The other way that Mark depicts the liveliness of Jesus’ life is in recounting the normal things that Jesus did in extraordinary ways.  Our passage for today tells the story of going to church and teaching.  This is the stuff of classic boredom, gazing out the window, teenagers sleeping, back row chatters, games of guessing what the confession of sins will be type situation.  And yet with Jesus it isn’t boring.  He teaches and people are amazed.  

Listen to the way Mark describes it.  Here is a literal translation: “And they entered into Caperaum and immediately it being the Sabbath they went to the synagogue and he taught and they were amazed by his teaching.  Because he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”  People went to the local ‘church’ on a normal Saturday.  They were expecting the same old read a passage, listen to the scirbes telling us what the experts think kind of sermon and BOOM, Jesus is there teaching with authority.  Its not boring, in fact its amazing!

That is the way that Jesus always taught.  If you go and read Mark you see Jesus redefine the nature of family; he takes away the importance of blood replacing it with the connections of faith.  Then he takes the Sabbath and turns it inside out.  He tells the Pharisees that the people aren’t there to keep laws and rule and regulations and make the Sabbath holy, but it is there to make them holy.  It is there to do something deep and unexpected in them so that they might rest in God and live for his glory.  Soon after that this new teacher takes all the rules about food and eating and cleanliness that marked off the people of God from the time of Moses and wipes them away.  Race, religion and righteousness get reordered when Jesus teaches.  This isn’t boring stuff.  Its mind-boggling, hard, big, and shocking.  And that’s just the first 7chapters.  

In the first 7 chapters and beyond Jesus was willy and witty, creative and bold.  He didn’t suffer fools gently but instead he taught with authority.  As he did so scripture came to life. The world became a place where God was working then and there to change all things taking the old order of sin and selfishness and bringing in the time and people of love, giving and grace.  Jesus wasn’t boring.  That wasn’t his issue.

When Jesus taught people he had a magnetic quality; people were either drawn in or repelled.  They were called to make an absolute decision in an immediate way.  This is the case in our passage for today too.  The people are amazed with one exception.  There is one man there who protests.  In fact, an evil spirit within him can’t handle Jesus’ teaching.  He is repelled.  There is too much power, to much holiness, too much God speaking and amazing and bringing the truth into their typically boring synagogue.  And so, this evil Spirit cries out.  It can’t be contained by the normal rules of what you do and say in church.  It cries out, it has to know what God is doing and how it will be affected.  This isn’t boring.  This is the cutting edge of reality where Jesus lived and taught and took people.

God isn’t distant.  Church isn’t about being good.  Faith isn’t a relational booster or balm for your private troubles.  That is boring and lifeless compared to the shocking life and death of Jesus where God dies as he take up and into himself all our sin.  What we are talking about is the ultimate mission to defeat death and bring us into the infinite and infinitely awesome life of God.  That is not boring stuff even if it is complex and deep.