SERMON
FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY – YEAR B
“WHAT HAVE YOU TO DO WITH US, JESUS?”
Mark 1:21-28 / February 1, 2015
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be
acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
The gospel writer, Mark, has this style of writing that suggests a state
of ‘urgency’. He often writes that
something or the other happened immediately,
or right now or right away – in the gospel passage for today he
says, “just then”, as Jesus was teaching, just then, or suddenly,
there appeared in the synagogue this man with an unclean spirit.
“Unclean spirit.” That’s
first-century talk for a demon. Many
people in those days believed that demons were personal beings, living entities, that possessed persons or
communities and caused those people or groups to think, feel and act in ways
that distorted God’s purposes. A demon was like a virus that got into the
operating system of the human being and caused the person to do things which
that person would not do if everything were operating in the way God intended.
Now I’m thinking that very few of us believe that the world is inhabited
by actual demonic beings who have
personality in a way similar to human beings. Having said that, I have on a few occasions
been asked to ‘bless’ a person or their home because of an alleged strange, potentially evil, presence there. While I admit that such experiences have
caused me to examine my own conviction in this regard, and have shaken that
conviction to a certain extent; I do still remain very skeptical of any claims of the presence of the demonic,
believing that unless proven otherwise another explanation has to be
found. In any event, we don’t have to
conjure up imagined or real demons to experience evil; sadly, there is plenty enough human activity
that epitomizes what we might label the demonic.
In our contemporary contexts, while we don’t speak of demons or unclean
spirits, we do speak of powers, forces, systems that are bigger than we are and
that prompt us to act in ways that corrupt God’s will and purpose for our
lives. They sneak up on us and take over
without our noticing them: psychosocial
phenomena. Ways of thinking. Ways of feeling. Ways of acting. We seldom choose them. But we are guided by their force
fields. Some of them are personal. Some are more social and systemic.
On the personal side we experience the ‘demons’ of alcohol and drug
abuse. If our mental health becomes
problematic for us; perhaps severe depression, as an example, we may feel and
act like we have an unclean spirit.
These can get inside our system; they can have a life within us that is
independent of our will. And they can
distort God’s purposes for our lives.
One day when I was minister at West Broadway community ministry, a
fellow approached me and said that he wished to speak to me privately and to have
prayer.
He said he wanted to be in a sacred place for this.
So, I invited him to join me in the small chapel located on the
facilities. This fellow was no stranger
to me;
He regularly attended the drop-in centre and had, on occasion, volunteered in a variety of ways in the work of the
drop-in. After I closed the door to the
chapel and walked toward where he was standing on the other side, he suddenly
pulled out two knives and waved them threateningly at me. He made demands which if I had complied with
them would have put persons in the
drop-in at risk. After a whole lot of
listening, some conversation, and all the while praying silently within myself
for God’s help, he finally broke down, dropped the knives, and fell into my
arms weeping.
Later I learned of the pressures in his life and his attempts to deal
with them using illicit drugs.
His violent act, so unlike him, was precipitated while under the
influence of these drugs which to use biblical language – were his ‘unclean
spirit’, his ‘demon.’
As well as these personal forces that distort God’s purposes for our
lives, there are what may be described as the “social equivalents of
possession”,
that is, social forces that bind, limit, possess. The work of demons: The “consumption” demon; the “you can never have enough” demon;
the “make profit at all costs” demon; the “looking out for number one” demon;
the demon of corporate greed and systemic injustice. Most recently we have been reminded of that
unclean spirit within our city – that demon we call racism.
Today’s scripture text does not specify the content of Jesus’
teaching. But we know what it is because
Mark has made it clear in the stories leading up to this one.
Jesus is teaching that the realm of God is at hand; God is at work in the world to quiet the demons and to lead every
relationship and every situation to mediate God's love, justice, and blessing. At one level, this story establishes the
authority and power of Jesus as the agent of the reign of God. Jesus comes eyeball to eyeball with the
unclean spirit. The demon doesn’t like
it. “What have you to do with us, Jesus
of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
Then Jesus rebukes the demon.
With a word. Nothing more than a
word. Words do have power. They can shape – and reshape – our
world. Yesterday at the meeting of
Winnipeg Presbytery, our conference
president, Barb Jardine, talked about ‘voice’; how as a church we need to be a
‘voice’ speaking out against racism; a ‘voice’ for right relations between
people of different races; a ‘voice’ that is strong and loud declaring that all
people are God’s beloved children; that all people deserve respect; a ’voice’
that exposes racism; a ‘voice’ that promotes justice and wholeness for first
nations people and all people oppressed by racist attitudes and actions. Barb offered this quote: “Voice is the muscle of the soul.”
“And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud
voice, came out of him.” Sometimes
healing is that way. Between the
recognition of the need for healing, and the healing itself, convulsion, pain
that is a part of healing. What is
your unclean spirit? What is your
demon? Where, in your life, do you
need healing? It’s interesting, isn’t
it, that this man with ‘an unclean spirit’ is discovered in the synagogue,
within the faith community. Where in
this faith community; this church is the one with the unclean spirit. Well, let me say I believe all of us, at one
time or another, have unclean spirits, demons we want rid of; parts of our lives which distort God’s will and purpose for us; that
thwart our efforts to be faithful followers of Christ: the guilt and shame some live with; the
despair of loneliness; the unrelenting competition and drivenness of people
climbing the business and social ladders; hopelessness in the face of illness
and death; the heartbreaking pain of a friend’s unfaithfulness; the rage churning within an addict’s battle
for control. Is it any wonder that, in
the midst of God’s people in a synagogue, a man bedeviled with an unclean
spirit cried out, “what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Why does any one of us come to worship? Is it not, at one level, because we are
crying out that same question, “what have you to do with us, Jesus?” You may not choose to call them demons, but
how can you know and watch the community around you on any single day and not
recognize the evidence that there is still at work in this world sinister
forces that oppose God’s will and purpose for our lives?
Yesterday at the same presbytery meeting we heard from a modern day
prophet. Ovide Mercredi spoke
eloquently about racism in our city.
In true prophetic style he spoke the hard truth of the reality of racism
that continues to injure first nations people – individually and
collectively.
He was clear about it; racism exists, is prevalent, and his people,
first nations people, experience it every day. But also in true prophetic fashion, he
spoke of hope; he spoke of the hope he has in the people of this city to rise
to the occasion and effect the transformation needed. And he called on the churches to be leaders
in this regard. As followers of the
greatest prophet of them all – Jesus – we are to exorcise the unclean spirit of
racism, removing it from our city, starting with our own corner of it; even
from within ourselves. Like the man in
the synagogue, there will be much convulsing, and crying with loud voices – but
that is the process toward healing and wholeness.
This passage in Mark is a paradigm for the ministry of the church. Jesus confronts the demon and casts it
out.
A couple of chapters later in Mark, Jesus gives the same power to the
church which reads, “and he appointed twelve...to be with him, and to be sent
out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.” Ministry may be described as the casting out
of unclean spirits. “What have you to
do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Yes, yes he has!
He comes to destroy all that would prevent us from the will and purpose
of God for our lives; all that would hold us back from abundant living.
And, in turn, we are called to do the same in the church, in the city,
in the world. Let us give God thanks
and praise for such healing, freeing, transforming love. Amen.
Major
Sources:
“Teaching
as Exorcism” by Ronald J. Allen in Pulpit Digest, July-September 2000,
pp. 121-127.
Editor: David Albert Farmer. Logos
Productions Inc. Inver Grove
Heights, MN.
“Proclaiming
the Text” by Ann Hoch in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 28, No. 1, Year B, pp.
20-21.
Editor: William H. Willimon. Wood Lake Books, Kelowna, BC. 2000.
No comments:
Post a Comment