A sermon on Mark 2-4 for Kensington Community Church, during a survey of Mark themed around the question “Who do you say that I am?”
“Hope is the thing with feathers,” says the poet Emily Dickinson.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all
And “notice,” adds the author John Green.
“Notice that she never said you don’t stop hearing it. Just that it never stops singing.”
John Green initially shared that stanza of Emily Dickinson’s poem on hope, followed by his addition, in response to a 20-something TikTok user who—in tears—posted a video asking for someone, anyone to tell her how she’s supposed to have hope that things get better. She didn’t say what she was facing, but I didn’t need her to disclose what was going on in her life to know so deeply how she felt.
John’s answer: hope isn’t a thing you have in a moment. It’s a thing you have faith is already there, it’s a song you choose to insist is playing even when you can’t hear it.
I think Jesus might be saying something similar in this week’s reading.
Climax of Mark
Two weeks ago, we read the exposition to Mark’s gospel: Jesus appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and proclaims that God’s kingdom is coming—that the world will soon be reordered to the way it would be if God were running things.
Last week, we started to get into the “rising action” of Mark. The part of the story where Jesus really meets—in a deep and meaningful way—the people, sees their pain, heals them; sees their circumstances, calms their storms. Jesus’ power seemed to escalate with each verse, and with that, his popularity. We start to see Jesus like, run away from crowds, but still find people are following him everywhere he goes.
This week, we’re getting to the end of that rising action and reaching the gospel’s climax: where Jesus asks his closest followers the big question—the question we’ve been asking ourselves for weeks: “who do you say that I am?”
The five pericopes
In the five pericopes we read—the five little chunks of scripture—we saw Jesus’ interactions with the disciples, with the people of Israel, and with foreigners—and at times, his interactions are puzzling. But after spending the last week meditating on this, I think there’s a common thread here: Jesus invites everyone around to listen for, or at least believe in, the song of hope that Emily Dickinson would write about 1,822 years later.
Hemophiliac woman
In the first passage, we meet a woman who we first know only by her affliction: she’s been hemorrhaging blood for twelve years. There is, of course, some distance between us and the authors of scriptures when it comes to knowledge of medicine, so we don’t exactly know what caused this or what this is… maybe she has hemophilia and even the slightest cuts are quite dangerous; maybe she has PCOS and is experiencing years of menstrual bleeding. Who knows.
What I do know is that, if I were in her shoes, I would think that was the worst. Twelve straight years of a condition, and I honestly think I would have already given up hope for a cure. I would be the person insisting my life would forever be a life where I’m constrained by all the ways that a condition like that, in particular before modern medicine, would interrupt my life.
And to be clear, this isn’t just self-flagellation; I think I’d have given up hope because I know how I am when I get sick. I am a chronic sufferer of what they call “man fever,” and every time my temperature creeps up above 100, I find myself laying on my couch, eating Ramen, watching Maury reruns, and thinking, “is this how I die??”
I have had seasonal allergies as long as I can remember, but for four years now, every time I forget to refill my Flonase I am convinced I have COVID… until I take a negative test, and remember that COVID is real, but so is the empty container of allergy medicine in my medicine cabinet that I keep doing nothing about.
So suffice it to say, if I were this woman, I don’t think I would be like “if only I touch his clothes, I will be healed.” I think I would be like “maybe Jesus can help all of them, but not me.”
But somehow, she heard that thing with feathers in her soul, or at least believed it was there even when she couldn’t hear it, and found the strength she needed to crawl through the crowds—maybe risking someone scraping up against her and causing her to bleed, or maybe even through the chronic pain associated with her illness—and insist that Jesus could heal her.
And he does. The thing she hopes for turns out to be totally real.
Then Jesus calls out the same thing I seem to constantly call out when I’m at my brother’s house with his four children: “who touched me?”
The woman, afraid, I imagine, of what the consequences of her using of Jesus’ power without permission might be, sheepishly identifies herself.
And Jesus responds with care: “Daughter, your faith has made you well.”
Not “I have made you well.”
“Your faith.”
Your belief in the song of hope.
Feeding of the five thousand
Then we cut to the next pericope.
This crowd simply won’t stop following Jesus. Jesus tries to get away to a remote place to be alone, but they find where he is going and get there first. They simply must hear every word this man speaks. I imagine if this were happening today, they would all be like, on Discord or in a Facebook group or something sharing each rumor they hear about where Jesus is going next. These people are more intense than Taylor Swift fans (I should know; I am one).
So when the disciples come to Jesus and say “these people haven’t eaten, we need to send them away,” I can’t help but wonder if that is less about their compassion for the people and maybe more about their fear of riots or something.
Then Jesus says, you know, when people are hungry, there is an option besides casting them out: you could feed them.
And the disciples are maybe confused, maybe overwhelmed at the whole idea, maybe starting to think Jesus is a little disconnected from reality.
They ask Jesus a question I can’t help but read as sarcastic: “Should we go and buy bread for two hundred silver coins?”
Like, “remember how you’re homeless, Jesus? And remember how we gave up our jobs to follow you?” “We can’t exactly afford to cater these crowds, and they’re going to riot soon.”
Jesus tells them, “go count how much food you have.” They come back and tell Jesus “five loaves, and two fish.”
I almost imagine them feeling like, a little validated there. “See, Jesus! We told you we didn’t have enough! Now can we send them away?”
But Jesus continues on as if that’s a totally normal thing. He blesses the meal, then tells the disciples to go organize everyone into groups and feed them.
And then the miracle happens.
And it turns out, they have enough food.
More than enough, even.
The traditional interpretation of this is that it’s a miracle Jesus performs over nature – bread appearing from nowhere. I think that’s definitely one legitimate way of interpreting the passage.
But when we read this at bible study, another interpretation came up—Sara Davis Anderson wondered if maybe this isn’t a miracle over nature, but instead a miracle of community organizing. If maybe what happened was the disciples calmed down, took a breath, got people into groups, and realized that their anxiety had caused them to rush the counting earlier, to not inventory everything, and there was actually already enough among them—there were actually plenty of people who were ready to share with their neighbors as soon as the disciples created a structure for them to do so.
That interpretation fascinates me.
Cause if that’s the miracle… What if Jesus was trying to get the disciples to do earlier was to just stop letting catastrophizing about scarcity drown out the song of hope. To stop worrying so thoroughly about the worst possible outcome before they even gave the community a chance to meet the need. To listen, not to their anxiety, but the song of hope sung from the thing with feathers perched in their soul.
Walking on water
Then the next scene:
Jesus really wants his alone time. He sends the disciples away in the boat – maybe because he wants alone time even from them, or maybe as like, a decoy so the crowds go across the sea instead. Like how the presidential motorcade always includes two limos so you never know which one really has the president in it.
Evening comes, and Jesus just casually decides to go “pass by” the disciples, walking across the sea as if it were dry ground. Maybe that’s just because it was the fastest route to where he was going… or maybe because he wanted what happens next to happen.
The disciples see Jesus walking on water and think it is a ghost. They’re afraid!
But Jesus calms them down and says “have courage!” “Have hope!” “Listen for the song!” “The thing you’re scared of—the thing that seems like it’s just the worst—is really me at work. You didn’t get it earlier, but I’m gonna give you another chance to see that things aren’t quite as bad as you seem to think they are!”
Syrophonecian woman
Then the fourth pericope:
Jesus goes into a private house, hoping desperately to hide himself from his groupies, but no such luck. A woman whose young daughter had some kind of demon possessing her came from afar and fell at his feet, insisting on her daughter being healed.
And maybe in that moment, Jesus was just annoyed by her. Or maybe he was catastrophizing—”I don’t have time to heal the whole world!!” Come on man, I barely have time to heal my own people.
Or maybe Jesus wanted to see something. Or even to show something.
Jesus shuts this woman down and calls her a dog. Jesus’ words here are harsh, bordering on a slur. It’s hard to soften them.
If I were this woman, I think any chance I had of believing in the song of hope would be gone the moment I heard Jesus’ rejection. Any faint sound of birds chirping in my soul would be drown out by the sound of Jesus calling me a dog.
I think I’d run away in tears, wondering how I’m supposed to believe that things could ever get better.
But that’s not what she did.
Instead, she looks deep in her soul and says “that bird is still singing somewhere,”—or maybe even—“that bird may have lost its voice, but I’m going to pick up the melody now.”
She claps back at Jesus, and when she does, he tells her, “because of this,” she may go and trust her daughter’s been healed; the demon is gone.
Because of her insistence.
Because she didn’t let fears about a catastrophic future stop her from having hope.
She didn’t let herself believe that her current state had to be her final fate.
And her daughter was healed.
Peter
Then, the final scene in this week’s narrative. The one we’ve all been waiting for. The climax.
Jesus asks his disciples, “who do others say that I am?” and they tell him all these things that are like, a big deal, but not the Messiah.
Then he asks them who they say he is and Peter responds: the Christ. The Anointed One. The Messiah.
Jesus tells them not to tell anyone… but that he’s going to die soon, he’s going to suffer greatly, and he will be killed, but don’t worry he’ll rise again… he’s starting to be frank about some potentially scary news.
And Peter—the very one who named a big hopeful thing in Jesus a moment ago—rebukes Jesus.
I don’t know what Peter was rebuking him for; what Peter was saying. But it clearly made Jesus upset.
I wonder if Peter was catastrophizing. If he was saying “no, no, you don’t get to die. You are the one we’ve waited for, and you’re here, and you don’t get to leave! That would be the worst! No!”
And I wonder if what upset Jesus was maybe less the specific statement, and more about the fact that – having seen all the miracles so far, having seen all these stories of people catastrophizing and things still working out, having seen even the “worst” things imaginable – an apparent ghost, Jesus telling a desperate woman “no” – happen and turn around in the end into healing… having seen all of that, Peter still wouldn’t just listen to the song of hope, wouldn’t allow himself to believe that better things were still possible? That a single defeat would not be an ultimate loss, that his current state—or maybe even his fears about a future state—would not be his final fate.
Conclusion
So when Jesus says “you are not setting your mind on God’s interests,” maybe that’s like, “you are not setting your mind on hope; you are not hearing the God that Will Reagan calls the background song of the universe; you are not trusting in the thing that Emily Dickinson says perches on your soul. You are too distracted by the limited view you’re able to see right now.”
And I wonder if maybe Jesus isn’t asking not just, “who do you say that I am,” but “who do you hope that I am?” “Who will you still say I am even when it feels like I’m not here?”
“What do you believe-beyond-belief about me?”
And church, I wonder if we can ask ourselves those questions.
Who do we say Jesus is?
Who do we hope Jesus is?
And who will we insist Jesus is, even when the song of hope has been muffled by all the stuff that suffocates our souls?
Amen?