A Day in the Life of Jesus
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Mark 1:21-28
It was on a psychiatric ward at a hospital in Nova Scotia many years ago, when I was doing a many-month internship as a pastor learning how to care for the mentally challenged, and so I was on the ward eight hours a day, six days a week, for months. It was an incredible experience! Among the many experiences that I had, I encountered one particularly difficult case. He was a man who wasn't well, his whole right arm was completely bare - there was no skin left on it at all!
I had no idea why he was in this condition, but clearly it wasn't improving as time went along. Over the time that I was there they tried to stop him from using his other hand to pare the skin off his arm. They put gloves on him and his arms in a sling so he couldn't do it. Then, he decided that he would chew the skin off his arm. Finally they put a mouthpiece on and strapped it to his head so that he couldn't untie it, but that didn't work, for he learned to rub his arm against the wall and continue to remove the skin.
They put on bandages, but he rubbed them off. They put on salves, but they had no effect. They gave him medications, and it didn't stop him. They tried behavioural modification, and it didn't work. Why? Finally one of the doctors in a group meeting that we had on a Thursday afternoon, I remember it very well, said, “Reverend Stirling and team this man believes that on his right arm are a thousand demons, and he wants to remove them.” Having looked at all the options, and realizing how dangerous it was to his health, he just said, “Reverend, over to you!”
It was one of those moments that you never forget. I felt that I had been transported back in time a thousand, two thousand, maybe three thousand years, to a time that believed in supernatural demon forces roving the earth, to a time in the biblical era where, as Adolf von Harnack said, there was “an atmosphere of demonic possession.”
It was time in the biblical era when skulls were unearthed in archaeological digs all over, dating back hundreds and thousands of years. People who had their heads trepanned, a drilling in the head, not to remove pressure, as is often done medically today, but to release demons from the heads of people. Even when people died, they were trepanned, again that they might have the demons removed so they could enjoy eternal life.
Thinking of that man in hospital, my mind went back to the exorcisms of The Bible in both The Old Testament and The New Testament by Jesus and by others. My mind went back to the superstition and the belief that a thousand demons could be on our right arm. I thought, “What do we in our modern world make of this?” Clearly since the Enlightenment we have looked at such incidences and tried to explain them medically or psychologically or scientifically. We have been able to explain so many of the myths that were around at the time that ascribe certain illnesses to demonic possession rather than being illnesses themselves. We have deconstructed a lot of that mythology and rightfully, put an end to it. The Enlightenment and its reason brought us out of the Dark Ages of superstition.
Having said that though, as a society, despite all the messages of enlightenment we're still fascinated by the mind. We are still fascinated by its spiritual force. You can see it in movies and in television programs, where suddenly it has become a great surge of entertainment. Incantations, occult, possessions, exorcist movies re-done and revisited, television programs talking about conflicts of good and evil spirits. There is a fascination with it. Even Harry Potter grabbed part of that fascination and superstition that we have and turned it into entertainment.
Even then, despite all of that, there is still undergirding in our minds this question: “Is there an evil power? Is there something that is not right and not good that is a force?” For all of our enlightenment and for all our knowledge of things that were previously superstitious, still in the human soul no matter how educated and enlightened, we question and we wonder.
That is why the story of Jesus this morning is such a fascinating one. It is a problematic one in many ways. We bring with us all our suspicions, all our concerns about the myths and the legends of the past, and we read this story and we think it is so outdated. We think that the notion of Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue seems old and distant and far from the things that we believe today.
One of the things that is so clear in today's passage is that this story was about authority. It was about the authority of Jesus to teach and the authority of Jesus to heal. It was a day in the life of Jesus. One has this incredible sense in just a few verses in Mark that this was important. Mark, the writer of the Gospel, doesn't spend a lot of time with words, doesn't give a lot of flowery language. He gets right to the heart of things. Jesus went into the Temple and he taught, and he taught with authority, and people were amazed by him. But Jesus also healed. And to the man with the unclean spirit who had come in, Jesus was the one who healed him.
There is an irony in all of this of course. The irony is that it is the evil spirit who recognizes Jesus for who he is. He says, “You must be the Son of God. Why are you here and what are you doing to us?” The man knew and the spirits knew that Jesus was something more than the ordinary. The other irony is that it occurs in a synagogue, in a church, in a place of worship - the last place you expect to see evil, but probably if we are really wise to understand that is probably the first place where it raises its head at times.
Jesus is in a synagogue healing a man and teaching takes that demon out of him, that unclean spirit. What are we to make of this? How do the enlightened get their mind around this? Some have sat for days trying to figure what this story is about. Why? Well, one of the things it is clearly not about is giving us a blow-by-blow description of all the problems that are associated with evil: where does evil come from, how does evil manifest itself, what is the genesis and the source of it? There is not a word on that anywhere. There is no attempt by Mark to explain it. There is no way we can trace and have a theology of evil from this encounter. That is to read too much into the text.
On the other hand, we have no idea how Jesus was able to heal this man. How was he able to take this spirit and remove it? There is no example as to how or why, just simply this is what happened. There is no explanation of the medical state of the man, where he had come from, what he does, had he been ill before, had he been a reject, did he have a disease? We don't know. We aren't given that information. We can try and look at this story and ask, “How could this happen?” We want to know that. But the story isn't told to tell us the “how” it is to tell us the “why” and therein lie the profundity of this story and the reason why it is important.
There is an implication in all of this that is somehow revealed in this encounter between Jesus and the man with the evil spirit. There is this sense that evil is a destructive force. One of the things that we often think about when we think of evil is that it is kind of amazing, that it is powerful, we're superstitious about it, and we can even find it quite exciting at times. When you talk about it, it has a cache, does it not? It sounds so exciting! When we think of evil we think of the dramatic, we think of something really big happening, something that is a colossal cosmic struggle, do we not? That is the way that we often conceive evil. We think of it in those supernatural big ways, and that is how it is manifested. We have been taught that that is the way evil is produced.
Yet, it seems to me that the very existence of evil is not just in the extraordinary things and the big events, but it is in the ordinary things. I couldn't believe it on Thursday! I opened up the National Post, and there in the business section one page was devoted to one question, and the question was: “Is Google evil?” The article went on to say by the way that Google isn't evil, and even though it holds all this information about us, a lot of personal information, essentially it is not being used for any evil purposes. I am thinking, “Clearly, they haven't got some of the e-mails I've been getting when people have Googled things!” But, that is another matter!
Is Google evil? I am not sure the article was particularly deep. In fact, it was sensationalized as we do with evil. That was the whole idea: to get us reading it. I read it. Had it said, “Is Google a good corporate citizen?” I would have turned to the next page or the Sports Section. No! “Is Google Evil” got my attention. But, what was fascinating was that just inserting that word grabs your attention, and you read the whole article to find out if the answer was yes or no. I thought that says a lot about our world. Oh, we might discount the demons and the possessions and the atmosphere and the sense of evil powers all around us in little personalities that are there like they did two thousand years ago, but believe-you-me, it still strikes a chord.
It is in the ordinary things where it is manifested. I think it is manifested when a nation decides that it wants to build a nuclear bomb for the main purpose of destroying another nation for ethnic and religious reasons. If that is not evil, what is? When someone is beaten up and bullied on the street corner simply because of their lifestyle, if that is not evil, what is? If corporate greed, if those who have been in places of authority over finances and investments do not act wisely and sensibly, and then seek to escape from the responsibility while ordinary people suffer and question whether their pensions are intact, if that is not evil, what is? You see, evil is a malevolent force. Evil is that which destroys life. Evil is that which is contrary to the moral law. Evil is the antithesis of good and we see it.
On Friday night, I was at a Burns Night Dinner of all places - not the most holy event in the world! One of our soloists, Rocco, was with me, so he can attest to that! I was one of the speakers but that is beside the point. Sitting next to me was another man, a radio host, who has spent a lot of his life caring for people who are on the underside of society. He has worked in the Jane and Finch area. He has worked in Malvern. He has worked in many different places. He has used his status as a celebrity to try to help the underprivileged.
He made a comment to me in the conversation between speeches. He said:
You know, you have no idea Dr. Stirling, at least I don't think you do, of just how malevolent and how evil the drug culture is in our city and how it is growing amongst many within our teens. I see it every day. Drug lords are now actually becoming landlords and buying apartment buildings, and using the influence that they have as the owner of those buildings to keep the drug culture alive within the building. You have no idea the depth that they will go to hook and to destroy young families. I see it. I have to face it. I have to confront it. I am a Christian, and if I wasn't one, I don't know how I could handle it. But, if that is not evil, I don't know what is.
Evil is not just the absence of the good. Sometimes it is the prevention of good. Sometimes it is the absence of good when good is needed. I was reading a book about the Second World War not long ago and there was a recounting of a story that I had read before, I was reminded of the great pastor Martin Niemoller, who was a great German and a war hero in World War I for the Germans.
When Hitler came to power, Niemoller had become a pastor, a minister, and he decided that Hitler was a destructive force so he spoke out against him. Hitler put him in prison, held him for eight years, and sent him to Dachau. While he was there a movement of people who had looked up to their hero, Niemoller petitioned for his release. Realizing the upsurge of interest in the release of Niemoller, Hitler decided to send one of Niemoller's former friends to visit him and convince him to turn from his ways and to support the Nazis.
His friend went to the prison where Niemoller was being held and in an encounter that will go down in history, said to him, “Martin, why are you here?”
Niemoller looked him straight in the eye and said, “That is not the question. Why aren't you here? Why aren't you strong enough to stand against the force of evil? Why aren't you prepared?”
He knew that his friend had sold his soul, and Niemoller was deeply grieved. Evil is not just something malevolent; it is silence in the face of malevolence. That is what evil is!
When we look at the story of Jesus, we see something so hopeful in the midst of all of this. One of the things I always caution is never to call somebody else evil. It is a very dangerous thing to do. Some months ago, I visited a men's shelter. It was a rainy fall day and as I was approaching the door of the shelter to visit the director and see some of the men that were there, I was greeted by a man outside, who was in his slippers and dressing gown. He was standing out there in the rain when everyone else was being let in and warning. He said, “I don't think I would go in there. There are an awful lot of crazy people in there, you know. It is a dangerous place to be.” I am there, talking to a man in a dressing gown and slippers in the pouring rain, and I am wondering, “Who is the crazy one here?”
It is so easy, is it not, to think that somebody else is evil when you don't see it in yourself; that somebody else is wrong and not yourself? I love Robbie Burns, I love Robbie Burns! “I wish to God the gift he gee us to see ourselves as others see us.”
We must be careful. You know the story of Jesus and the encounter with this man is not just to let us know that evil exists, and that it exists today, maybe not in the superstitious way of two thousand years ago, but it exists. Jesus is offering a better way. Jesus is revealing his authority over that which is evil. He is showing that the power of good is greater than the power of evil.
One of the seductive powers of evil is that you think it is the greatest power. It is not! It never will be! It is good that is the greatest power! Every religion in the world recognizes and acknowledges that. It is not evil that is great; it is good. Jesus, in his teachings, in his life, in his embodiment of God's grace is the authoritative word on that. The very power that he had to drive out demons, the very power that he had over evil was to let the spirit world know that no matter what games it may play in destroying life, he was victorious over it.
I think it is fascinating that my travels to South America and my years in Africa showed me this: that in places where there is great superstition, where there is this fear of dark things happening, in Animistic religions in particular that have this sense of the prevailing power of darkness in nature and in the world, it is in those cultures where so many people have found the Christian Gospel liberating.
They haven't just found it liberating because they have found a new faith or a new craze or a new system of thought and dogma. They have found freedom from the bondage of superstitions that have tied them down for thousands of years. When they encounter Jesus of Nazareth, they encounter freedom and healing.
I am going to suggest to you that this is one of the reasons why Christianity continues to flourish in such a society, not because they are mindless people who don't know any better as one of my sceptic friends said to me last week, clearly never having set foot on either of those continents. No, it is because they are being set free from things that have held them back and they found in Christ their liberator. This is a wonderful thing.
For the man who is encountered by Jesus, who knows what he must have felt when Jesus set him free. We don't know what things bind people or hold people today. We don't even know what things hold and bind us. Sometimes we don't know where we stand. But, as Doug Hall, the United Church theologian rightly says:
“In the midst of all of this, there is one thing and one thing alone we can do, and that is to confess Jesus Christ”. ”˜
Therefore, in confessing Him not be frightened and not live in fear, not live in superstition, but to see the powers that are at work and to know that good can overcome them, to believe the power of love is mightier than the power of sin, and to know that in Christ these things have been revealed with authority.
Amen.