Mark
1:21-28
21
They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and
taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one
having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their
synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 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." 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be
silent, and come out of him!" 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him
and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 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." 28 At
once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
Once upon a time, in a church not too unlike
ours: it was Sunday, and the new preacher was really “shucking the corn” as they
say. The people in the pews were shouting “Amen!” and grinning ear-to-ear with
every turn of phrase the new preacher flung from the pulpit. They liked what he
had to say—really, they liked better how he
said it. He was different, better than the other preachers they had heard.
Those other preachers would climb up in the pulpit with their stacks of notes,
their reading glasses perched precariously on their noses, and begin to unravel
the linguistic challenges of the scriptures while expounding on dry, historical
traditions. To be fair, they were smart, really
smart, but they lacked something…something this new guy had. You see, he
had charisma: he had a gift. He was able to speak as if God Almighty was
beaming it down, directly through the fillings in his teeth. His teaching
seemed simultaneously new and yet grounded in something bigger, something more.
You could say he had the folks eating right out of his hands. But then somebody
had to show up and spoil everything.
Before
the congregation could get through the first verse of “Softly and Tenderly,”
before the preacher could ask for every head to bow and every eye to close, he
seemed to just appear in the aisle in the middle of the sanctuary. This man seemed
to almost be running to get to the preacher. It was obvious he was disturbed,
ill, and as the musicians continued to play through the invitation, the congregation
began to mumble the words as they started whispering among themselves: “Who in
the world is that? What do you think is wrong with him? Would you look at his
hair; I bet he hasn’t bathed in weeks (bless his heart)….” He came directly to
the preacher, and in a hurried voice, slurred by his mind and the absence of a
few teeth, muttered something indecipherable.
The
preacher, assuming the man was “wanting to get saved,” told him he’d have to
clean himself up, get his mind right, and maybe see a dentist before he came
back down the aisle like that. After all, if he was going to be a functioning
part of that congregation, he was going to have to get in line with the ways
and means of the whole bunch—after all, these were God’s people, and God’s
people have rules to follow and appearances to keep. So when the song ended,
the preacher presented the man to the congregation and said, “This fella’ is
going to get himself cleaned up and put right, then he’s going to march himself
back down here so we can all welcome him as a full member of this
congregation.” And all of God’s people said, “Amen!”
The man never set foot
back in the church. He came looking for help, for liberation from the illness
that clouded his mind, for love from those who claimed to love everybody, for
acceptance from those who were really just as broken and messed up as he was.
He just wanted someone to say that he wasn’t alone in his struggle, that there
was something more powerful than the oppression of fear and rejection, yet all
he got was more of the same—it just happened to come dressed in its Sunday
best. He was looking for freedom from the chains of illness and loneliness,
freedom from the so-called authorities of this world that tell us how to think
and how to act, but instead he got a new dose, a new authority with cleverly
disguised “God language.” And he wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last
(even if he exists in a world of my own creation).
Of course, it could have
gone differently. It could have gone more like that meeting at Capernaum some
two thousand years ago, where Jesus (fresh from his bout with Satan and the
calling of his first disciples) was teaching in the synagogue there. The
congregation, we’re told, was “astounded at his teaching,” when “Just
then [in the middle of their service] there was in their synagogue a man with
an unclean spirit.” Now, nothing can really throw a wrench in the gears
of a good service like some giant, obnoxious distraction, and I’m sure to many
that were there in the synagogue at Capernaum, that’s exactly what this man
was—a distraction. Not only that, but he had no right to be there! This man had
an unclean spirit, whether that refers to a demonic possession (though the word
“demon” does not appear in this text), a mental illness, or something else
entirely is really irrelevant. This man is unclean, which means he is not
supposed to be gathered with the others in the synagogue. Perhaps he had
successfully kept this unclean spirit hidden from the others and Jesus’
authoritative teaching had forced his hand. Maybe he had snuck into the meeting
that day just to test the new rabbi from Nazareth. Mark doesn’t give us a lot
of details; we just know he appears and threatens to throw things off track.
The unclean spirit cries
out through the man at Jesus: "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 doesn’t roll up his sleeves and ball up his fists
in preparation for a physical altercation. Jesus doesn’t begin a systematic
utterance of incantations to expel the spirit. No, Jesus (in a matter-of-fact
sort of way) rebukes the spirit and says, “’Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the
unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” Jesus
showed his authority over the unclean spirit—over those things which are beyond
our control and comprehension—and in doing so gave this unnamed man a new life.
No longer was this man ruled by the authority of this unclean spirit, but now
he has come face-to-face with the ultimate authority that rests in the Son of
God.
That’s all we get about
this man; there’s no follow-up. We never even get his name, but we are told in verses 27 and 28: “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.” Jesus kicks off his public ministry with a bang!
His fame begins to spread as those at Capernaum witnessed what Jesus had done
to the man with the unclean spirit. It’s really a great testimony, isn’t it? A
man who was once tormented by an unclean spirt, a man who was once under the
influence of a false authority, a man who was once enslaved to a power outside
of himself, a man who was once lost is now found. That’s the kind of story we
can get behind. It’s the kind of story we like to share with others. It’s the
kind of story we like to tell…but it’s not really the kind of story we want to
live.
See, like those first
witnesses at the synagogue in Capernaum, many of us are anxious to hear
exciting teachings; we’re excited about telling these grand stories of how
Jesus saved someone from an unclean spirit, a life of crime, fornication,
drugs, evil, and sin. But when it gets down to it, and we have to be a part of
that story…well…we kind of lose that excitement. There are those of us who find
ourselves standing on the other side of a decision, the other side of baptism,
and believe (whether we admit it or not) that we no longer need Jesus to save
us, to exorcise those unclean spirits that pollute our lives and cloud our
conscience. We would much rather witness that in the lives of others, of those
we call unbelievers, sinners, reprobates, different. We’d rather watch it
unfold in the lives of others, to watch as the love and forgiveness of Christ
becomes real in their lives, all the while we withhold our own love and
forgiveness from those who need it. We love to tell to the stories, but we’re
not so anxious to live them.
We’re quick to point out
the need for Jesus’ authority in the lives of others, but not so quick to
confess that our lives aren’t always steered by the presence of Christ within
ourselves. In other words, it seems to me that we are always ready and willing
to call out the unclean spirits in others, to tell the stories of how someone else has been liberated from a
sinful life we were fortunate not to lead, but when it comes to acknowledging
that there are blind spots in our own lives, places where we have yet to allow
Christ to take control...we’re not so ready to confess that. It’s as if we have
some kind of diet, low-cal, fat-free faith: “all the salvation with none of the
surrender.” Do we really believe that Jesus has the authority to be Lord of our
lives—our entire lives? Do we really
believe that Jesus still has the authority to forgive even our darkest, most
secret sins? Do we really believe that Jesus has power over those things that
are beyond our control and outside of our understanding? Do we really believe
that Christ has that sort of authority, that sort of power? Sometimes I wonder…
I like the way Annie Dillard puts it in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk:
Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort
of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of
it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets,
mixing up batches of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear
ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash
helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should
lash us to the pew. For the sleeping god (sic)
may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where
we can never return.[1]
I wonder sometimes if we still
believe that Jesus has the power and authority to change this very world, our
very lives in an instant, if we’re ready to confess that we still have places
in our own hearts we have yet to fully give over to Christ’s authority and
power. I wonder if we’re just a bunch of folks who want to tell others’
stories, to make Jesus famous by sharing stories of how he has changed those we
believe needed to be changed. Or are we ready to confess that we are still in
need of Christ’s love each and every day, that we need to let go of more of
ourselves that it may be changed by more of Christ and his love?
May we be
people who readily confess that we are not perfect—at least not yet. May we be
people who are excited and encouraged by the stories of those who surrender to
God’s love in Christ, yet let us also be people who know that there are still
parts of our lives we need to surrender to God. May we be people who long to
make Jesus famous, but even more than that, may we be people who seek to
surrender our whole lives to him, trusting in his authority of love, so that
Christ may continue to call us and continue to change us into the people he
longs for us to be. Amen.
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