“A Dangerous Jesus”
1 Corinthians 8:1-13 Mark 1:21-28
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany January 29, 2012
Reverend Deb Davis First Congregational UCC
This morning … Mark’s gospel gives us a glimpse of a Jesus who can see right into our souls … can see what’s wrong in our lives … a Jesus who can spot and challenge our demons.
And that makes Jesus very dangerous for us. Because I suspect most of the time we wish everyone would just see want we want them to see … the external us … what we project … the storyline we want people to believe. We go through life most of the time hoping no one will ever see our demons … and we even begin to believe the false notion … that we can avoid suffering by just getting used to them.
But then along comes Jesus … and he exposes our demons and wants to change us … and that feels scary … dangerous … threatening.
In his book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, the author and teacher Marcus Borg says that a remarkably high percentage of the synoptic gospel’s stories of Jesus’ mission in Galilee … concerns what we commonly call his ‘miracles’ … But … Borg argues … they are not miracles in the sense of a supernatural intervention into a world governed by natural laws … but rather in the gospels … these healings and exorcisms are called ‘mighty deeds’ or ‘deeds of power’ … and they were seen by those around Jesus as the product of God’s spirit flowing through him.
According to Borg … it was these acts of healing that caused Jesus’ reputation to grow … and it was that reputation that generated an audience for him as a teacher.
This morning’s lectionary gives us one of those “deeds of power” Borg is talking about in his book … one of four exorcisms in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is in the town of Capernaum – and like all faithful Jews – he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath.
And there he encounters a man with what this gospel writer calls an unclean spirit … an unclean spirit that Jesus orders to leave the man … and it does.
Now I don’t think we should get too concerned this morning about what these exorcisms actually were … as Borg says it is probably impossible for us … 2,000 years later … to understand the worldview of Jesus’ culture.
Today we would probably use different words to describe the brokenness that had a grip on this man. But whatever was going on with him … we can say that he certainly had a loss of self-possession … that he was separated from his true self and from community.
And the other thing we can say … is that Jesus was a healer … that he was able to see what was wrong … not only with oppressive and unjust political systems … he was also able to see what was wrong with individual people.
Jesus rebuked evil … wherever he found it. He was not afraid to speak the truth about what he saw … perhaps because he knew … that speaking the truth about our demons is always the required first step to healing them. Naming the demons … is knowing them.
And so if we believe with Marcus Borg … that Jesus is the decisive revelation of God … that through the life of Jesus we come as close as human beings can come to the nature and will of God … … then we have to believe God is also a healer … pulling us always toward wholeness … and fullness … and abundance … … and that means that the deeper we can center our lives in God … the more our lives will be transformed.
The questions generated by this text this morning seem to be these: “What do we know of unclean spirits within us … unclean spirits that we try to carefully control and disguise? And how can this biblical story … how can the nature of the God we know through Jesus … offer us a pathway to healing?
As the quote on the bulletin cover this morning suggests: “What miracle might possibly rise … what new person might arise … out of our emptiness that we have begun to accept as permanent?”
There is no doubt that Jesus … both his presence and his teachings … are dangerous for those unclean spirits that haunt us … those things that hold us in bondage … that keep us shackled … … dangerous… because Jesus came to make people new … … not just mildly better … but radically new. He came to bring justice and mercy … not humanity's ways somewhat improved … but rather God's radical way.
And so we miss the point of Jesus’ behavior in this text this morning … if we see this healing as an attempt to merely prove he was divine … or to merely restore the status quo. Rather, the action he takes to heal the man’s brokenness shatters old orientations … … and with that action Jesus opens up avenues of power for others.
Jesus’ way of healing goes deep. He doesn’t just remove our prejudice… rather he calls out the fear that causes it. He doesn’t just treat our alienation … he names the shame at its base.
Jesus’ way of healing doesn’t just calm our rage … rather he calls out all the accumulated suffering that has been left behind by the betrayals we have experienced. His way doesn’t just make us feel better for a time … rather he calls the demons out of us … pulls them out by their roots … so they are gone forever.
Throughout the Bible … Jesus could always hear that beyond all the shouting of the demons … there was a cry for help. Jesus could always see beyond the masks people wore … beyond all the bluster. And what he saw – what he sees - are beloved children of God … children with immeasurable worth.
That kind of love can free us … free us to name our own demons … free us to do the work we need to do to get ourselves unshackled from despair and grief … from guilt … from the anger and shame of the horrible betrayals of parents, partners, friends … … all those things that lodge within us and become demons … causing us so much more pain.
Jesus spoke with authority … with power … … and make no mistake … he was all about change. And that’s what terrifies us the most I suspect … Jesus doesn’t leave anything alone … not oppressive systems … not religious structures … not people … and certainly not our demons.
Today we will baptize Adam Garza … a ritual act that says we acknowledge that God’s grace is poured out for us … a ritual where we invite that grace in. And we should all take this act very seriously.
Not because it will get us into heaven on some far off day … but rather because this moment of understanding about grace is where all the trouble starts … where the danger becomes real … … this moment when we deeply understand the God we serve actually loves us … and loves every other person just as much … … loves us and is calling us to wholeness.
And hopefully it is in that moment … if we take it seriously … that we understand that being on the way with Jesus is not an escape from suffering … but an invitation to heal whatever it is that makes us and others suffer.
Because once we have faith in our own worth … once we believe the promise of our baptism … then we can begin the work of healing … … and then and only then will we as the Body of Christ in this place … have the power to help lead others to that same healing.
And we can risk that …we can take the risk to face our own demons … because of the grace that is poured out … the love that is poured out … by the God we know through Jesus.
In her book Traveling Mercies, the author Anne Lamott says this about such grace: “… it is the force hat infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love – the love that goes before, that greets us on the way.
“It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you.
“Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed … and eventually grateful … as you are to be there … … it’s like the faucets are already flowing before you even hold out your cup to be filled.”
And so this morning … let this baptism remind you about this gift of grace … … and that if we can accept it … believe that it is present for us … open ourselves up to it … our lives can be transformed.
I know that feels scary and dangerous … because we have become so accustomed to those demons. But our call now … as followers of Jesus … is to become accustomed to grace. Amen.
