Day 785 - Astounded and Amazed

A Sermon at Urban Outreach Ministry, Chattanooga, TN, February 2, 2015

OT Reading: Deuteronomy 18:15-22
Gospel Reading: Mark 1:21-28

(Note: This sermon is an extended reprise of a sort after a few years in seminary of "Day 308 - It's not too late brothers and sisters" given at Fairhope Presbyterian Church, Fairhope, AL, Feb 1, 2009)

I said previously Mark's gospel is the gospel for the abused. Also, it is to be admired because it accomplishes its message with brevity in a quite remarkable literary way.

The first twenty verses begins with a mixed version of Exodus, Malachi and Isaiah’s ancient prophetic herald of The Messenger, a prophet who will announce the coming of the Lord and ends with a powerful demonstration of the beginning of the new creation.

From the times of  Isaiah and Moses, it has been said this Messenger, or Prophet (John the Baptizer) would come, and Israel awaited and wondered when that day would come. Even today we await the day of the return.  Over that span of time many have made false claims that the time is here. Even today we hear prophetic calls that the end is here. That is likely the reason the folks who assembled the lectionary gave us the Deuteronomy reading for last Sunday. How do we know when we are listening to a real prophet? 

Here in Chattanooga we have a weeklong music festival down on the riverfront called Riverbend. For many years a young man dressed in a white robe with a large wooden cross with a banner was a common fixture at one of the bridges across the river leading to an entrance to the festival. One could always count on hearing him shout at the passing crowds that they were all going to see the works of Satan and were going to fall into perdition. He presented himself as a self-appointed prophet, in effect saying to the crowd, “It’s not too late, Brother, Repent. Turn back O Man!” Almost everyone dismissed him as misguided, if not deranged.

But context is everything. The words about prophets written in Deuteronomy give us a guide. Prophets come because the people feared to hear the voice of the Lord after the disaster at Horeb when the Hebrews made a golden calf to worship while Moses was on the mountain receiving the commandments for living. Then the voice of the Lord burned with anger contemplating to destroy his people. Thus people fear the voice of the Lord as death and said, “Please give us a prophet to speak for you. We will obey the prophet’s commands.” The problem is, of course, when is the person speaking as a true prophet for Lord? The word in Deuteronomy says, “you will know a true prophet by the results.”

This discussion about the truthfulness of the prophet is important to understand today’s passage in Mark 1:21-28. These eight verses are the counterpoint to the message Mark has given us in the first twenty verses; the Messenger, John the Baptizer has proclaimed the new age as we hear these words from a stormy sky, “You are my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased” that validate this new creation that Jesus has inaugurated on earth with his entry, the Kingdom of God,  and Jesus has called the first four disciples to turn around from their ways and learn to fish for people. All in twenty verses!

I must say though that neither our modern times nor our English translation do justice to these next eight verses (21-28). These verses describe the first action of Jesus after calling his four disciples. He went into the synagogue and taught. 

What did Jesus teach? Mark is not interested in telling us exactly what Jesus taught. Mark is only interested that we get the message that Jesus speaks about this Good News with the authority of the Lord testified by the prophets through the ages. 

One could conclude Mark is saying if you want to know what Jesus preached in this visit to the synagogue, go read the accounts in Matthew, Luke or John. You should get one message, heed what he says because Jesus speaks with divine authority.

In the synagogue, the reader would pick up the scroll of the Torah and read from it. Perhaps Jesus read from the scroll of Jeremiah, or Isaiah where the Lord said to his people, “Why do you trample my courts, I am sick of your burnt offerings, your sacrifices and your holidays.  I cannot endue your inequities. When you ask for help I will hide my eyes. Make yourselves clean, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:12-17), or “I remember the devotion of your youth… What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went so far from me?... I still will contend with you… Return faithless Israel, I am merciful! If you swear 'as The Lord Lives' in truth, in justice and in uprighteousness… then the nations will bless themselves in him…Circumcise your heart to the Lord lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.” ( Jeremiah 2:2-4; 4:1-4). God demands absolute fealty.

I think perhaps Jesus read one of these scrolls or similar prophetic words for this reason. 
Our modern translations do not do justice to the nuances of the actual Greek words. Here in English, the only thing Mark tells us about what Jesus taught is that he astounded the listeners. Mark uses two different words in this passage (verse 22 and 27) that the translators replace with "astound" or "amaze."  After Jesus finishes his teaching in verse 21 Mark tells us the people were astounded. The Greek word has a sense of being “blown away, shocked, completely stunned, swept off one’s feet, or even outraged” by what they heard because it came across as coming from powerful authority - not just a human authority but  a superhuman or divine authority. In other words, the projected power of Jesus reading and teaching from the scripture was as if the Lord was speaking, not just a scribe or rabbi.

Jesus has done this not by saying, “Hey! Listen to me, I’m the Son of God!” (In fact as we will see through out Mark until almost the very end, Jesus goes out of his way to squelch any talk of that he may be of divine origin); but by the shear power of his presence. It is the events that surround Jesus that communicate his Good News, not someone saying he is the son of God. James and John, Simon and Andrew on the shore of the sea never heard any divine proclamation; they were compelled by the authority of His call to follow him. So the congregation knows something powerful is working here, they just do not know what it is.

And JUST THEN here in this synagogue IMMEDIATELY we encounter a man with an “unclean” spirit and an ensuing exorcism. This exorcism is an exclamation point that underscores what we have just previously heard. Jesus has astounded the congregation by teaching with divine authority and as he deals with this poor man he is going to amaze them further.

Some of us only think about the fanciful movie "The Exorcist" when we hear “exorcism.” Others find it easy to imagine people who are possessed and out of control, we have all met them. But we are “sophisticated.” We have all the knowledge of medicine and psychology to explain things in medical terms and say all this talk of spirits is a relic of an uneducated past. We may say cognitive therapy or even psychiatric medications are a kind of exorcism.
           However we continue to grapple with whether or not there are unclean or evil forces in the world.  We all know people who walk down the street and have it out for us, or sit among us in church, or claim to be good Christians don’t exactly behave that way. 

The exact nature of whether there is a separate evil in the world or it is a part of all of us demands the time of a completely separate discussion so I will not do it now. What is important here is Mark’s literary device needs to be taken as it is written to understand the message.

Mark has done two things. First he mirrors the difference in the reaction of the people who heard Jesus teach and the reaction of the evil spirits in the man who heard Jesus speak. Who recognized the true nature of Jesus? Did they both? 

It is my opinion that the people listening to his teaching knew something very powerful, unusual and divine was going on, but like sheep did not fully grasp what was going on. 

In Mark, even when the people do not recognize Jesus for who he is, evil, the unclean spirits understand. I think of it like sheep and wolves. The sheep are clueless about the danger of the wolf, but the wolves hunting sheep understand the danger of the presence of the shepherd.

What did the unclean spirits in the man say?

With the man’s voice they asked, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”

And then, the spirits, like the Messenger, speak the truth, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

Does the congregation hear this exchange, or is it something going on between Jesus and the unclean spirits?  They at least hear Jesus saying to them, “Be silent, and come out of him!” and see the man writhing on the ground. Mark tells us in v 27 that this scene evokes another kind of amazement. They realize in fear, this is no prophet but something greater.

Mark uses a different Greek word for amaze here. This time the congregation reacts as if in the presence of danger with awe tinged with fear from seeing something totally outside their human experience. They say, “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” Is the memory of the Lord’s voice at Horeb bubbling below the surface?

What is Mark telling us here? He is telling us that there is a divine power in Jesus that the perceptive person sees. It is a power that evil recognizes and fears.

From this point forward as Mark follows Jesus to the Cross he will reveal exactly what that power is. It isn’t a power like the rebels in some place in Africa claim - the rebels who kidnap young kids, teach them to use AK-47’s and brainwash them into thinking they are invincible to bullets even though they are not.

The power and authority Jesus commands is not a human power like an armored vest, bullets still can kill the body. Jesus will defeat the thing that can kill the soul. Jesus will defeat sin. 

There is no guarantee of a free ride home, that our road will be paved with gold and we all will share happy stories until we get home. There is a guarantee of only two things, we have God’s blessing that there is a safe home no matter what happens.

We always quite humanly want to focus on the good things, the happy stories about our life on earth but I can tell you a fisher of persons can be part of something good happening even in hard circumstances.

I came across two examples in my work in Mississippi rebuilding after Katrina with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  One day I got a call in my office from a social worker at an agency whose clients we helped at times. She asked me to visit a woman near Bay Saint Louis who was quite ill and had some serious problems with depression, and as I was to find out, could be more than difficult to work with. I drove up into her yard where a dilapidated mobile home sat on loose concrete blocks. The mobile home was in such bad shape I wasn’t sure which side to try for the door. Finally I knocked on door on one side and she called me to the other door. I discovered she has COPD, and uses a ventilator. In that characteristic raspy voice she asked me, “Please Mr. Paris, please fix my floor. She showed me a mushy spot in her kitchen floor that sagged under my weight. And then she told me she had no heat, and when I looked at the heating ducts in the floor throughout the home I saw directly to the ground. All she had are three electric space heaters, one of the major causes of fires in mobile homes. She told me she bought this mobile home for $7,000 after Katrina washed away her original home. She paid some contractor $4,000 to half-way fix the kitchen (It still was not completed). I’m thinking why did she do it? I asked, “Why haven’t you applied for one of the FEMA grants? “

“Oh I did, before this last mobile home, they gave me $36,000 to replace my home.”

Well I tell her that’s great, but then she continued, “I bought a mobile home for $20,000 and the guy never delivered it.”

I asked, “Have you tried to get your money back, or the mobile home delivered?” “Yes.” 

“Do you have a receipt so we could go to the police?” “No, I paid cash. I cashed the FEMA check and put all the money in a shoebox. I went down to that man’s business and paid him the twenty thousand for the mobile home out of the box.”

  I was grasping at straws, “You still have $5,000, Mrs. Jones. We have to get you in some housing where you have heat and protection. Can’t we sell the property and build or buy elsewhere?”

 She begins weeping. “No, I don’t have any left, I gave my son who moved to Baton Rouge about $4,000 for his children and my daughter here in town who has a drug problem, I gave her about $2,000. And besides that, my husband who died just a few months before Katrina came, changed his will to protect me from some of my relatives selling the property out from under me.  He changed the will so the property can’t be sold while I’m alive.”

So here I inherited a case of the abused, where I don’t have any answers. She had no money, she lived in a mobile home that should have been condemned, she couldn’t sell the property to use the money to move into assisted living, she was dying of COPD and she was quite clearly mentally troubled and so objectionable (possessed?) at times that few people, even her case manager, wanted to help her. (That was why the case manager referred her to me.)

I was humanly powerless to help her other than to listen to her story with a sympathetic ear. The only thing she had to cling to was hope for that promised home and the outside chance someone could chase the demons away from her in that sorry mobile home. I could only sit there and listen as she cried, feeling more and more helpless myself wondering where is the blessing in this mess.

The other instance taught me that sometimes you know you are on the right road to home only when you hear the words of blessing, “God bless you.”  I heard those words a lot in Mississippi. 

In my office again one day I found a voice message on the office phone from another woman looking for help. I called her back. After listening to the big and expensive problem she had, I said I didn’t know how much I could help her but I’d try to find someone for her who might be able to help. She began sobbing and through the tears through tears said, “I know you can’t help me but you called me back. That means so much to me. You care. God Bless you.”

The power Jesus offers is that guarantee of a good blessing that we will find our way home regardless of the mess we have in the here and now.  Being astounded and amazed by the Good News gives us the power to turn away from all the things that suck us back into that old world of envy, jealous, longings, pride that makes us want to fight and harm our family, friends and enemies. It gives us the power to hear, to see, to understand.

That is the message of the first 28 verses of Mark. The message Andrew and Simon, James and John heard to turn around and come follow Jesus home. Sometimes the only way you know you are on the road to home is when you hear the words, “God bless you” because then you know peace is with you.  

Some times that is all it takes to chase the “unclean spirits away” from my troubled soul.

AMEN