Community Church Sermons
Year B
February 1, 2009
The
Fourth Sunday After Epiphany
Mark 1:21-28
Evil.
What comes to mind when you think of “evil”?
During these challenging times, we might well associate evil with global terrorism. Or, we might bring it a little closer to home and hang the descriptive word “evil” around something like Bernie Madoff’s 50-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded people out of their hard-earned money. Or, we can narrow our focus even further, bringing to mind the campaigns of fear and violence conducted by gangs in some of our cities, or the drug dealers who destroy so many young lives.
When we say the word “evil”, we can associate it with many things, places, and people. But seldom do we associate it with the setting where Jesus most often encountered evil.
In today’s Scripture reading, Jesus meets evil – in the church!
The synagogue.
The religious institution.
The place where religious people gather, and faith is taught, and God is worshiped.
And what is especially remarkable about this encounter is that in the very place where evil is decried and evil is preached against, evil – it turns out - is alive and well and actively at work.
If you have seen the movie “Doubt” in which Meryl Streep plays the part of a Roman Catholic nun who suspects the church’s pastor of an inappropriate relationship with a young student, you were no doubt reminded of how evil has manifested itself in all denominations of the Christian Church in the form of child sexual abuse – and the institutional cover-up that has so often followed it.
If you have read about that group of fundamentalist Christians who hold “God-hates-fags” rallies at the funeral services of honorable young servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have seen evil at work through the church even while the church THINKS it is opposing evil.
Sometimes it is not until long after the evil has inflicted itself on innocent people and destroyed their lives that we wake up and realize that what we thought was so right was actually so terribly wrong. That was the case when American Christians finally realized that the institution of slavery they so ferociously defended was, in fact, a terrible evil. And that was the case when that little church up in Kentucky prayed that God would send a lightening bolt down and destroy the local whiskey distillery. And lo and behold, a storm blew up and the distillery was destroyed by a lightening strike. The church people praised the Lord for answering their prayer - until the distillery sued them for arson! And then they denied their praying had anything to do with it!
Evil.
Evil in the church.
It is a terribly difficult thing for religious people to see evil at work within and through our own self-righteous selves.
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” the demon cries out from within the man in the synagogue. “Have you come to destroy us?”
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus has done nothing to provoke this outburst from the demon. All Jesus did was show up at synagogue that Sabbath, and when invited to share his wisdom, to stand up and teach. We know that all of his teaching centers on the one foundational doctrine, “Love God and love your neighbor.” A while ago, Tim brilliantly described what Jesus did to the Ten Commandments in a sermon called, “When The Ten Become Two.” Love God. Love neighbor. The whole of the law is summed up right there, Jesus said. And yet, when Jesus offers this simple teaching – about the one thing God requires of us – the demon that possesses the man in the synagogue goes ballistic!
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
Now there is a great truth to be found in these words spoken by the evil spirit – a truth that every person here today needs to listen to and take seriously. The demon that possesses this man unwittingly reveals what evil is most frightened of, and how evil can be disarmed!
“Love God, and love your neighbor.”
I know that may sound too simple – too naïve – but there is nothing that frightens evil more than that greatest commandment of all. When the demon heard those words in the synagogue that Sabbath, the demon knew its days were numbered.
You see, here is how evil perpetuates itself:
First, by converting our love of God into self-love, and then by turning neighbor against neighbor.
It always makes me chuckle when I hear people say, “I go to church because I really get something out of it!” Or the contrary observation, “I don’t go to church because I don’t get anything out of it.” So worship becomes not a gift of love we bring to God, freely and with no strings attached, not expecting anything in return, but only to be with God in a moment of shared love between Creator and creature. But rather worship becomes a commodity - something that is supposed to do something for ME. This is why people get so upset over hymns they don’t like, or whether clapping is appropriate, or how loud or soft the organ is playing. These things have nothing to do with God – with what pleases God. But it has everything to do with pleasing ME and making ME feel good and empowered and blessed.
And when we convert our love for God into self-love, what happens? We turn against each other! We spend our time fighting about whose hymns are best, whose view on clapping is right, how we can get the organist to play at the volume we want – and if we don’t get our way, we either get mad, or stay home, or go somewhere else, or start our own church where we can worship ourselves in the way that is most pleasing to us. And in this divisive battle over things that mean far less to God than they do to us, evil gets a foothold, neighbor is turned against neighbor, and the cause of God in the world is diminished.
But the way to disarm the power of evil is by committing ourselves to loving God, and loving neighbor.
I’m reading a very provocative book by Matthew Boulton called, “God Against Religion.” I’m not that far into it, but from the outset, Boulton reconnects us to the great theologian Karl Barth and his student Dietrich Bonhoeffer. These two deeply committed Christian men held that the worst thing that ever happened to Christianity is that it was institutionalized into a religion rather than advanced as a way of life. Bonhoeffer, in fact, argued in favor of the development of a “religionless” Christianity.
What did he mean by this?
Well, a “religionless” Christianity is a way of life with Christ at its center, and therefore loving God and neighbor as its only work.
On the other hand, a “religionized” Christianity sets aside love of God and neighbor in order to argue about hymn selections, who is better than the other, who reads the Bible the right away, who is welcomed to the Communion Table, who is truly saved and who is not, and who will be taken up to heaven and who will be “left behind.”.
A “religionized” Christianity gets you that tearful young girl I once met who wanted to start a new life of responsibility after giving birth to a child. She wanted to begin by having her baby baptized and making a commitment of her own to raise her child as a Christian. It was the moment in her life when she knew she had to grow up because now she had a child to raise. But her home church said, “No.” They refused the Sacrament because she was unmarried and would not marry the father who was drug-addicted, violent, and no person she would want influencing her little girl.
“Religionized” Christianity is the setting where the Gospel of grace is set aside in favor of all kinds of man-made, self-serving laws, and where giving away judgment, guilt and rejection becomes more important than sharing the heart and soul of who Jesus is and what Jesus taught.
Love God, and love neighbor.
“What have you to do with us?” the demon cried. “Have you come to destroy us?” And then the demon adds, “I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”
I find it interesting that this title, “the Holy One of God”, is used in only one other passage in the New Testament – John 6:69. In that case, it is Peter and the other disciples who say they believe and know that Jesus is the Holy One of God. And the reason they know this about Jesus – they say – is because Jesus has the words of eternal life.
Love God, and love your neighbor.
Christianity is fundamentally much simpler than people make it, and yet much more profound than people realize.
It is simple because it is a way of life built entirely upon that one simple command – love God and love neighbor. And it is deeply profound because that one command has the power to set people free from the evil powers that threaten to destroy them.
So there is Jesus at the synagogue that day. He teaches the faith. The evil spirit cries out in protest. He commands it to leave the man. And with a shriek, the demon departs.
The man within whom the evil spirit dwelled is now well, and whole, and set free to live life for all it’s worth.
Love God. Love neighbor.
The people in the synagogue marvel at Jesus. They say, “He teaches as one who has authority, and not as the other religious teachers.”
Which is just another of saying, “Look! It worked!”
And it still does!
What would happen if we put away all the self-serving nonsense that goes on in churches today, and placed at the very center of who we are and what we do as a church a commitment to love God with all our heart, mind soul and strength; and to love our neighbors as ourselves?
The powers of evil would tremble!
Our community would be transformed!
We would see the power of God at work in ways we cannot even imagine!
And people would be set free from “religionized” Christianity to a way of life that is filled with the grace and power of the God who made us and loves us as His very own!