Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:14-20
The Scream
Reading
the Gospel of Mark is a bit like reading a set of Cliff Notes—and a
paired down version at that. It is a fast moving Gospel, details are
spotty, and years worth of events get packed into a few sentences. In
this opening chapter to Mark’s Gospel we go from the Messianic
Predictions of Isaiah to John the Baptist and Christ Baptism, His
wilderness temptation, the launch of His Galilean Ministry, the calling
of His first disciples and immediately into a series of healings and
miracles. These opening 45 verses to Mark’s Gospel gives us a sweeping
overview of Christ life and ministry. Reading it is like watching a
movie trailer to an action packed adventure. Even those great beings who
devised our Revised Common Lectionary seem to understand there would be
much to unpack in this core narrative of the Good News. There are a
total of six Sundays in Epiphany. However five out of six Sundays give
us Gospel lessons from the first chapter of Mark.
Todays
lesson brings us to Capernaum, where we find Jesus teaching in the
synagogue. And in the middle of His discourse He is interrupted by a
deranged man yelling out at Jesus. The text paints the picture of a
demon possessed heckler who is no longer in control of his own body. The
evil spirit is now speaking through the man. But we are given the
fewest of details and I find myself wishing to know a few more facts to
better understand the story.
1.
Why was this man in the synagogue? Demon possession was a sure sign
that you are unclean, impure and not worthy of presenting yourself in
the synagogue. In the first century those who have mentally lost it
lived out by the tombs, in the cemeteries or in the desert wilderness.
Most of the demon possessed people that Jesus encountered during His
earthly ministry dwelled in one of these “outer” places. In fact these
were the places feared and avoided at all cost. When it was time to bury
the dead you got in and out of the cemetery as quickly as possible. If
you lingered your chances of encountering an evil spirit increased. Or
worse yet, you may pick up a demon who goes back home with you.
2.
What kind of evil spirit did this man have? What was it nature and
character? It isn’t made clear to us what the mans unnatural or
pathological state was. Did he suffer addictions or was he bi-polar? Was
he completely schizophrenic or did he still have some hold on reality?
Was he a victim of abuse? Did he come from a broken home or a loving
home? Did he know he was lovable and loved in God’s eyes? Had anyone
ever taught him to have self-compassion?
Or
maybe it was something simple and far more common—something experienced
by all of humanity. Did he suffer from the non-stop commentary, those
internal voices of on-going negativity and judgement, running in his
head. The Church Fathers called it Sin. The Church Mystics called it
Brokenness and The Human Condition. It is the universal fate we have all
been born to. Quite possibly our deranged heckler was traversing the
dark night of sense and his outcry was more of a cry for help. Edvard
Munch’s classic painting of an impressionistic landscaped with a lone
dark figure standing in the foreground whose hands cover his ears as if
to say stop the inner voices, with mouth wide open is a painting of both
stunning beauty and stark reality. The painting is simply titled “The
Scream.” And it is a painting that we have all found ourselves living in
at some point in our lives.
The Scream - Edvard Munch - 1893 - National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
Our
questions could go on. The list of unanswered details are endless. Mark
did not write with the agenda of giving us a complete picture. Instead
he leaves us with an open invitation. An invitation to write the details
of our lives into the story. If this is the story of the “good news of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” then it must be a story we can write
ourselves into. It must be a story we can identify ourselves in.
Not
that long ago as a green and “wet-behind-the-ears” novice I posed a
question to my Novice Master in a novitiate class. I asked “where have
all the demons gone?”. The response was a quizzical look, as if to say
“what are you talking about?”. Well, in the life and times of Jesus and
in the life and times of the early Church there seemed to be a strong
focus on Satan and his minions—the demons. But in our post-critical age
of scientific enlightenment we don’t talk much about demons. Respectable
Anglicans can go decades without experiencing a good smiting of the
devil. We don’t even seem to poke fun at the devil in our culture the
way we did in times past. Long gone are the days of comedian Flip Wilson
and his character “Geraldine” and that classic line “the devil made me
do it.” Long gone are the days of Dana Carvey’s “The Church Lady” from
Saturday Night Live who week after week had the recurring epiphany
“Could It Be Satan?”.
But
maybe our consciousness is changing. Earlier this week I was asked by a
Princeton Seminarian student if we as a Monastic community ever
experience a sense of being up against forces of darkness,
principalities and powers that push against us in our ministries. And if
so, how do we fight against these forces. (With questions like this you
know why we brace ourselves when we have seminarians come for a visit.
They’re wonderful and they keep us on our toes.) The truth is the dark
forces are never that far away. Our modern day demons include:
alcoholism, drug addiction, prejudice and hatred, fear, depression,
jealousy and envy, loneliness and isolation, materialism and a drive for
power, even boredom and meaninglessness, acedia. These demons do not
point to something that has taken hold within us. It would be more correct to think of these demons as pointing to a LACK of something within us.
Jesus
did not take something out of us to make us good. The good news is that
he came to make us aware of something inside...truth, love,
forgiveness...our central core of goodness.
Jesus
came to the synagogue well equiped to deal with evil spirits. He had
just spent 40 days in the desert facing down his own demons. The image
of Jesus as exorcist is an image of someone who has experienced his own
demons. It is the classic image of the wounded healer. Jesus faced three
temptations. They are the 3 temptations of the false self. They are the
3 temptations that we all face in our broken humanity: our twisted
needs for control, power and affection. To dismantle the programs of
control, power and affection is to dismantle the false self. And when
you have dismantled the false self you have authority when the devil, or
when life, tries to knock the wind out of you. Jesus only had to speak
two words to take authority over the evil spirit. Be Silent, sometimes
translated Be Still. They were the same two words He used to calm the
raging sea. It has been said that silence is God’s first language.
Everything else is commentary.
“What
is this? A new teaching—with authority!” Absolutely right! Jesus not
only teaches in parables in the synagogue but He IS the parable of God.
From this first chapter of Mark and all throughout the Gospels he
appears as an enigma wrapped in mystery. What He actually says seems
straightforward enough, at least on the surface. Yet sufficiently
cryptic to tempt and tantalize us to be drawn in deeper.
We
are also left without the details of where our deranged heckler went
next. What happened to him? What became of his future? His story never
recurs in Marks narrative. And once again we are left with the
invitation to write in our own story and become the living Gospel.
Today
we are the ones who come to temples, synagogues, churches, houses of
worship, and even monasteries seeking transformation. And in two words
Jesus becomes our boundary-breaking, demon-dashing, law-transcending
Lord commanding us to “be silent, be still.”
Through
His healing silence we go forth with restored meaning to our lives.
Through God’s silence all the evil spirits that are wrapped up in our
control, power and affection issues are dismantled leaving us in the
wonderment of being filled with God’s love. Through the realization of
the fundamental woundedness of our humanity is where we discover
healing, freedom, transcendence.
Through
Jesus’ own woundedness of battling satan’s temptation in the wilderness
he healed this man in the Capernaum synagogue. His woundedness took him
all the way to the cross fulfilling Isaiah’s prophetic words, “by His
wounds we are healed.” In the woundedness of Christ He became the source
of life for all of us—even for you, even for me.
Amen
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