Highlighted Text: Mark 1:16-28

Summary and Themes for Preaching:

The purpose of this “Summer Settings” sermon series is to connect people’s favorite summer destinations with the biblical and theological importance of similar settings.  The hope is to help people see the stories and events in the Bible with new eyes and new understanding, identifying with our ancestors in the faith in ways we might not have known possible.  In so doing, we can gain a better understanding of how God worked in their imaginations and how He is longing to work in ours.

Going deeper, this series is a set of four two-week themes: mountains, lakes/streams/rivers, beaches/oceans/seas, and road trips.  The first week features an Old Testament passage with a passage that transitions toward the New Testament.  The second week focuses on a New Testament passage. 

For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The point is to relate our present-day affinity for lakes, rivers, streams, etc. to the ancients’ experiences with those places.  We have a similar qualifier for “Oceans,” since the marketing department rejected the title, “Summer Settings: Mountains, Fresh or Mostly Fresh Bodies of Water Including but Not Limited to Lakes, Rivers, Streams, Marshes, and Brackish Estuaries, Expansive Bodies of Salt Water that Take a Long Time to Traverse, and Road Trips.”

Have you ever spent a few years away from a place, only to return and find that nearly everything is different?  If you like history, architecture, or history of architecture, then there are lots of Twitter and Instagram accounts that show changes in neighborhoods and cities over the course of decades.  Most of them are probably bots, but it’s fun to see what they can come up with.

If you grew up in the Old Testament and then were suddenly transported to the New Testament, one of the changes that might surprise you is that all of a sudden a bunch of people were hanging around the Sea of Galilee.  Or, they were at least talking about it a lot more.  There are a couple of Old Testament mentions of the villages in the region of Galilee, but the lake itself was more commonly referred to as a boundary area that had a city of refuge for murderers (Joshua 21:32).

During the intertestamental period, however, the Greeks and Romans came through and really spruced the place up nicely, even giving some of their names to the villages and the lake itself (Sea of Tiberias).  Over a couple of centuries, the area had become home to an industrious mix of people from different backgrounds.  The ability to make a living on the lake had even led many Jews to get into boats and start fishing.  Incidentally, these were also Jews who had learned how to live alongside their Gentile neighbors, which would come in handy.

Enter Jesus, who in Mark’s gospel wasted no time in targeting the area for his first recruiting visit (though John’s gospel suggests this was after Jesus got Andrew from John the Baptist in the transfer portal).  In fact, Jesus had just come from downstream, where people had been going out to the Jordan River to see John for baptism and preaching on repentance and forgiveness of sins (flashback to Naaman in the Jordan last week).  Right from the start—especially in the case of Mark—it is clear that fresh water will be central to Jesus’s ministry.

There was still some danger with the water—storms and waves and the like—but Galilee became a fertile ground for Jesus’s miracles and teachings.  It also became a venue for demonstrating his Lordship, visible by lots of people but comfortably away from Jerusalem both in location and in risk.  We might be able to resonate with Jesus here.  There is a reason that lakes and ponds are not only popular for vacations, but also for retreat centers, camps, and even schools (feel free to cite the “Beach Games” episode of The Office).  We can get away to focus, to relax, to gather, to share ideas, and a nice lake communicates calm and some level of liminality, even if it is also a busy place.

The diversity Galilee provided Jesus with a forum for interacting with different people who were used to interacting with different people.  In the midst of this, he also communicated his authority over whatever those diverse people might think or believe and whatever footholds the evil one had gotten in their communities.  This is why his casting out of the impure spirit in Capernaum is on theme with the calling of the disciples.  Jesus had communicated “with authority” and the news spread around the lake. 

The impure spirit even did everyone the favor of naming Jesus “the Holy One of God!”  While Jesus commanded silence after that, the point was made.  News travels fast around a lake because everyone is united around a common source of water, food, and recreation.  Now they had a common source of healing, exorcism, weather control, loaves and fishes, and salvation in Jesus.  Whatever spirits they might have been following before, Jesus was now in charge. 

The freshwater cross-cultural meeting points would continue in the New Testament, notably with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch and Paul (with Silas, Timothy, and Luke?) finding Lydia at the river in Philippi.  So, whereas bodies of fresh water had previously been boundaries and dividing lines between contentious kingdoms, they became the unifying places of a new Kingdom that was open to any who believed.  With Jesus being the water of life, it should be no surprise that he also offers himself as the gathering place for all peoples and nations.   

Allen Thompson is senior pastor at Fairview Presbyterian Church in North Augusta, South Carolina.  Allen attended Pittsburgh Seminary (M.Div.) and Fuller Seminary (D.Min.)  His wife, Kelsey, is a Marriage and Family Therapist, and they have two children.

Allen enjoys golf, hiking, camping, cooking pigs, ice climbing, and live music.  He loves to imagine being in the story and culture of the Bible, wondering how we might have responded to God then and how we can follow Jesus now.  As an “ideas” person, Allen is passionate about working with others to find out how God is calling us to use the many gifts and resources the Holy Spirit provides.  

Allen holds a Doctor of Ministry (Fuller Theological Seminary) and a Master of Divinity (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary).

Call to Worship

Prayer of Confession

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Assurance of Pardon

Benediction