Mark 1:21-28 OUR DEMONS
Sermon February 1, 2009: People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE: The Rev. Dan Griggs
What can we say about an exorcism? This Gospel Lesson is one paragraph in a series of paragraphs in Mark chapter one, and all these paragraphs are supposed to go together as a description of the early ministry of Jesus in Galilee: his work involved four things—preaching, teaching, healing and casting out demons. But the lectionary has singled out this one paragraph. If I wanted to, I could just skip this week's assigned Gospel Lesson and preach on something I like better; but for fifteen hundred years or more the church has provided a lectionary of Scripture Lessons for each Sunday, and it's part of a preacher's own discipline to come back every three years and look again at each text, and listen for what the Spirit of God is doing with it today. But still, what can we say about an exorcism?
Well, to introduce it I need to share with you something of my understanding of what Mark was trying to accomplish by writing this Gospel. It's my opinion that Mark was written about 71 AD for a group of Jewish Christians living in either Egypt or what we call Turkey today. The Apostle Paul ran into teachers from this group twenty years earlier when he arrived in the Greek city of Corinth. Paul named four factions, or denominations that were arguing among themselves in Corinth:
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Some say "I am of Paul," some "I am of Apollos," some "I am of Peter," and some "I am of Christ." |
Four groups with four different interpretations of Christianity. The "I am of Christ" group is just as sectarian as the other three; I think the Gospel of Mark was written to the second generation of the "I am of Christ" faction. It appears that this faction centered its teaching and its worship on the practice of miracles, and that their doctrine was triumphalistic—that is, they believed that the miracles they performed were going to get greater and greater until the End of the World, which would be soon: they would be the winners. Mark includes in this Gospel all the stories about Jesus that this faction loved—miracles, Jesus' winning and Jesus' teaching; but then Mark added to their stories a more mature explanation of what Jesus was about and what Christian discipleship is about: Jesus was about the Cross; "take up your cross and follow." Now if I'm anywhere close to right about this "I am of Christ" group, this paragraph I just read is a story that Mark has taken over from their miracles and triumph tradition. This is the way they told the story of Jesus, and Mark includes it because he is one of them—only his understanding of Jesus is more mature and richer. So the lectionary has assigned this exorcism story for the sermon today.
What can it possibly mean for us? We've heard of exorcisms, but most of us think of them as depicted in Peter Blatty's book and the movie "The Exorcist," or those vampire programs on television; so we don't really take them seriously. We might wonder about it, but then we put it out of our minds and go about the practical business of living. Exorcisms are not part of our experience. Some of us may even laugh at the idea.
But when we read this paragraph, something happens to us. This exorcism story pulls the floor of common-sense experience out from under our feet and plummets us into a whole other realm—a realm of angels and demons, and the deepest worries and fears of our own hearts—those nightmares that come back to haunt our days. This exorcism story tells us something important: that Jesus doesn't ignore our deepest fears, doesn't ignore the demons that haunt our lives (however we understand them). Jesus is right there at the center of this whirling chaos, and he brings it under control.
Does your life ever feel like chaos? like you're not in control and some other power has taken over? Have you had that deep anxiety that's like sky-diving the first time, or white-water rafting all alone? That's what I mean by "our demons." The bottom falls out, and it's like you're falling through unending space.
Mark tells this story about an exorcism, and somehow it touches the chaotic heart. Jesus' word to you is whispered quietly, powerfully: "You are beloved." Somebody asks, "What is this?" And another suggests, "A new teaching—with authority!" "He commands even our demons, and they obey him." And he shows us: "You are beloved."
It was back in the 1970's: I was glad to say "yes" when one of the young men in my church, Mark asked me if I would go over to the Catholic Church to assist in the celebration of his wedding. I had done that before, and I knew how it works. But he said, "We're afraid of what Dad's going to do." Mark's father had watched all the buying and planning and growing excitement about the wedding, and he had sunk into a deep and sour sulkiness. He was angry that his son was marrying a Catholic girl in a Catholic ceremony. So I wasn't surprised when Mark's mother spent an hour with me on the phone crying and telling me how difficult life had been with her husband: how thoughtless of others, how abusively blunt he had always been. She used the word "mean." The man had grown up in a stark home without much to make life kind or gracious. His parents had been abusive, and he thought that's the way life is supposed to be. If he had learned anything growing up, it was to hate Catholics. So how could he possibly attend his only son's wedding, possessed as he was? I talked with him, and he wouldn't budge. But in the middle of this chaos the Spirit of Christ broke through and whispered into his ear, "beloved." On the day of the wedding I walked into the church and he was sitting there with his family.
And what of this demon anxiety for loved ones far away, or soon to be going far away? To war, but not just to war: there's school, and jobs, and so many other things that lead to a move, or to a more permanent loss, that seem sensible enough in their explanations; but for your heart the bottom drops out and all you really feel is the chaos of loss. One of the most beautiful messages in the Bible is what I call "God's 'however'"—much assails your heart, however, you are "beloved."
As we celebrate Holy Communion today and the Cup is passed to you, hold the cup between your thumb and your index finger. Look into the unfermented wine as you hold it in the silence. You will see small waves radiating out from the center. Each beat of your heart sends a pulse through the wine and it shimmers across the surface. That's not just your pulse, just like the contents of the cup are not just grape juice. Jesus' life was poured out for you, and the sign of it is the wine. And that pulsing, shimmering wave—is the pulse of the heart of God. You are "beloved."
AMEN
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