What Draws People to Jesus?

Sunday, July 21 2024 – Gospel, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, also Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 23, Ephesians 2:11-22

What draws people to Jesus?

That’s the key question I want us to think about today.

Now when I was last with you, two weeks ago, remember that Jesus had just gone back to his hometown where he experienced rejection and a loss of power. But then he turned right around and empowered his disciples, sending them out in pairs to go and teach and heal, professing the good news of the presence of God.

In between those happenings and where we pick up today, Mark inserts the story about John’s beheading, that Pastor Wogen had to preach on in my absence. I swear, I didn’t time it that way on purpose! But that insertion was a story from the past, and so today’s reading picks up right after the disciples have returned from their travels as itinerant preachers and healers.

They’re both exhilarated and exhausted by what they’d been able to accomplish, and so Jesus encourages them to rest and renew themselves by drawing them away to “a deserted place,” where they can recharge. We can tell by the way the text says that “many were coming and going” that they had been surrounded by crowds and chaos and hadn’t even had the time to eat.

Jesus and the disciples go off in a boat to that deserted place. But we’re told that people from “all the towns” around the Sea recognized them and rushed ahead of them.

I want to remind us here that most of Jesus’ ministry was centered around the Sea of Galilee. So many of the stories of feeding, teaching, and healing happen here. The storms too.

But if we were to think of this countryside as an insignificant backwater community, we would be wrong, because it was a very active area. According to a website called Got Questions,

In New Testament times, the Sea of Galilee was an important commercial area surrounded by Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Magdala, and Tiberias. Most of the roads in ancient Galilee passed near the sea, and many travelers crossed the Jordan Rift there. Its semi-tropical climate combined with the sulfur springs in Tiberias made the Sea of Galilee a popular health resort destination for sick people. Being the only significant freshwater lake in the region, the Sea of Galilee supported a flourishing fishing industry. Capernaum, a dominant setting in the ministry of Jesus, was the center of that fishing industry (Matthew 4:18–22; Mark 1:16–20; Luke 5:10, 11).”

Now we might also wonder why Jesus went to this area from Nazareth to center his ministry from the seaside town of Capernaum. Understanding the context of what had happened in that area over the ten years before Jesus began his ministry is crucial.

According to biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, Herod Antipas, ruler of the Jews and son of the Herod who tried to kill the baby Jesus, was trying to make himself a big man in the eyes of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, and so not only did he rename a town at the Sea Tiberius, but he moved his headquarters there. We might call him a sycophant, or a “self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite.”

Then Herod Antipas decided to commercialize the fishing industry at the Sea to benefit the elites in Rome. So, he contracted with the professional fishermen in the area to catch all the fish so it could be salted and sent to Rome. In so doing, he pushed out all the freelance fishermen and then taxed them heavily for any fish they took, just trying to survive. He basically ruined their livelihoods.

When Jesus established his ministry at the Sea of Galilee, it was a hotbed of anti-government animosity and unrest. And when he called fishermen to be his disciples, he was intentionally calling the men who were out of work and struggling to make ends meet and inviting them to witness a whole new economic reality, to fish for people instead. He invited them to see their lives in a whole new context of the kingdom of God.

We might imagine that this unrest in the area and anti-Roman feeling was a good part of why Jesus has compassion on the crowd and calls them “sheep without a shepherd.” Remember, as we see in both our first reading and our psalm today, shepherds were a metaphor for kings. The people around the Sea of Galilee were once again at the mercy of bad shepherds, bad rulers.

They had been abandoned.

When Jesus and the disciples go in the boat to Gennesaret, the crowds from all around were clamoring to be healed. And we’re told that even touching the fringe of Jesus’ garment brought them healing. Now the “fringe” referenced here is not just some kind of decorative hem on Jesus’ coat. It’s the fringes or “tzitzit” worn by observant Jewish men – and we can see these still worn today by many Orthodox Jews. Jesus is marked as a holy man and a worthy shepherd.

So now let’s come back to my question: What drew people to Jesus?

I believe what drew them was the healing, and the feeding, and then they stayed for the teaching.
What drew them was that they were seeing their friends and neighbors come back from being with Jesus and his disciples, now able to see, able to walk. Now restored to health. With their faces shining like the sun with joy.

Think about it. Jesus never told anyone what to believe. He showed them how to live. He taught them about God’s love and God’s kingdom. He asked them to care for each other and for the poor. And he showed them compassion, mercy, and love.

He healed their suffering. He healed their grief and their pain. He gave them the direct experience of new life.

People saw the changes in their loved ones, and they wanted some of that new-life spirit for themselves. Transformed lives are magnetic and powerful. Transformed people don’t have to shove their beliefs down anyone’s throat.

People are drawn to the healing power of Jesus like moths are drawn to a flame.

If we are meant – if we are chosen – to bring people to the light and life of Christ, then I believe we must first focus on healing. Anything else we might start with, in my eyes, will be ineffective.