Confront the Comfortable

Transcript is AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Welcome to church, everybody. My name is Matt Moberg. I am grateful that we have a community here that continues to show up to this space and the worship program where we try to dive into our text. We have a sacred text that belongs to us as a people, as we try to root our story inside of that wider story. But before we go to that place, I wanna say the thing that we say every time. If you don't hear anything else, this is the only thing you pick out from this space tonight, please go home with this and step into your Mondays with this tightly tied to your chest: Who you are is more important than what you do, even if what you do gets more attention than who you are. Say it one more time. Who you are—as a person, as a child of God, as an embodiment of enoughness—who you are is more important than what you do, even if what you do gets more attention than who you are. 

Now, with that in mind, in fidelity to that truth, before I do something for you and we dive into a furthering of our Mark 1 text, I gotta tell you something about me, if it's all right. I'm very grateful for y'all. I'm also very tired, so I apologize if I cry spontaneously nowhere right now. As many of y'all know though, last Thursday, my boy Wyatt woke up Friday, Mom? Dad? Was it Friday night? He was over at your place, got a call at 3:00 AM and my 10 year old Wyatt woke up with stomach pains, keeling over, tears, fears, anxiety. What is happening? And long story short, and it's a longer story, but I'll keep it short, he's been in the hospital since that last Friday, till this past Thursday.

But from the time that he went in till the time that he came out, you all have held us so fricking well. Through prayers, words of encouragement, gift cards, grocery trips. I mean, amidst the chaos, I don't want to just go like onto some like text and just talk about, here's what I'm thinking about some sacred text that maybe we can apply. I want to tell you about how you have been the embodiment of Christ in my life. And that is the truest thing I can say tonight is that you guys have carried my family and so on behalf of me, my wife Lauren, who right now is at home with our other sick kids, Graham, who has 102 temp now, it just feels like it's one thing after another. But that is what it is. I wanna say thank you all. Like we are grateful, we're frustrated. We don't know all the results from Wyatt's tests and what was actually happening, but we're grateful. We are, exhausted, but we're grateful. We are so grateful for you. And, and so thank you for that. 

I was thinking about it this past week. Y'all mind if I turn my notes off and we’ll just talk tonight? Debbie gets nervous—she just raised her eyebrows. Okay. I was thinking about this past week though. Inevitably, when you are a dad…any parents that have had kids in hospitals? Yeah, a lot of y'all. There is something of a different kind of vulnerability, something of a different kind of anxiety. The edges seem a little bit more sharp when you are a parent sitting next to your kid and they're writhing in pain and they're looking at you with the fear in their eyes going like, “Can you do anything or something and whatnot?” And I don't know how to do anything or something or whatnot. And I look at them. There is something that inevitably makes you think, “I'm weak. I I don't, I can't fix this particular problem. Like I've come so far. But here was where I stop. I I can't go much, I can't carry you beyond this point.” And I don't think it's limited to dads, but I can only speak as a dad. It kills you. It fricking kills you to know like, “I don't know how to take away the pain that you have right now. Done everything we could so far, nurses in tow, like we've tried everything to make you stop writhing in pain, make you feel a little bit better, but I don't know how to, I don't know how to intervene. So all I can do is stay by your side, talk you through the pain and make it okay.”

Eventually, the peak moment for us was on, I want to say, Wednesday night? It all blurs together where Wyatt was at the utmost pain the first time. He showed fear in front of the nurses and the doctors who rushed into the room at 3:00 AM in the morning. It was the first time where I, after he fell asleep from the struggle at hand, I stayed awake. And I just thought about all of these things and thought about the idea of “if there was anything I could do right now, if is there any way I could spend myself right now? If I had one wish pushed into a corner and you're asking me what's one thing?” Give my kid some comfort, he's terrified, he's scared, he's in pain, (he's good now, to be clear, context-wise), but all I wanted to do was provide him with, um, comfort, which inevitably after he did fall asleep from the struggle at hand, it made me think a lot about comfort. Just thinking about the role that comfort has in our lives. 

And on that Wednesday might've been a Thursday, probably was a Thur-Friday. I don't actually remember anymore. Who am I? Where am I? It's all a blur. But on that night when I could not fall asleep after seeing that look in my eldest child's eyes, I started listening to Debbie's message from the prior weekend. As many of y'all know, we are going through Mark, the totality of the gospel in the year that is before us. We're going through 1 through 16 every verse, not just the highlight reel. We're going to, we're going to tackle it all. We're gonna dive into it piece by piece. 

And so not being able to be present in church in this space with us last weekend, I listened to Debbie's message. She told the story in front of the kids and the fam about how Jesus stepped onto the shores of Galilee. And he called out to the fellas in the boats and he said, “I want you to leave the sea for the sand because you got a calling before you that is far greater than the one that's that you know thus far.” And Debbie made a point to say that Mark didn't know Jesus. John Mark did not, he didn't like share coffee with Jesus. They weren't pen pals, accountability partners, or anything of that sort. All Mark knew was what Peter first told him. And Peter said that at once and without delay, when they heard Jesus say, “Come follow me” they just came. 

Now, I would just suggest that maybe that's not true. I mean, if these are human beings, we're trying to understand this story from our human perspective, which is the only one we have available to us right now. You're telling me right now that Peter and Andrew, James and John, when they saw this stranger from Nazareth, this son of a woodworker, show up on the shores and say, “Hey, come, hey, y'all on the boats, you guys in your, your career, you're doing just fine? You're making ends meet? You're doing the thing. And James and John, especially you two who are with your dad, it was dad's business. You are inheriting your family business?” You're telling me that when Jesus said, “Hey, come follow me,” they just hopped into the water and waded to the shore and they're like, there was no flinch attached whatsoever? I don't think that's true. 

When I was up in the hospital and I was thinking about the matters of comfort and I was listening, listening to the words that Debbie said about the first part of Mark, I thought that had to have been the most comfortable experience. Because there is no way that when the first two boys let go of their nets, not knowing what was next, when they hopped into the water and they waded to the shores, are you serious when you say that they didn't flinch at all? And they're like, “this is all fine. This makes sense. Nobody’s done it prior to in our village, like in our family line, in our context, nobody's actually ventured down the path of the unknown. But yeah, that’s fine. This guy said come, we're gonna come.” Uncomfortable. You tell me that James and John, the sons of Father Zebedee, when they heard Jesus on the shore say, “come from the sea to the sand and follow me.” You’re telling me, when they made that progress from the boat to the sand, they didn't at any point turn around and see Father Z crying going like, “this was our future. This is our legacy. You guys are just gonna walk out on it?” You don't think they ever questioned that and go maybe this wasn't our best play. 

My paradigm is obviously biased. I was in a place of discomfort, but when I read this text and I heard Debbie's words, I thought “they must have been in that same place.” They had to have been in that same place. And I know Mark is very like big on like we were here and then we were there. It was immediate, at once, without delay bada bing, bada boom. He's the first of the gospels. He's trying to get you the highlight reel. He's not trying to dive into the depths of the conversation at hand. But at some point, Mark must have pressed on something with these fellas and said, “Is your comfort with where you are, costing you your calling of where you're supposed to be? Is your familiarity with what is, costing you the future that I have for you?” We don't catch that side conversation. It's weird if Jesus just shows up outta nowhere, it says, come follow me. And they come. You know, there was more conversation. 

But the number one hindrance to them actually saying yes to the story at hand had to have been comfort, had to have been familiarity, had to have been the thing that they've always known is what they will always go about doing. This is important to acknowledge, especially as we progress through Mark. 

I was telling my wife this this week because it struck me. And things shouldn't strike you, by the way, at 2:00 AM when you're in hospital and you're kind of delusional and low on sleep because it's probably not revelatory, you're just exhausted. And so don't write that down, but it did. And it stuck me when I had a full night's sleep as well. And the thing about it was over and over in the gospel of Mark if you study this text at all, Jesus is always confrontational. That's not the Jesus that many of us grew up with. 

Many of us have a caricature of Jesus in our minds where Jesus is speaking, you know, uh, love songs in our ears during the day and he's fluffing our pillows at night and he is giving you like seven “I am” statements that you can feel good about yourself and face the new day tomorrow. He's a comforter in a lot of different circumstances. But if you read the gospel of Mark again and again, just like he did with these four boys in their boats, he confronts them in their “fine” and he invites them into their future. Every single time, we see that story play out. And so let's be perfectly clear about what is actually happening.

At one point Jesus does say that like “When I'm gone, when my story on earth is done and my time is all but run out, I will send a Holy Spirit who will be known as the comforter and she will meet you in all of your needs.” The Holy Spirit comes to comfort. But Jesus came to confront. Jesus came to face all the things that we don't want to face. I've said this 10,000 times, but this is the prophetic work that Jesus was tasked with because it's one thing to be a prophet like Moses and tell the enslaved people that y'all could be free. But it's another thing to be a prophet like Jesus and tell the people who thought they were free that they were actually enslaved. That was a sacred work according to the gospel of John Mark that Jesus takes on. 

He invites these fellows—begrudgingly, slow crawl, we don't actually know—to come along with him. And the first scene, number one, like day one on the job as they follow this stranger from Nazareth is this Patti, can you put that text up there? “They went to Capernaum and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went to the synagogue and began to teach.” Lemme pause right there real quick. 'cause Bill Wright will talk to me afterwards if I don't say this out loud. You ought to know that Mark is big on symbolism. He wants you to be perfectly clear about a few different things. 

Where was Jesus prior to? He was out in the woods. Thank you for all of those answers coming in at one time. It was hard to distinguish who said what, but he was in the woods. Which in the Jewish imagination, in their narrative of the world, that was the marginalized territory. Jesus went from the marginalization of the woods to here He is not just at the synagogue, which is the center of Jewish life, but also on the Sabbath, which is the center of Jewish time, space, time, marginalization. Now we're coming in, eventually he'll go back out to catch his breath again. But he's coming into Capernaum and he's stepping into not just a sacred space, but also a sacred time. 

And he started talking and the people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority. Authority. That Greek word there is exousian, which means original material out of the original source. He's speaking as if you had a firsthand account. He's not just like reciting what other rabbis had told him. He's telling you like, “I was there, I saw this unfold. I can speak as if I saw it from my own two eyes.” That's what he's talking about. When people saw him, they were impressed because of the authenticity and the authorship of the things he was speaking about. 

Stop right there though, real quick. Y'all need to know, and this may be the most important thing you need to know, is that Debbie and I were there a couple years ago. Right, Deb? [Shows picture] there you are, spring chicken, there you are. We were in the middle of that synagogue. It is still standing. And Debbie, I don't if you remember, but like Jon Huckins, who was our leader at that point, when we went into the city of Capernaum, one of us said, “Oh, so this is kuh-PER-num. This is where Jesus, in the brief moment that he had in the public eye, was doing ministry of any kind. This was like the home base.” And Jon—it felt arrogant at the time, but it's helpful right now—he goes like “Actually it's kaffer-NAY-um.” And I said, “Just chill out, man. We all call it kuh-PER-num. Get off your high horse, k?” And he goes, “No, no, no. But like it IS Kapharnaoum.” 

And the reason why that's important is if you don't get a breath in between the “Kaphar” and the “naoum,” you're gonna miss the whole point of the town that's at hand. Kaphar means village. Naoum means comfort. This is the village of comfort. So when Jesus comes into town and he steps into the synagogue—a synagogue which, mind you is has one overseer that sees the whole thing. Not a paid staff, not a hired position, but one overseer who says like, I'm trying to make sure that the affairs of the synagogue are kept in order and everything is running as it should. If there's a guest, preacher, guest rabbi, somebody who's gonna come in town, they have a word to share, let's go. I'm in. Let's put them in the pulpit. That's why Jesus got such easy access to that pulpit on that day. 

So Jesus comes into that space at the center of the synagogue, which is the center of all of Jewish life. At the risk of being redundant, let me say it one more time. Synagogue, Sabbath in particular, was the center of all Jewish life. Kids were educated all throughout the week at the synagogue. That's where it all went down. On Saturday morning during the Sabbath, they would spend their days there at the synagogue, worshiping. Worship, prayer, teaching, all the above, it would happen at the synagogue. Jesus strolls into the pulpit at the synagogue in the middle of Capernaum and Patti, what’s the text say next?

“And just then, a man in their synagogue, who is possessed by an impure spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the holding one of God.” That is, in the enchanted world of ancient first century Israel, one of the understandings at the time was, if you're dealing with spiritual enemies of any kind, one of the military tactics that you employ is you would name them and then you would name the hierarchy that they hold in the spiritual realms. So recorded before us in John Mark's account of the story of Jesus Christ is that there is a spirit in the church that speaks up and says, “You're Jesus of Nazareth, holy one of God.” 

But at first before it says any of that, it says, this is “their synagogue.” This is their center axis upon which Jewish life in that particular village all ran around. Thinking about comfort, thinking about discomfort, thinking about our ability to handle discomfort, I thought about that part right there. Jesus is a guest speaker who's occupying the pulpit. There'll be a brief moment. Yes, he's gonna camp out here. Yes, this will be his home base. But this man, if he's a part of this village, he's a regular. You know what I'm saying? You, you don't just go to the synagogue if it's Christmas or it's Easter or you're feeling like it or you're well rested or whatever the thing might be, you got a friend that like peer pressured you into it. You go all the time. This is the center upon which all Jewish life revolved around. 

And so this man who had impure spirit, and some people call it like an unclear spirit or unclean spirit, other like translations will say he was a demon that possessed him. Others like King James will say, there was a devil inside of him. It does not matter what you actually want to choose to name it as—it's dysfunction. This man had a dysfunction he walked into the church service with time and time again. And this is the first time that man shouted out something saying, “What do you gotta do with me? Why are you messing with me?” 

For a long time, prior to this time, as a regular, in the rhythm of the village, that dysfunction was comfortable being in the church. Having that habit, having that problem, having that addiction, having that habitual way of living that you know is not good for you, but you're gonna do it all the same. It was comfortable coming to church, but Jesus did not come to comfort. Jesus came to confront. And there was something about the word made flesh when it occupied that pulpit that made the person in the back pew go, “What are you doing here? What's going on right now? I thought we were like keeping our Ps and Qs, tucking our shirts in doing the right thing?” Something about this man felt exposed. 

Why is it? You know, please don't get distracted by the fact there's a demon in this story. Some people get so scared. They're looking for the exits right now, they wanna find a way out here. We're not gonna do anything weird, I promise you right now, okay? But don't miss the fact that there was dysfunction that was coddled and comforted and made to be normal inside of the sanctuary of the living God. When the word made flesh occupied the pulpit before the people there was something about this person that was within the person that said, “This is not gonna be hospitable to me.” 

Is it hospitable to you? Shoot, y'all know I've been transparent with you from the moment I first stepped in here, right, Maggie? At times too transparent. You guys know I got my dysfunctions. Sorry, no, you know, Debbie has her dysfunctions. Thank you, Becca, for that clarification. Why is it that people can come into the presence of the living God—and there's no space that you're gonna enter into where you're not in the presence of the living God. But what is it about sacred spaces like this where the unclean parts of our lives don't shriek out? What is it that you're pretending not to know right now? 

I mean, the reality is, dysfunctions are very comfortable. You know, I mean like we live our lives thinking that Christ came to provide us comfort. And so we think that all of our dysfunctions that provide us comfort, they have to be somewhat in line or in cahoots with the Christ. But I can tell you as an alcoholic in recovery, that not every comfort provided to me is good for me. I can tell you as somebody who was at the peak of my anxiety this past week—where I stayed clean all the way through, been clean for a moment now—I still slowed down when I parked up next to a liquor store and thought “There's a breath of fresh air inside of there that would be comforting”

This man in this space, he felt called out by the very presence of Jesus, and he was confronted: “Is this who you actually are? Or were you born for something bigger? Were you born for something different than this?” This past week, when Wyatt was in the hospital, at the peak of his anxiety and the pain that was all unfolding, he had morphine in his system, lots of Tylenol, ibuprofen, all those things, trying to alleviate his pain. But there was one particular point where everything came to a head where I was the one who was asking nurses “Do we have any more of that morphine like in supply? Or are we done with that now?” And they're like, “We need to teach him how to learn to breathe.” And so in the midst of his pain, in the midst of his tears, in the midst of his crying, “Dad, is this it for me?” He had nurses alongside of him, just like the Holy Spirit comes alongside of you and says, “Breathe.” 

Discomfort, disturbance, confrontation, the things in life that make you face the things you don't want to face. All of the dysfunctions in our life coming to the surface. “Breathe.” Listen to it. Jesus steps into that pulpit. The man responds, he throws himself on the floor because that's what all of our things do, right? All of our dysfunctions, they go down with a good fight, if they're gonna go down at all. They're gonna make a hot mess of the scene. 

But just because you are uncomfortable, don't immediately assign that discomfort to the work of some kind of darkness that might be the presence of God in your life right now. We can sing every Sunday night when we get together in this space about how we love Jesus. We're gonna walk on water. What's that “Oceans” song? That's been a minute now, I'm dated. 

But will you still wanna walk on that water if Jesus comes into your space and says, “I need you to look at that. I need you to acknowledge the thing that is killing everybody, but you're comfortable inside of it.” Isn't it beautiful when we walk through the text of Mark slowly, the things that might come to the surface for us individually? Pray with me. [Prays] 

God, you are good, Lord. We are grateful, God. We think about the ways that oftentimes we can cling to our comforts at the cost of our calling. Give us courage to be disturbed. Give us courage to say out loud what we've tried to keep quiet. Give us courage to be uncomfortable, to keep breathing, but to not be satisfied with the JV-level of a story when we were built for something more. Christ, you are so good. And Christ, we are grateful. In Jesus’ name, all of God's children we pray. Amen.