Epiphany 4
January 28, 2018
Mark 1:21-28
The best books are the
ones that let you know what they are all about right off the bat. Regardless of
the genre, it is more engaging to know the premise right away, even if the
details come later. This gives the reader a sense of purpose as to why they
should keep reading. The writers of the gospels seek to do this as well. Each
one of them begins with a premise that is intended to hook the reader in, to
clue them into what they are trying to communicate about God and Jesus right
off the bat. John begins by proclaiming light and abundance that come from
Jesus, Matthew seeks to tie in Jesus role as it pertains to the history of
Israel and Jesus’ status as a teacher, Luke goes to far as to pen his thesis in
the first verses of his Gospel – with the intention that Theophilus, would come
to know the person of Jesus, the one through whom God turns the world upside
down. And Mark, Mark immediately shows us a Jesus that breaks down the barriers
that separate us from God and us from each other – Beginning when God tears
open the heavens and the holy spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove
at his baptism.
This morning, then, we see
Jesus perform the first act of his ministry. In the synagogue. On the sabbath.
As he is teaching, a man with an unclean spirit approaches, recognizing Jesus
for exactly who he is, the Holy one of God, and cries out “what have you to do
with us? Have you come to destroy us?”
I’m actually a bit
surprised that this man was able to get into the synagogue to see Jesus. In
Jesus’ time, those with unclean spirits were cast out of their communities, we
see later in the gospel that they went so far as to chain a man known as the
Gerasene demoniac in a graveyard because of the danger he posed to himself and
to the community. So for a person with an unclean spirit to be present in the
synagogue was unusual.
But Jesus, upon seeing
him, rebukes the spirit and orders it to leave the man.
And the man who entered
the synagogue as an unclean and outcast, has not only been rid of the spirit
possessing him, he has also been restored to his family, his friends, and his
community. In other words, Jesus has given him his life back. This is the first
act of Jesus’ ministry – giving this man back his life – which shows us, in a
very powerful and visceral way, that Jesus isn’t just interested in saving
people for the next life, Jesus wants abundant life for us in the here and now
and he will stand in the way of anything which seeks to rob us of that abundance.
So what does an unclean
spirit look like today?
If we take a look at the
scriptures, what we find is that an unclean spirit is that which stand in the
way of our ability to live into the abundance of God’s love for us. This may
seem like a strange venture away from the witness of our Gospel this morning.
But the reality of the situation is that, in our modern and scientific times,
we are faced with the temptation to want to diagnose away these unclean spirits
so that we can better understand them. But if you look at the entirety of the
scriptures, we find, time and time again, that unclean spirits often take the
form of the temptations of this world that try to convince us that there is a
better, easier way of living than following in the teaching and commands of
God.
These are ways of living
that cause us to see our neighbors not as God sees them, but as the world sees
them. They are no longer neighbors from whom we differ and with whom we may
disagree, they are enemies from whom we must be kept safe.
We saw an example of this
last weekend. For those few days that the government was shutdown, it was
interesting to note that politicians on both sides of the aisle spent more time
laying blame on those republicans, and those democrats, than they did
explaining how they were going to come together to find a solution.
From a broader
perspective, we throw around words like Illegals, thugs, burnouts, moochers,
dead beats, snowflakes, all the way to words that should never be uttered aloud
- to describe groups of people who we don’t like or whose existence makes us
uncomfortable. And when we label our neighbors as such, the participate in the
act of dehumanizing one another.
And beyond the ways that
we drag each other down and label one another, there are systems that are in
place in this world that keep folks from being able to live in the abundance
promised by God. Systems of poverty that are cyclical, unemployment, insurance
systems that leave people in tremendous amounts of debt, cycles of addiction,
systems that promote abuse and harassment, idolatry that looks to the gods of
wealth and security rather that to the God who desires wholeness and peace for
each and every person created in the image of God, which just happens to be
everyone who has ever or will walk this planet.
Beloved, according to the
Gospel of Mark, the work that Jesus came to do was to tear open the heavens and
come down to us so that we could be freed from those things which seek to rob
us of the abundant life that God wishes for us. The work that Jesus came to do
was unleash the presence of God in the world so that, through Jesus, we would
know that God stands against all those things which seek to rob us of our life
and the abundance of it. And in our baptism, we were joined to Jesus in his
death and resurrection and thus freed from the bondage of sin and death so
that, in the next life we would have life abundant and eternal with him.
But that also means that
we are freed in Jesus, through the waters of baptism to boldly proclaim Christ
and his death and resurrection to those places where unclean spirits live. And
we have been called by virtue of our baptism to first – open our eyes to see
the world as God sees it, and second – to go into the places where the world has
been broken by unclean spirits so that Jesus may work through us to cast those
spirits out and bring an abundance of life.
We have been called to be
imitators of Jesus, seeking a world in which those who have been cast out and
ostracized can be welcomed back to the table, a world in which young girls can
go to the doctor and know they will be safe; where women and men can go about
their day with the confidence that they will not be harassed or abused; a world
in which our children can go to school without the fear of gun violence. We are
to seek a world in which the systems of racism, poverty, and oppression, in all
its forms, are eradicated and where, instead of the doomsday clock moving
closer and closer to midnight, we can actually reverse the clock and, with it,
our fears of a nuclear holocaust.
My friends, our nation is
sick. Our world is a mess which has been broken by our sinful and self-serving
natures. However, it is to the sick and broken places that God sent Jesus to
tear open the heavens and come down in order to break down the barriers that
separate us from God, those things which seek to rob us of the abundance God
wishes for us, so that, in gratitude for our freedom from sin and death won for
us by Jesus, we might boldly seek ways in which we and our neighbors may live
free and abundant lives here and now, basking in the love of God most
powerfully made known to us in the person and work of Jesus.
So, as far as books go, I
think Mark is off to a compelling start. Amen.
