Year B - 4th Sunday after Epiphany – January 31, 2021, Mark 1: 21*28
You all know by now that I’m all about context. And there are things about the gospel of Mark that we always have to keep in mind. First, it’s the earliest gospel written. It’s widely accepted that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a framework for their telling of Jesus’ story, supplemented by an unknown source referred to as Q. While Matthew was written to a mainly Jewish audience and Luke to mainly Gentile Christians, Mark was written to the whole church, needed to set the story in writing before too many witnesses were gone and no longer able to tell the story.
Second, it’s the shortest of the four gospels. At only 660 verses, Mark doesn’t spend a lot of extra words talking about the whys and wherefores. Who, what, where? … that’s what Mark wants us to know. Mark hits the important highlights, informing us of the basic facts of Jesus’ ministry.
And third, there is this underlying message of secrecy. Many times, Jesus tells the disciples, “Do not tell anyone about what you have seen.” We’ll talk about this more as the year progresses, but the question does arise, why would he do that? There are many ideas – maybe it’s the case of telling people not to do something, but knowing that they will anyway. But mixed in is the underlying reality that Jesus’ story is too big, too amazing, too true not to tell. And it’s not only the disciples doing the talking. Today we see a most unusual witness to the miraculous nature of Jesus’ identity, power, and authority.
It’s hard to believe we are still in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel. Contained within its verses are the beginnings of a different kind of ministry. Think about what has happened so far… John the Baptist preaches about the coming of a Savior, sent by God. He baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River. Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted – one of our first lessons during Lent. And when he comes back to civilization after John’s arrest, he begins calling the disciples. And here in verses 21-28 he begins a ministry of teaching and healing.
And still, we get the point. Mark uses this story about Jesus and the beginnings of his ministry to talk about Jesus being one with authority. Through the power of his spoken word, and his ability to cleanse this man at the sound of his voice, Jesus’ identity as the One sent from God is being unveiled.
Jesus makes one of his first stops in Capernaum, and when he gets to town, he shows up at the synagogue, steps into the place of authority, and begins to teach… that is a pretty brave way to step up. And not only that, but he confronts an unclean spirit, while he’s at it… that sounds like my worst nightmare, come to life. But Jesus, he claims the authority that he’s been given by God, and he steps up.
Jesus didn’t dazzle or trick the people into hearing the word of God in his message. He did not muscle or bully the unclean spirit into leaving the man’s body. In fact, the unclean spirit understood much more quickly than the crowd did about who Jesus was. They knew that Jesus’ authority was not that which he claimed for himself and then exacted on others at his will. Jesus’ ability to teach and heal in the name of the Lord was recognized as a God-ordained gift by those who believed and followed him. And people are amazed. And not just like, “Who does this guy think he is?” No, this is “WOW, he might be the one we were promised.
I imagine there were many regular synagogue goers there that day. They came, week in and week out to hear the Torah read and to take encouragement into their daily lives to keep following the Law. But this day was different. Jesus brought new meaning to the words that they had heard before. This wasn’t someone reading from a dusty sacred scroll. This was someone who spoke with authority and then followed by putting his authority to the test.
One last notion: In our current society, we aren’t sure what to do with this miracle. We wrestle with the idea of demonic possession, not because we don’t believe that there is evil in the world, but because we see for ourselves that this kind of behavior can often have a medical explanation. Biblical scholars from the last fifty years have jumped on that bandwagon. Some think the unexplainable only confuses the issues related to Jesus and his ministry.
But evil does exist, and there are other demons besides non-human entities that possess even the best of us… greed, pride, fear, jealousy, hatred… pushed to their limits, these can fuel the evil we see in everyday life. These kinds of behavior assume that the world revolves around us and our needs, and pushes away the needs of others as unimportant or even detrimental to our own identities and existence.
These sins are called deadly for a reason – they focus our attention on personal gain and position rather than on the one who created and calls us to cede authority to him. They cause us to cast aside the structures and authorities we have relied on in order to frame the world in a particular way. They lure us off the path of righteousness and back into the darkness, and away from the light.
We are people called to be in community with one another. But in reality, we are connected to many kinds of communities. We align ourselves with different groups throughout the course of our lives. We are members of different families, students and graduates of different schools, members of different branches of the military, or workers in different directorates, battalions, and professions. But at the center of all of those competing claims is claim the Christian community has on us… not as members of different branches of Christianity’s family tree, but as brothers and sisters in Christ, all called to love and serve him, and through him, one another.
This lesson is difficult because it opens the door to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions. What or who has authority over our lives? What controls our actions and reactions? In the end, the most important question for us as Christians is this one: Is Christ at the top of the list? Do we accept the authority he has over us as believers and followers of him?
A lot of wars have been fought between fellow Christians over the years. Some of those fights were and are over perceived differences in how we are called to believe in and worship God. Some of those fights are over things that seem entirely unrelated, seeking to claim power over others before they can claim it over us. We fight because we are afraid of change.
The demonic spirit in Mark’s gospel is smarter than us. It knows that things are about the change: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” We, too, must ask that question. “What will you do with us, Lord? What change will you require?” Eventually, we learn important lessons: with change comes surrender, and with surrender comes transformation. We ask if Jesus has come to destroy us, destroy our lifestyle, destroy our image of ourselves, our self-confidence, our self-dependence. Maybe the answer is yes, but we are not left the pick up the pieces all by ourselves. This kind of change wipes the slate clean and allows us to begin again.
We are people on a journey of transformation, and it isn’t always easy. Becoming disciples is hard work. It means setting aside the comfortable things that weigh us down. It means handing over the reins of our lives so that we can be led into a wholeness that we could never have imagined. All this is necessary so that we can proclaim wholeness to the broken world around us. It’s the very reason we exist.
Amen.
Let us pray:
What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? What changes are you making in us and among us? How are you recruiting us for the task of overcoming evil, ending oppression, bringing justice to an unjust world?
That sounds scary, Lord. That sounds like something we can’t do alone.
We ask you to bring us into community together, so that we can commit our lives to the work of your kingdom. We are yours, Lord; we commit ourselves to you again, right here, right now. Amen.
· https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/epiphany4b
· https://mailchi.mp/christiancentury/sc-free-350975a-351612?e=a9151c0052
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