“A Disruption in Church”

by Bruce J. Johnson

January 29, 2006

Scripture: Mark 1: 21-28

Today’s lesson is a hum-dinger. My first reaction to it is to say something like the following:

“ That’s just what any preacher or teacher wants to happen in the middle of things----just when things were going so well!--- to have some raving lunatic causing a disruption, inserting himself into the dynamics of worship or the classroom, maybe even threatening the validity or integrity of that which was just preached or taught!”

GET WHAT I MEAN?

Things were going so well that Sabbath in the local synagogue at Capernaum. We know precious little about the circumstances. That’s typically Mark! All we know is that Jesus and his entourage went to Capernaum sometime during the week and ‘when the Sabbath came’ Jesus showed up at the synagogue and took the floor and was teaching and everyone was astonished not so much by what he said but how he said it. We are told that he didn’t teach like the scribes!!! What that meant I guess is up for grabs but it may have meant that they liked how he carried himself—how he taught with such authority. I often wonder what they actually meant. Did they mean that he knew what he was talking about? Or he actually showed that he believed in what he was saying? Or maybe it was simply that he taught with such conviction in his voice… as if what he was saying were really true? Whatever it was, he was having a good day!

And there was quite a buzz about it!

Then it happened—the big disruption--- and it could have gone either way!

We’re not sure how this man got there. Was he there during the class and just waited for the right moment or did he barge in as Jesus was stepping down? All we are told in the lesson is:

“Just then--- there was this guy!!!!!! With a voice that seemingly wasn’t his own.

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I kno-o-ow who you are” howled something deep within the man. “You’re the ho-o-o-ly one of God.”

Jesus responded saying:

“Shut up” “Come out of him!”

While our first inclination is to focus on the unclean spirit that comes out of the man, it is also quite a ‘coming out’ for Jesus too. What started out as a simple first day at the synagogue turns into something pretty wild. The man falls to the synagogue floor, his arms beating wildly at the air, his legs thrashing out so that people moved back to give him a wide circle, froths of foam and strange cries coming out of his mouth. Then the man became strangely calm and lay very still. Slowly he picked himself up off the floor, his face now tranquil, his eyes clear, his voice measured and composed. Whatever it was inside the man that was tormenting him, whatever it was that probably made him the shame of his family and shunned in the community was now gone. Like I say, we know precious little about the man--- that’s typically Mark too. What we do know now, however, is that he either got his life back if his illness wasn’t from birth or he was introduced to a life he had never known and a future he couldn’t possibly have imagined for himself, if it was! EITHER WAY--- WOW!

AND JUST AS AMAZING IS WHAT THIS MEANT FOR JESUS, ALL OF A SUDDEN A GOOD DAY WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A GREAT DAY. HIS FAME BEGAN TO SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE SURROUNDING REGION OF GALILEE!

Of course, as we read this story today, quite literally – today we might be justified in asking---Can we trust Mark? IS HE TELLING US THE TRUTH? How good was his source? How good was his memory?

Those are questions being asked a lot these days!

I’m sure that we have all been following the hot new controversy of the week. It’s all over the place in print, op-ed columns and letters to the editor--- as well as on the news stations--- Fox News, the Network News, CNN, and celebrity TV because of Oprah’s involvement! Today’s “Commentary” section of the Hartford Courant adds to the volume of print with its TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES article. The controversy is over James Frey’s memoir about his recovery from addiction and his self-destructive live style, A Million Little Pieces. It caught the attention of Oprah and she was so moved by Frey’s story that she selected it for her Book of the Month--- which of course, translated into millions of copies sold and millions of dollars profit. SmokingGun.com, however, investigated Frey and discovered that much of what he said about his life experience was untrue.

Oprah, however, even though she was told about the lies and embellishments, nevertheless made a call to Larry King defending the book saying, essentially, that the truth doesn’t matter when so many lives have been touched and so many people have been given such hope!

Of course, she now regrets that phone call and has apologized for it before millions of viewers. Oprah says she was duped--- others say she was conned!

What is getting all the ink, of course, is the bigger issue for our society, with lying being so pervasive: Does the truth matter? Does something need to be true if the end result is so redemptive? That debate rages on!

Ironically, if not comically, at the same time, CNN reported the other day that in Rome, Italy, lawyers for a small town parish priest have been ordered to appear in court next week. The Roman Catholic cleric and the church were being charged with breaking the law by teaching that Jesus Christ actually lived 2000 years ago. The church is being hauled into court to prove that their claims are true and to show that they are not exercising a con on the people--- which is illegal! (CNN, January 22, 2006)

None of you will haul me into court, will you, if I make the claim that what Mark is telling us about that day is true? Not only did he teach with such authority but that authority was tested immediately by that disruptive unclean or evil spirit who knew him and why he was there--- to overcome all that is within people--- all that is unclean and evil and he exorcised that spirit--- giving the man his life!

Does anybody know what book Oprah has chosen as her next Book of the Month? Night by Elie Wiesel, his very moving ‘memoir’ from his time in the death camp, Buchenwald. Amidst all this recent fuss, some are saying that it is a memoir—others a novel. On the back cover, we read this description:

“Night—A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family…. the death of his innocence… and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at it absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.”

For me a critical moment in the book is when he gives an account of the hanging of three Jews—two adults and one child.

“The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.

The three necks were placed at the same moment within the three nooses.

“Long live liberty!” cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

“Where is God? Where is he?” someone behind me asked.

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs were tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

“Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice is raucous. We were weeping.

“Cover your heads!”

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive.

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is he? Here He is---He is hanging here on this gallows…”

That night the soup tasted of corpses.

(Night, pp.61-62)

Powerful stuff!

And it must have been the same that day at the synagogue at Capernaum, as the people widened the circle around the man who was foaming and convulsing himself to health and wholeness and a new life within his community. Mark is telling his Truth--- that God was there in their lives just as God is here in ours in Jesus Christ--- redeeming our poor sorry souls--- with the authority of His presence and his teaching….AND THAT IS CERTAINLY OUR ASTONISHING TRUTH!

PRAISE BE TO GOD.

AMEN