And they obey . . .
There are real spiritual powers that are demonic, unclean, and God has come – now in you and me – to send them reeling into the abyss.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 B
Text: Mark 1:21-28
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Maybe we’re too smart for our own good, too enlightened.
See, maybe you hear a story like today’s and it sounds quaint, archaic. Whatever this man suffered from, you think, he probably wasn’t possessed by unclean spirits.
Or maybe you don’t. If you thought this was a moving story of the power of God entering into our lives in the flesh, driving out a demonic strength that inhabited another human being, you’re on the right track.
Too often we dismiss these ancient writers and their “superstitions.” We don’t imagine there really are demons running around possessing people. We can think of several different mental or physical illnesses that fit the symptoms described. No need to bring the devil into all of this.
But this told Capernaum that God had come to them with power and authority.
This is a local synagogue in a small town. Maybe this man just wandered in on a Sabbath. Or maybe he was their friend and neighbor who’d come down with this possession to their great sorrow. And frustration – no one could help him, even though he came every week.
Either way, he came today, and there was someone new there. Jesus from Nazareth. That day Jesus had been teaching them so differently than what they were used to hearing the people saw deep authority in him. Then their possessed firend shouted at him, called him the Holy One of God, claimed Jesus came to destroy him.
You know the ending. Jesus tells the unclean spirit to be silent and get out of the man. And the spirit obeys. And the good people of Capernaum said, “what is this? Even the unclean spirits obey him.”
Jesus’ authority over unseen things showed he was from God.
He could drive away invisible, evil things that plagued people’s lives, could heal not just legs and backs and eyes but minds and spirits. People flocked to him – his fame spread all over Galilee.
We live in this time of amazing science and medicine where the brains and imaginations God gave us have taught so much and brought great healing, even healing of our minds. If you’re clinically depressed, suffer from debilitating anxiety, are bipolar or schizophrenic, there are medicines to help, to heal. Therapists can help with so many diseases of the mind and spirit, too. God has always used human wisdom and skill to bring healing, not just today.
But what if this story says God has more healing to do than that?
There’s a lot of suffering these days that doesn’t have neat explanations.
People today can describe their being “caught up in something” beyond their control, beyond whatever intentions they might have had. A group of people becomes a destructive mob seemingly in a moment. A political movement based on hatred and destruction is supported by millions of people calling themselves Christian. It’s more than bad choices, bad people.
Or there’s this: I’m not solely responsible for climate change. I recycle, I compost, I even walk around the church moving paper towels people have thrown into the garbage into the green compost bins. But I, and billions like me, together are destroying our planet’s ecosystem, changing the climate for the ill of all living things here. I’m part of that. What power or spirit moves such a reality that seems beyond one person’s control?
One commentator on today’s Gospel says: “We may or may not call addiction or racism or the sexual objectification of women “demons,” but they are most certainly demonic. They move through the world as though by a kind of cunning. They resist, sidestep, or co-opt our best attempts to overcome them. . . . The experience [is] like wrestling with a beast.” 1
And the good folks at Capernaum call to you and me from over the centuries and say, “what if God is doing something about that, too?”
They see an authority in Jesus, God-with-us, that faces even those beasts that roam in our world and speaks God’s power against them.
Even breaks them. And we’ve seen it. We’ve seen evil systems fall in South Africa and East Germany through the power of prayer and the strength of people peacefully, non-violently, resisting those powers. Surely the people of South Africa saw little hope in ending something like apartheid, and yet, it was broken. The Berlin Wall was taken down by ordinary people. Great, invisible powers were dismantled.
“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Hamlet says to his friend Horatio, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 2 Recognizing demonic powers as true and dangerous opens us to a very real hope: maybe they can be stopped.
If you’ve ever looked at any one of the massive problems in our society and despaired that you, just one person, couldn’t make a difference anyway, this is good news for you. If you ever thought “what’s the point of hoping, things are just getting worse and worse,” this is good news for you. If you’ve ever felt trapped, oppressed, targeted by evil greater than one person or thing, this is good news for you.
If you’ve ever dared hope that this world could be healed, this is good news for you.
Jesus stands in the way of the demonic and says, “no further. Be silent. Get out.”
And then turns to the people around him and says, “follow me.” Follow me to the cross. Come with me into the shadows, into the evil, with the love and grace of God that will break these things apart. Put your lives and hearts on the line. These are powers beyond you, and it’s like wrestling a beast. But I am with you, and will empower you to stand in the heart of the storm and make a difference.
If millions of people are so called and shaped by the Spirit, and stand together, a whole different power emerges. A power of love that cannot be stopped, that breaks down walls, deconstructs systems of oppression and evil, brings life and wholeness to the world.
You’re not the only one Jesus needs. But you are the one Jesus needs.
Maybe you can find hope in those first disciples.
Last week four decided to follow Jesus, leaving their boats and families behind. And in Mark’s Gospel, these four, along with lots more, struggle with what it means to follow, to be anointed as God’s power in an evil world. By the end of the Gospel, most of these disciples seem to have failed.
But Mark knows that these disciples, these men and women who stumbled mightily at first, all ended up faithful. By the time he documented their failure in this Gospel, they’d all gone out into the world as part of the Christ mission against evil and oppression. Some had already died for their witness.
Maybe Mark tells their faulty beginnings to give you hope. These women and men weren’t heroes or special in any way. But filled with the Spirit they told of the coming of God in Christ into the world, and embodied that coming, signaling the end of all demonic powers and evil.
And so can you. So will you, with God’s help.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
1 https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-epiphany-week-4
2 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, scene 5.
Worship, January 28, 2024
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 4 B
We belong to a God who shows up in the world with authority, driving out the demonic and calling us to follow.
Download worship folder for Sunday, January 28, 2024.
Presiding and Preaching: Pastor Joseph Crippen
Readings and prayers: Chuck Gjovig, lector; Tricia Van Ee, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download next Sunday’s readings for this Tuesday’s noon Bible study.
The Olive Branch, 1/24/24
God Calls Twice
God calls us twice, with patient urgency, into the reign of God.
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 B
Texts: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20; John 21:1-19
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There is an urgency in all of the texts for this week.
“The time is fulfilled!” Jesus says – his first words in Mark’s gospel.
“The appointed time has grown short,” Paul writes to the Corinthians.
“Get up and go,” God says to Jonah.
There is something pressing about the message of all these writers, and it reminded me of something my mom used to say: “If it’s urgent, call twice.”
That was the instruction she always left for us when we were kids, in the days before texting, on any occasion when we might need to talk to her while she was gone. “I might not answer the first time,” she’d say. “But if you call back right away, if you call twice, I’ll know it’s urgent and I’ll answer.” That was her promise to us and to this day I know that if I call twice, my mom will drop everything and answer. She’ll know it’s urgent.
In these texts, something urgent is happening. So God calls twice.
“God has spoken once, twice have I heard it,” the Psalmist sings. God calls twice.
“The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.” God called Jonah twice. Because it was very urgent. The situation was dire. God describes Nineveh as a place with more than one hundred and twenty thousand people who don’t know their right hand from their left. Whose wickedness, especially their violence, had risen up before God.
Jonah’s work is urgent. There are people, thousands of them, who must be reached, who must be stopped, the violence must stop. For the sake of the people that the Ninevites were hurting, and for the sake of the Ninevites themselves. God calls Jonah twice, because the need was urgent. It was time for a better way.
This is the same urgency that drives Jesus. “The reign of God has come near,” he proclaims, and he pairs with an urgent call “Repent and believe the good news.” As if he were saying: All you people who don’t know your right hand from your left. It’s time for the reign of God! It’s time for a better way.
It’s the same urgency that still drives prophets who speak and spread the reign of God today.
This past Monday we celebrated perhaps our greatest modern prophet in the United States, Dr. King. Dr. King understood the urgency of the reign of God. He dreamed of a better way. And he knew the reign of God meant love and power.
The Psalmist knew it too: “God has spoken once, twice have I heard it, that power belongs to God. Steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.”
Power and love belong to God. That is the recipe for meeting the urgent needs of the people, so urgent that God calls twice. But power doesn’t work on its own. Love doesn’t even work on its own. That’s the crucial insight that Dr. King understood.
“Power without love,” he said, “is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”1
This is the reign of God- power and love, at their best, implementing justice.
God called Jonah twice because it was time to implement justice. With both power and love, God saved them all. God saved the victims and God saved the oppressors. Justice and Mercy, Power and Love correcting everything that stood against love.
This is the reign of God. It’s what God calls each and every one of us into it. It’s incredibly urgent. And it’s why God calls twice.
But it’s not the only reason.
Because God could have called somebody else, when God called the second time, right? Jonah did not want to do this job, he made that very clear. If you don’t remember the story, the first time Jonah was called to Nineveh, he hopped in a boat and sailed the opposite direction as fast as he could. That’s how he ended up in the belly of that big fish. Which spewed him up right back on land so that the word of God could come to him a second time.
God calls twice because God is incredibly patient with us.
God was certainly patient with Jonah. Jonah ran away from the first call, because he knew God would be merciful. He knew that God would respond not only with power, but also with love, and he just couldn’t stand it. And in the end the only one who isn’t saved, the only one who isn’t part of the reign of God, is Jonah. He is left looking down at the city in resentment, telling God he is “angry enough to die!” And the book ends with God patiently loving him too, calling him, yet again, into the reign of God.
Because it is urgent, God is patient.
God was also patient with those fishers in the gospel for today. Andrew and Simon Peter and John and James. Now, it’s true in this story, they don’t seem to need to be called twice. “Immediately” they leave their nets and their boats. James and John up and leave their father in the boat and they don’t even seem to look back. All four of them are caught up right away in the promise of God’s power and love implementing justice, ushering in the reign of God.
But we know that they don’t really understand the reign of God yet. Most of the rest of the gospel of Mark will show how they really don’t get it. And even these men who seemed so eager to leave their nets, will end up back in their boats. On another lake shore. At the end of another gospel. Lost and despairing because they really didn’t think that God’s love and power in action would look like God dying on a cross.
But Jesus will call them again.
He will call these same followers again from their boats. He will tell them to cast their nets on the other side. He will tell Simon Peter to feed God’s lambs and tend God’s sheep. And he will say, for the second time, follow me.
Jesus called these fishers twice, in almost the same way. Because God was patient with them, even though they didn’t understand.
And with this patient urgency, God has called you too.
Even when you, like these fishers, just don’t get it, don’t understand the fullness of the reign of power and love and justice you are being called into. Even when you, like Jonah, don’t like it, when the love of God makes you angry enough to die. God is patient. God calls twice.
Or three times or four times, or too many times to count!
God has called you into the reign of God. Maybe you heard God’s voice, saying “Get up and go!” Or maybe you felt an urge, a stirring from the Holy Spirit that you couldn’t quite explain, maybe you feel it right now, calling you into urgent work. Maybe you heard the words of a prophet with a message as simple as “Repent and Believe.” Or another way you could translate it: “Turn and Trust.”
Turn away from standing against love. Turn away from the ways you hurt others and hurt yourself. Turn away from this present world and follow Christ into the new creation.
Turn and Trust.
Trust that power belongs to God. Trust that steadfast love belongs to God. Trust that God is calling you and will not abandon you. That God will call twice. Again and again and as many times as it takes.
The reign of God has come near. It’s urgent. Turn and Trust.
In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
1. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Where do we go from here?” Speech. 15 August 1967. Transcript available at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here. Hear the quoted excerpt from the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvSq5_vbL4&t=1s
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