Mark 1:22-28

By Joseph Moore
January 29, 2012
Reading: Mark 1:22-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

I know you all went home last Sunday and read the book of Mark...so a review of where we’ve been is more than likely redundant...but for those of you who weren’t here last Sunday...a brief synopsis...

Mark begins his book by telling us that this is the beginning of the Good news of Jesus Christ. We’ve been introduced to John the Baptist who preached a message of repentance. Jesus has been baptized and immediately is led into the wilderness where we are told he is tempted. John the Baptist is handed over to the authorities, it’s a bit of foreshadowing because Jesus will also be handed over to the authorities in a few short chapters.

Immediately after John's arrest, Jesus goes along the Sea of Galilee, and in the first words he has spoken in the gospel, he announces that, “The time has been fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news...” He calls the first 4 disciples, and we’re told that they leave everything, jobs, families, all they know, and immediately follow him. Last week we talked about how they might have caught a glimpse of the divine in their everyday lives. We talked about how maybe the good news of Jesus contains an invitation to pay attention to God’s presence in our lives.

And then today’s passage...We’ve heard the first word’s Jesus speaks...and now we see the first action Jesus takes. We’re told he, immediately, marches into the synagogue and proceeds to cast out an unclean spirit from a convulsing man. Honestly, I'm more comfortable with stories of Jesus turning water into wine than I am this story. (For those of you who weren’t here last week I invited the congregation to find an hour to read the Gospel of Mark, I said it was brief and accessible...I failed to mention, intentionally so, that he talks a lot of about spirits, and demons, and evil...I knew if I mentioned that...that some of you might avoid reading it the way you might avoid talking to a weird family member at Thanksgiving dinner.)

I know that those of us in established, dignified, progressive, mainline protestant churches don’t talk about things like unclean spirits, demons, and the casting out of such things. Other churches, non-Presbyterian churches, less dignified churches...they talk about personified evil, and how they might pray that out of one another...horror movies show head spinning, vomit spewing portrayals of exorcisms. All week long I’ve been reminded of the Congressman from Missouri who, last year, described one of the few legislative compromises in Congress as a ‘sugar coated Satan Sandwich.” Country churches and Congresspeople from Missouri talk about devils and spirits...not Central Presbyterian Church...However, last week I talked about how Jesus brought the good news to misfits, outcasts, and rebels...And you’ll remember that I said this is a church of misfits, outcasts, and rebels.

We need to talk about this...not because I think our world is overrun with little horned men with long red tails and pitchforks...who’s sole purpose is to lead our souls to hell. I don’t believe that’s true at all...but we need to talk about what Jesus is doing in this scene, because we need to talk about things like authority, purity, and evil...and just because our story comes to u in the language and metaphor of another times doesn’t mean we can simply gloss over what it might have to say to us today.

Throughout Mark’s gospel he is telling us something about Jesus. Where as Matthew, Luke, and John tell us a lot about Jesus by what he says, Mark is far more interested in telling us about Jesus by showing us what he does. And the first thing he does is immediately walk into the synagogue, begin teaching, and finds himself casting out an unclean spirit.

Mark tells us that Jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach. The congregation is astounded because he teaches as one who has authority.

We live in a society where authority is in short supply. For decades our culture has, for good reason, questioned authority. We resist anyone telling us what we should or shouldn’t do, what we should or shouldn’t believe, who and how we should and shouldn’t vote.

All one needs to do is watch 5 minutes of cable news, or listen to talk radio, to hear how, in an effort to establish authority, we simply try to talk over one another, while demonizing (there’s that word) our opponents. Many of us yearn for a word of truth, some powerful reminder that God still speaks. Too often, we come to church looking for a Good Word, only to be turned away beaten down and uninspired.

Those of you who have been in my office might have noticed the large quote I have above my bookshelves. It says, “Is it true” and it comes from a longer quote from the great theologian Karl Barth who once asked, “When people come to church, is it not the case that “they consciously or unconsciously leave behind them cherry tree, symphony, state, daily work, and other things, as possibilities somehow exhausted?” They turn in expectation toward this new and infinitely greater possibility, that God is indeed present. On Sunday in worship, claimed Barth, the people want an answer to this one question, Is it true?—"and not some other answer which beats around the bush.”

Jesus went into the synagogue and evidently they felt the presence of God. They were amazed and they heard a voice of challenge, a voice of hope, a voice of grace. And a man with an unclean spirit cried out and said, “‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’

“What have you to do with us?” “What are you to us?” It’s a question that is quite similar to the question Adam and Eve asked of God in the Garden of Eden? Who are you to tell us not to eat from a tree? What are you to us? It’s a question many of us, when confronted with the loving voice of God, cry out, “what have you to do with me?” When you hear the voice of one who tells you that because you are loved you don’t need to take another drink...because you are loved you don’t need to spend money you don’t have for things you don’t need...because you are loved you don’t need to look for love in the arms of a stranger...we, you, and me cry out “what have you to do with me?” and we turn our backs on God and on one another.

Is it a demon, or is it an addiction to alcohol? Is it a demon, or are you just a work-a-holic? Is it a demon, or...you fill in the blank...it doesn't really matter what we call it, what matters is that it separates us from god and each other.

Walter Wink reminds us that, “We are possessed by violence, possessed by sex, possessed by money, possessed by drugs. (possessed by power) We need to recover forms of collective exorcism as effective as was the early Christian baptism’s renunciation of ‘the devil and all his works.’” (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers)

Many of us might discount the idea that there are such things as demons and unclean spirits. But in a week where, across our TV screens, we saw pictures of almost one hundred massacred Syrians, many of them women and children who can deny that evil exists. Surely you agree with the great preacher Fred Craddock who once said, “In any case, for all of our scientific sophistication, not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world" (Preaching through the Christian Year B).

Throughout modern history many have pointed out how ancients often blamed any number of medical problems, things like epilepsy and various types of mental illness, on spiritual beings. It could very well be that the man in today’s story was an epileptic.

But it’s interesting to note that the phrase ‘unclean spirit’ was not related to a medical condition. It was a term that dealt with ritual uncleanliness. To be ritually unclean meant you had recently been around someone who was dead, or you had had sex, or you had born a child. Most people in the ancient world were ritually unclean. To be unclean did not necessarily mean to be sinful. By simply engaging in life you were unclean.

In the ancient world, things that made people unclean were often times things that touched on the mysterious. Things like the birth of a child, things like death, and procreation. Mysterious, powerful, moments where the line between heaven and earth is barely there...these moments made one ritually unclean. To this day Jews don’t touch the torah scroll with their bare hands...to touch the scroll with one’s bare hands ‘rendered the hands unclean’.

Maybe...just maybe...Jesus is saying to those gathered in the synagogue, to the unclean man, to you and to me...that the mysterious presence of God has been made real for you, and you, and you...

Maybe Jesus is telling us, “It’s true.” It’s true that I have come to reframe the way you see the world. It’s true that I’ve come to silence the voice in you that would keep you from God and one another. It’s true that I’ve come to give voice to who you really are. Maybe this is what it means to teach with authority. Maybe this is why they were amazed on that sabbath so many years ago. They came to worship expecting the same-old, same-old, and they left having received a blessing.

A blessing of truth can radically change us. When we hear what we need to hear, not necessarily what we want to hear, our identity as one who is a sacred child of God can be confirmed. When we see ourselves as people made clean in the midst of our every day lives we no longer have to hide behind that which separates from one another.

Jan Richardson, (who’s artwork often appears on the front of our bulletins) writes, This kind of change and reconfiguration means that a blessing is not always a comfortable and cozy thing. Sometimes the blessing most needed is one that involves confrontation and calling out, that requires standing against what is not of God. Such a blessing may be difficult to give—or to receive.

But, as Jesus shows us in this passage where we see him healing a man in the grip of a destructive spirit, such a blessing—the blessing that comes in facing the chaos rather than turning away from it, the blessing that comes in naming what is contrary to God’s purposes rather than letting it persist unchecked— this blessing makes way for wholeness. It brings release to what has been bound; it invites and enables and calls us to move with the freedom for which God made us.

The late John O’Donohue writes, “The human heart, continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.” (Jan Richardson)

The first thing Jesus does in Mark is help make someone’s heart whole... is it true... that the same thing can happen still?

Let us pray:

Find us Lord like you did that day in Capernaum.  And may we all be amazed….