How do you feel?

Matthew 4:23-24; Mark 1: 35-39; Luke 4:42-44

Mark 1

³⁷When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ ³⁸He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ ³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

We have a tendency to try and keep hold of the Jesus that seems to meet our own felt needs and wants. Felt need and wants are not necessarily an accurate reflection of our actual needs or what can be described as our normative needs. This is an important point. When we go to the doctor we may have a painful throat and in our own minds believe that we need an antibiotic to kill an infection. However the GP may inform us that we have a viral infection and an antibiotic would do us no good; in actual fact it may make us worse as we would suffer all the side effects of the medication but gain no benefit. We need to know our actual need, our normative need the state that under design conditions would produce health.    People can initially look to the story of scripture as a means of identifying how their needs should be met according to God’s creative plan; so far so good. However, there is a problem. If we do not know our actual or normative needs we have a tendency to experience the story in a self-affirming way instead of recognising how the bible defines our normative need as a first step. We simply pick and choose the prescription of values, attitudes, beliefs and practices that we are attracted to in the story of scripture. If we are angry, proud or have a poor self-esteem we will tend to see the story through those felt experiences. If we live in a culture which is imperialistic and acts as if its wealth and power is a blessing from God we might read certain passages of scripture in ways that affirms our culture while others point to scripture to demonstrate how unethical our culture is. We need some sort of base measure to which we can refer. We need a set of basic definitions and a source to accurately make these definitions clear or at least clearer. As reflective human beings we need to be able to exercise our God given ability to reflect on context from a context. We have to come to the point where we are prepared to allow the Holy Spirit through scripture define our need not just offer us a series of prescriptions to meet what we think our needs are. As disciples of Jesus Christ we follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Our needs are what He says they are and they should be met the way He teaches they should be met. We take the teachings of Jesus seriously and make sense of all passages of scripture through His teachings and practices. We therefore need to understand His cultural context and our own: we need to find the crossroads between His story and our own and live at that crossroads. This means we will not live in the past nor will we elevate the present or idealise the future; we will live in the tension of the story of scripture interacting with our own story. 

In today’s passage people wanted to keep Jesus with them (Luke). Seems an ok self-identified need and action plan; they wanted Jesus to stay that’s got to be the solution.  But Jesus said he had to share the story with others. The people seem to have got their self-assessment of need wrong! They do not understand the story. They want their diseases cured and that’s understandable but they are failing to understand their actual needs and the needs of others. They are confusing symptoms with diagnoses and what real prescription is needed. How are we reading the story of Jesus today? What does the bible say our actual needs are? It’s time for an inventory and plan of action!