Day 791 - Where Is Power ?

A Sermon given for the Urban Outreach Ministry, Feb. 9, 2015

OT Reading: Isaiah 40:18-31

NT Reading: Mark 1:29-39

(Note: Many of the references to Isaiah in this post are poetic writing, therefore I have placed them here in the poetic form since the links have put them in prose form. An important thing about poetry is that it captures an emotional sense of reality but pays a price of losing part of its literal quantitative sense that prose writing carries.)

A few weeks back I called the Gospel of Mark, the “Gospel for the Abused.” We also learned Mark projects a very pressing urgency in the actions of Jesus to proclaim the beginning of a New Creation as the fulfillment of prophecy, and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. We also learned that only the evil he opposed and perhaps those he healed understand who he is. We also learned from his recruitment of the first four disciples that he is no ordinary rabbi who takes on eager students; rather He calls people to him.

The passages in Mark today amplify my reasons for this subtitle as we learn a little more about the power of the Kingdom of God and the people to whom he first brings this Good News and what it means for the world and for Christian ministry.

Power

The reading in Isaiah is all about the supreme power of God. Isaiah mocks those who make idols of gold or wooden images covered with gold and silver for worship. Do any of us make idols to worship? Money? Pride? Possessions? Appearance and clothes? Drugs? Alcohol? Authority?

Isaiah poses questions that are well known today. “Have you not heard? Have you not seen,” Isaiah exclaims, “Who is the source of power but the Lord who reigns over everything, who can end our days like sweeping a speck of dust off the table, the Lord has no equal, so why do you, Israel claim the Lord has forgotten them or is blind to their plight?”

“What does the Lord do?” He gives power to the faint, strengthens the powerless, even all you young people who think you are invincible will swoon and sit exhausted trying to contend with the Lord; but those who wait on the Lord, for the time of his presence, their strength will be renewed. They will mount up in the power and glory of the Lord “with wings like an eagle; they will run and not get tired, walk and not faint.”

This is the power that resides in “The Holy One of God.” (1:24)

And of what use is this power?

Matthew and Luke tell us Jesus was born in Nazareth and as Nathanael in John (the fourth called disciple in John’s Gospel) says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  

Jesus begins his ministry, not in Jerusalem, the heart of Hebrew religious life and the grand temple where the Holy of Holies stands, but in Galilee a remote province known mostly for its uneducated, poor folks. We might call them country rubes, bumpkins and laugh at their coarse accent as a sophisticated person from a wealthy suburb of New York City might when visiting us Chattanoogans.

The religious leaders looked down on Galileans. For that matter they really looked down on everyone who did not live in Jerusalem. Rome clearly looked down on all of Judah, and gave special perks to the religious leaders in Jerusalem as long as they kept the people in line.

Are you beginning to see the plan? Jesus begins his message of Good News out in the hinterland and even there to the abused, the sick and disabled who are oppressed by Rome and their own religious leaders.

In fact, in the world of Judah, you had a big problem if you were sick, had mental illness or a physical disability. You could not enter the Temple because you were considered “unclean,” less than whole. Priests may have to undergo purification rituals if they touch you. You were avoided and excluded by most people and lucky to have a friend or two. You were the people I call “the abused.”

Had the people truly heard Isaiah’s prophesy they would recall that the Lord has a special place in his heart for the abused, because all Israel was in captivity and labored under the yoke of slavery in Egypt. The Lord heard their cry and redeemed them. They would remember Isaiah 58:6-9a,

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

            to loose the bonds of injustice,

            to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

            and to break every yoke?

 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

            and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

            and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

            and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,

            the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

            you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

What words, “Then you shall call and the Lord shall answer, you shall cry for help and he will say, ‘Here I am.’”

They would get the message, even today, that poverty and slavery are not an economic and physical problem but a spiritual one. We are all impoverished in our spirit of true devotion to the Lord and enslaved by our pride and love of things.

And here is Jesus, the man of power fighting authority, or as Paul would say, pushing aside the world of flesh that enslaves and impoverishes us. The fight did not use weapons of arrows and bronze against the power of institutional authority, but used healing of those that authority abused as his weapon. Only at the end of this Gospel does Power truly oppose and defeat authority after authority thinks it has had the last word with the crucifixion.

Who gets the message?

The next question in this beginning ministry of Jesus is, “who gets the message?” Recall Jesus comes out of the wilderness and calls four disciples and goes directly into the synagogue on a Sabbath and astounds and amazes the congregants with his word and healing power.

His first act is to heal an outcast, a person possessed by “evil spirits.”  The only people we are sure got the message are the demons Jesus casts out, (“Jesus of Nazareth, …We know who you are, the Holy One of God”). But Jesus silences them and prevents revelation of this truth. I am led to believe the person who was healed got the point but the other congregants, we only know they were terrified as if in the presence of divine power.

It’s a Secret

In today’s reading (v32-34) people learn Jesus heals and flock to him, but it seems the only people who get the true message of the identity of this man are the demons and evil spirits that Jesus silenced. Why is he keeping it a secret that the Kingdom of God is at hand, a new power is walking in the world, a power that fights the authority of the world of flesh, who liberated humanity from the death of sin through repentance?

We would like to believe that surely the disciples know, after all he called them. We want the message to be, “you will know who Jesus is when he calls you, as he did with Simon, Andrew, James and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.” But Mark will show us even these poor disciples did not understand very much, not the parables much less that Jesus was truly the “Holy One of God.”

The key to this divine secret may also lie in Isaiah 42:16-17,

I will lead the blind

            by a road they do not know,

by paths they have not known

            I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

            the rough places into level ground.

These are the things I will do,

            and I will not forsake them.

They shall be turned back and utterly put to shame—

            those who trust in carved images,

who say to cast images,

            “You are our gods.”

Perhaps we will find out only when we realize how far we have sunk from God’s presence and how gracious and unjustified is this act of reconciliation through the Kingdom of God.  Perhaps when we understand the promise of revelation in Isaiah 52:3-6, and especially what is in store for those who reject the humble and poor in Isaiah 66:4-5,

These have chosen their own ways,

            and in their abominations they take delight;

I also will choose to mock them,

            and bring upon them what they fear;

because, when I called, no one answered,

            when I spoke, they did not listen;

but they did what was evil in my sight,

            and chose what did not please me.

            Hear the word of the LORD,

            you who tremble at his word:

Your own people who hate you

            and reject you for my name’s sake

have said, “Let the LORD be glorified,

            so that we may see your joy”;

            but it is they who shall be put to shame.

Some will not want to have their eyes, ears and mind opened to their shame. 

But why the secret? The reason could be in verse 6 of  Isaiah 52:3-6  when the secret is revealed to the world.

Mark intends to reveal the secret in the last few verses of his Gospel (16:6-8). These verses proclaim what Jesus silenced in the voices of the evil spirits and demons (that we might want to call the authorities of the world?)

But the important question our current verses of Mark raises is what exactly does this healing signify? There is also a powerful literal reality and global symbolism in these healings. On a literal level clearly to have demons expelled creates a mental clarity in the person. It is a positive individual experience. The same can be said about the blind who can now see.

When Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, what is her first action? She rejoins her family activity. The first thing she does is begin participating in the community of the shared Sabbath meal.

A blind person who now can see, or a lame person who now can walk are no longer less than whole. They may enter the Temple and worship, they are brought back into the social and religious community.

In our own time, a homeless person who with our help finds a sense of Christian vocation and a livelihood to support that vocation has re-entered our community.

Mark is illustrating that the healing power of Jesus creates a communal unity. We are brought together as whole persons in the healing power of Jesus Christ. In this unity one can see how Paul came to understand that we are called to work together like parts of the body. (1 Corinthians 12:1-13)

I entreat you not to forget that Jesus is creating this community out in the boondocks (Galilee) with perceived rubes and bumpkins, and outcasts who are abused by the authority of the state, society and religion. Do not forget this new creation came from an angry God who said through Isaiah (1:4-17), “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint… Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile;… Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;…remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil,  learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

Do not forget this new creation, this inauguration of the Kingdom of God came from the Lord who was angry over the mistreatment of his human creation by each other. This angry Lord could have wiped the slate clean instead.

I seldom venture into politics, and some may disagree with the point I am about to make. This message in Mark seems so directly “on point” to the actions last week of seven members of our Tennessee state legislature. They found themselves faced with the great Christian opportunity to provide limited health care to 280,000 uninsured lower income citizens of Tennessee, the kind of abused people Jesus is healing in Mark, but instead used the power of state authority to reject the opportunity. They did this all in the name of greed reflected in a view that says, “I made it by myself why should I share with those who have not made it." They acted on the basis of the petty power of partisan politics rather than compassion. Would that they look at the positive actions of some of their fellows who have given vast sums of personal wealth for medical care because they experienced the pain of suffering in their own family. Would that they hear the words of the Lord through the prophesy of Isaiah, and have their eyes opened to their own disgrace.

We should never forget that we are all abused and spiritually impoverished. We invite upon ourselves the same things that we treat the abused, disadvantaged and outcasts.

AMEN.