Creekside Church Sermon of February 2, 1997 "A Teacher Like No Other" Mark 1:21-28	Rev. David Bibbee
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It's amazing that after all the years those feelings are still there, but as I thought about it, more amazing still is the way my teacher's and the lessons they taught remain a part of me. In ways both imperceptible and as large as life, they continue to influence me and speak with authoritative voices which shape my outlook.

There was Blanche DeLong, my kindergarten and first grade teacher. She began each day singing to us, "Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning dear children, good morning to you." Then we would respond "...good morning dear teacher, good morning to you." Miss DeLong was like a grandmother who made sure we got a snack, took a nap, and mastered the basics. She may have been the one who roused my curiosity with nature, teaching me to read books like, A Fly Went By, A Bumblebee's Secret, and What Is A Turtle?, which earned me my Ohio Pupil's Reading Circle Certificate.

There was Leora Ankney, my eighth grade history teacher. She dusted the cobwebs off history and made it come alive. I credit Miss Ankney with helping me learn how to memorize large blocks of information. Every week she filled three blackboards with one sentence facts which she had us read and re-read in preparation for Friday's test.

Down the hall was Mrs. Crane, my science teacher. She was an eccentric lady who stuck her head out the window at the start of each class to smell the weather. Her nose was more accurate than the forecasters. Mrs. Crane appointed me class weatherman. Every day I rose early to copy the national forecast map from the Today Show. My multi-colored maps with fronts and depressions were always consulted after she had inhaled her data. From Mrs. Crane I learned that like the weather, things happen in life you cannot control. You can only respond by buttoning up, cleaning up, and heeding the signs on the horizon.

There was Joseph Petrich, my high school drafting teacher. My dad had him in high school. Mr. Petrich was a no-nonsense man, a stickler for details. The first day of class he held up what is commonly known as a ruler. "This is a scale," he said, "not a ruler. Call it a ruler and you flunk. Parallel is spelled PARALLEL. Angle is spelled ANGLE, not angel. Misspell these words and you flunk." Over the next two years I grew to admire him. He inspired my dream to be an architect. Three years after graduating I visited him to say I was going to be a minister. Joe Petrich taught me to take pride in my work and how to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. He taught me that in life, like on the drawing table, the big picture comes together by paying careful attention to the details. Little details make a big difference.

You've heard me talk before about my favorite college professor, T. Wayne Rieman and his profound impact upon my life. He forced us to examine what we believed and why we believed it. He began a lecture by throwing acorns at us that he had gathered on the way to class. "There's a majestic oak inside these little nuts. Just imagine. And God has implanted a part of Himself within you so you can be more than you are." In the middle of a night class he hauled us outside and had us lay on our backs gazing at the stars while he recited the discoveries of the cosmologist about the incomprehensibility of the universe. Then when he felt we were sufficiently small, he recited Psalm 8 "...when I consider the moon and stars, and all that your have made, who are we that you should care for us? But you have created us a little less than yourself." And how often I hear his voice reverberate in my head, "Life is good. Life is good because God made it good and because you are a gifted, unique child of God, you must say and do something about what is not good."

When I went to Taryn Nicodemus' funeral, seeing the profound grief of her family was heartrending. And as my mind groped for something to say, I heard T. Wayne, "Life is good. God is good."

From Miss DeLong to T. Wayne Rieman, teachers have challenged me, changed me, inspired me, scolded and molded me. Scarcely a day goes by without being reminded of a truth implanted by these teachers. These people who influenced me so much are all gone now, but they're still very much alive within; influencing me in more ways than I know. Consider the power and the authority of the teacher. If you wanted or didn't want to go to school, it was because of the teacher. Think of those "Aha!" moments of discovery when you were helped to understand how something worked and it sparked your curiosity to learn more. Consider that we all need a teacher.

Do you know the title Jesus was addressed by as often as any other? Rabbi. Teacher. More than a worker of wonders, he was considered a teacher of the truth. But he was a teacher like no other. Jesus had called the first four disciples, and went to the synagogue at Capernaum. It's important to know that the synagogue wasn't a place of worship. You could only offer a sacrifice at the Temple. The synagogue was a place for teaching. The service consisted of prayer, the reading of the scripture, and a word of instruction. The teaching was done by the scholars known as the scribes. They were interpreters of the law who expanded it and applied it to every conceivable facet of life in the form of rules and regulations. Every legal intricacy was committed to memory by the scribes. Every Sabbath was a litany of quotes about what one could and could not do.

But when Jesus taught, everyone was amazed. There are teachers and there are teachers. One rattles off notes and quotes like a machine. Another makes the subject come alive. One wears the subject like an old hat, while it pulses through another's veins. It is not information, it is the truth that wakes you up and makes you hunger for more. "Who is this?" He was like none of the scribes with their relentless recitations. Jesus had such confidence in what he said. But right in the middle of his lesson, Jesus was interrupted by a disturbed guy hollering, "What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are!" Then the lecture turned into a lab, and Jesus healed the man. "We've never seen anything like this before. This is a new teaching. The power. The persuasiveness. The authority. He is a total package. His words are wedded to his deeds. He speaks and a deranged man is given his sanity."

As you read on in Mark, Jesus does some amazing things. He heals a paralytic, a blind man, and a woman with a twelve year hemorrhage. He stills a storm, brings a little girl back from the dead, feeds five thousand and walks on water. But what does Mark tell us before all of this? Jesus came to teach. The world is his classroom. Nothing is theoretical. It is all applied. He teaches, and by his words, lives change direction, lives are handed over and healed.

When you were growing up, do you remember what it was like to struggle and sweat over a problem or concept you didn't understand? Try as you might, you couldn't make sense of it and you were ready to give up when a teacher showed you some simple step and the windows opened and the light poured in and instead of giving up, you were hungry to learn more. Amazing, isn't it, what a good teacher can do?

We could all use a teacher like this. There is so much about life that is so troubling and confusing and chaotic. The problems seem to outnumber the solutions. There are no conclusions on what should be done. We're told the old answers aren't applicable, and that everyone has to fend for themselves as best they can. But with no teachers to guide, with no one to point the way, we reap a disastrous whirlwind.

This week in California a thirteen year old boy shot and killed a fourteen year old at school in front of the other students and then went to the cafeteria to eat lunch. Stories like this used to shock us. Now they are so commonplace we just keep score. "Elkhart County records its first homicide for 1997."

An FBI agent who specialized in behavioral sciences, interviewed the most notorious serial killers of the last three decades. He spoke on Monday at Valpariso University. Speaking about the twisted personalities of men like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahlmer, he pointed to three aspects of society which help create such people: broken homes, violence gone wild in entertainment, and kids growing up in a void with no guidance...in other words, no teachers.

A couple of weeks ago I was out late one night sitting at a booth at the Steak and Shake. Across the aisle were four guys either in or just out of high school. The subject was cars, women, and partying, dude. With expletives that would make a longshoreman blush, they talked about how they hated school, except for Mr. So-and-so. Two of them had him the year before he retired. "It was great. He said we could do whatever we wanted as long as we didn't bother anyone else. We did as little as we could, and he wasn't gonna let anything about it bother him. Nobody gave a (blank). It was great." We need a teacher...a teacher , who care, who holds the words of life.

Can you identify with the sick man who ran wild into the synagogue the day Jesus was teaching? There are lots of prescriptions to make life in this crazy and confused world manageable. You can go inside yourself...live out of your potential. There are thousands of self-improvement books. You can go back to nature and live organic. You can surf the Internet and take security in your access to information. After all, they tell us that in the near future only those with access to information are going to make it.

But those of you who bother to come here each Sunday, do so because you know these aren't the answers. You are here because you have wits enough to know that this synagogue is one of the few places where you can find your sanity. You alone can't do it. Going back to nature won't do it. The need is not "what to have" but "how to live", and we need a teacher for that. To live we need more than a command of the facts, and more than information to halt the insecurity we feel. What we need is a teacher. That is why we are here...because we never outgrow the need to learn the truth that sets us free.

We want to know how to make sense of what is going on around us. We want a solid place to stand while all around the footing gives way. We want to know how to make our families strong, how to keep our relationships alive. How to pray, how to understand the Bible, not to conform it to our lives, but so we can be conformed to its prescription for our lives.

A couple of times each week I have lunch with Marilyn Monroe. As I eat, her beautiful eyes gaze so longingly at me. It's one of those life-size cut outs of Marilyn in a classic pose. Marilyn Monroe isn't just a symbol of beauty. She is a symbol of the emptiness of our age. Arthur Miller has written a book called Timebends, in which he describes his marriage to Marilyn. While shooting the film, The Misfits, he described what it was like to watch her sink deeper and deeper into depression. He watched her become withdrawn, paranoid, and addicted to barbiturates. One night a doctor was persuaded to give her another shot, and as Arthur Miller watched her sleeping, he remembered this thought: "I find myself straining to imagine miracles. What if she were able to wake and I were able to say, þGod loves you, darling.' and she were able to believe it! I wish I still had my religion and she hers."

I heard someone say, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." Well, we have, and the results we see every day. This is why we need a teacher back to what matters. Mark doesn't begin with Jesus' great works. He tells about Jesus' great words spoken with authority and power. "A new teaching," they said, a teaching that calms the storms, raises the dead, mends the broken, heals the sick, points the way.

You are the person you are because of the influence that teachers had upon you. There is no power to rival that of a great teacher. We need one, and we have one. Everything we need to know about what to do, how to be, how to live, in Him we already have. There is no need to look for another.

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