josephholubsermons
January 29, 2012 - Epiphany 4
Mark 1:21-28
Good News On Two Levels
Four times in Mark's gospel Jesus casts out
“unclean spirits.”
We might be quick to
casually dismiss these accounts to an ancient world-view, inclined
to see what’s described in these ancient stories as pre-scientific
diagnosis of conditions that must have had other explanations,
perhaps psychopathological disorders or other illnesses and syndromes.
But whatever modern explanations we might give to these
encounters, we need to recognize that in Jesus’ time possession and
exorcism were taken for
granted. Our world view is,
most certainly, vastly different
from theirs, but that doesn't mean their experience of Jesus
within their
worldview cannot speak to us
within our world-view.
THREE THINGS speak to
me in this passage.
THE FIRST THING:
Jesus saw past the surface and
directly and deeply
into the humanity of the person within the possession.
He didn’t stop at the surface as
if it revealed the
total story of the person, like we might do, basing our judgments on
only what we experience at skin level.
A young executive was traveling down a neighborhood street in his new
Jaguar. He was watching for kids
darting out from between parked cars, and he slowed down when he thought
he saw something. As his car
passed, no children appeared, but instead, a piece of brick came flying
through the air and smashed into the side door of his Jaguar.
He slammed on the brakes and
spun the Jaguar back to the spot from where the object had been thrown.
He jumped out of the car, grabbed the kid standing there and pushed him
up against a parked car, shouting,
"What was that all about? Just
what the heck are you doing?" His
anger reaching a crescendo, he raged on.
"That's a new car and that brick
you threw is going to cost a lot of money. What were you thinking?"
"Please, mister, please, I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do!"
pleaded the youngster. "I threw
it because no one would stop."
Tears were running down the boy's face as he pointed around the parked
car. "It's my brother. He rolled
off the curb, fell out of his wheelchair and
is pinned between the parked car
and the curb. He is hurt
and too heavy for me to lift." Sobbing,
the boy asked, "Would you please
help me get him back into his wheelchair?”
The young executive tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his
throat. He lifted the young man back into the wheelchair and took out
his handkerchief and wiped the scrapes and cuts on his arms and face,
checking him for other injuries.
"Thank you, sir, and God bless you,"
the grateful child said. The man
then watched the little boy push his brother down the sidewalk toward
their home. The short distance back to his Jaguar seemed lengthy as he
walked slowly. The young
executive never did repair the
dent in his door.
He left the dent in his Jaguar
to remind him not to go through life so fast that someone has to throw a
brick at him to get his attention; and to presume less and always
look deeper than just
the surface of circumstances or a person.
THE SECOND THING:
Our world-view may not include
unclean spirits, but I can totally appreciate the experience of being
in the grip of
something that feels more powerful than myself.
Have you ever acted or reacted rashly or impetuously and
afterward, with regret, you said something like,
“I don’t know what got into me!
That was not like me! I am sorry.”
I've known people caught in the
grip of bottled-up anger;
the slightest little trigger setting them off, lashing out against even
their most precious loved ones.
I have known people trapped
within a "spirit" of guilt;
people who simply cannot forgive themselves for something they've
done or some pain to another for which they hold themselves responsible.
I've known people held hostage
by denial that kept them
from admitting that their life was out of control.
I’ve known people captured
by self-righteousness;
needing to be right so desperately they minimized
others who did not share the same point of view.
I could go on and we could talk about
fear, low self esteem, inflated pride, thirst for revenge, prejudice,
self-indulgence, various chemical addictions and many more as things
that can so dominate and diminish a human life that perhaps the
only appropriate language we can find to describe the
experience is the language of possession.
What are the things that can possess (you, me) to the point that our
humanity is diminished? What can
control a life in such a dominating way that perhaps only the
language of possession can fully describe the experience?
And then
ultimately to ask,
“What
or who can set us free?”
I recall that the disciple Peter was
crushed under a heavy load
of guilt after he abandoned Jesus at his most desperate hour-denying he
even knew Jesus, his best friend.
But yet, in a moving interpersonal encounter, Jesus
lifted the weighty burden of
guilt off Peter’s shoulders, and Peter emerged as a key leader in the
early Jesus movement.
On numerous occasions the disciples were
paralyzed by fear that
reduced them to whimpering puppies.
But yet, Jesus helped loosen the choke–hold of fear that
freed them
to embrace the people and circumstances that lived beyond their
fear.
I think of times the disciples were
entangled in the snare of
cultural prejudice
concerning Gentiles, Samaritans, women, children and the hated Roman
occupiers. But Jesus, not
deterred by them in the least, affirmed the humanity of Gentiles,
Samaritans, women, children, and even a Roman soldier as models of
faith unraveling the
confining power of prejudice that lived in their hearts.
The early faith communities experienced something
extraordinary in
Jesus - a power and a presence
that set them free from that
which was inhibiting their
fullest humanity from emerging.
They experienced, in him,
someone so filled with the spirit and love of God that he saw deeply
into their beings, past
the surface, past
the dysfunction, past
the pain, past the
pathology, past the
possession, and he called forth and drew out of them a
fuller humanity - and they were transformed into courageous disciples of
love and compassion.
THE THIRD THING:
In Mark, chapter 1, Jesus
emerged from the wilderness proclaiming the Kingdom of God and
calling his disciples. Those early disciples became
zealously committed to
walking a unique and different road.
They understood that the
primary mission and message
of Jesus was the Kingdom of God – which was not about heaven –
but about the transformation of life in this world. It was
about personal
transformation, yes,
but even more! It was also
about social-public
transformation. It was
about “Thy kingdom come, thy will
be done on (this) earth,” as Jesus taught them in his prayer.
Through Jesus they came to the deep conviction that God cared
deeply for the quality of life in the world.
For most of them, because they were from the peasant class, their
quality of life was poor! They
lived under the oppressive thumb
of the Roman domination system and a collaborative religious hierarchy
that gave every advantage to the powerful elites.
The economic system was designed so that the vast majority
of power and wealth was controlled by the top 1% or 2 %.
Buried away,
scarcely noticeable in today’s story, is a
little verse that says,
“They were astounded at his
teaching, for he taught as one having ‘authority’”,
and not as the scribes.” The
designation, “one who teaches
with authority,”
was a designation reserved
exclusively for the great social prophets of Israel – and the
primary message of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible was a message of
social justice,
compassion and empowerment
of the poor and powerless.
It was
Mark’s way of subtly
sticking it to the hypocritical religious hierarchy saying that the
“authority”
they claimed and by which
they ruled was a
sham. It was Jesus,
proclaiming the Kingdom of God, who had
“authentic”, prophetic
authority. It was an incredibly
risky and dangerous thing
for Mark to present for he could have been brought up on charges of
blasphemy and sedition.
Also notice this:
Right after Mark's comment about the
“authority”
of Jesus, the unclean spirit in the man cries out to Jesus,
"Have you come to destroy
us?"
Mark crafts the story in
such a clever way that we are left with the impression, as readers, that
the “unclean spirit”
represents the voice
of the religious hierarchy and the Roman oppressors.
"Jesus,
have you come to destroy us?"
Mark has woven this exorcism
story into the larger story-line of his gospel to
promote the message
that it was not merely
personal unclean spirits that Jesus exorcised leading to
personal transformation,
but Jesus also announced the Kingdom of God that challenged the
systemic evil that
oppressed whole classes of people.
Mark begins his gospel with the line,
“The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ,
the son of God.” Mark’s
faith community truly experienced the
“good news” of Jesus” on
two levels: the
personal and the
public:
Ø
The personal:
In the face of the inner demons that minimized their humanity,
Jesus called forth, from the depths of their beings, a greater love and
compassion.
Ø
The public:
He gave them a vision of a
different kind of world he called the Kingdom of God;
a
vision of a fairer,
more just, more compassionate world that elevated the powerless and
included those excluded and marginalized by power.
Can we,
as modern day disciples, be open to the same love and power of God’s
presence that was embodied in Jesus and allow him to
draw out of us a fuller
humanity and to be guided
by his vision of a transformed world?
I pray we, in our time, will
allow this story and the “good
news” of Jesus to speak into the
personal and public
dimensions of our lives.
Amen.