29 January 2012

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

OK. I’ll admit it. I’m not all that thrilled with today’s reading from the Gospel according to St. Mark. An exorcism? Really, Mark? Really? How can anyone in this post-modern United States of America relate to an exorcism? I mean it was fun in movies a while back – the spinning heads, the green vomit, the eerie, screechy voices – but come on. And one of the problems I have with some of the Church in Africa is that when we protest their practice of regularly engaging in exorcism rituals – and yes, in Lutheran churches – when we protest, they reply by saying that we are the ones who are hopelessly naïve.

Whatever we think of this story wherein Jesus exorcises an unclean spirit and tells it to shut up, it’s worth noting that in this first chapter of Mark, Jesus has been spoken to only twice. The first voice that speaks directly to Jesus is a voice, we are told, that “came down from heaven” accompanied by the Spirit “descending like a dove on him” – the dove – a symbol of peace. And the voice says, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” We are to presume that there is no need to silence this voice, for this voice belongs to God, and only Jesus can hear it. But the second voice to address Jesus, we are told, is that of an unclean spirit – a voice that screams out, loudly cries out, a voice belonging to an entity that rudely interrupts worship in the synagogue, that rudely interrupts the teaching that Jesus is doing, a voice belonging to an entity that violently convulses the body that it inhabits. And then Jesus exorcises this unclean spirit simply by telling it to “shut up” and leave the one it possesses. But outside of its admittedly bad manners, what makes this voice so unclean? After all, the voice isn’t saying anything all that bad, is it? The voice of the unclean spirit tells the truth; it identifies Jesus as being from Nazareth, but more importantly it identifies Jesus as “the Holy One of God,” the Messiah. And true that, right? So again, just what is so unclean about this spirit? Why tell it to shut up? Aren’t we supposed to tell others about Jesus? And isn’t that just what this voice is doing?

Throughout this Church year as we listen to readings from St. Mark’s Gospel, we’ll hear Jesus, with authority, tell those voices that identify him as the Holy One of God to shut up. Jesus will even command his own disciples to tell no one that he is the Messiah until he has undergone great suffering and is killed, and after three days rises again. Simon Peter, densest of the dense, will strenuously object of course, and so Jesus will do to Peter exactly what he does to the unclean spirit: Jesus will rebuke Peter – and not only that but he will say to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” Poor Peter – the object himself of an exorcism. But again we must ask, “What’s wrong with identifying Jesus as the Messiah? Why does Jesus, in Mark’s telling of the Story, not want anyone to know? Why is this so wrong, demonic, Satanic, even?”

In the first reading this morning we hear God promise to send prophets to the people, voices who will speak what God commands them to speak. “However,” says God, “any voice who speaks . . . a word that I have not commanded it to speak – that one shall surely die.” The short answer to “Why so much secrecy?” in Mark’s gospel is that it is not God’s will that Jesus be known as Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God until it is time, until God’s self-revelation be completed, perfected, finished – until Jesus himself gives a loud cry and breathes his last and the curtain of the Temple is forever torn apart, and all humanity sees God as God wills to be seen. And it is the voice of a centurion (one whom it is fair to assume participated in the very murder of Jesus of Nazareth) that  un-rebuked, un-exorcised, is finally allowed to speak: “Truly this one was God’s Son!” It is only at the cross that we can see the fullness of God’s will: to die rather than be known as the God of vengeance, to turn the other cheek to human hatred and violence, to repay the bullying taunts and jeers of the crowd not with hell-fire and brimstone but by citing the Twenty-second Psalm, that though it begins by asking why God seems so far away, ends by praising the God who will deliver all those who cannot save themselves.

“You wish to know the will of God?” The only place we can truly, truly say we know God’s will, says Luther, and Paul, and the Gospels, is from beneath the cross of the Crucified One who in refusing to save himself will be delivered from death. And the only thing we can say for sure about God’s will for our lives is that we have been promised, promised in Holy Baptism that we are united with Christ in a death like his and are united with Christ in a resurrection like his. No, this doesn’t mean that we will literally hang upon a cross. It does mean, however, that God has proclaimed that, with Christ, we are dead to every attempt to save ourselves. We, with Christ, are dead to vengeance, dead to getting even, dead to violence, dead to the human will to power. Along with Christ upon the cross, we are dead to hating and cursing our enemies; dead to having to have the upper hand; dead to riches; dead to fame; dead to having to be right; dead to having to justify our existence to ourselves, to the world, and before God. And so our very consciences are freed from their bondage to fear – for it is God who saves us, a people who cannot save ourselves, no matter how hard we try. And with Christ upon the cross, we are free to go to our deaths singing praise to the God whose will is not vengeance but peace and good will toward all humanity. All humanity. And with Christ crucified, we too shall rise from death. You shall rise from death – every new dawning day, including and most especially, on that already dawning new day when this old body is dead and you are all clothed in a glorified body that shares eternity with the glorified Jesus of Nazareth. That’s God’s will for you. And it is just that simple, and so with Jesus you too may say to those voices that would speculate and complicate things and tell you otherwise, you too with Jesus may say to those voices: “Shut up and go away.”

Now how’s that for a post-modern exorcism that even you can do? And no spinning heads, no green vomit.