Preached by Pastor Jeff Hamling

Sunday, November 15, 2020

November 15, 2020

Mark 3:13-19

Sacred Calling

Introduction:

I’ve always been fascinated by stories where some obscure, no-name person stumbles on to a great idea and then it catches fire and changes the world. For example,

• The Beatles played for the first time in 1960, in a dingy, obscure outlet in the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany. Hardly anybody was listening. But they found their unique sound. And went on to sell more albums than any artist to date in history.

• Steve Jobs was a 20-year old college drop out working out of his parents garage when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. In 2018, Apple became the first company to be valued at 1 trillion dollars. The world has never been the same.

• In 1990, JK Rowling was a single mom on welfare. She was sitting on a train headed to London when she got the idea of a boy named Harry Potter. It is one of the top best-selling books of all time having sold more than 500 million copies.

Sometimes a seemingly insignificant moment sparks a movement that changes the world. That’s what today’s passage is about: A no-name rabbi, in the first century, in the middle of nowhere calls 12 people nobody ever heard of to follow him. A humble beginning. A seemingly insignificant moment. And it would change the world forever.

How does this kind of thing happen. What would it look like for you to be a part of something that changes the world? This passage invites us to follow the disciples and to take the three following steps.

First, Recognize your desire

Second, Discover the object of your desire

Third, Participate in a transformational community

Recognize Your Desire

v.13 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.

Notice the symbolism of where Jesus calls his disciples: “Up on a mountainside.”

In the ancient world, mountains were considered holy places. Sacred places close to the gods.

In the Bible, Moses met God on Mount Sinai. Elijah calls down fire from the mountain top of Mount Carmel. Later in the Gospels—Jesus is revealed in all his glory on a mountain—known as the Mount of Transfiguration. Most importantly, in the OT, the Garden of Eden is up on a mountain. This is the place where God dwells with his people.

Being summoned to the mountain is a symbol of being called back home. Back to the Garden of Eden. To the place where things are the way they are supposed to be.

Today, mountains continue to be places that beckon us. We want to live near them. We want to hike in them and climb them.

Last year a documentary called Free Solo won and Academy Award. It’s about American rock climber Alex Honnold and how he climbed El Capitan—a 3000 ft rock formation in Yosemite National Park. He is the only person in history to climb it without using any ropes. For over a year, he organized his entire life around this one, singular pursuit. He risked his life. Why? In the documentary his mother is interviewed and asked, “Why does he do it?” She said, “When he’s climbing, he feels the most alive, the most everything.”

You might not be interested in climbing El Capitan without ropes, but we all familiar with that desire to feel “the most alive, the most everything.”

But the mountain climber is never satisfied with just one summit. They have an insatiable desire to keep climbing the next mountain. Why is that?

Steve DeWitt in his book, Eyes Wide Open writes: What we desire is never found in the wonderland of creation. We keep looking and longing for the beauty behind the beauty, the one who will