February 1, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Psalm 95 + 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 + Mark 1:21-28
The “amazement” is what I want you to reflect upon with me this morning. It occurs again and again in this gospel. If we fail to reflect upon this amazement and pass over it thinking that power is always amazing. The Word of God falls on deaf ears. There are things that amaze us all the time: good and bad. Watching a lift-off for a trip to the space station is amazing. Watching the power of a tornado even from a distance is amazing. The disciples and people all around Galilee are not amazed at the “power” of Jesus. It is not the violent casting out of an unclean spirit that amazes these people.
Not unlike our own times, the response of these people to evil or to anything that might endanger their holiness was avoidance. They simply did not deal with it. They avoided it. So, what amazes them first of all is that Jesus did not do so. The authority of the past told them to avoid the evil, “pretend it isn’t there” is the suggestion. “Stay away, look the other way, and everything will be fine.” And so, in some ways, things only got worse. Do not miss the detail that this unclean spirit is inside the synagogue!
The holy place is defiled! There is a subtle and fascinating detail in this story. It takes place in a holy place at a holy time: synagogue and Sabbath. Holiness is going to confront evil in a new way, and that’s amazing.
A new authority suggests that holiness is not possible by ignoring evil, pretending it isn’t there or by looking the other way; and I am not talking about evil in someone else. This is about how one attains to holiness within themselves. If it is not just about clean pot and pans, observing the correct religious diet, and the other minute details of the Jewish Law, neither is about avoiding unclean spirits. Holiness is about getting it out. It is about silencing the tempting voice of evil not pretending it isn’t there. This is amazingly new not just back then but today as well.
We have become experts at denial. We have denied ourselves into a national and world-wide economic crisis. We have denied the seductive voice of violence to the point that this evil has entered the holy place of our homes. We have avoided facing the evil of individualism and isolation while the unclean spirit of poverty and sickness lurks all around us spoiling our uneasy peace. We have made boundaries where there ought to be none setting ourselves apart through racism and all kinds of fears and suspicions and then transgressed boundaries with sex and exploitation where there ought to be respect.
A new authority is speaking these days, says Mark. It is an authority that does not allow lesser beings to harm those God loves. That authority says: “Get out!” and it does taking with it the pain it has caused. The Jesus of today’s Gospel is not a “play it safe” authority, and “playing it safe” is not the style of his disciples. Again and again, he names evil and he demands that it shut up and get out. Our comfortable accommodation of evil within ourselves will not bring us to holiness no restore the innocence of baptismal experience. We may to hit the floor, so to speak. We may end up being cast down; but if it brings us to holiness, to salvation, to justice, and to the peace of God’s Kingdom, then that would appear to be what is happening here.
It is amazing what can happen when we cease denial, avoiding, and pretending in order to embrace the kind of change, conversion, and holiness to which Jesus invites us all.