Super Bowl Sunday Recap Sans Football, The Hermeneutical Version

February 5, 2009

Once again you people crack me up! The more inane my posts, the more comments you leave and the other day’s post on Super Bowl Sunday was another fine example. Just another reason why I love you. “I really do by the way,” she said with all sincerity. We just had a warm fuzzy moment together, didn’t we? I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Sigh.

I had originally intended to share a few thoughts from the sermon I gave on Super Bowl Sunday, also known as the Fourth Sunday in Epiphany to the more spiritually-minded or Epiphany B4 to any maverick clergy lingering among this holy readership, so before I get distracted yet again by my personal unresolved issues concerning football…

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

“Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.” News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. Mark 1:21-28

In Matthew Jesus’ ministry began in the tradition of John the Baptist as Jesus announced the coming of the Kingdom of God and called the people to repentance.

In Luke at Jesus’ first official public appearance he proclaimed who he was and why he had come by reading to those in the synagogue from the scroll of Isaiah; “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In Mark Jesus began his ministry by doing. Throughout Mark’s Gospel little attention is given to what Jesus taught but to what Jesus did. Jesus was an activist, a healer of the sick, an exorcist of demons, an advocate for the poor, a liberator for the captive and oppressed.

In Mark the kingdom of God wasn’t a future coming alone but in Jesus the kingdom of God had broken through into the world. The Spirit of God was alive in him and he was the very content of the Good News rather than simply one who heralded the Good News. And what was the Good News in Mark? The Good News was the saving power of God that delivered humanity from anything that robbed people from living an authentic life and as this Gospel unfolds one miracle after another demonstrate people being liberated from bondage and called into freedom.  Liberation is at the very center of the Gospel and Jesus stands as the Great Liberator!

Evil or unclean spirits were as real to ancient people as their neighbor next door. If you were blind you had a demon of blindness. If you couldn’t have a child, you had a demon preventing you from giving birth. Doctors tried to eradicate demons from people through trepanning, a process that  involved drilling a hole through the top of the person’s skull so the demon could escape. Ouch! Professional and religious exorcists preformed all kinds of elaborate incantations and rituals to free the possessed but when all attempts failed there were times when nothing more could be done for the possessed person than to take them outside the city gates and chain them up for the safety of the community.

Since the Enlightenment people have been trying to offer a more reasonable explanation for these accounts in Scripture other than the actual presence of evil spirits. Was it a supernatural phenomenon, a psychological malady, mental illness or a seizure disorder? Ultimately I don’t think it matters but here’s what does: Someone who was in bondage was set free, and on this I agree with the writer of Mark, that the tortured soul in this story was freed by the power of God’s Spirit alive and active within Jesus.  The story of this one possessed by an unclean spirit is a story of God’s liberation, one that shares similar features to other liberation miracles that will follow.

1. The liberation of God meets people where they are even when they’re not where others think they should be.
   The synagogue on Sabbath was the last place anyone would expect to find an unclean spirit. Uncleanness was considered an abomination to God and to the people who earned the right to be there by following the prescribed process for being ritually clean. What makes us worthy to enter into the presence of God? If it’s total freedom from every bondage, from the chains of fear and despair, the shackles of arrogance and greed, or the weight of some addiction or shortcoming then who should come before God? Who would be left? No, the battle between good and evil isn’t limited to corrupt governments and corporate structures but it rages in the midst of ordinary people like you and me. We need to know we’re welcome to come as we are in search of God’s liberating touch just as we need to equally allow all the room in the world for others to do the same.
2. The liberation of God comes equally to those who have the faith to believe for it and those who lack all faith.
   We read countless accounts in the Gospels where people came to Jesus seeking a miracle. “Master, heal me!” they pleaded. “If you would but touch me, I will be made whole,” they believed, but not this one with an unclean spirit. He had no control over his life. Something controlled him. He took no action for himself. He spoke no words of his own. He didn’t ask to be freed because he couldn’t ask and there’s no reason to think he believed he could be freed, and yet Jesus does that very thing. There are times in our own lives when we feel powerless to rid ourselves of the chains that hold us. We who once believed it might have been possible have stopped believing. This is how it will always be. I will always be depressed. I will always be afraid. I will always be stuck in this old thinking. I will never be free to be who God created me to be. Even in our hopelessness, God in his great mercy and grace longs to unbind us and call us forth into a new life beyond our imagination.
3. The liberation of God comes amid conflict.
   Every liberation movement in history has come through conflict. The civil rights movement, the end of apartheid in South Africa and for GLBTQ people, the continuing fight for full equality under the law. No oppressed people have gained their freedom without suffering and tension. In the same way personal freedom often comes after a time of great pain and conflict. Sometimes we misinterpret the suffering as a sign God has abandoned us or an indication that we’re wrong and need to turn in another direction, and then we read this story. Jesus speaks to the unclean spirit, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” but there was nothing quiet or immediate about the person gaining his freedom. Instead he’s thrown convulsing to the ground and then in fits of shrieking the unclean spirit leaves him unharmed. Through there are times when freedom doesn’t come immediately, we can trust it will come another day after the storm.

While the scribes taught with the authority of their accumulated book smarts and their intimate knowledge of the finer points of the law, Jesus spoke with the power and authority of God’s Spirit. Empowered by the authority of the Spirit Jesus amazed all who listened to him and for most of them in the synagogue that day Jesus’ words would have been enough but not for everyone. Sometimes words seem like nothing more than words and there was someone on that day who needed much more than a good sermon. There was someone who needed to be free and so in a holy place at a holy time Jesus not only taught the Good News but he brought the Good News directly into someone’s tortured life, releasing him into the freedom and wholeness God had purposed for him all along, as God’s Spirit continues to do in and through and among us.

Whatever our demons.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Posted in Faith, Public Homilies