The Fame of Jesus (Mark #23)

How many of you have ever spotted a celebrity out in the wild? Not on a stage — I mean at the coffee shop, at the mall, and suddenly there is somebody famous standing right there.

A couple of hands.

I was listening to a podcast a few years ago where they do a question of the week, and one week they asked for celebrity sighting stories. I felt completely left out. I live in Iowa. We do not have celebrity sightings here. We have deer sightings.

The closest I ever came was in Washington, D.C. I had flown out with a friend for a conference, and we were sitting in the airport waiting to fly home when he says, “That’s Joe Theismann.”

If you do not know, Theismann was the longtime Pro Bowl quarterback for Washington’s football team — and is probably most famous for the horrific leg injury that ended his career.

Now, seeing the longtime Washington quarterback in the Washington airport makes sense. But it was not enough for my friend to simply point him out. And I should mention that all I ever saw was the back of the guy’s head, so I was not convinced.

My friend says, “Let’s follow him.”

So we grab our bags and start walking through the airport trailing this man like a pair of extremely awkward stalkers. Five or ten minutes later, the man he is convinced is Joe Theismann walks out the exit — and we realize we cannot follow him out there without going back through security and possibly missing our flight. So we turned around and went back to our gate.

He was convinced. I was not, mostly because nobody else stopped the guy. No one asked for a photo. He walked through that airport completely undisturbed.

So I have never had the experience you see in videos — where someone spots a celebrity and cannot stop grinning, cannot believe they are in the presence of that much greatness, wants a photo, wants an autograph, tries to say something and it comes out sounding ridiculous.

I have never had that chance to embarrass myself.

Today we get to watch some people who are absolutely in awe — because in Mark 6 a whole region encounters Jesus. But what they do with that awe is very different from what we would expect. Instead of running at Him to get something for themselves, they do something else entirely. And I think it is exactly what every follower of Jesus should do.

Because my hope for you today is not that you leave in awe of me — I am not sure that has ever happened after a sermon anyway. It is that you leave in awe of Jesus.

Mark 6:53–56

“When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.”

How They Got There

Last week Jesus sent His disciples into a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee while He went up a mountain to pray. On the way across they hit a fierce headwind — Mark says they were “making headway painfully.” It reached the middle of the night. And from the mountainside Jesus perceived what was happening, came down, walked across the water to them, got into the boat, and the wind stopped.

They had been headed for Bethsaida. But here in verse 53 they land at Gennesaret instead.

Look at a map and Bethsaida sits on the north-northeast side of the Sea of Galilee. Some scholars believe there was a second Bethsaida farther east and a bit south, in Gentile territory. Either way, verse 53 tells us they ended up at Gennesaret. Maybe they went to Bethsaida first and nothing happened worth recording. Maybe Jesus simply changed course — you have learned your lesson in that wind, I am God, let us go this direction instead. We do not know.

What I learned this week is that Gennesaret was a well-known region famous for agriculture — something like the Napa Valley of that land. When I hear “agricultural” I picture sparse population and open fields, but this was actually densely populated and highly regarded. Some people in that region did not even call it the Sea of Galilee — they called it Lake Gennesaret and claimed it as their own. Luke uses that name in Luke 5:1.

And that is where Jesus lands.

They Immediately Recognized Him

Verse 54 says the people recognized Him at once.

Remember what era this is. No television. No internet. Nobody had been scrolling celebrity photos the night before or seen His face on a magazine at the grocery store. There was no mechanism for spreading someone’s image.

So either some of these people had already been somewhere Jesus taught and recognized Him on sight — or they were very good detectives, watching a man step off a boat with twelve followers and putting it together: this is Jesus, the miracle worker.

And a miracle worker He was. Verses 55 and 56 show Him healing constantly.

Two Details You Should Recognize

Notice that they brought their sick on their beds.

If you have been tracking with us, that should ring a bell. Back in chapter 2 there was a paralyzed man on his mat whose four friends carried him to Jesus. They could not get in the house where Jesus was teaching, so they climbed onto the flat roof, tore a hole through the mud and sticks, and lowered their friend down.

And now here at the end of chapter 6, people are doing precisely the same thing — carrying their friends on mats to Jesus.

Then verse 56: wherever He went, in villages, cities, and countryside, they laid out the sick in the marketplaces and begged that they might touch even the fringe of His garment.

Which should also ring a bell. In chapter 5, while Jesus was on His way to heal the daughter of a synagogue leader, a woman who had suffered bleeding for twelve years pushed through the crowd, quietly touched His robe, and was healed instantly.

So why is Mark pointing this out? Why show us people doing exactly what was done in chapter 2 and exactly what the woman did in chapter 5?

Because humans are copycats.

The Longboard, the Juice, and the Song

A couple of weeks ago a man in Idaho was driving to work when his car simply died on him, which apparently happened to him fairly regularly. He had a longboard in the car — a very long skateboard — so he grabbed it so he could still make it to work on time. He was also drinking a bottle of cranberry juice as part of his breakfast.

It was a gorgeous morning, so he propped his phone up and filmed himself gliding down the road, drinking his juice, singing along to an old Fleetwood Mac song.

The video went viral. Over two million views in about a week. And immediately people began imitating it — including Mick Fleetwood himself, who filmed his own version longboarding down a sidewalk with a bottle of the juice, singing along. Which pushed it further, until the juice company’s chief executive made his own video. The company decided this was extraordinary advertising and gave the man a brand-new truck so his car would stop dying on him — which cost them far less than buying the exposure would have.

And everybody made their own version. There is one out there of military personnel filming themselves in a helicopter, singing along, drinking the juice.

Why? Because we are copycats.

You see a video you like, you imitate it. You see someone wearing something you think looks great, you go buy it. You hear someone rave about a show, you go watch it.

So I believe that when people heard what Jesus had been doing, they wanted to reproduce the conditions. A man in chapter 2 was carried on a mat and healed? Then we will carry our loved one on a mat. A woman touched the fringe of His robe and was healed? Then we only need to touch His robe. If we copy it exactly, maybe we get the same result.

Sometimes God Honors the Copycats

Mark does not comment on this, but I want to.

Every single human being God has placed on this earth is unique. You might have a doppelgänger somewhere. You might even be an identical twin. And we could still take fingerprints and DNA and find the differences. You are unique.

Which means God will very likely work uniquely in your life. Just because God worked a certain way in someone else’s life does not mean He will do it the same way in yours. And just because God used a particular book, or a film, or a specific conversation to bring you to Jesus does not mean He will use that same thing for your friend. God is a unique God.

But sometimes He does honor the copycats — and we see it right here. These people are reproducing what happened earlier in Mark, and Jesus heals them anyway. He knows their hearts. He knows their desperation. He loves them.

The danger comes when we copy someone else because we think we have located a magic formula. If I say the same words. If I go through the same motions. If I wear the same thing. If I do exactly these things, I will get the same miracle.

God very often does not work that way — because what He wants is not your faith in your words, or your actions, or your methods. He wants your faith in Him. So pursue Him.

And if you copy someone and God blesses it, wonderful. And if He does not, it is not because He is not good and not because you were not good enough. It is because God is working in your life differently.

But There Is One Thing Here You Should Copy

It is in verse 55.

Verse 54: Jesus gets out of the boat, and the people immediately recognize Him. And then the very first phrase of verse 55: “and they ran about the whole region.”

Sit with that for a second.

Jesus steps onto the shore. They recognize Him instantly. He is the most famous figure in their world. What do we do when we spot someone famous? We run toward them. We want the autograph, the photo, a moment in the glow.

And this is Jesus. Most of our celebrities are famous for singing well or acting well, and there is nothing we can actually get from them. These people had every reason to converge on Him — they wanted healing, they wanted teaching. They were desperate.

And instead, they turn around and run away — out into the whole region.

Why? Because they want to tell everyone else about Him.

When you know about a good thing, you cannot help but share it. You see a great movie and you tell someone at work or at school. You hear a great record and you text it to a friend. You read a great book and you start recommending it. When you experience a good thing, you share it.

These people realized Jesus is a good thing. So instead of running to Him to take what they could get for themselves, they ran out to tell everyone that He was here.

Why We Do Not Do This

If you follow Jesus and you know He is a good thing, you need to share Him. If you understand Jesus and His gospel, you should not be able to keep it to yourself.

And yet we do. We do not tell people about Jesus because we do not want to look odd. We do not tell people because we do not want to impose our beliefs on anyone. We do not tell people because our culture insists that faith is a private thing.

So we might admit to being “spiritual.” We might admit we went to church on Sunday. But we rarely get to the place where we actually talk about Jesus personally.

Now understand: the people of Gennesaret risked real rejection. We have already watched the religious leaders in Mark reject Jesus, and those leaders held enormous power.

Go to John 9 and you find the story of a man born blind. Jesus spits into the dirt, makes mud, spreads it on his eyes, and sends him to wash in a pool. He does, and for the first time in his life he can see.

But the miracle happened on the Sabbath, which meant somebody worked on the Sabbath. This deeply troubled the Pharisees, so they hauled the man before their council and demanded to know how it happened. He told them. They decided he was lying. So they brought in his parents.

His parents know this is their son. They are astonished — our boy can see. They have heard what happened. But they also know that if they so much as hint that Jesus is the Messiah, they will be put out of the synagogue. Excommunicated.

So read John 9 and you watch two parents living in fear. They are staring at the evidence of what Jesus did for their own child, and they are terrified to say a word. Their answer is essentially: he is an adult, ask him — pushing the whole thing onto their son to protect themselves.

The people of Gennesaret faced the same exposure. Telling the region that Jesus was there could get them rejected, could get them thrown out of the synagogue, could carry real consequences.

And we do not see them running back whispering, psst, He is here, grab Grandma quietly and let us sneak out there, maybe He will heal her.

They ran into the villages shouting it. Jesus is here. The miracle worker. The teacher. He is here — everyone, come on, let’s go.

Because they knew He was a good thing, and a good thing has to be shared.

Which Is Why I Am Not Quite as Excited as You Think

This is our last Sunday in this space before we move into our new building. And I need to say something about that.

Do not misunderstand me — I am genuinely, deeply excited. The building is a good thing and I am looking forward to sharing it. I think some of our most effective ministry is still ahead of us in that space. It is going to be wonderful.

But as people have congratulated me and sent messages, I can sense something underneath the kudos — a sense that we have arrived.

And in my mind, we have not arrived. When we started this church, the goal was never a building. The goal was to see spiritually disconnected people find and follow Jesus. And there are still a great many spiritually disconnected people out there who need Him. So no, we have not arrived.

Besides, we are used to worshiping anywhere. We have met in schools. We have met at the civic center. We have met outside. We have met at the fairgrounds. And in every one of those spaces we did exactly one thing: point people to Jesus.

So when we move into a space that is ours, nothing changes. We keep pointing people to Jesus.

Because that is what our world needs. We are still fighting over masks. Still fighting over race. Still fighting over politics. And that does not even touch what so many people are carrying privately.

Do you know that seasonal depression climbs sharply through fall and winter? A lot of marriages start to struggle in this stretch. Because of the pandemic, a great many people have lost work and are staring down financial crisis. There are health crises everywhere.

Our world is not sitting out there thinking, how wonderful, that church got a building. What they need to know is that we preach Jesus — I need to go there.

So I want us to be like the people of Gennesaret. I do not want us running around town known as the church with the new building. I want us known as the church that runs around telling people you have got to meet Jesus — because that is what all of this is about. And I believe the new building will help us do it more effectively. That is exactly why I think it is the right and wise step.

But who we are does not suddenly come to fruition now. The mission continues — because Jesus showed up on the shores of this earth and went to a cross to die our death and heal our spiritual disease. That is what our world has to hear.

So Run

Yes — run to Jesus. Some of you need that today. You are struggling. There is something going on inside you, whether from all the noise around you or from something deeper. Run to Him.

And as you run to Him and realize how good He is, realize the second half too: I need to go tell others. I need to run and let people know who Jesus is and what Jesus did. Because in the noise and chaos of this moment, that is what they need to hear.

Father, help us be that kind of church — a church that is all about Jesus, that puts His fame first.

I pray for the person who has never surrendered their life to You — that right now they would see You stepping out of that boat, recognize who You are, and come running. That they would see You on that cross dying for their sins, and surrender completely.

And I pray for the person who knows You but has not been living surrendered. Things have piled up. They have gotten wrapped up in work. They are struggling internally. Depression is settling in. They are fighting an addiction. Or they have simply gone complacent. Jesus, let them see You — how much You loved them, that You went to a cross to die for their sin, that You loved them enough not to stay dead but to come back to life so they could be fully embraced by You.

Help us be in awe of You. And as we recapture that awe, let us want to be near You — like the awkward stalker who follows You everywhere — because You are good, You are great, and we have to share You. Amen.