What Is It? Readings: Deuteronomy ; Mark February 1 st, 2009 Fourth Sunday in Epiphany Rev. J. Manny Santiago

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1 1 What Is It? Readings: Deuteronomy ; Mark February 1 st, 2009 Fourth Sunday in Epiphany Rev. J. Manny Santiago They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him Mark 2.27 Introduction The people of Israel have been wandering in the desert for way too long. They were tired, and hungry, and sick. The people were getting anxious about the future since some of them had passed away and it seemed like the final goal was not going to arrive. Their feet were swollen. The sun burnt their faces. God spoke only through a prophet and even then, it seemed as if God had forgotten about the people. Healing was not near. Rest was not there. Now, on top of it all, Moses was pretty much saying good bye. The only leader the people of Israel knew since their departure from Egypt was talking as if he was about to leave them. What is going to happen to us? they wondered. Has God forgotten about us? Is rest ever going to come? Is healing ever going to come to our people; to ourselves? Are we really going to see the Promised Land and the blessings that come with it? Encounter Many prophets came and went in the history of Israel. Some of them were sent by God, while others were self-proclaimed. Every now and then a prophet will raise from among the people who did not pass the test that God mentioned in Deuteronomy

2 2 regarding who was a real prophet and who was not really sent by God. Nevertheless, in so many years, the people were still feeling pain, and sickness, and the sun was still burning their faces and their skin. On top of all that, an Imperial force had invaded the land that was once promised to the children of Abraham and their presence there was hurting them in more than one way. The people of Israel were still in need of healing: both communal and personal healing. Enter God. The Christian tradition acknowledges Jesus as the embodiment of God in the midst of the people. We proclaim that God was made flesh Emmanuel, God with us in the person of Jesus, whom we confess as the Christ. In the scene from the gospel of Mark we encounter Jesus doing two things: teaching and exorcising. We are familiar with both of these images, yet, for those of us who claim to be in the progressive side of Christianity the Christian left if you will the image of the teacher Jesus is more comfortable than the image of Jesus the exorcist. I am pretty sure that most of us in this sanctuary feel more comfortable talking about the teachings of Christ than talking about the possibility of the existence of unclean spirits as the author of Mark calls them and the need to get clean from them. But, you see, unclean spirits are all around us. If we look closely, it is impossible not to see unclean spirits in our lives. Sure, they might not be as we imagine; no red creatures with long tails and horns are going to show up in front of us. However, unclean spirits are present in many forms in our lives. Unclean spirits show up today in the form of oppression, both personal and communal; they also show up in the form of illness, again, both personal and

3 3 communal. On the one hand, the people of God feel oppression when we struggle for justice and reconciliation. We might feel disappointed, and tired, and lonely in our efforts to build the reign of God here on earth. Oppression takes from us the desire to keep fighting and to keep finding the way out of the desert. On the other hand, the more personal form of unclean spirits, we might be going through hard times; times of illness and pain and solitude. By claiming that God is present in our midst, what Christians do is to claim that God is walking with us, not walking for us. Often times we expect God to take away the pain and the illness and the solitude, without realizing that God is actually helping us through it. Like the prophets of old, Christ was sent to proclaim wholeness; but the task of bringing wholeness is a communal call. For most of us who identify as progressive Christians, the image of Jesus as an exorcist is so troubling. We want a Jesus that is more like us: free from superstitious believes in otherworldly beings like unclean spirits. To see Jesus as an exorcist makes us uncomfortable. We prefer to see Jesus in the role of a teacher, who is with us leading the way to understand God s presence; never to actually FEEL God s presence in our lives. This is exactly what happened to the people in Capernaum. The people were in the midst of a religious meeting, and they were astonished by Jesus words. They wanted to hear more and more of his teaching. And then, out of nowhere, comes the person with the unclean spirit. The crowd wanted to hear about healing, but they were not ready to feel it, to experience it. They wondered about Jesus words, but were not ready to see it in action.

4 4 Just like the Israelites in the desert, they wanted a Moses who would lead them, telling them what was right and what was wrong, but seldom doing what was right and what was wrong. And they were caught by surprised. When the man with the unclean spirit enters the scene, people didn t know how to react. But Jesus did. This was not only about words; it was about deeds and actions. Christ wanted to show the community that it was not in the words, but in the actions that healing was present and possible. The community is to experience healing, not just to proclaim it. Or put in another ways, the community is to proclaim healing by ways of becoming a healed community. Here is where Jesus cuts from the prophets of old. He is not only sent to proclaim with words, but to proclaim with concrete actions. This certainly made the crowd uncomfortable, just as it makes us uncomfortable today to talk about Jesus as an exorcist who gets rid of unclean spirits. But, isn t that the point of the gospel? Isn t being uncomfortable part of the deal? What is it? What have we done with Jesus? Are we only interested in the prophet Jesus with his nice words and really cool miracles that don t really happen today? Conclusion Robert V. Thomson, a fellow progressive pastor with the American Baptist Churches in Chicago, writes the following: Christians have put Christ under the glass. Jesus has been separated from us. In order to worship him we have covered him in the robes of a savior of the known universe. Here is a Jesus dressed as a king, even though he refused to say he was one. Here is a Jesus sanctified as intercessor when he consistently taught that the realm of God is already within us and in our midst. [ ] When Jesus is undressed, when the theological

5 5 silks and satins are removed, when Jesus is unveiled, what do we see? We see that real religion has nothing to do with what we say we believe. Real religion has to do with how we actually live our lives. What is it, then? It is the real Jesus, the one who understood that unclean spirits are real, for they are present in many ways in our lives; whether in the form of oppression or illness or fear, unclean spirits are parts of the deal. More than that, when we come looking for a prophet who can just proclaim with his or her words, we encounter an exorcist who is willing to get rid of unclean spirits and who is calling us to join him in doing the same; as individuals and as a community. Let us be uncomfortable with the image. Let us feel the uneasiness of doing God s work, just like Jesus did. Let us take Jesus back and make of him a fellow traveler and not just a distant and remote God who did wondrous things, but a constant and regular presence in our midst. Amen.