. Our heart rate changes, our blood pressure changes, skin conductivity changes slightly. If I had some EEG electrodes on your skull, it would signal what is called an N400 wave. When you see something surprising, your brain responds that way; your attention is peaked.

It's like my brain is predicting, "Okay, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen," and we kind of switch off. Then all of a sudden something surprises us and we get this N400 wave. If I was to say to you, for example, "I like my coffee with milk and shampoo," all of a sudden you're going to pay attention because something's gone wrong. You're predicting me to say "sugar," but I said something different. As you process that sentence, it triggers in your brain an N400 wave as you struggle to semantically put together what is going on.

Nick Enfield, a professor of linguistics at Sydney University, says this: "The stories we tell are almost always about disruptions from the normal flow of life. If something is out of the ordinary or otherwise seems unlikely, we talk about it." The very fact that people are telling a story about something shows that they regard it as out of the ordinary; otherwise, they wouldn't be telling it. If you're telling me something, it should be news.

The Mystery and the Punchline

Mark 1:1 says: "The beginning of the gospel [literally good news] of Jesus Christ, the son of God." We are told from the very beginning who this is about: Jesus Christ, the son of God.

In the 1970s, you might remember this hugely popular TV series called Columbo. This was a detective show with a difference: in most whodunits, you find out the murderer at the end of the episode, but in Columbo, you find out in the first five minutes. When you're watching Columbo, you're not trying to solve a mystery; you're watching to see if Columbo can solve the mystery because you already know the answer. The fun and the suspense comes from spotting the clues that are going to help him to get there.

Mark does the same thing. His gospel is a little bit like an episode of Columbo because he gives us the punchline right at the beginning: "The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the son of God." Then, in true Columbo style, we spend the rest of the story watching and waiting for the other characters to catch up with what's going on. For the most part, the people in Mark's gospel don't get who Jesus is, and they mistake him for all kinds of things and all kinds of people.

Mark doesn't want us to suffer from the same confusion; he wants us to be absolutely clear from the outset. He wants us to know that the Jesus he's talking about is none other than Jesus Christ, the son of God. Jesus Christ: "Christ" is the Messiah, God's anointed king. "Christ" is the Greek version of the word Messiah, but it picks up all this Hebrew expectation of God sending a king.

Then he calls him "Son of God." "Son of God" again is a title to describe the king of God, but also a title that was taken on the lips of Roman emperors of the day; they described themselves as sons of God. Mark is being deliberately provocative in his opening line: Jesus the Christ, the son of God. Jesus Christ: the King, the son of God, the king. Mark has really told us the same thing twice. You could read the opening line as "the beginning of the good news about Jesus the king, the king."

He wants us to be absolutely clear because this is the king to respond to. Mark is a great story. It has a great beginning that gets you in; it's deliberately provocative and meant to unsettle you and disrupt you so you're engaged from the very beginning. I hope over the next few weeks that you'll come along each week and follow this story as it unfolds between now and Easter and let this story really take you somewhere.

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