Michael Card, writing on Incarnation, said: “While we struggle with our many ‘clumsy words,’ God needs only one Word to perfectly communicate the depth and mystery, the passion and the overwhelming grace of who He is.” If this is true, and most Christians believe it is, then the gospel accounts of Jesus validate the claim that God is relative.

If Jesus is God’s full and final word that God has to speak to us, we learn who God is by keeping an eye on Jesus as we follow him through the gospel stories. What does he do and say, and in what manner? Let’s follow him through The Gospel according to Mark, where the elemental narrative is traced, and see what we find.
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When we first meet him, he is coming into Galilee, “preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.” Those who first saw him in action, knowing nothing about any subsequent understandings of Jesus, would have identified him as an itinerant preacher.

Almost immediately he begins gathering about him a select group of followers (disciples/those who follow because they are drawn to someone, with learning as their intent). These will comprise the group that later will be known as The Twelve disciples. He is not only a preacher, he can now be seen as a leader.

He saw two fishermen, Simon and Andrew, and told them to follow him and he would “make them fishers of men.” If we note this, we will find that--apparently--he never spoke of making fishers of men to anyone else. Next, he summons another pair of brothers, James and John who also are fishermen. It would be fair to assume he told them he would make them “fishers of men,” but the text doesn’t mention it. It would only be an assumption on our part.

The next selection we read of is a tax man named Levi; Jesus did not tell him that he would make him a collector of God’s taxes. It is not long before many other disciples join Jesus. They elect to follow him. Out of this group, Jesus will choose only a few. We are not far into the narrative before we learn who they are. For the present purpose, I mention only one, another Simon. He, we are told, is a member of the paramilitary group called the Zealots. Jesus says nothing to him about making him a gospel soldier.

We know none of the specifics of Jesus’ calling of any of the twelve, except the five noted above. From those, however, we see that the words of his calling varied from person to person.

We also note that he could be identified as a preacher, a not unusual type in the world of Judaism. He might be known to others as a leader, the leader of a small group that he may have been organizing for some special purpose. We might watch to see if he might be recognized as an organizer. Preacher, leader, organizer–all might be appropriate titles by which he could be known.

Shortly after the choosing of the four fishermen, Jesus appears in a Jewish meeting house on the Sabbath and astonished the congregation with the authority of his teaching. From this point in the story, we will see teaching as one of the two or three of his most prominent activities. We can add teacher to our list of possible titles that might be used to identify him.

After leaving the synagogue, he went directly to the home of Simon and Andrew, where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick. When they told Jesus about her, he took her by the hand. Immediately she was healed. No mention is made of a request for healing, no mention of the faith of Simon, his mother-in-law, or anyone else. The significance of faith, relative to the work of Jesus, is not as clear as later generations have made it.

If you are reading this with a copy of Mark open before you, you may find interesting to watch for the place of faith in Jesus’ healing ministry. As in this case, it is not always mentioned at all. We will see faith often given great prominence, leaving us to wonder about those occasions when it is not mentioned in Mark’s story.

Healing by Jesus follows no set procedure. Watch to see if it does not vary from one individual to another; see if he deals with each occasion in its own singularity, seemingly dependent on the situation.

I mentioned that teaching would prove to be one of the two or three activities that dominate the story of Jesus’ activities. Healing will emerge as one of the others.

The story has yet to lead us out of Mark’s first chapter, and already we can notice that he deals differently with each situation. Whether some of us are prepared to talk about situation ethics, we do begin to observe in Jesus a situational approach to life. What he does is done relative to the situation. He takes whatever the appropriate action to bring the Kingdom of God, the power of the Gospel to bear on the needs of the occasion.

If, as Michael Card has suggested, God needs only one Word to make himself and his ways known to us, and if Jesus is the Word of God, then, among other things, we see that God’s action is apparently relative to human need. God relates to us where we are, wherever that might be---each of us in each of our specific situations. In God’s eyes we are individuals, and every situation is different. We cannot discern any simple formula by which God always performs his work.

Moreover, we have at least a hint that Jesus might be legitimately known by titles other than Savior, Lord, or Messiah. Even these titles are relative. To those in trouble, he is their Savior; to those who commit their lives into his trust, he is their Lord, their Master; to the Jew, he is their hoped for and anticipated Messiah, the one anointed by God to redeem them. We will find that Jesus is given many titles, and that each is understood relatively. No one of them is absolute.
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Since we are still in the first chapter of Mark’s story, told with God’s one Word, we will follow the story for at least another day or two–probably no more than that unless you ask for more. The major point I want to make will have been well-established by that time.