Unclean Spirits

"What do you want with us, Jesus? Have you come to destroy us?" That's what the man with an unclean spirit shouted at Jesus when he preached in Capernaum. Who is the "us" he was worried about? It's worth a look, because some people say the very same thing today!

It’s jarring, isn’t it? One moment, worship is humming along smoothly, everything going as planned; while the next moment, somebody is standing up screaming things at the preacher! That’s not the way that things are supposed to go at all. But that’s what happened in the very first Sabbath service that Jesus attended after he called his disciples. At least, that’s the way that the Gospel of Mark tells the story. Nothing was out of the ordinary when Jesus and his disciples visited the little synagogue at Capernaum. They went in; they sat down; and Jesus, as a rabbi, was invited to preach that day’s sermon. Everything was going well. Jesus impressed the congregation not only with his familiarity with the scriptures, but with the confidence of his teaching. “Wow!” the people said to one another, “This guy knows what he’s talking about! He’s giving us new insight into the scriptures that we thought we knew! Maybe they aren’t just old and dusty texts, after all. Maybe they have something to say to us today! It sounds like there are some things that we really need to think about!”

That’s when things got messy. Right in the middle of the sermon, somebody stood up and started yelling. Mark tells us that it was a man with “an unclean spirit”: a junior-grade demon. Unclean spirits aren’t as destructive as demons. They don’t make people disfigure themselves, rip their clothing off, and run off to live in a graveyard. No, unclean spirits are shadows that crawl into you and curl up inside your mind. They grab you by the hair and refuse to let go of you. People with unclean spirits look just like everybody else, but they are in the grip of something that makes them see Jesus as the enemy instead of as the Savior. When they encounter God, they react with fear or anger instead of awe and reverence. This particular man saw Jesus not as a blessing, but as a threat. That’s why he yelled at Jesus, “What do you want with us? Have you come to destroy us?”

Let’s freeze the action for a moment as the man with the unclean spirit is standing in the middle of the synagogue. Who is the “us” that he fears Jesus has come to destroy? With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, we know the answer. Jesus has come to destroy that unclean spirit, to send all the demons who enslave us back to the garbage heap where they belong, and to fill us, instead, with God’s Holy Spirit. But I’ll bet that some folks in that the congregation thought that he meant something else. While time is stopped briefly, let’s ask some of them. The first person we ask responds, “He’s afraid that Jesus will destroy our traditions.” The person behind him is nodding vigorously and agrees: “Yes, Jesus has new ideas about things. He says that God wants us to do something different. What’s wrong with the way we’ve always done things?” Then a third person chimes in: “If we change, it might ruin our synagogue! That’s what Jesus will destroy!”

Now, before you reject that suggestion as being completely off-the-wall, let me tell you a story. Many years ago, I was a member of an old, established, main-line congregation that was struggling financially (as many of us are these days). At the yearly congregational meeting, one of the church leaders stood up and announced that the only way that we could make ends meet was to eliminate all of the mission giving. Keeping those mission dollars would enable the church to meet their budget during the upcoming year. Fred and I stood up and argued that mission was the heart of our responsibility as a Christian congregation; and that if we kept the dollars that are meant for others, we were no more than a social club! After the meeting was over, a long-time church member collared me and asked angrily, “How could you say what you did? You’re trying to destroy this church!” That’s unfortunately the way that many people react when they are confronted with God’s demands to love our enemies, to minister to the last and the least, and to put others first. “Why, that kind of behavior will destroy us,” say their unclean spirits; and they don’t even want to consider doing what God asks of us.

We know, though, that Jesus didn’t come to destroy the church, but to free it to be witnesses to God’s work in our world. So let’s resume the action in the synagogue and see what Jesus had to say about the accusations of this unclean spirit. As soon as it asked Jesus, “Have you come to destroy us?” Jesus acted decisively, leaving no doubt as to how he felt about that question. “Be quiet!” he told the spirit, “Get out of here!” and the spirit immediately left the man alone. Jesus has no patience with anything that gets in the way of God’s work in the world, and that includes unclean spirits! Mark doesn’t tell us how the man reacted; but he tells us that the congregation was very impressed. Jesus was somebody who put his money where his mouth was; and his fame began to spread far and wide.

Now, we don’t have people standing up disrupting our Sunday morning worship services very often; and if they do, we call the police instead of an exorcist. Bu all of us have unclean spirits lurking somewhere in our consciousness. They might be just tiny little baby spirits that only poke us now and then; but they’re in there! Let’s face it, most of us are threatened by something that God has asked us to do! Some of us don’t want to loosen our grip on all the stuff that we’ve accumulated so that we can share it with those who need it. Some of us have a terrible time going where God wants us to go. (Let’s face it, we aren’t like the disciples who left everything and followed Jesus as soon as he called them.) And many people still put money above relationships, compassion, and charity. Those unclean spirits are powerful, and we can’t get rid of them by ourselves! Even the little ones are buried too deeply in our lives. We need Jesus to tell those spirits in no uncertain terms, “Shut up and hit the road!” Now, Jesus doesn’t always do that as quickly as we would like. Sometimes it takes years of poking and prying to get those unclean spirits to loosen their hold on us! But if we just keep asking him, Jesus will take care of them.

“What do you want with us, Jesus? Have you come to destroy us?” If you’re an unclean spirit, the answer is “Yes!” Jesus has come to destroy all the unclean spirits that hold us captive and keep us from living the full lives that God wants us to live. But if you are a Christian who is trying to follow Jesus and to do God’s will, then the answer is “Absolutely not!” Jesus has come not to destroy us, but to set us free to be God’s partners in the work of transforming the world into the Kingdom of God! Thanks be to God!

When Kingdoms Collide

Epiphany -- aka Twelfth Night -- is the Christian feast that celebrates the visit of the wise men to the Christ child. The visit triggered the conflict between the Kingdom of God and the powers of the world. This sermon will help you to think about that conflict.

Epiphany is the Sunday when we remember the Magi: the wise men who came from the east to bring gifts to the child Jesus. What springs to your mind when someone mentions the Magi? Do you see their luxurious clothing, and hear the rustling of fine silk and the crinkle of embroidered satin? Do you see the gifts that they offered to Jesus, and smell the sweet fragrance of frankincense and the bitter odor of myrrh? Or maybe you simply see the light of the star that settled right over Bethlehem – the star that led the Magi all the way on their long journey. Those are all important parts of the story! Something else that should come to mind, too. It’s a bell – a bell that signals the beginning of a fight. That fight is between the powers of earth and the heavenly Kingdom of God. Imagine, if you will, a boxing ring. In one corner stands Herod, representing the Empire of Rome. In the other corner stands Jesus, representing the Kingdom of God. Both men claim to be “the King of the Jews.” We all know that two kings is one king too many, so… which one is the rightful king: Herod or Jesus? Who deserves the devotion of the kingdoms of the earth? That’s what the fight is all about.

The fight got started when the Magi stopped in Jerusalem to ask directions of Herod. They assumed that the child whose star they were following was someone in Herod’s household. After all, Herod was Rome’s man, and Rome had control of nearly everything; so Herod should certainly know the identity of this new “King of the Jews.” But that was the first that Herod had heard of it; and when he heard what the Magi had to say, the bell rang, and the fight was on! Herod wasn’t about to let someone take his kingdom away from him, so he planned his strategy carefully. Herod knew it would be a difficult match, but he didn’t know who he was fighting – or even where his opponent was! So Herod decided to start with a sneak attack. As soon as he found out where this new “King of the Jews” was hiding, Herod planned to knock him out with a killer punch before he even knew what hit him. That didn’t work out so well, because the Magi refused to cooperate; so Herod had to go to Plan B. If he couldn’t kill this particular child, he’d just kill all of them; so Herod had all the baby boys in Bethlehem murdered in cold blood. Of course, Herod probably didn’t think of it as murder. He would have called it “collateral damage,” just part of business as usual to hold on to the power that he craved. The great irony is that the child that he was fighting wasn’t even there! He had been quietly whisked away to Egypt. Round One goes to Jesus.

This fight between earthly powers and God’s Kingdom continued when Jesus became a man. Round Two started when Jesus began to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Although Herod was long gone, the earthly powers of the time reacted exactly the same way that Herod had reacted. They heard the bell ring and came out swinging. But when they hit Jesus, he refused to hit them back. Oh, he avoided their traps and deflected their blows; but he knew that they would knock him out in the end. When they finally nailed him to a cross, those earthly powers thought that the fight was over in a knockout, and that they had won the match. But they were wrong, because on Easter, Jesus rose from the dead. Round Two goes to Jesus, too.

That’s when Round Three began; and that round is still in full swing! The contestants are still fighting for the championship of the world. In that corner are the powers of the world: violence, war, greed, and evil of every kind. Oh, their names have changed over the past 2,000 years. Herold may be long gone, and Rome may no longer be an earthly empire, but there are plenty of other evil people and violent, oppressive regimes who are still fighting as hard as they can to have their way in the world. And in this corner is the Kingdom of God. Jesus is still resisting those earthly powers; but these days, he is doing it through us. And our strategy is still the same one that Jesus himself used: evade the punches, deflect the blows, but don’t hit back. That’s because our methods are love, peace, and hope, methods that the powers of the world judge to be useless.

And here’s the good news – the good news of Epiphany that we proclaim today – God has rigged the fight! Jesus is going to win in the end, no matter how many times the world may punch us, or how hard they hit us! When the final bell rings, the powers of the world are the ones who will be knocked out, and the Kingdom of God will be victorious! The Light that was born in a stable on Christmas; the Light that led the Magi to that same child; the Light that offers us wisdom and hope and peace and joy – that Light will one day shine brightly throughout the whole world, and every single person in every single nation will know Jesus Christ as King! So don’t let the fight worry you. When you hear the bell ring, don’t be afraid! The Light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it! Thanks be to God!

One of Us

What if God were one of us? Where would we look for him? And how would we recognize him if we found him? This sermon for the end of 2017 (and the beginning of 2018) considers those questions. You might realize that you have found God already...

“What if God was one of us?” A little over 20 years ago, a song that was recorded by singer Joan Osborne asked just that question. “What if God was one of us?” That recording made it into the Top 10 Billboard hits of the year, and was even nominated for three Grammy awards. That song intrigued people who had never really thought of God as anything other than an old man with a long white beard sitting on a heavenly throne bedecked with jewels. The God in the lyrics was nothing at all like that.

“What if God was one of us?” it asked.

“Just a slob like one of us.

Just a stranger on a bus

Tryin’ to make his way home.”

That vivid imagery of God as a bus passenger trying to get home made a lot of people wonder: What if we ran into God on a bus… on the street… or in a grocery store? What would that be like? A more important question to ask, though, is: how would we recognize God if we ran into him on the street or sat next to him on a bus?

The gospel of Luke tells us about a man who recognized God right away when he ran into him. The old man Simeon knew the Christ child immediately when he ran into the Child and his parents in the Temple (Luke 2:22-32). Simeon had been waiting for this child for years – all of his life, in fact – and he believed with all his heart that he would live to see the Christ in the flesh. I can just imagine him peering closely at all the people who came into the Temple, scrutinizing each face with eyes grown dim with age, waiting for the one who was “God with us.” But when that one finally appeared, Simeon knew who he was right away. How did Simeon recognize him? The Child looked just like any other newborn baby, with soft baby hands and eyes that couldn’t even focus on the world around him yet. He couldn’t wave to Simeon and say, “Over here! I’m the one that you’ve been looking for!” He didn’t have a halo shimmering around his head that was probably covered with dark, baby peach fuzz. No, he was absolutely ordinary, this God who had become “one of us” on Christmas. But Simeon knew that this Child was The One. Don’t you wish that you knew how Simeon recognized him? Maybe we should ask ourselves that question as we celebrate Christmas and worship the God who became “one of us.” How do recognize that God when we run into him? Jesus’ earthly body certainly isn’t here anymore. He was born, died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven long ago. But his Presence is still among us. He will always be, “one of us.” So the question remains: Where do we look for this God who has become “one of us”? Where do we even start to look for him?

Theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner recalls such Christmas Eve when he happened to be in Rome. He joined the crowds at St. Peter’s Basilica to hear the Pope (Pope Pius XII at that time) celebrate midnight Mass. He recalls his impression of the Pope as the pontiff entered the basilica: “I can still see his face as he was carried by me on his throne – that lean face, grey-skinned, with the high-bridged beak of a nose, his glasses glittering in the candlelight. And as he passed by me, he was leaning slightly forward and peering into the crowd with extraordinary intensity. Through the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular. He was not a potentate nodding and smiling to acknowledge the enthusiasm of the multitudes. He was a man whose face seemed gray with waiting, whose eyes seemed huge and exhausted with searching, for someone, some One, who he thought might be there that night or any night, anywhere, but whom he had never found, and yet he kept looking. Face after face he searched for the face that he knew he would know – was it this one? Was it this one? Or this one? – and then he passed on out of my sight.”

Was the Pope searching for “God with us”? Buechner believes that he was, and concludes his thoughts this way: “In one sense, of course, the face was not hidden; and as the old Pope surely knew, the one he was looking for so hard was at that very moment crouched in some doorway against the night or leading home some raging Roman drunk or waiting for the mass to be over so he could come in with his pail and his mop to start cleaning up that holy mess. The old Pope surely knew that the one he was looking for was all around him there in St. Peter’s. The face that he was looking for was visible, however dimly, in the faces of all of us who had come there that night….”

“God with us” – God as “one of us” – is here in every single person! The historical Christ child lived and died 2000 years ago, but God is still present with us in each one of us. Is that hard to believe? Turn to the person next to you. Take a good look at them. God is in that person, just as God is in the person on your other side, and in the person sitting behind you, and in the person sitting in front of you! What a difference it would make if, as we search for God as “one of us,” we would remember that.

The story is told of a monastery somewhere in Europe. It was old, and so were the monks who lived there. In fact, it was in danger of closing, a prospect that gave its monks many sleepless nights. One day, a traveler stopped by to take advantage of the monastery’s hospitality. The monks knew of him; he was rumored to be a prophet. As he was preparing to leave, the monks begged him for a word of hope for their monastery. The prophet smiled and said, “The Messiah is one of you.” “One of us”? the monks asked each other. The Messiah is “one of us”? They began to wonder which one of them it was! Was it Brother Charles? He was a gentle man, but none too bright. Surely the Messiah would be smarter than Brother Charles! Was it Brother Edgar? He was a good cook, but a little abrupt in the kitchen. Surely it couldn’t be grumpy old Brother Jerome! He complained about his gout day in and day out! Which one…? Since they couldn’t identify the Messiah among them, they decided that they had better treat every single brother as the Messiah, just in case that one was The One. They helped Brother Charles when he had difficulty learning something. They made sure not to get in Brother Edgar’s way in the kitchen. They were even patient with Brother Jerome’s complaints. And something happened. New brothers began not only to visit their monastery, but to stay! Within a few years, it was once again a thriving religious community. Did the brothers ever identify the Messiah? No – but their search for him had increased their compassion, patience, and love for one another, because… well, the Messiah was one of them!

God is “one of us.” He was born among us at Christmas, and he is still here! Keep searching for him in every single person that you meet! Treat everyone as though they are the Messiah – because, in great or small ways – they are! In the coming new year, may you recognize the face of God in everyone you see. If you do, I guarantee that you will have the best year of your life!

(The quotes by Frederick Buechner were taken from Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, 1992, HarperSanFrancisco, pages 334-335.)