A sermon for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on January 29, 2012.
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
Jesus and his disciples came to the town of Capernaum, and on the next Sabbath Jesus went to the synagogue and began to teach. The people who heard him were amazed at the way he taught, for he wasn’t like the teachers of the Law; instead, he taught with authority.
Just then a man with an evil spirit came into the synagogue and screamed, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are – you are God’s holy messenger!”
Jesus ordered the spirit, “Be quiet, and come out the man!”
The evil spirit shook the man hard, gave a loud scream, and came out of him. The people were all so amazed that they started saying to one another, “What is this? Is it some kind of new teaching? This man has authority to give orders to the evil spirits, and they obey him!”
And so the news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere in the province of Galilee.
Jesus is powerful.
Powerful in word. Powerful in action.
We join with the people in the synagogue in amazement.
What did he teach there? What were his words?
We can imagine based on other places in the Bible what he might have said.
It went something like this: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
What does it look like when the kingdom comes near?
We live in an time and place where evil spirits are the subject of films and books and ghost stories not realities of our daily perception. We may be suspicious that there is something like an evil spirit in our computers at times, but we don’t find ourselves seeing someone convulsing or behaving strangely and thinking immediately: They have an evil spirit! Rather, we think immediately, “call 911.”
Whereas former cultures have understood diseases, emotional and physical as spiritually brought on – our culture looks for answers in biology and brain chemistry. We don’t exorcise, we medicate.
We have developed a schema by which we judge events in the world and that schema, that framework, does not include intrusions of the demonic sort. So when we hear about magic or spirit possession in far-off cultures we assure ourselves that those people are just describing as demon possession what we sophisticated Westerners know to be medically explainable.
While I congratulate and celebrate the advance in medical technology and understandings of disease emotional and physical – I do think we should be a little more cautious than we are when we presume to know that all that happens or could happen is explainable or will be explainable by our medical sciences.
As Hamlet says to Horatio:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
So we read of Jesus’ driving out of the evil spirit in the synagogue. Let us not take this text and make it safe and comfortable for our modern ears and modern minds. Let us not say that Jesus is just doing what we’ve now got medications for. Let us not say that the man’s “evil-spirit” is just their primitive way of diagnosing what we know now to be an imbalance of brain chemicals.
This man had an evil spirit. We don’t know exactly what that means but let us not lose its power in our effort to make it familiar to our experience.
This man had an evil spirit.
So I asked the question, “what does it look like when the kingdom of God comes near?”
When the kingdom of God comes near there is a confrontation between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
When the kingdom of God comes near the demons, the destroyers, the agents of decay in this good earth begin to tremble and resist.
Jesus announces in that place that God’s new creation is being born in the midst of this old one. The time is ripe. God’s new way is approaching.
And the power of the proclamation effects a conflict with the power of evil.
“What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are – you are God’s holy messenger!”
The man had run into the room and immediately the evil spirit within him began to confront and resist Jesus’ presence, Jesus’ proclamation.
Perhaps Jesus had just preached the kingdom of God is present. Perhaps he used a famous scripture from Isaiah like he did in a similar account in Luke’s gospel.
“The Sovereign Lord has filled me with his spirit.
He has chosen me and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce release to captives and freedom to those in prison. He has sent me to proclaim that the time has come when the Lord will save his people and defeat their enemies…”
Perhaps Jesus had just announced the good news to the poor, healing to the broken, and release to those enslaved by forces out of their control.
Whatever he preached, it immediately provoked opposition from a force of evil within a man in the town of Capernaum.
What does it look like when the kingdom comes near?
Demons, those who delight in enslavement, destruction, those parasites find it repulsive and a great threat to their power, their control.
The demon recognizes that the kingdom’s nearness spells its own defeat: “Are you here to destroy us?”
Jesus does not even entertain the questions for a moment nor responds in accordance with how the demon wanted him to.
Instead, “Jesus ordered the spirit, ‘Be quiet, and come out of the man!’”
The Spirit of God is upon Jesus and with the power and authority of the creator of the world, the one who made all things whole and good – with that power Jesus announces the kingdom in action and the demon screams.
IN the presence of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, oppression and violence are dethroned and driven out.
What does it look like when the kingdom of God comes near?
The oppressed spiritually, the oppressed socially, the oppressed physically, the oppressed politically, the oppressed economically, all of those weighed down by evil in all of its manifestations are given hope of liberation.
Walter Rauschenbusch once wrote that it is possible to hold the orthodox doctrine on the devil and not recognize him when we meet him in a real estate office or at the stock exchange.
We must be careful of seeing the kingdom as having only a “spiritual” significance. Something very big is happening in Jesus’ presence and it is threatening much more than the spiritual world, it will eventually so threaten the powers of his day that he will be a victim of Roman capital punishment.
But we must be equally careful of denying the powerful spiritual reality that lies behind all of our social, spiritual, and physical evils. God’s world is not easily divisible into spiritual and physical. There is spiritual in the physical and physical in the spiritual and when we seek healing for our spirits we must realize that our bodies are going to have to go along and change too. And when we seek healing for our bodies, we’re not leaving our spirits behind us.
What does it look like when the kingdom of God comes near?
It is a reality that drives out the force of decay from within our souls, from within our minds, from within our bodies, from within our communities.
The kingdom of God is Jesus saying “Be Quiet!” to the present evils of our age – spiritual and physical.
And when Jesus says “Be Quiet!” the evil in this world SCREAMS.
The man convulses and is freed.
Liberation never comes easily. God’s healing in our souls will be an experience as painful as surgery. God’s healing in our relationships will require painful truth-telling and owning up to our wrongs, restoration and forgiveness. God’s healing is not the absence of pain – God’s healing is through the pain to a new reality. Avoiding the pain only results in a half-healed, half-broken reality like never walking on your wounded leg.
Liberation never comes easily. The evil spirit, the evil force will scream in opposition – but the Spirit of God will be victorious and this is the hope that we look to with St. Paul who writes that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
What does it look like when the kingdom of God comes near?
Evil will lash out and pain and difficulty will come to those who seek God’s liberation, God’s healing.
As Stanley Hauerwas remarks: “peace is not the name of the absence of conflict.”
Peace is the road toward healing that is marked by such conflict. Seeking God’s peace is to seek to live in the reality of God’s healing and forgiving power. But the road to the realization of that reality is marked by suffering and great opposition from the evil powers of this world.
What does it look like when the kingdom of God comes near?
We recall the story in the gospel of Luke of when John the Baptizer’s disciples were sent to Jesus while John was in prison
“‘Are you the one who is to come,’” they ask Jesus, “’or are we to wait for another?’ When the men had come to him, they said, ‘John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ’ Jesus* had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’”
The kingdom of God comes near and good things start happening – better yet, bad things begin to recede.
Our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Our God is still a healing God, our God is still a threat to evil in this world.
May we seek God’s healing in our own lives and may we recognize that God’s healing is not just a spiritual thing, that God wants to heal our whole selves, our spirit in the context of our body, our body in the context of our community, our community in the context of our nation, and our nation in the context of the many people of this earth.
And all of this liberation will go nowhere-- it will be a futile noisy clanging cymbal if the God of love is not in it.
A good part of this fight will need to take place on our knees.
So let us seek God’s mercy, God’s healing, and the power of God’s spirit within us to overcome oppressions within and without and realize that evil does not leave without a fight – but God is victorious. God has conquered the death and evil of this world.
God has given us the promise of making all things new.
“‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:53-58)
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment