The Case of the Missing Jesus

Sermon for Sunday, February 8
Scripture: Mark 1:29-39

This morning, I stand before you with a confession to make. I have a hidden obsession. This obsession started when I was about 8 or 9, and to this day I have never been able to rid myself of it. It’s an obsession that no one except my wife, and maybe my parents, know about. As I reveal this obsession to you, I ask that you not rush to judgment. It may shock you, it may disgust you, but I really feel like I need to share it with you. I, Erik Hoeke, your pastor, am obsessed…with hats.

I love hats. Specifically, I love baseball caps. I love getting a new, fresh hat and spending the first few days breaking it in. I cut out the lining so it fits my head more snugly. I get it wet and throw it in the dryer to shrink and soften the material. I bend the bill to my exact specifications so it really looks cool. I work it and rework it so that the hat is absolutely beat up, worn, comfortable – the way a ballcap should be. Hats are like a fine wine or a good block of aged Wisconsin cheddar – they get better with age.

I also love stocking caps for the winter months. I missed wearing them in Atlanta, but the northern winters have offered me the chance to wear those hats I love so dearly. My favorite one is my Steelers hat, the one most of you have seen me wearing all winter. But a couple weeks ago, I lost this hat. As I went to leave for work one morning, I discovered my hat was not in its usual home, perched atop the coat rack in our front hallway. I spent about 15 minutes turning our house upside down looking for that dang hat. I looked upstairs, downstairs, in my car, even in the attic – and there was no way it was in the attic. But hey, I had to check. I love that hat, and I can’t live without it. I knew I wore it to a meeting the night before, and I thought for sure I wore it home. So where was that dang hat?

I finally gave up my search, and when I got to the church that morning I discovered I’d left it here. Whew, that was a close one! Another close call came once when I was on a chorus trip in High School. We were at Myrtle Beach, and I accidentally left my favorite hat at a restaurant. It was this beautiful, worn, ragged, smelly, old Pirates hat. I realized it as soon as we got on the bus, but it was too late. I couldn’t go back. I thought it was gone forever. I’d lost my most treasured hat. Luckily, the next morning we found ourselves near the restaurant, and I was able to retrieve my hat.

When I lose a hat, it doesn’t take me long to notice that it’s gone. A few minutes, a few hours, but never more than 24 hours. I always know if I’m missing the hats that I so dearly love.

When we search the attics and garages of our homes, we find that they are filled with “missing” items. They are filled with things that that used to be integral parts of our lives – baseball cards, electronics, camping equipment, old cassette tapes, home movies, 2008 Christmas gifts. We have piles of stuff that at one time or another we couldn’t live without, but somehow they went missing in our lives and were banished to the dark corners of our homes, where we seldom notice their existence anymore. If my baseball card collection went missing when I was 8, I would’ve noticed immediately. If my baseball cards went missing now, it might take me months to notice.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Simon and the other disciples discover something missing in their lives. After spending a day with Jesus, at the synagogue, at Simon’s house, and healing people all around town, the disciples are starting to form a relationship with Jesus. He’s their buddy now, the miracle worker from Nazareth. He’s their leader. But then, in the middle of the night, after hanging out with these guys all day, Jesus slips out the back door and retreats into the wilderness, into a “deserted place.” Jesus, if you will, needs some alone time. He needs to get away from it all and pray. And we like this image of Jesus. This text is often used to justify our own need to escape into the wilderness from time to time. See, Jesus takes time off, so we should too. If the savior of the world needs a vacation from time to time, then aren’t we entitled to one as well?

Well, we do need to escape into the wilderness from time to time, but to focus on this as the meaning of Jesus’ retreat is to miss the point. Jesus is not retreating because he needs a vacation, but because he needs to pray. He needs to reconnect with God in heaven, and the middle of the night is the only time people won’t be looking for him to heal them – it’s the only time of day when people won’t notice he’s gone.

But eventually, Simon and the other disciples do look for Jesus, and eventually they find him, praying in the desert. How long it took them to do so is unclear, and I think that’s the beauty of this passage. We have no idea how long it took the disciples to notice Jesus was gone, and we have no idea how long it was before they found him again. Most people assume it was just a couple hours, but we have no way of knowing. Mark, the writer of this gospel, leaves out a lot of details. For all we know, it could have been days, weeks, or even months between the time Jesus left and the time Jesus was found by the disciples.

That’s what I love about this story when I read it. I call it “the case of the missing Jesus.” Jesus goes missing, and the first question the story raises for us is, “how long did it take the disciples to notice?” When Jesus went missing in the disciples’ lives, how long did it take them to notice? I find myself wondering what would happen if I were one of the disciples when Jesus went missing. If Jesus went missing, if he slipped out the back door of my house in the middle of the night, how long would it take me to notice? Would I notice as soon as I woke up, like I’d notice if my arm was missing? Would it take me an hour, and I’d notice once I started walking out the door to go to work? Would it take me a day or two, when I finally start to sense there’s something missing from my life? Or would it take me weeks or months, when I finally visit the spot in the attic I’d been storing my Jesus, and find that he’s gone missing? How long would it take me to notice my Jesus is missing?

How long would it take you to notice if Jesus was missing in your life? A minute? An hour? A day? A few weeks, months, or even years? How long would it be before you noticed Jesus was no longer part of your life? How long would it take for us to notice Jesus has gone missing? This is the first question that this morning’s gospel lesson poses for us.

The second question is, “What do we do once we discover that Jesus has gone missing?” What do we do? Do we turn our house upside down trying to find him? Do we search through the streets and post flyers on all the telephone poles trying desperately to find our lost Jesus? Or do we shrug our shoulders and say, “Huh, that’s too bad, but I’ve already replaced my Jesus with something else.” What do we do when we find out our Jesus has gone missing?

The Gospel writer, Mark, says the disciples “hunted for him.” The original Greek text uses the verb “katadioko” – they pursued him with hostile intent. They hunted him down. They were angry. How dare their leader, their miracle worker, their Jesus, call them to follow and then, just as quickly, go missing?! How dare Jesus leave our side, abandon us! How dare he not stay where we left him! And like we scold our dogs when they don’t stay where we told them to stay, we look at our runaway Savior and firmly say, “BAD JESUS!”

But Jesus is no dog for us to own. He is no collection of baseball cards for us to store in our attic so we may pull him out and admire him a couple times a year. He is no winter coat or hat that we wear only for a season. Jesus is not to be treated as a possession, as something we own. So we dare not treat him the way the disciples did.

“Where have you been, Jesus?” the disciples ask, like panicky parents react to their teenager coming home 3 hours late. Where you been? Everyone’s searching for you, and they’re mad that you aren’t around to heal them. People are upset you’re not where they think you should be. So what do you think about that, Jesus?

How often we treat Jesus the same way. “How dare you leave us,” we say. “Some kind of leader you are.” It seems as though the disciples were hunting him down because they wanted him to return to Capernaum and perform more healings. Mike Graves, a professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary, says, “Simon, who stands for all of the disciples, does nothing in this text other than to request, or perhaps to compel, Jesus to come back from his time of praying so that more healing may take place. The motives of Jesus and Peter are not entirely clear, although Jesus clearly has another agenda.”

In this text, Jesus does have a different agenda than the disciples. Rather than return to Capernaum for more healings, Jesus goes on to neighboring towns to preach the message there also, for as Jesus tells them, “that is what I came out to do.” The disciples say, “It’s time to GET BACK.” Jesus replies, “It’s time to GO ON.”

There are times that Jesus seems to go missing in our lives. Sooner or later, we notice he’s missing. So we hunt him down to find him, perhaps scold him, and try to convince him to come back into the comfort of our home. C’mon Jesus, get out of the woods, out of the dark, deserted wilderness. It’s kinda scary out here in the middle of nowhere. We don’t want to follow you if it means going out here. Let’s get back to where good things were happening. Let’s get back to Capernaum, Jesus, so we can give the crowds what they want, give them what they need. Let’s go back to where we were before, back to where we were doing ministry that was working!

But Jesus has a different idea. Jesus does not want to return to Capernaum just yet. Jesus’ plans are not the same as those of the disciples, the plan to return home to safe, familiar surroundings. No, says Jesus, we are not returning to the comforts of the past. That is not where I’m leading you. Follow me into new towns, new places, new opportunities for ministry. Jesus refuses to simply lead the disciples back home. He does not intend to stay in one place, and he does not intend for his disciples to stay in one place either. He intends to lead his disciples into new places. For Jesus, the plan is about GOING ON rather than GETTING BACK.

This morning I invite you to go on with Jesus. I invite you to go wherever he may lead you, whether it’s a dark, deserted place or a new town full of strangers. I invite you to keep regular daily contact with Jesus, so that if he does in fact go missing in your life, you’ll notice right away. And rest assured, we will all lose Jesus along the way from time to time. But that’s okay – hopefully we’ll quickly notice and we’ll seek him until we find him again. I hope and pray this morning that when we find Jesus missing in our lives, it won’t be long before we seek him out to lead us once again – not to the places that we would have him go, but to the places that he would have us go. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.