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!
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