The Third Ear and the Imagination of Jesus

Sermon Starter

by Leonard Sweet

Mark 4:26-34 

Every morning the early local newscast reports on how good or bad the "daily commute" is going. 
Strategically perched cameras and computer generated models show whether there is clear sailing 
or clogged arterials on the major commute-routes. Seattle is a city consistently in the Top 10 
for its gelatinous traffic jams - the LA freeway is a breezeway compared to Seattle's Route 5 
most of the time. And the Seattle newscasters like to keep minute-by-minute track of how slow you can go. 

Now it takes 20 minutes longer than normal - wait!
No, it just climbed to 22 minutes longer.
Okay, make that 23 minutes, above the average drive-time to go from Point A to Point B. 

These days our commuting time can be put to productive work. Your commuting time can be used 
to practice new language skills, or test the effectiveness of your blood pressure medication, 
or boost your caffeine intake with some double Venti mocha mash-up mix. As more people keep smashing 
into things while talking or texting on their mobile phones, more states keep passing stricter 
anti-cell-phone legislation. If you've got a hands-free phone you can still talk. But since that time of day 
everyone else you want to talk to is stuck in traffic with you, it's hard for anyone really to get much work done. 

But there are other ways to use your commute. The strip of asphalt you are stuck on, or if you are transit commuter 
the interior of your bus or train, might not look too impressive, but it is a big part of your everyday existence. 

What do you see from your car window?
What does your world look like?
What is that world telling you? 

Jesus was a commuter. He commuted to work just like we do. For at least fifteen years Jesus worked as a "tekton." 
We like to translate that word as "carpenter," but it really means "builder" or "day laborer." 
If you've ever been to the "Holy Land," you'll laugh when I ask you this question: 
"How many trees did you see over there?" 

Jesus didn't just work in wood. In the 1st century they didn't specialize that we do today. 
He wasn't just a "carpenter." Rather like all builders in that part of the world in the first century, 
Jesus worked with three media: mostly with stone, some with metal, and to a lesser extent with wood. 
Where would he have plied his trade as a builder? Most likely not in Nazareth, 
a dirt-poor small provincial village of no more than 400 people who lived in small stone dwellings. 

No, most likely Jesus worked as a builder in Tzippori (Greek "Sepphoris"), about three miles 
from the village of Nazareth. During the first 30 years of Jesus life, there were constant, 
large construction projects going on in the cosmopolitan city known as Sepphoris - both Roman and Jewish. 
When Herod Antipas was made Tetrach of the region in 1 CE, he started rebuilding and expanding the town 
he renamed "Autocratis" - or "the Ornament of the Galilee." For any tekton, any builder, Sepphoris was work-central. 
And not unlike today, when every major city is known by its stadiums, one of the first things Herod Antipas 
wanted to build was the theater. Could it be that Jesus learned the secrets of megaphoning sound 
from his work on building the theater? 

From Nazareth, Sepphoris was a 15 minute horse-back ride, or an hour walk. Most likely Jesus spent two hours a day 
walking to and from Sepphoris. What did Jesus do on his daily commute? How did he spend his time commuting? 

He became a keen observer of the countryside.

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