Sunday, February 1, 2015

Astounding Authority

Astounding Authority from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.



Deuteronomy 18:15-20 (218)
15The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. 16This is what you requested of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the LORD my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.” 17Then the LORD replied to me: “they are right in what they have said. 18I will raise you up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. 19anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. 20But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak - that prophet shall die.

This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God

Mark 1:21-28 (43)
21They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, He entered the synagogue and taught. 22They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. 24and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching - with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God.

For Mark, evil is a historical reality, and it's personified in demons and unclean spirits. Now that's a little outside most of our experience, few if any of us have encountered someone with an unclean spirit. It's an exotic part of the Gospel of Mark, and our God-given curiosity draws us to it. We want to know more details about this "unclean spirit:" where did it come from? was it really something supernatural or was it just a mental illness?

I don’t know how helpful those questions really are. I think they only help us to diagnose this man in the synagogue. Understanding what the unclean spirit “really” was gives us an excuse to push him farther away from ourselves. It gives us an out to not be changed by the teaching of Christ, because we’re too busy trying to translate this unclean spirit concept into what we want it to be.

A couple of weeks ago, the youth got together to learn about Christology - that is, theology about Jesus. I posted various pictures of Jesus around the room and had them each choose their favorite. Naturally they didn't have camera phones or Polaroids in the New Testament, so each image was an artist's rending of what they though Jesus may have looked like.

One of the images was an image of Jesus wearing boxing gloves and squaring off against an obvious devil figure. Presumably they were fighting over our souls or something. It's easy, I think, to get caught up in watching the cosmic struggle between God and the powers of evil. That's partly because that image makes us spectators, with nothing required of us but to cheer when our guy is winning.

But the kingdom of God is much more than just stadium seating. Christ's authority cannot be contained in a ring. Christ's humanity means that all of human life is claimed by God, and humanity is expected to respond in faith, to live as ones who are saved by God. When the forces of evil do show up, it's important to recognize that "the New Testament does not show direct interest in these forces in themselves. Its interest is in the clash between Jesus and these powers, and the victory of Jesus when the confrontations take place." The forces of evil are not the focus of the Gospel, Jesus's actions in our world, in our lives, are the center. So as we tell how Christ is active in our history and in our lives right now, it’s up to us to keep the focus on Christ, and on how we respond to Christ’s teachings, both in word and action.

Right now, Mark is telling the story. He tells it from his perspective, focusing on how, through Jesus, the kingdom of God breaks into the world around him. What he sees in the world around him is evil, personified in demons and unclean spirits. God’s good news is both words and action, and the actions oppose the evil mark sees in the world around him.

By the time the unclean spirit speaks through this man, Jesus has already amazed people in the synagogue with his teaching. He’s arrived on the scene, as we read in last Sunday’s gospel lesson, with a compelling message that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He steps into the synagogue and begins to teach, and the people were “were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus is obviously teaching on a different level than the scribes. 

Just look at the way this possessed man challenges Jesus: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

It’s into this setting that the man with an unclean spirit steps, corrupting individuals and destabilizing the same communities Jesus is redeeming. The unclean spirit invades Jesus’s teaching with his cries of “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” At first read-through, I thought the “us” to which the unclean spirit refers was the host of evil forces against which Jesus is confronted during his ministry. But the more I read, the more convinced I became that this unclean spirit was referring to the congregation.

The man with the unclean spirit is trying to sabotage Jesus’s ministry. He’s trying to destabilize this community of faith by undermining Jesus’s astounding new teaching. “What have you to do with [these people], Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy [this synagogue]? I know who you are, the Holy One of God!”

For the disciplined among us, it would be tempting to just point to the man and tell him to get out. That his actions were inappropriate for a worship space and he was not welcome there until he could act right. For the rational among us, it would be tempting to try to reason with and correct him, saying that no, Jesus’s teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand are not the end of God’s people, but a transformation of them. For the patient and non-confrontational among us, it would be tempting to roll our eyes and ignore him until he went away.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God, takes a different action. He carries his lesson from the wordy discussion of synagogues to an action, intervening in the life of this man with an unclean spirit. This man is more than his affliction to Jesus, he’s a child of God, and his place is in the synagogue, worshipping with the community. But he is trapped by this unclean spirit, which dominates him and forcibly speaks through his mouth. ”Jesus’s gospel is a healing word and action. The Jesus of Mark's gospel has offered, inside the very synagogue, his teaching of freedom, a word and act that heals the human being.” Jesus looks at the man with an unclean spirit and enacts his teaching of God’s kingdom with us, saying, “‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” God’s good news is both word and action, and Jesus brings both to the people he meets in Mark’s Gospel with an authority that leaves them astounded.

If at the word and action of Jesus, unclean spirits are compelled to act, how much more, then, are we, his disciples, compelled to act? We are astounded, to be sure, but rather than be paralyzed with shock, God calls us to enact our amazement by responding in faith to Christ’s teaching about the good news of God.

God’s good news is both words and action. Which leaves us with the question: how can we do faith in the same sense as Jesus does his teaching? I’ve not met enough people with unclean spirits to try my hand at exorcisms, and I don’t have the same kind of authority as Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy One of God.

But we do have the Holy Spirit, who guides our every action. We do have our experience of God-With-Us in our lives. We do have our own testimony of what Christ means to us. We do have the opportunity to share love with one another in both words and actions.

We can build up the kingdom of God, which is already at hand, in so many ways. God’s good news is both words and action, so we can proclaim God’s glory by what we do and what we say. Worship attendance is a great way to enact God’s call on us. You’re all already here, so good job there. 

On this Souper Bowl Sunday we can share God’s good news by reaching out to those in need, knowing that God reaches us in our need as well. We contribute financially to the church and its missions and we bring food to the hungry through the Lowell Food Bank.

We can spread God’s Word by growing as a community of faith, bearing one another’s burdens through prayer and sharing meals with someone who might be struggling or lonely. We can show the world that this is a tightly knit community of faith, even in the face of potential division, our love for one another reaches across aisles, between pews, and around tables.

We can live the good news of God by changing our hearts and lives, and choosing to see a beloved child of God where others might only see an unclean spirit. We can connect with those who are not like us, or who look broken, because we too, were once broken and now God is reforming us day by day until we are whole again in Christ.

Jesus teaches as one with authority, and his message is that the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand. He embodies the arrival of God’s kingdom, and its fulfillment will not be understood until he reaches the crucifixion and resurrection. Until then, we have his teaching, both with his words and his action. He sets us free and restores us to who God has created us to be.

We all have a little bit of the man with the unclean spirit in us. ”We must trust and believe that Jesus has come not to destroy us but to restore, heal, and save, so that we may obey his loving authority. God’s good news is both word and action, and whatever picture of Christ we may have in our heads, we know that he comes as the redeemer. He comes as the Holy one of God. He comes to restore us to ourselves, and to God. He comes with authority to call us to action.

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