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There are really two parts to the gospel story this morning: the part about Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum with “authority,” and the part about Jesus exorcising an “unclean spirit” from one of those in the synagogue.
I really have no idea what the “spirit” in this story actually is. Some commentaries recast it as a mental illness, or as a medical condition like epilepsy. Others insist on it being an actual demon … a malicious spiritual being that entraps human souls. Still others argue that spirits in the New Testament are metaphors for anything that might “possess” or “control” us such as anger, fear, lust, greed, hatred, envy, etc.
Worship Booklet
Communion Prayer
Printer-Friendly Version (Sermon)
There are really two parts to the gospel story this morning: the part about Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum with “authority,” and the part about Jesus exorcising an “unclean spirit” from one of those in the synagogue.
I really have no idea what the “spirit” in this story actually is. Some commentaries recast it as a mental illness, or as a medical condition like epilepsy. Others insist on it being an actual demon … a malicious spiritual being that entraps human souls. Still others argue that spirits in the New Testament are metaphors for anything that might “possess” or “control” us such as anger, fear, lust, greed, hatred, envy, etc.
In the name of the God of all Creation,
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
There are really two parts to the gospel story this morning: the part about Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum with “authority,” and the part about Jesus exorcising an “unclean spirit” from one of those in the synagogue.
I really have no idea what the “spirit” in this story actually is. Some commentaries recast it as a mental illness, or as a medical condition like epilepsy. Others insist on it being an actual demon … a malicious spiritual being that entraps human souls. Still others argue that spirits in the New Testament are metaphors for anything that might “possess” or “control” us such as anger, fear, lust, greed, hatred, envy, etc.
I don’t know which one of these explanations is what the author intended, and I don’t think it matters. When I tried to imagine my way into the life of the man with the unclean spirit, what disturbed me most was not “who” or “what” the spirit actually was, but how utterly it ravaged the poor man whose body and mind it possessed. According to Mark's account, the man had no voice of his own … the spirit spoke for him. The man had no control over his body … the spirit convulsed him. The man had no community … the spirit isolated him. And the man had no dignity … the spirit dehumanized him.
Granted, this picture of “spirit possession” is extreme. But all of us suffer … or have suffered … under the burden of “spirits” that have diminished, distorted, and wounded us. All of us know … or have known … what it is like to lose capacity for life, flexibility, and self-respect to forces too powerful for us to defeat on our own. Some of us might even name the current pandemic and its global effects as just such a “demon.” COVID-19 … and now its variants … are a huge, powerful force that robs us of life … of loved ones … of community … of safety. Whether we regard such forces as spiritual … psychological … biological … metaphorical … or cultural … this Gospel story tells us about how “unclean spirits” affect and manipulate our souls.
In Mark’s story, the unclean spirit goes to the synagogue and listens to Jesus. It recognizes “the Holy One of God” before anyone else does. This “unclean spirit calculates the stakes, realizes that Jesus’s presence signals its doom, and puts up a loud, vicious fight before it surrenders.
Does any of this sound familiar? Sometimes our “unclean spirits” take up residence in our holy and sacred places. At times, we carry our destructive habits and tendencies right into our churches, our friendships, our families, and our workplaces. Sometimes our demons … our fears, our addictions, our sins, and our compulsions … recognize Jesus first because they know that an encounter with the holy will change everything. So, they make us recoil as soon as the divine shows up in the guise of a loving friend, or a provocative sermon, or an awakened conscience. Sometimes our lives actually get more difficult when we move towards faith and healing, because unclean spirits always fight the hardest when they have been recognized, and they know their time is up.
Two lines in this week’s Gospel reading stand out to me. Both refer to the people who encounter Jesus’s Sabbath teaching in the synagogue: “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority,” and, “They were all amazed and kept asking one another, ‘What is this?’”
They were “astounded.” They were “amazed.” Do you recall a time in the recent past when the presence of the divine … the sacred … the holy … in your life caught your attention and held it? When has a sacred moment or a holy encounter … maybe just a word, an image, or synchronistic experience caused a chill to run up and down your spine? When do you wake up three in the morning … your eyes wide open … with the realization that accidentally bumping into an old friend was really a visit by God.
These are rough, unlikely days for astonishment. Almost one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are battling a deep and persistent unease. We are weary, anxious, dejected, and bored. I’m tired of referencing COVID-19 in every sermon. We are too worried about the future to live attentively in the present. Time drags on in a soggy shapelessness, with the days of the week assuming new names … Thisday … Thatday … the Otherday. Or, time flies by at breakneck speed as we struggle to multitask under face masks, social distancing, positivity rates, death tolls, mutations, quarantines, and attempts to get the a vaccination shot. And, because St. Cyprian’s is still online, our access to this spiritual community … our sacred space … the ritual of our worship and sacrament … is severely limited.
Where, in the midst of all of this, might we experience awe … wonder … astonishment … surprise? Where is the voice of authority, power, grace, and healing that can snap us back into full and vibrant living? And, where is it right now?
The text says that Jesus taught in the synagogue at Capernaum. We don’t know anything about the people in that congregation … their names, ages, or backstories. All we know is that they showed up in the synagogue, listened to Jesus teach, and his words penetrated their souls to a place that felt fresh, new, and transformative.
The implication, of course, is that these worshippers came to the synagogue in a spirit of curiosity and openness. Alongside whatever sense of responsibility, tradition, and habit compelled them to show up that day, they also held onto the possibility of surprise … of an encounter with the sacred … of a trust that the divine might show up and do something different and shocking.
I wonder if we approach God … or our Holy Scriptures … or our church … or our faith in this way? I wonder if we approach God with a sense of anticipation? Do we approach the holy and sacred with a hunger for an encounter with something new and different? Or, have we allowed the trials of this past year to make us cynical? Even as we worship these days by YouTube-Live, do we watch and participate in the service expecting the shock of actual divine presence? If not, why not?
We live in a culture that is deeply … and perhaps rightfully … skeptical of “authoritative” religious claims. Many of us have good reasons to be jaded when it comes to “hearing God’s word,” as we have been hurt by authority figures we trusted. How, given these realities, can we still leave room for something holy to show up and surprise us? How can we make sure we’re not so entrenched in our theological, liturgical, cultural, or political points of view that we fear and resist the new?
Mark never tells us what Jesus taught his audience that day. All we know is that he entered the synagogue, taught with an authority his listeners found astonishing, and underscored that authority with an exorcism that rattled everyone who witnessed it. Jesus taught with authority, as if he were the author of his own life … even the author of life itself. His authenticity spoke for itself, and he had an integrity and a generosity that compelled people to listen and to follow him.
For me, the take-away from this story is this: Jesus stepped directly into the pain, rage, ugliness, and horror at the heart of this story. He wasn’t squeamish … he didn’t flinch … his brand of holiness didn’t require him to keep his hands clean. He was in the fear … in the sickness … in the nightmare … ready to engage anything that diminished the lives of those he loved. Yes, he preached with great effectiveness to the faithful, but he also spoke the unclean spirit’s language, listened to its cries, and rebuked it for the sake of a broken man's health and sanity.
One last thing, consider the question the spirit asked before it left its victim: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? There’s only one answer to that question. “Everything. I have everything to do with you.” Wherever pain is … wherever darkness is … wherever torment is … that is where God is. God has everything to do with us, even and maybe especially when we're at our worst. When the shadows overwhelm us, when the demons shriek the loudest, when the hope of liberation feels like nothing more than fantasy … that is when Jesus’s authority … his authenticity … brings the walls down.
In this difficult season we’re all walking through, I pray that we can recover a capacity for holy amazement. I pray that like the man with the unclean spirit, we will surrender to freedom when the holy presence of the divine offers it to us … even if the casting out of our demons causes us hardship. And I pray that like Jesus, we … in our authenticity … we will speak words of loving, healing authority to a world that longs for an astonishing encounter with the divine.
Amen.
I really have no idea what the “spirit” in this story actually is. Some commentaries recast it as a mental illness, or as a medical condition like epilepsy. Others insist on it being an actual demon … a malicious spiritual being that entraps human souls. Still others argue that spirits in the New Testament are metaphors for anything that might “possess” or “control” us such as anger, fear, lust, greed, hatred, envy, etc.
I don’t know which one of these explanations is what the author intended, and I don’t think it matters. When I tried to imagine my way into the life of the man with the unclean spirit, what disturbed me most was not “who” or “what” the spirit actually was, but how utterly it ravaged the poor man whose body and mind it possessed. According to Mark's account, the man had no voice of his own … the spirit spoke for him. The man had no control over his body … the spirit convulsed him. The man had no community … the spirit isolated him. And the man had no dignity … the spirit dehumanized him.
Granted, this picture of “spirit possession” is extreme. But all of us suffer … or have suffered … under the burden of “spirits” that have diminished, distorted, and wounded us. All of us know … or have known … what it is like to lose capacity for life, flexibility, and self-respect to forces too powerful for us to defeat on our own. Some of us might even name the current pandemic and its global effects as just such a “demon.” COVID-19 … and now its variants … are a huge, powerful force that robs us of life … of loved ones … of community … of safety. Whether we regard such forces as spiritual … psychological … biological … metaphorical … or cultural … this Gospel story tells us about how “unclean spirits” affect and manipulate our souls.
In Mark’s story, the unclean spirit goes to the synagogue and listens to Jesus. It recognizes “the Holy One of God” before anyone else does. This “unclean spirit calculates the stakes, realizes that Jesus’s presence signals its doom, and puts up a loud, vicious fight before it surrenders.
Does any of this sound familiar? Sometimes our “unclean spirits” take up residence in our holy and sacred places. At times, we carry our destructive habits and tendencies right into our churches, our friendships, our families, and our workplaces. Sometimes our demons … our fears, our addictions, our sins, and our compulsions … recognize Jesus first because they know that an encounter with the holy will change everything. So, they make us recoil as soon as the divine shows up in the guise of a loving friend, or a provocative sermon, or an awakened conscience. Sometimes our lives actually get more difficult when we move towards faith and healing, because unclean spirits always fight the hardest when they have been recognized, and they know their time is up.
Two lines in this week’s Gospel reading stand out to me. Both refer to the people who encounter Jesus’s Sabbath teaching in the synagogue: “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority,” and, “They were all amazed and kept asking one another, ‘What is this?’”
They were “astounded.” They were “amazed.” Do you recall a time in the recent past when the presence of the divine … the sacred … the holy … in your life caught your attention and held it? When has a sacred moment or a holy encounter … maybe just a word, an image, or synchronistic experience caused a chill to run up and down your spine? When do you wake up three in the morning … your eyes wide open … with the realization that accidentally bumping into an old friend was really a visit by God.
These are rough, unlikely days for astonishment. Almost one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are battling a deep and persistent unease. We are weary, anxious, dejected, and bored. I’m tired of referencing COVID-19 in every sermon. We are too worried about the future to live attentively in the present. Time drags on in a soggy shapelessness, with the days of the week assuming new names … Thisday … Thatday … the Otherday. Or, time flies by at breakneck speed as we struggle to multitask under face masks, social distancing, positivity rates, death tolls, mutations, quarantines, and attempts to get the a vaccination shot. And, because St. Cyprian’s is still online, our access to this spiritual community … our sacred space … the ritual of our worship and sacrament … is severely limited.
Where, in the midst of all of this, might we experience awe … wonder … astonishment … surprise? Where is the voice of authority, power, grace, and healing that can snap us back into full and vibrant living? And, where is it right now?
The text says that Jesus taught in the synagogue at Capernaum. We don’t know anything about the people in that congregation … their names, ages, or backstories. All we know is that they showed up in the synagogue, listened to Jesus teach, and his words penetrated their souls to a place that felt fresh, new, and transformative.
The implication, of course, is that these worshippers came to the synagogue in a spirit of curiosity and openness. Alongside whatever sense of responsibility, tradition, and habit compelled them to show up that day, they also held onto the possibility of surprise … of an encounter with the sacred … of a trust that the divine might show up and do something different and shocking.
I wonder if we approach God … or our Holy Scriptures … or our church … or our faith in this way? I wonder if we approach God with a sense of anticipation? Do we approach the holy and sacred with a hunger for an encounter with something new and different? Or, have we allowed the trials of this past year to make us cynical? Even as we worship these days by YouTube-Live, do we watch and participate in the service expecting the shock of actual divine presence? If not, why not?
We live in a culture that is deeply … and perhaps rightfully … skeptical of “authoritative” religious claims. Many of us have good reasons to be jaded when it comes to “hearing God’s word,” as we have been hurt by authority figures we trusted. How, given these realities, can we still leave room for something holy to show up and surprise us? How can we make sure we’re not so entrenched in our theological, liturgical, cultural, or political points of view that we fear and resist the new?
Mark never tells us what Jesus taught his audience that day. All we know is that he entered the synagogue, taught with an authority his listeners found astonishing, and underscored that authority with an exorcism that rattled everyone who witnessed it. Jesus taught with authority, as if he were the author of his own life … even the author of life itself. His authenticity spoke for itself, and he had an integrity and a generosity that compelled people to listen and to follow him.
For me, the take-away from this story is this: Jesus stepped directly into the pain, rage, ugliness, and horror at the heart of this story. He wasn’t squeamish … he didn’t flinch … his brand of holiness didn’t require him to keep his hands clean. He was in the fear … in the sickness … in the nightmare … ready to engage anything that diminished the lives of those he loved. Yes, he preached with great effectiveness to the faithful, but he also spoke the unclean spirit’s language, listened to its cries, and rebuked it for the sake of a broken man's health and sanity.
One last thing, consider the question the spirit asked before it left its victim: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? There’s only one answer to that question. “Everything. I have everything to do with you.” Wherever pain is … wherever darkness is … wherever torment is … that is where God is. God has everything to do with us, even and maybe especially when we're at our worst. When the shadows overwhelm us, when the demons shriek the loudest, when the hope of liberation feels like nothing more than fantasy … that is when Jesus’s authority … his authenticity … brings the walls down.
In this difficult season we’re all walking through, I pray that we can recover a capacity for holy amazement. I pray that like the man with the unclean spirit, we will surrender to freedom when the holy presence of the divine offers it to us … even if the casting out of our demons causes us hardship. And I pray that like Jesus, we … in our authenticity … we will speak words of loving, healing authority to a world that longs for an astonishing encounter with the divine.
Amen.
