What can we say January 28? 4th after Epiphany

    Hard not to pick the Gospel this week. Deuteronomy 18:15-20 expresses a promise of a great prophet to come – not a prediction of Jesus but most certainly a promise Jesus lives into thoroughly. And 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 may work well as an illustration of the kind of evil spirit Jesus silences in Mark 1 (we’ll get back to this idea later) – not to mention that Paul spent time around the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus (one of the Wonders of the World), which has gone the way of Ozymandias: a mere one column base left! The temple, with the food Paul mentions, was the bank, the stock market, the trading floor – so there was business costs to commitment to Christ.

   So the Gospel now. Mark 1:21-28. I am drawn to Joel Marcus’s clever way of framing his insight that the demons in Mark’s Gospel “seem to experience a fatal attraction to Jesus,” and St. John Chrysostom’s familiar but compelling appeal on how to win over skeptics: “Let us astound them by our way of life.”

   Tourists flock to the synagogue in Capernaum. Photogenic as it is, what we see is a later synagogue of gleaming white limestone built right on top of the floor of the black basalt synagogue of New Testament times. What a great image: the preacher guides the people in looking beneath the surface of things, and it’s a little bit darker, but more real under there. Jesus is a young man in a hurry in Mark. Everything happens “immediately.” It’s urgent – although in this case, to say Jesus “immediately” entered the synagogue is simple fact. Archaeologists discovered Peter’s house, where Jesus stayed, and it’s literally about a dozen steps from the house to the synagogue! 

   They were “astounded” by his teaching. Not “they nodded in agreement,” but they were astounded. I’ve never astounded people much. If I try to be astounding, they wag a finger in my face and tell me I’m mixing politics and religion – which is easily decipherable code for You said something that doesn’t suit my political ideology! At the Festival of Homiletics a couple of years ago, I preached a sermon on this text – for clergy: “How to be Amazing in the Pulpit.” It’s actually more about us being amazed, as if we’re amazed, astonished, astounded, onlookers might be too. If we aren’t, they won’t be. 

   Hugh Anderson wisely reminds us that “Mark wanted to show that when Jesus taught, things did not stay as they were, but God himself was on the move against all evil forces of the world.” The reason can only be that talk uncovers the hidden reality of spiritual forces, good vs. evil, God vs. the devil. There are ways to speak of this today without implying the devil is a red guy with a pitchfork breathing fire. People are puzzled by politics and society and other people; can’t we see this through the biblical lens that it’s not just one bad decision and then another, or stupidity, but actual vile forces that would undo us all. I used to worry people would think I was crazy if I mention evil forces; but nowadays people nod. It’s really the only thing that makes sense – and gives us hope, since God is steadfastly laboring against those forces, and they surely will be defeated. 

   Almost comically (and Mark is poking gentle fun at the demons), the demons in the guy recognize Jesus – when the pious can’t figure it out! Joel Marcus cleverly points out that it would be smart for the demons to keep a low profile. But they have that “fatal attraction” to Jesus. Jesus must have been attractive, for why else would the fishermen simply drop everything and traipse off after a near total stranger? The demons too find him alluring. 

   Jesus, never as sweet and gentle as we fantasize him being, says to those invisible forces of evil, “Hush!” The Greek, phimotheti, is slang, coarse, sort of cursing, more like “Shut up!” or as Marcus suggests, “Shut your trap!” God always wants silence, right? Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46), Jesus stilling the storm, the quiet Elijah heard after the storm on Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19). The racket of the world is racket. The noisy rancor of political ideology, the clamor of marketers to get you to buy something, anything. The hollering in your head that you’re no good. Name plenty of loud evil spirits, and in your sermon, embody Jesus saying to them phimotheti! Hush! Shut the hell up! Maybe omit hell.

   I have no real clue how to be an amazing preacher like Jesus. I am amazed by Jesus. And I do wonder how we might be an amazing church. If Jesus was amazing, maybe Jesus now, the body of Christ, Jesus on earth in ecclesiastical form (his only form now), can be amazing, astounding – which is where Chrysostom comes in. Instead of a church where nice people do nice things, or we drop off a few canned goods, which even the pagans do, maybe we astound them. Unsure how that would happen or what it would look like where you are. But raising the question might be astounding enough to open the window. Here’s Chrysostom’s full quote: “Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we give 10,000 precepts in words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. Let us win them by our life.”

   Kathryn Greene-McCreight addresses this well (and from the viewpoint of someone who’s experienced it) in her thoughtful Darkness is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness.  My church has engaged in several series on mental illness/mental health, addictions, etc. – so crucial to end the shame and stigma, so challenging to the Body to embrace people and not expect sunny, simple fixes.

     The whole business of Jesus’ healings in general:  how do we speak of his healings when we don’t see them so often – or ever?  When Jesus healed, was it so the person could get better, or to make some larger point?  Who wasn’t healed back then?  I’d commend this brief video Idid to you as one way to process the healing stories.

    Jesus’ teaching astonished everyone – and why?  “He taught as one who had authority.”  I can’t preach on this without observing how, in postmodern culture, authority isn’t permitted to anybody, unless we listen to the loudest, most shrill, most ideologically extreme voices.  How do we preach with authority? Or better, how do we lift up the authority of the Scriptural story?  My best guess is this thought, via an early sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr., featuring an illustration from mythology, which I related in my book on preaching, TheBeauty of the Word:

    The sirens sang seductive songs that lured sailors into shipwreck. Two, though, managed to navigate those treacherous waters successfully, and King contrasted their techniques. Ulysses stuffed wax into the ears of his rowers and strapped himself to the mast of the ship, and by dint of will managed to steer clear of the shoals. But Orpheus, as his ship drew near, simply pulled out his lyre and played a song more beautiful than that of the sirens, so his sailors listened to him instead of to them. Every preacher knows how to declare resolutely that the Bible is inspired, that truth is revealed only in Scripture, and so we strap ourselves to that mast, and try to cram that Word into their ears. But think about Orpheus.  Calmly, deploying some simple artistry, Orpheus trusts the beauty of the song, and he plays. Frankly, if the preacher wants to be “effective,” we have to reckon with the harrowing truth that most Church people nowadays won’t let you stuff anything in their ears. They could care less if you are tied to the mast of all those slogans we fall back on, like “The Bible is the Word of God,” or “The Church is of God,” or whatever we say Baptism or Scriptural Christianity requires. If we are to persuade, if we are to give voice to the mysteries of God, then we must take quite seriously the task of picking up the lyre and playing the song in ways that are lovely, although perhaps in the way a young semi-talented guitar player might woo his lover, the sincerity and courage of the attempt compensating for lack of talent. St. Augustine urged preachers to marshal their rhetoric, “to teach, to delight, and to persuade… When he does this properly he can justly be called eloquent, even though he fails to win the assent of his audience,” although Augustine clearly believed all preachers could teach, delight and persuade. {end of excerpt}