Engaging the Spirits

Sunday, Jan 29 2012

Speakers: Rev. James M. Rand

Scripture: Psalm 111, Mark 1:21-28

It is no great stretch of imagination to say that each encounter with Jesus in the Gospel of Mark involves casting out demons or unclean spirits.

The stories move fast: from today’s confrontation in a synagogue to the stilling of a storm and calming of waves, healing a leper, feeding hungry crowds, raising the dead, distinguishing what belongs Caesar and what to God, or cajoling lukewarm disciples to get with the program.  Sooner or later, though, these stories all end the same – as when Jesus orders disbelieving, play-it-safe Simon Peter to “get behind me … Satan!”  (Casting out demons!)

No patient, polite Jesus on these pages.  No “little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay,” for whom we sing, “No crying he makes.”  Start to finish, Mark lays out a cosmic contest between evil and good.  Sweat flies.  Muscles strain.  Wits are tested, loyalty challenged.  Bodies “convulse.”  Spiritual warfare is waged in epic proportions, and in dust that won’t settle until Easter morning.

(If then!)  Even at the resurrection, Mark (more than the other Gospels) leaves the outcome undecided. Women bolt from the tomb in terror and amazement – amazement like that which fills the synagogue today – and they tell no one that God’s great victory over death and evil has been won.

In Mark, you see, the enemy is never far away: be it a frowning Pharisee, unclean spirit, or contrary wind.  Trouble lurks (even on the sabbath) in places that ought to be safe – like the synagogue, and in Capernaum, whose very name means “Village of Compassion.”

No wonder John the Baptizer showed up preaching “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  When powers like these clash, you better know where you stand.  An African proverb says, “When elephants fight, the ant suffers.”

And these are big elephants.  They plow at each other with brute force more than words.  The Jesus we meet here is not the sensible teacher of the Sermon on the Mount that Matthew presents, nor the spinner of pretty parables about prodigal children and good Samaritans that we see in Luke.

Mark’s Jesus is a man of few words, especially compared to the Fourth Gospel, John, where that Jesus talks at length to Nicodemus and Pontius Pilate and the disciples … baffling them all.

No verbal swordplay here! No empty threats, fancy talk or idle chitchat.  When Jesus speaks in Mark, it is only to say he means business.

He doesn’t tolerate loose lips on others, either.  Especially among unclean spirits.  He commands the one in the synagogue to be quiet.  No, he tells it to “Shut up!  Put a cork in it.”  Our translation is too gentle.  (Sorry parents of young children!)  Jesus is almost rude with his command.

It’s not that words don’t matter to Jesus, or that he thinks “silence is golden.” It’s that, too often, words are used to fight dirty.  Just ask lovers that have fallen out of love, or kids at recess when the playground monitor is out of earshot, or political candidates who spout half-truths against members of their own party.

Jesus – especially in the Gospel of Mark – knows how deadly words are. 

He’s “not like the scribes,” Mark declares.  “Not like the scribes,” says the synagogue crowd.  “Not like scribes,” who made their living with words, culling others’ ideas and opinions before mumbling some semblance of their own.  Not like tall steeple preachers who prattle on and on but never lift a finger to work, or Pharisees in the temple who love to hear themselves pray.  And not like church committees that “take minutes but waste hours” before submitting reports that are quickly filed away and forgotten.

Unlike the scribes, Jesus in Mark is a man of few words … but much authority.

Let’s ponder that word for a moment, because authority comes in many forms. There is the authority of a loud voice (you’ve heard it: “Stop!”) … the authority of certain roles (“because I’m your mother, that’s why!”) … the authority of clever words or good looks.  (Politicians and police gain authority simply by looking the part.)

But the authority witnessed in Jesus at the synagogue was none of those.  What set him apart was integrity.  There was a convergence between what he said and did.  And that gave him a high “B.Q” (Believability Quotient).  And that is where his authority rested.

In every presbytery I’ve served, I’ve had colleagues that (believe me) could barely preach.  But they had thriving congregations.  Why?  Because whatever they did say was confirmed by their actions.  They spoke in monotone, their neckties didn’t match their sportcoats on Sunday mornings, and their message rambled a bit.

But congregations turned out faithfully to hear them – because, when you went in the hospital, he showed up by your bed and prayed.  Or she buried your elderly parents though they weren’t church members.  He wrote you a note that arrived on the day you needed it most.  And she volunteered at an AIDS hospice on her day off.

I’m not saying pastors have a monopoly on integrity.  Church members have it too, and whole congregations.  A sign out front says “All Welcome.”  And when you walk in, they show it – no matter what you’re wearing or whom you’re with.  They say, “We’re mission-minded” … and prove it at the food pantry, when refugees come to town, and when stewardship season arrives.

Authority.  Integrity.  Believability.  Not like the scribes.  That’s what Jesus had.  And the people who saw it on display in the synagogue were “astounded.”

I always thought Mark meant, “They were impressed.”  Then I learned that the Greek word for “astounded” means “blown out of their minds.”  It means they could have been fascinated or offended.  Or both – at the same time.  After all, the way Jesus behaved is disruptive.  No quiet church when he and the unclean spirits walk in!  The pew-sitters had to figure out in a hurry where they stood (like the ant between the elephants).

So a preacher from up north goes to march with Martin Luther King in the south, then comes home and preaches about it.  Is the congregation happy?  Not entirely!  They’re “astounded” – which means some are thrilled by the bravery and witness. And some leave and join a quieter, “safer” church. 

Casting out demons of segregation and suspicion seems completely desirable 40 years later.  But on the day that it was happening?

 “This Jesus has a … mission,” Tom Long says, “namely to do battle with the demonic powers that rage against human life.”  Then he adds: God sent Jesus “to defang the snake coiling itself around God’s creation and all of God’s people” (Christian Century, 8/25/09).

* *

How do you like that?  God sends Jesus “to defang the snake.”

Kind of puts going to church in a new light.  Because church is where the snake and Jesus meet up for the first time.  Jesus’ first public test takes place in a synagogue – during worship!

Compare that to John.  John was more abrasive than Jesus, no contest.  But John did his thing in the desert, away from the city, by the river.  Where he operated, it didn’t get as much press.  John worked on the margins … mostly.

But Jesus had his first big dust-up in the social and spiritual heart of the city – in the synagogue – where you had to be holy and pure and righteous to get in.

Somehow an unclean spirit snuck past the guards.  It infiltrated their meeting under the robes of an ordinary man, and waited to pounce.  It bided its time like a heckler on the campaign trail, this unclean spirit did, looking for the right moment to attack.

It waited till all the attention was on Jesus, then let fly with what the “Dilbert” comic strip last week called “destructive criticism.”  Constructive criticism is hard enough to hear.  But this spirit cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus?” (Like religion and the rest of life have nothing in common!)  “Have you come to destroy us?”  It tried to make Jesus look bad – a destroyer, not a healer.

I don’t know why it had to happen in a synagogue, but that unclean spirit was dumb.  It was like giving Jesus home field advantage.  It gave him an edge.  It didn’t work so well for the Packers this year, but overall, home field is a good thing.  Since it was his first public test, it gave Jesus a chance to try out his stuff before moving on to bigger contests.

* *

Up to this point, I’ve been improvising on the text, jazzing it up – saying what came to mind.  But now I’ll sum up, with three ideas you can take home with you.

First and foremost, this text revels in our great eschatological hope.  It celebrates our deep-rooted belief (and need!) that in the end, demons will be cast out of creation.  God will win.  It is only chapter 1 of the Gospel, but even now we get clues about the long-term promises for how things will finally be.

Unclean spirits will be vanquished.  Already, (in the words of James Cone) we see “the overthrow of everything that works against [our] humanity.”  It’s in this passage.

That’s one thing.

Second, we discover that the cosmic battle is played out in worship before anywhere else.  The future we await starts here – in synagogue and chapel, prayer hall and church.  And we get to be the first to know it.

That means we are the first who get to try it on for ourselves.  Like Jesus, this is our “home field.”  We get the edge here over demons and unclean spirits.  The crowd is on our side – the crowd that went ooh and ahh when we were baptized and that promised to help our parents raise us in faith … the crowd that prayed for us when we left for college or work or our prodigal years, and then welcomed our return … the crowd that sings with us every Sunday, and lays hands on us when we are ordained as deacons and elders and clergy, and chats with us over coffee, and brings us a meal when we need it (be it bread and wine from this table, or casseroles from the oven at home to soothe our misery).

I’m won’t say going to church is like going into a bubble, where all is safe.  Demons get in here too.  Just ask Jesus.  There’ll be bumps and bruises and injuries sometimes.  But, when it comes to working on our integrity and Christ-like authority, it’s still the best place we have to start getting it right.

I mean, which do you prefer: to take on the unclean spirits alone in the world, or in church with others?  So that’s the idea #2 that you can take home.

Finally, you might take away from here this morning the reminder that the enemies we face are real.  And they are big.  And they are tenacious.  The unclean spirit that slithered out of the synagogue on its belly that day did not crawl in a hole.  It licked its wounds and started watching for other opportunities to coil itself around Jesus and us.

Even after Easter, it hasn’t been smart enough to know when to quit.  To quote Martin Luther’s most famous hymn, “Were not the right man on our side, our striving would be losing.”  Life would be unbearable.  But the right man is on our side.  Jesus Christ is with us, not for death but for life.  Not for obstreperous contention but for unity.  Not for words that wound but actions that heal.  Not for departing but for welcoming home.

That God has sent such a one to us as our Savior … astounding, isn’t it?

And that’s just the start of the story.  If we’re lucky, we’ll never get over it.

To the glory of God.