A Faith For People No One Else Wants”

Mark 1:35-39

As I’ve been reading and studying the opening chapters of St. Mark’s Gospel, drinking in the rich stories of the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, I’ve been struck by the awesome reality of the kinds of people Jesus reached out to.

Unhealthy people. Religiously unclean people. Socially unacceptable people. Demon possessed people.

Amazing.

In today’s reading, Jesus gets up early and, in the predawn darkness of a Galilean morning, goes out and finds a place to be alone and to talk things over with God. But soon, the solitude is broken when Simon and the other fledgling disciples interrupt.

“Everyone is looking for you!” they exclaim. And for good reason. The night before was the night when they brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed people of the region, and Jesus healed many. It was the most incredible thing anyone had ever seen! This was not the same old-same old religion of the past! This was new! Different! Powerful! Redemptive!

“Everyone is looking for you!” they said. Overnight, Jesus had become the most popular guy in town. The people wanted to embrace their newfound hero!

But slowly, Jesus shook his head. “No,” he said, “we’ve got to move on – to the other villages and towns – so I can preach there, too. After all, that’s why I’ve come.”

And Mark concludes the passage with these words: “So (Jesus) traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues, and driving out demons.”

As I was studying this text about the people Jesus cared so much about, a question leapt into my mind about the role of the Church in the world today. And the question is simply this:

“In our day, where have all the demoniacs gone?”

I mean, you just don’t seem to run into all that many demoniacs nowadays, do you?

It seems that everywhere Jesus went he encountered demon-possessed people. And the Bible seems to want to make a point that an important part of Jesus’ ministry involved bringing God’s healing love to such persons. On page after page of the Gospels, it is reported that Jesus reached out with special care to demoniacs.

But we don’t seem to encounter too many of those folks these days. I wonder why. I wonder:

“Where have all the demoniacs gone?”

Do you know?

Are there any demoniacs here in our church today? Maybe over there where Nash and Puckett dream up evil things to do to me? Or, how about back here in the choir? You know, someone once said that the devil loves to sing in the choir! I mean, the devil can almost wreck a church from there! Are there any demoniacs in the choir today? Or how about out in the congregation? Are there any demoniacs out in our sanctuary this morning?

Now, I’m not talking about the same thing as what happened in a certain church one Sunday when the devil himself showed up. Came right through the back doors. The ushers, when they saw the devil come in, took off as fast as they could. And as the devil came down the aisle, off ran the preacher – and the organist – and all the people sitting in the pews. When they saw the devil coming down the aisle, they ALL took off, lickety-split.

Well, all except for one little old man who just kept sitting there.

The devil went over to the man and growled, “Arrrgh!”

The little old man didn’t even look up. “I ain’t scared of you!”

The devil said, “Of course you’re scared of me. EVERYBODY’S afraid of the devil.”

The little old man said, “Yeah, well I’m NOT!”

The devil, looking sort of disappointed, said, “Well how come? How come everybody else in the world is scared of the devil, but you’re not?”

The little old man looked up and said, “Been married to yer sister for 35-years!”

No, pointing an accusing finger at your spouse or other family members and seeing something devilish about them is NOT what I’m trying to get at today by asking the question:

Where have all the demoniacs gone?

In the pre-scientific world of the New Testament, the term “demon-possessed” was often used to describe people whose behavior was outside the bounds of societal norms. Surely, the term sometimes referred to people suffering from various forms of mental illness. And clearly, there were persons afflicted by physical disorders like epilepsy that could only be understood in those times as some form of demonic attack. There were those whose behavior was antisocial and was reflected in addictions, and gross immorality, and disruptive language. Sometimes those who dared question the religious authorities were considered to be demon possessed. And then, of course, were those whose symptoms were so obviously evil that they could only be described as demon-possessed … because they probably were demon possessed.

And Jesus had a special love for this kind of people the bible generally describes as demoniacs. We might broaden our understanding of these people by not thinking so much about the demonic, but by seeing them as the kind of people no one else wanted.

When I was in college, there was a tremendously successful church located at the center of a very busy intersection of the city. It was the church everyone-who-was-someone belonged to. Among its members were the politically powerful, and the financially blessed. They had glorious buildings! And a wonderful staff! They had a budget that’d take your breath away, and money in the bank to spare.

But you know what happens sometimes in cities. Population shifts occur, and demographics change. Little by little, that area of the city became home to an increasing number of …well, people no one else wanted. You know what I mean. People of different ethnic backgrounds. People who spoke languages other than English. People of different socioeconomic status. The neighborhood of the wealthy and powerful over time became a neighborhood of the poor and powerless. The crime rate went up. The safety rate went down. Alcoholics lay in the streets, drug addicts made their buys, and young women sold their bodies. The up-and-coming people of that wonderful church found themselves living among the down-and-out.

So the church closed its doors and moved out to the suburbs.

Where have all the demoniacs gone?

Maybe that’s not really the right question to ask. Maybe the real question should be, “In a world full of people no one else wants, where has the Church gone?”

So these disciples of Jesus came along that early morning and said, “Jesus, everyone is looking for you! Come and take advantage of your popularity! We’ve already bought some property on the Kingston Pike, and plans are being drawn up for a big church. There’s enough seats for all of us, and we’re already writing by-laws. We’ve got a choir, and an orchestra, too! Come and claim your success!”

But Jesus said, “No. The reason I came into the world is to go looking for people no one else wants, and to bring them the love of God.”

A few years ago, I had the honor of worshipping in a little Canadian Anglican Church that sits in the shadow of the giant retailer Eatons in downtown Toronto. When we visited a service, there were only about a dozen of us in the crowd. We sat in the chancel, in two rows of chairs facing each other, and we all participated in the service. Some read the Scripture passages for the day. Others participated in the sermon, which was an open discussion about the Bible texts. When we all gathered at the altar for Communion, several of us giggled as we noticed that the priest was wearing shorts under his robe. There were other services at the church that day, but I suspect they were as sparsely attended and as liturgically unspectacular as the one we shared.

It was evident that this church was once a regal place, attended by some of Toronto's best families. The church's clientele these days seem to be the poor, the mentally ill, the alternative lifestyle people, some drug addicts, and the homeless people who sleep in the doorways of the buildings in the neighborhood. You know, the kind of people no one else wants. The night before we attended the service, a joyful group of Hispanics was using the sanctuary for a birthday party - complete with loud music, dancing, and refreshments which they invited us to share. The pews were all pushed to the side so the party could go on.

Over and over again, the big department store has tried to buy out this unpretentious little church, offering grand financial incentives that would surely let it relocate in a more desirable area where they could minister to the kind of people everyone wants. But the church has steadfastly refused, remaining committed to reaching people no one else wants.

When I read this passage from Mark, and think of these two churches – the one that moved out of my college town and the one that didn’t move out of Toronto - I find myself asking the question, “In which of the two churches would you more likely find Jesus on a given Sunday morning?”

And I find myself asking, “Which kind of church are WE?”

I believe that another of the many things that makes the Christian Way a faith so worth finding is its relentless call to the followers of Jesus to reach out with grace and mercy and welcome to those who sit out on the edges of life, to those no one else seems to want.

Who are some of those “people out on the edges” of your family? Are you willing to be the one who will seek them with the love of God? And who are some of the people in our community and our county who seem to be discarded by everyone else? Are we willing, as a church, to seek them and embrace them in Christ?

Today, I want to enlist you, and our church, in the cause of going out looking for those no one else wants! All around us are people whose lives are physically, mentally, and spiritually broken. All around us are people who desperately need someone to love them in Jesus’ name!!

I hope it will be you!

I hope it will be us!