All Souls Church, Washington, D.C.
Br. Adam D. McCoy, OHC
RCL - Last Sunday after Epiphany B - Sunday 22 Feb 2009
2 Kings 2: 1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4: 3-6
Mark 9: 2-9
Today’s lessons are about the power and the presence of God. They relate incidents of the divine breaking through the veil of ordinary life to reveal aspects of God’s presence which almost defy description in human terms, and are all the more powerful for taking us to the edge of the possibilities of language itself. They give us a glimpse of the utter otherness of God which should leave us, like Peter, breathlessly inarticulate at the sight of divine majesty. More importantly, they tell us something unexpectedly wonderful about the nature of God and God’s intentions for his world and for his people. And each of these encounters with God is unspeakably mysterious.
Elijah is the prophet who never died. He fearlessly opposed the political evils of Ahab and Jezebel, their personal wickednesses and their apostasies from the God of Israel. God was with Elijah over and over as his prophetic ministry took him to the brink in daring acts of confrontation, mysterious acts of power over nature, and compassionate deeds of mercy. Time and again he called upon God and God’s power revealed itself in him. His first recorded act was to bring a three year drought to Israel in protest of the wickedness of the King, and then to provide food for the family of the widow of Zarephath who had been kind to him, and who were starving as a result of Elijah’s power over nature. He raises her son from the dead. He theatrically confronts the priests of Baal, and after God has sent lightning to consume Elijah’s water drenched offering, the prophet himself slays the prophets of Baal, 450 of them, by the brook Kishon at Mount Carmel. He curses the Queen, Jezebel. No wonder he has to flee for his life. But in doing so, in his hidden and fearful humility, cowering in the cave on the mountain, he discovers that God is not in the great noise but in the still small voice. And so, after he has called Elisha, he is taken up to God in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire.
The divine chariot is a primary Old Testament manifestation of the majesty and presence of God. Its most developed account is in the beginning of the book of the prophet Ezekiel. In Jewish mysticism that chariot is the symbol of God’s unspeakable presence, God’s energy and God’s power. When he wrote, Ezekiel was doubtless thinking of the chariot event of Elijah’s ascent to heaven. Elijah’s direct ascent to God, without the mediation of physical death, sets the seal of God’s power on the deeds of his life, showing Elisha and us that God is mysteriously and powerfully present in prophetic work.
St. Paul uses the image of light and sight to tell us that God has veiled the eyes of those who do not believe so that they might not see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” This passage always makes me wonder if Paul knew of the Transfiguration and is recalling it here. But there is of course another reference to the revelation of God’s presence and power in this, and it is to Paul’s own experience. Paul tells us in his own words, in the first letter to the Corinthians, that the resurrected Christ appeared to him personally (1 Cor 15:8). And Paul tells us in Second Corinthians something even more striking: that he knows a man (meaning himself) who was caught up into the third heaven, into Paradise, where he heard “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor 12:2-4). And so as not to get puffed up by this, he is given his thorn in the flesh, so that God’s power may be made known in weakness. Consequently, when Paul writes of the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, he is not simply using a vivid image to convince the Corinthians of the truth of Christ, but is speaking of the mysterious, indescribable presence and power of God which he himself has seen and known, and not just once. And of course the power Paul announces is the power of the Cross, the power of weakness transfigured by God into grace and victory by his own Son’s suffering and death, the paradox of the Christian faith then and since.
So the mysterious moment on the Mount of Transfiguration is not an event without analogue. Mark must have Elijah and Ezekiel and possibly Paul in mind as well as he tells a story which doubtless the three witnessing apostles had already preached to the early church. It is the moment when the presence of God identifies who Jesus really is to his disciples.
The Transfiguration is the center of a narrative passage which answers Jesus’ question to the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27) The Transfiguration is part of the answer to that question. The disciples answer that people think Jesus is the second Elijah, John the Baptist, come back to life, or even Elijah himself, or one of the prophets. They are perhaps thinking of the brave prophetic confrontations sealed with glory that the Baptist and Elijah represent. And they perhaps wish Jesus would show himself more clearly as the political Messiah of Israel they may want him to be, breaking the yoke of Roman oppression and setting his people free. But Jesus’ answer to them is the cross: That the Son of Man must suffer, be killed and on the third day rise again. And more, that anyone who would follow him must be prepared to suffer as well. Which the disciples simply do not understand. This is the context of the Transfiguration: the prophetic ministry and glorification of Elijah, and the implied desire for a new Exodus, a new release of Israel from its political bondage into a new land of promise.
But what happens is something for which the disciples are utterly unprepared, as no doubt Elisha was unprepared for the whirlwind, for the chariot and for the fire. It is something for which Paul was unprepared when he met the resurrected Christ in person and was taken into the third heaven and heard the truth of Christ from heaven itself in words he could not repeat, but fortunately for us, labored mightily to communicate for the rest of his life. Elijah and Moses appear standing at either side of Jesus, giving him the central position of honor, and they are illuminated in blinding, dazzling light, the sign of God’s presence. This is the clearest possible statement that the prophetic and redemptive work of Elijah and Moses will find its consummation in Jesus, and precisely in his death upon the Cross, the least likely place for the manifestation of God’s presence and power. This is the revelation of the presence and power of God in Jesus.
The message was not entirely clear to the disciples at the time, as no doubt it was not entirely clear to Elisha and to Paul at first, But how could it be? Our eyes are veiled by our unbelief. These revelations of God’s presence and power show the truth that human beings did not yet know: That God is with us even if we cannot see it. That the politically dangerous prophecy of Elijah was not the work of a troublemaking crank bent on upsetting the system but the inbreaking of God against a corrupt and faithless regime. That the works of power of Moses are not the tricks of a shamanistic charlatan but the precursor to liberation and new life for God’s people. And so it is with Jesus. His acts of confrontation, his acts of power, his word and work of teaching about the Kingdom of God, are not what they seem to human eyes to be, but are the inbreaking of God himself into the world.
God lifted the veil when he took Elijah up to heaven, and Elisha heard and saw the glory. God lifted the veil when the resurrected Christ appeared to Paul, and again when Paul was taken into the third heaven. Paul heard and saw the glory. God lifted the veil when he revealed who Jesus really is to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter, James and John saw and heard the glory. God’s presence and power are not where we expect them to be. They are in the dangerous and daring work of a prophet, but also in the still small voice. They are in the dramatic ascent to the third haven , but also in the thorn in the flesh. They are in the quiet whisper, in infirmity and weakness, in the Cross.
All these stories are told so that we might understand how the veil across our eyes might be lifted. Where are the presence and power of God in our lives? Have we considered how God has already shown us where to look? It can be in the life of the fearless champion of God, but also in the one who is persecuting the people of God. God can reach us and find us and give us strength and lift us up when we pursue what we know from God is right, as he did for Elijah. But God can also reach us and find us and lift us up even if we, like Paul, have given our best energies to what is wrong.
Most of all, God can and will be with us in the crosses of our lives, the great and dramatic ones but also our smaller, daily crosses, when we find our lives in the course of losing them for the sake of the love of God, for the sake of the Gospel.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
RCL - Epiphany 5 B - 08 Feb 2009
St Boniface, the Episcopal Church on Siesta Key, Sarasota, FL
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 5 B – Sunday 08 February 2009
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
Lord Jesus,
Your prophet Isaiah proclaimed that
…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
May we relentlessly turn our hearts towards You,
May we recurrently refocus on the building of your commonwealth of love, your republic of universal welfare.
May we remember that you are a God close at hand; as close to ourselves as our own heart, as close at hand as this neighbor you are giving us to love.
We ask that you may bless us with the strength that Isaiah described, that we may not grow weary but walk and not faint as we co-create your Kingdom, here, now.
Amen.
*****
Today, I would like us to move beyond the pretence of political correctness that make us smirk and say:
”Well! Ain’t that typical, that the guys would raise a woman from her deathbed, so that they don’t have to fix dinner themselves!”
And in order to move beyond the sexist cliché, we’ll try to look at the gospel with the understanding of Israelites contemporary to Jesus.
*****
Last week’s and today’s gospel play out a showdown in Jesus’ hometown. Let’s call Jesus Yeshua for the moment. That is likely to be closer to the name he answered to in everyday life (before his name was made Greek-sounding for the purpose of disseminating the Good News).
Yeshua was a local in Capernaum where his errant family had settled down. To the villagers, Yeshua is one of them, but not one of the most honored villagers. Remember that honor, not wealth or power, is the highest value transacted in first century Palestine.
Yeshua is the son of a carpenter who re-settled with his family, in the village of Capernaum, a while ago. Yeshua would be considered as the kid of an immigrant who came there because something forced them to move from wherever was home before – and the gossips would be swift in pointing out that it must have been something dishonorable that must have prompted the move.
Yeshua would have to do a lot of honorable things to progressively rise into the ranks of the honor-wealthy. For that to happen, not rocking the boat would have been advisable.
*****
Instead, Yeshua stands up and teaches with authority in the synagogue. You can already hear the proper and prim asking under their breath “who does he think he is to outdo the scribes at their own job?”
And then an unclean spirit tries to out Yeshua as The Holy One of God. Spirits, whether clean or unclean, were considered to have inside knowledge of higher levels of reality. But Yeshua silences the spirit and casts it out of the poor man who has been its host. Claiming such high honor as Holy One of God would be seen as unfathomable by the villagers. But in the process of quashing that high claim for himself, Yeshua has demonstrated that he is a gifted healer.
Unfortunately for his honor, he has done a healing on a Sabbath day and in the synagogue, no less. That’s not within code and therefore raises even more eyebrows amongst the self-righteous.
*****
In today’s gospel, Yeshua next visits Peter’s house and proceeds to heal Peter’s mother-in-law. This is hardly a more private healing than the one in the synagogue. It is probably a numerous household in a smallish house. Both Simon Peter and Andrew live there. And from the mention of Peter’s mother-in-law, we can surmise that, at least Simon Peter, has a wife and probably children; Andrew probably too. Moreover, in good honorable fashion the outside door would remain open all day until everyone went to bed.
So it is no wonder that news of Yeshua’s healing capabilities spread like a wildfire through the village. The villagers, on the other hand, are not so bold as Yeshua with the Sabbath rules. They wait until after sundown, when the Sabbath is over, to transport their sick and bring the possessed, at the door of Peter’s house.
Mark the evangelist tells us that “he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.”
*****
After a short night’s sleep, Jesus, who has been constantly pressed by people and their personal needs, chooses to isolate himself for some personal prayer. Since a simple villager’s house would offer no personal privacy, he goes outside to a deserted place.
This is a poignant lesson our Savior is giving us. Not even the Son of God could go long without drinking from the water brook of prayer. Jesus shows us just how critical it is to give ourselves times and spaces of quiet prayer. And he models for us that, if necessary, we may have to improvise to find the time and space; even when the needs of ministry urgently demand priority over everything else. Mark the evangelist isn’t subtle about the demands of ministry when he says that “Simon and his companions hunted for Jesus.”
*****
They didn’t look for him or wonder where he was; they hunted for him. After all, Jesus only healed many (but not all) who were sick, and cast out many (but not all) demons present in his village of Capernaum. There was more work to do there.
And yet, Jesus chooses to expand the revelation of the Gospel by moving onwards to other places. He could have chosen to stay put; to cure all; to cast out all demons while letting them vouch for the fullness of his honor as the Holy One of God. And he could have built a power base right there from which to expand to neighboring Galilean villages.
But that is not the sort of Messiah that Jesus is. He is going to become a very upsetting Messiah for the Israelites, upturning expectations, challenging institutions, and overwhelming those who open their hearts to him.
*****
And the demands of Jesus’ ministry for himself and for his disciples are going to be overwhelming right from the get-go. In asking Andrew and Peter to follow him to the neighboring towns of Galilee for starters, he is also asking them to leave their families behind.
There is no way to beat around the bush on this one. The disciples’ relatives were left to fend for themselves as far as economic and social supports were concerned.
*****
The presence of Peter’s mother in law in Peter’s household is illustrative of what discipleship involved for both themselves and their families.
Peter’s mother-in-law has no other male relative to stay with (she is probably a widow without a son, otherwise those would be the men she would be living with). Women who ended up unattached to a male relative, often ended up in destitution and, not rarely, resorted to prostitution as a last effort for survival.
In a patriarchic society like first century Palestine, the fact that no other woman is mentioned in the story does not exclude the fact that Peter’s wife might still be alive and that they might have children. Mark’s early readers would know that he would not deem them worth mentioning unless they move the main narrative in some way.
*****
So, can we imagine what it was for Peter’s mother-in-law to be healed from serious illness and brought back to constructive participation in the community and then to see her only social and economic support removed the very next day?
‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ said Jesus in these early days. What sort of good news was that for the apostles and for Peter’s mother-in-law?
Well! Good News it was... but not of the sort that was expected. Jesus did not come to comfort the honor code of his society nor its family system, nor ours for that matter. The hope he brought to people like Peter, who left all behind, and to those like Peter’s mother-in-law, who was left behind, was a great re-ordering of whom we consider our kindred. If my kindred is each and every one of the neighbors I am called to love as myself then both Peter and his mother-in-law could be OK.
So it is in the incredible hope that no one will remain a negligible stranger that you and I must strike out with Jesus to announce and build up the commonwealth of love, the republic of universal welfare that is the Kingdom of God.
*****
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, Holy One of God, give us hope, guidance and protection in these difficult times.
Give us hope, guidance and protection as we turn away from a misguided focus on the short-term advancement of our self-serving wants and needs.
Give us hope, guidance and protection as we turn to one another to discover and love You in mutual support and advancement of the common good.
Amen.
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 5 B – Sunday 08 February 2009
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
Lord Jesus,
Your prophet Isaiah proclaimed that
…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
May we relentlessly turn our hearts towards You,
May we recurrently refocus on the building of your commonwealth of love, your republic of universal welfare.
May we remember that you are a God close at hand; as close to ourselves as our own heart, as close at hand as this neighbor you are giving us to love.
We ask that you may bless us with the strength that Isaiah described, that we may not grow weary but walk and not faint as we co-create your Kingdom, here, now.
Amen.
*****
Today, I would like us to move beyond the pretence of political correctness that make us smirk and say:
”Well! Ain’t that typical, that the guys would raise a woman from her deathbed, so that they don’t have to fix dinner themselves!”
And in order to move beyond the sexist cliché, we’ll try to look at the gospel with the understanding of Israelites contemporary to Jesus.
*****
Last week’s and today’s gospel play out a showdown in Jesus’ hometown. Let’s call Jesus Yeshua for the moment. That is likely to be closer to the name he answered to in everyday life (before his name was made Greek-sounding for the purpose of disseminating the Good News).
Yeshua was a local in Capernaum where his errant family had settled down. To the villagers, Yeshua is one of them, but not one of the most honored villagers. Remember that honor, not wealth or power, is the highest value transacted in first century Palestine.
Yeshua is the son of a carpenter who re-settled with his family, in the village of Capernaum, a while ago. Yeshua would be considered as the kid of an immigrant who came there because something forced them to move from wherever was home before – and the gossips would be swift in pointing out that it must have been something dishonorable that must have prompted the move.
Yeshua would have to do a lot of honorable things to progressively rise into the ranks of the honor-wealthy. For that to happen, not rocking the boat would have been advisable.
*****
Instead, Yeshua stands up and teaches with authority in the synagogue. You can already hear the proper and prim asking under their breath “who does he think he is to outdo the scribes at their own job?”
And then an unclean spirit tries to out Yeshua as The Holy One of God. Spirits, whether clean or unclean, were considered to have inside knowledge of higher levels of reality. But Yeshua silences the spirit and casts it out of the poor man who has been its host. Claiming such high honor as Holy One of God would be seen as unfathomable by the villagers. But in the process of quashing that high claim for himself, Yeshua has demonstrated that he is a gifted healer.
Unfortunately for his honor, he has done a healing on a Sabbath day and in the synagogue, no less. That’s not within code and therefore raises even more eyebrows amongst the self-righteous.
*****
In today’s gospel, Yeshua next visits Peter’s house and proceeds to heal Peter’s mother-in-law. This is hardly a more private healing than the one in the synagogue. It is probably a numerous household in a smallish house. Both Simon Peter and Andrew live there. And from the mention of Peter’s mother-in-law, we can surmise that, at least Simon Peter, has a wife and probably children; Andrew probably too. Moreover, in good honorable fashion the outside door would remain open all day until everyone went to bed.
So it is no wonder that news of Yeshua’s healing capabilities spread like a wildfire through the village. The villagers, on the other hand, are not so bold as Yeshua with the Sabbath rules. They wait until after sundown, when the Sabbath is over, to transport their sick and bring the possessed, at the door of Peter’s house.
Mark the evangelist tells us that “he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.”
*****
After a short night’s sleep, Jesus, who has been constantly pressed by people and their personal needs, chooses to isolate himself for some personal prayer. Since a simple villager’s house would offer no personal privacy, he goes outside to a deserted place.
This is a poignant lesson our Savior is giving us. Not even the Son of God could go long without drinking from the water brook of prayer. Jesus shows us just how critical it is to give ourselves times and spaces of quiet prayer. And he models for us that, if necessary, we may have to improvise to find the time and space; even when the needs of ministry urgently demand priority over everything else. Mark the evangelist isn’t subtle about the demands of ministry when he says that “Simon and his companions hunted for Jesus.”
*****
They didn’t look for him or wonder where he was; they hunted for him. After all, Jesus only healed many (but not all) who were sick, and cast out many (but not all) demons present in his village of Capernaum. There was more work to do there.
And yet, Jesus chooses to expand the revelation of the Gospel by moving onwards to other places. He could have chosen to stay put; to cure all; to cast out all demons while letting them vouch for the fullness of his honor as the Holy One of God. And he could have built a power base right there from which to expand to neighboring Galilean villages.
But that is not the sort of Messiah that Jesus is. He is going to become a very upsetting Messiah for the Israelites, upturning expectations, challenging institutions, and overwhelming those who open their hearts to him.
*****
And the demands of Jesus’ ministry for himself and for his disciples are going to be overwhelming right from the get-go. In asking Andrew and Peter to follow him to the neighboring towns of Galilee for starters, he is also asking them to leave their families behind.
There is no way to beat around the bush on this one. The disciples’ relatives were left to fend for themselves as far as economic and social supports were concerned.
*****
The presence of Peter’s mother in law in Peter’s household is illustrative of what discipleship involved for both themselves and their families.
Peter’s mother-in-law has no other male relative to stay with (she is probably a widow without a son, otherwise those would be the men she would be living with). Women who ended up unattached to a male relative, often ended up in destitution and, not rarely, resorted to prostitution as a last effort for survival.
In a patriarchic society like first century Palestine, the fact that no other woman is mentioned in the story does not exclude the fact that Peter’s wife might still be alive and that they might have children. Mark’s early readers would know that he would not deem them worth mentioning unless they move the main narrative in some way.
*****
So, can we imagine what it was for Peter’s mother-in-law to be healed from serious illness and brought back to constructive participation in the community and then to see her only social and economic support removed the very next day?
‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ said Jesus in these early days. What sort of good news was that for the apostles and for Peter’s mother-in-law?
Well! Good News it was... but not of the sort that was expected. Jesus did not come to comfort the honor code of his society nor its family system, nor ours for that matter. The hope he brought to people like Peter, who left all behind, and to those like Peter’s mother-in-law, who was left behind, was a great re-ordering of whom we consider our kindred. If my kindred is each and every one of the neighbors I am called to love as myself then both Peter and his mother-in-law could be OK.
So it is in the incredible hope that no one will remain a negligible stranger that you and I must strike out with Jesus to announce and build up the commonwealth of love, the republic of universal welfare that is the Kingdom of God.
*****
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, Holy One of God, give us hope, guidance and protection in these difficult times.
Give us hope, guidance and protection as we turn away from a misguided focus on the short-term advancement of our self-serving wants and needs.
Give us hope, guidance and protection as we turn to one another to discover and love You in mutual support and advancement of the common good.
Amen.
Global Crescendo photographer Kebeh Jallah took this photo of her sister, the village “sick woman” (in Liberia). Gang raped by militia men, she is partially paralyzed and bed ridden. The white chalky substance visible on her skin is said to relieve pain. Photo: Kebeh Jallah. From a 24 January 2008 entry in Ann Jones' blog Voices From The Field
Sunday, February 1, 2009
RCL - Epiphany 4 B - 01 Feb 2009
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 4 B – Sunday 01 February 2009
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
In the Book of Exodus God chooses to make a covenant with the Hebrew people and gives Moses the Ten Commandments as a guide for how they were to love God and love their neighbor. Other laws and rules were added as the people solidified their identity and preserved their theology in a land where they were surrounded by other religions. After the written record of the Old Testament, commentary and custom continued to be added to the Law to further regulate and define the nature of holiness and the means to living with God. In Jesus’ day a finely tuned system of Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, teachers, and rabbi’s would have sought to preserve the customs and traditions passed on to them, believing that the most careful and exact following of the letter was the behavior most pleasing to God. Obedience was not just the way of life and peace, it was prescribed for all in great detail.
Over the centuries what was intended to be a means to loving relationship degenerated, as systems are wont to do, into an end in itself. Why do we obey the law? Because we’re supposed to. Rather than the law being a help to love God and one’s neighbor, it became a barrier between the individual and God and the individual and his or her neighbor - a way to segregate and fault-find and control rather than a way to connect. Constant comparisons and measurements of holiness would have taken the focus off relationship and onto who was holier than whom, who was in and who was out, who was clean and who was unclean, who was acceptable and who was not - in other words “who does God really approve of and who does God not?” Religion became a tool to intimidate and enslave rather than liberate and empower.
Into this oppressive and manipulative institutional tradition comes our Lord, to teach on the Sabbath as would have been his custom as a rabbi. As he is teaching, something that would have been regarded by the people present as an offence against God and the sanctity of their gathering happens. An unclean man, an outcast, a lawbreaker, one who embodies everything they have been conditioned to hate, comes into the meeting place and disrupts the teaching. Rather than throw him out, the Lord engages him, or at least the evil that is speaking through him, and then, through no effort or merit on this poor soul’s part but as an act of pure love and grace on Jesus’ part, Jesus heals and delivers him.
Needless to say the people are amazed at the newness of this act. The scribes certainly couldn’t do anything like this. A neat trick, a one-time event to be sure, they may have thought. Later, as Jesus keeps showing up and continues to bother them with his calls of repentance, the people will become indignant, and then in short order the religious leaders will be actively plotting to kill this man who dares to disturb and question their sacred tradition. St. Mark’s community and his first audience was a mixture of Jews and Gentiles who found community by faith in Jesus as Messiah and sought to evangelize their Jewish brothers and sisters into the faith of Christ. Rather than convert, by the time the Gospel is written, his community has been kicked out of the Jewish places of worship and some are being actively persecuted for daring to disturb and question its sacred tradition.
So it is no surprise that our Lord’s first encounter with the institutional religion of his day is an encounter with evil within its walls. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus is the outcast, the nonconformist, the man from within the tradition who seeks to restore it to its original purpose but instead is rejected and executed by it. He is the model for his follower’s sufferings and the one whose death and resurrection gives them hope that their work toward a freer and more just world is not in vain.
Those early Christians would have seen in the stories of Jesus a model for how to act as outcasts and how to oppose the evil oppression of the people. The miracle stories Mark tells are not just the relating of history, but are teachings by action full of insight for that community. People become metaphors of bigger truths that apply to everyone. Every act is revealing what kingdom life is about, that indeed the heavens are being torn apart and a new presence was invading the world. The man with the unclean spirit is a symbol of the oppressive and legalistic system of rules and regulations, do’s and don’ts that sought to contain God’s love within a set of conditions and to exercise power over the helpless by exacting sacrifice and conformity to earn God’s favor.
By casting the evil spirit out of the man in the synagogue, the Lord is unmasking the hypocrisy and decadence of a depraved theology. As we know from other Gospel stories, nothing could raise the ire of Christ more than hypocrisy, especially the oppression of the weak by the powerful disguised as piety and faithfulness. The revolutionary idea simmering beneath this story would have been abundantly clear to the early listeners - the Law can manage and contain our sin, but Jesus can do more than that - he can exorcise it by his power. This uncleanness was not just individual but institutional, a creeping virus spreading through their understanding of who God was and what God wanted from them. Jesus appears with a new message that threatens the neat system of abuse: He says the real power is not the Law but grace, the real call is not ritual cleanliness but love.
This need to enforce laws at the expense of relationship didn’t end after the 1st century, goodness knows. Something in us keeps tugging at the question “aren’t rules the only way to keep people in line and maintain order and security?” This is a snippet from the Code of Connecticut, which was law in the early 18th century:
The implicit lesson for Mark’s readers and for us is that we are the man with the unclean spirit in need of Christ’s ongoing deliverance. This is good news and bad news: good news in that identifying our need creates a longing for healing and forgiveness; bad news in that we must break with the crowd and give up seeking safety and security through outward conformity to a ritual and a tradition. Being a Christian doesn’t make us immune from the illusion of an easy and comfortable road. One way our legalism shows up is in our understanding of worship. As you gather with your parish community at home or when we join around word and sacrament here this morning, what do we believe about this God we expect to encounter? Or do we anticipate much of anything at all?
Those of us in liturgical traditions must be on guard against becoming overly fond of religious motion - satisfied that, because the lessons have been read, the hymns have been sung, the liturgy observed by the authorized people; that worship has taken place. The outer pieces of worship have been offered but whether they have prompted us to open our hearts to God is our response. I often catch myself reinforcing my own illusions by saying that my physical presence is sufficient to get me a check mark for the day. The questions of worship under the authority of Jesus are: Do I seek to love God and my neighbor no matter what? Do I have the humility to face the evil within me and seek Christ’s help to deliver me? Do I have the courage to name the uncleanness within the community and challenge my community to the freedom of grace?
As Jesus was with the man with the unclean spirit he will be with us; he will freely give us his compassion and mercy but he will never shy away from opposing with fierce directness the uncleanness that can so easily entangle us. At times the Lord will, by grace, confront us with the reality of our own evil spirit, our own hypocrisy, our own indulgence in evils like pride, arrogance, safety, security, apathy, or indifference. These insights into the reality of our own conflicted motives are great gifts because only when we have looked clearly at our own condition can we decide to live in the freedom of Christ’s authority.
So our rule of life can be our Lord’s; receive and hold onto what is life-giving and fruitful and holy in ourselves and each other and forcefully resist what destroys, isolates, and separates us from ourselves and each other. Our call and purpose is to become like Christ - to live a love that wills and works toward the best in the other, even if such love upsets the religious forces of fear, power, and control. How can we live with walls of suspicion toward our brothers and sisters, imprisoning desires, and judgmental legalism when the boundary-breaking, demon-bashing, and law-transcending Servant of all has been revealed to us?
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 4 B – Sunday 01 February 2009
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28
In the Book of Exodus God chooses to make a covenant with the Hebrew people and gives Moses the Ten Commandments as a guide for how they were to love God and love their neighbor. Other laws and rules were added as the people solidified their identity and preserved their theology in a land where they were surrounded by other religions. After the written record of the Old Testament, commentary and custom continued to be added to the Law to further regulate and define the nature of holiness and the means to living with God. In Jesus’ day a finely tuned system of Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, teachers, and rabbi’s would have sought to preserve the customs and traditions passed on to them, believing that the most careful and exact following of the letter was the behavior most pleasing to God. Obedience was not just the way of life and peace, it was prescribed for all in great detail.
Over the centuries what was intended to be a means to loving relationship degenerated, as systems are wont to do, into an end in itself. Why do we obey the law? Because we’re supposed to. Rather than the law being a help to love God and one’s neighbor, it became a barrier between the individual and God and the individual and his or her neighbor - a way to segregate and fault-find and control rather than a way to connect. Constant comparisons and measurements of holiness would have taken the focus off relationship and onto who was holier than whom, who was in and who was out, who was clean and who was unclean, who was acceptable and who was not - in other words “who does God really approve of and who does God not?” Religion became a tool to intimidate and enslave rather than liberate and empower.
Into this oppressive and manipulative institutional tradition comes our Lord, to teach on the Sabbath as would have been his custom as a rabbi. As he is teaching, something that would have been regarded by the people present as an offence against God and the sanctity of their gathering happens. An unclean man, an outcast, a lawbreaker, one who embodies everything they have been conditioned to hate, comes into the meeting place and disrupts the teaching. Rather than throw him out, the Lord engages him, or at least the evil that is speaking through him, and then, through no effort or merit on this poor soul’s part but as an act of pure love and grace on Jesus’ part, Jesus heals and delivers him.
Needless to say the people are amazed at the newness of this act. The scribes certainly couldn’t do anything like this. A neat trick, a one-time event to be sure, they may have thought. Later, as Jesus keeps showing up and continues to bother them with his calls of repentance, the people will become indignant, and then in short order the religious leaders will be actively plotting to kill this man who dares to disturb and question their sacred tradition. St. Mark’s community and his first audience was a mixture of Jews and Gentiles who found community by faith in Jesus as Messiah and sought to evangelize their Jewish brothers and sisters into the faith of Christ. Rather than convert, by the time the Gospel is written, his community has been kicked out of the Jewish places of worship and some are being actively persecuted for daring to disturb and question its sacred tradition.
So it is no surprise that our Lord’s first encounter with the institutional religion of his day is an encounter with evil within its walls. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus is the outcast, the nonconformist, the man from within the tradition who seeks to restore it to its original purpose but instead is rejected and executed by it. He is the model for his follower’s sufferings and the one whose death and resurrection gives them hope that their work toward a freer and more just world is not in vain.
Those early Christians would have seen in the stories of Jesus a model for how to act as outcasts and how to oppose the evil oppression of the people. The miracle stories Mark tells are not just the relating of history, but are teachings by action full of insight for that community. People become metaphors of bigger truths that apply to everyone. Every act is revealing what kingdom life is about, that indeed the heavens are being torn apart and a new presence was invading the world. The man with the unclean spirit is a symbol of the oppressive and legalistic system of rules and regulations, do’s and don’ts that sought to contain God’s love within a set of conditions and to exercise power over the helpless by exacting sacrifice and conformity to earn God’s favor.
By casting the evil spirit out of the man in the synagogue, the Lord is unmasking the hypocrisy and decadence of a depraved theology. As we know from other Gospel stories, nothing could raise the ire of Christ more than hypocrisy, especially the oppression of the weak by the powerful disguised as piety and faithfulness. The revolutionary idea simmering beneath this story would have been abundantly clear to the early listeners - the Law can manage and contain our sin, but Jesus can do more than that - he can exorcise it by his power. This uncleanness was not just individual but institutional, a creeping virus spreading through their understanding of who God was and what God wanted from them. Jesus appears with a new message that threatens the neat system of abuse: He says the real power is not the Law but grace, the real call is not ritual cleanliness but love.
This need to enforce laws at the expense of relationship didn’t end after the 1st century, goodness knows. Something in us keeps tugging at the question “aren’t rules the only way to keep people in line and maintain order and security?” This is a snippet from the Code of Connecticut, which was law in the early 18th century:
No one shall run on the Sabbath Day, or walk in his garden, or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting. No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath. If any man shall kiss his wife, or wife her husband on the Lord’s Day, the party in fault shall be punished at the discretion of the court magistrates.We can laugh at what sounds to us like such primitive forms of legislated morality, but there is more to the Gospel story that speaks especially and directly to us today. The antidote to rule-dominated perfectionism is not an anything-goes relativism. To become adamantly anti-legalistic is just another form of legalism. The answer is the authority of Christ which is the law of love. The great paradox of the Gospel is that we are only really free under the authority of Jesus. We are most fully ourselves and alive when we live and act in love that comes from the heart that when we outwardly follow the rules to placate God or others. To choose our own will, our own way may seem like freedom, but it is really only imprisonment in the pit of our selfishness and prejudices.
The implicit lesson for Mark’s readers and for us is that we are the man with the unclean spirit in need of Christ’s ongoing deliverance. This is good news and bad news: good news in that identifying our need creates a longing for healing and forgiveness; bad news in that we must break with the crowd and give up seeking safety and security through outward conformity to a ritual and a tradition. Being a Christian doesn’t make us immune from the illusion of an easy and comfortable road. One way our legalism shows up is in our understanding of worship. As you gather with your parish community at home or when we join around word and sacrament here this morning, what do we believe about this God we expect to encounter? Or do we anticipate much of anything at all?
Those of us in liturgical traditions must be on guard against becoming overly fond of religious motion - satisfied that, because the lessons have been read, the hymns have been sung, the liturgy observed by the authorized people; that worship has taken place. The outer pieces of worship have been offered but whether they have prompted us to open our hearts to God is our response. I often catch myself reinforcing my own illusions by saying that my physical presence is sufficient to get me a check mark for the day. The questions of worship under the authority of Jesus are: Do I seek to love God and my neighbor no matter what? Do I have the humility to face the evil within me and seek Christ’s help to deliver me? Do I have the courage to name the uncleanness within the community and challenge my community to the freedom of grace?
As Jesus was with the man with the unclean spirit he will be with us; he will freely give us his compassion and mercy but he will never shy away from opposing with fierce directness the uncleanness that can so easily entangle us. At times the Lord will, by grace, confront us with the reality of our own evil spirit, our own hypocrisy, our own indulgence in evils like pride, arrogance, safety, security, apathy, or indifference. These insights into the reality of our own conflicted motives are great gifts because only when we have looked clearly at our own condition can we decide to live in the freedom of Christ’s authority.
So our rule of life can be our Lord’s; receive and hold onto what is life-giving and fruitful and holy in ourselves and each other and forcefully resist what destroys, isolates, and separates us from ourselves and each other. Our call and purpose is to become like Christ - to live a love that wills and works toward the best in the other, even if such love upsets the religious forces of fear, power, and control. How can we live with walls of suspicion toward our brothers and sisters, imprisoning desires, and judgmental legalism when the boundary-breaking, demon-bashing, and law-transcending Servant of all has been revealed to us?
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