Sermon for 2-1-09

In last Sunday's gospel reading from the first chapter of Mark we had the story of Jesus calling his disciples. Early on in Mark we see that the story of Jesus is not a story just of a solitary hero. But it is significant that from the very beginning of Mark this is also the story of a community of Jesus' followers. Which says to us that our Christian life is about discipleship, which involves being with Jesus. And discipleship is also about following where he leads -into the places where God and humanity intersect; into the suffering and brokenness of the world.

In today's gospel lesson Mark remembers Jesus leading the disciples into that brokenness and suffering. From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus is dealing with the problem of evil in the world. He is not doing what conventional wisdom would say do about evil -go around it, avoid it. Rather, he is confronting it head on.

In much of the religious thought of the ancient world evil came from the spirits or gods. It was understood there was a spirit or god in all things and those spirits needed to be placated. The spirits had to be honored and venerated. For example, there is an earthquake god or spirit, and unless it is placated with regular offerings of respect, it would cause suffering. Gradually this evolved to a god of a particular geographic area or city, which also needed to be placated with offerings or else suffering would come about.

In this polytheistic understanding, some gods were more important than others. The understanding was that if you went to the territory of a certain god, you should worship that god, so that the god didn't get angry and cause suffering to break out against the area. Although one always had to live in fear of the gods, on the positive side, it was a convenient way to understand suffering. According to this point of view, the gods could be manipulated by just offering whatever the right sacrifice was demanded. And this would prevent suffering.

Unfortunately, we still have the remnants of this kind of theology in some of our superstitions where evil is an instrument of an angry god who doesn't want to be ignored. You hear it from time to time in the teachings of televangelists or politicians who talk about God sending evil, perhaps in the form of a hurricane or in the form of terrorism, as some sort of punishment.

We see a remarkable development, though, away from this kind of magical thinking in the books of Genesis and Exodus. As the Hebrew people leave Egypt they are going through a change in their understanding of God. This God who they encounter is the God of their ancestors who has remained faithful to them even outside the particular geographical area of the Promised Land. This God is not a god who needs to be placated. Rather this God that they get to know is a single God of love, not at all like the multiple selfish gods of the peoples around them. They enter into a covenant with their God, and understand that evil does not come when God is bored, but as the consequence of human behavior, of breaking the covenant. This is the point of view of the writer of Deuteronomy in today's lesson, “Therefore, the way to avoid suffering,” says the writer, “is to listen to the prophets, do good works and remain faithful.”

Part of what we see in this passage from Deuteronomy is this idea of following God's law, the Torah. If one followed it to the letter, evil could be avoided. Eventually the Jewish kingdoms would be destroyed by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. This idea of evil resulting from not adequately following the law seemed to fit as an explanation of why the Kingdoms fell and the Jews found themselves in exile in Babylon . But the problem with this idea was that it was not always true. Sometimes bad things did happen to good and righteous law abiding Jews.

There developed a theology of evil that saw it as coming from outside of people and threatening them. Since the Jews were monotheists, they could not see evil as another god but as a force that opposed God. This was the understanding of evil during the time of Jesus and Jesus communicated through the symbolic images of demons.

We modern people find dealing with symbolic language difficult. We often want everything to be literal or else somehow it is not real. The biblical writers, though, had none of our hang-ups, though, with symbolic language.

Notice in the story that the demon surfaces in the place and time when people are gathered for the discussion of religion in the synagogue. The assembly in the synagogue is arguing about who is right. They are no longer listening to each other but are wedded to their own point of view of the truth. In the lesson from Corinthians for today Paul reflects on this attitude when he says that, “knowledge puffs up but love builds up.”

Listen to the words of the demon: “What have you to do with us?” This question of the demons suggests that evil exists when humans are self-absorbed. It is the attitude of leave us alone; I can't be bothered with that person's need. Evil appears when we are so self-focused that we block out the light of God's love. In this symbolic image we see that evil exists when we act as if we are the center of our universe. Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on that tendency when he spoke of the parable of the Good Samaritan, by saying: The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

Back to this parable in Mark: evil is present in this man in such a way as if the man feels he has no power over it. Paul speaks of this tendency of doing evil even when he doesn't want to: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.” Evil seems to have a power greater than oneself and there seems to be no hope of overcoming it. The evil becomes habitual. It reminds me of when I used to smoke cigarettes. I had tried for years to overcome it but my individual will was not strong enough. People who go to AA and NA teach us that they were only able to overcome their addiction, the evil in their life, when they admitted they were powerless over it, and turned to their higher power.

It may not be with chemical addictions, but we all struggle from time to time as individuals, as groups, and as societies with evil that is greater than ourselves. As societies we often turn to violence to solve problems that history has shown us time and again can't be solved with violence. And yet we habitually turn to it.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Jesus offers us a way out. In our story from Mark, in symbolic image, we see that evil is defeated when Jesus confronts it with God's authority. The man does not have the authority in and of himself to turn from the power of the demon, but Jesus by his authority, given by God, has the power to join with this man to conquer the evil.

In the Book of Mark Jesus leads us eventually to the cross, into death and resurrection, into radical self-giving love. Jesus doesn't do what the world would say leads to happiness. He doesn't avoid and try to go around the cross. Rather, it is only by going through the cross, by confronting the evil that we get to the Resurrection. So it is with us. We cannot avoid our pain, suffering, and struggles. We have to confront them. But the good news is that we are not alone as we face our demons. We have a community of disciples to strengthen us and most importantly we have Jesus who is with us and who has a power greater than the evil within us.

It is in the following of Jesus that we are able to claim his authority over our demons. By following Jesus in forgiving and even loving our enemies, by following Jesus by stopping our desire to always be “right”, by following Jesus in the practice of loving even when we might suffer from it. By reaching out to Jesus and following him into the brokenness and the pain we find God's power to overcome our demons.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.