Sermon_2012_01_29 Jesus the Exorcist by Jillian Jackson

Oh boy, do I ever feel like I lucked out with the scripture reading for this week. This type of story is often referred to as a wonder or miracle story. You can usually pick them because generally you’ll find that the crowds are ‘amazed’ or ‘astounded’ but in the 21^st century we are more prone to being bewildered or cynical by stories of miraculous healings by Jesus. The wonder stories are very hard to work with and here we have ahead of us an exorcism to make sense of. If you don’t think so, might I suggest you try telling your neighbor at the next dinner party you attend ‘hey, did you know Jesus was an exorcist?’ and you will soon see what I mean when you never get invited for dinner again. It takes a great deal of courage to say that Jesus was so much part of his world that he believed in demons and their expulsion[1].

Today some people might happen to say they believe in demons but few really believe in them, since few call in an exorcist when a loved one is ill or is behaving in an irrational and dangerous way[2]. Other views of sickness and emotional illness have now replaced the theory of demonic possession so that we interpret these demons as our psychological stumbling blocks in an attempt to make Jesus a modern man. I agree this is one way texts about Jesus can transcend time and speak to us to this day. However, the reality of the world Jesus’ lived and moved in is part of the story, our story of belief. And what historians can be more certain of is our history of belief.  Grounding ourselves in Jesus humanity is an important step in understanding our own Christ like selves and understanding how others can be the teacher Jesus was rather than placing him out on a pedestal as something unreachable and unattainable. There was a man 2000 or so years ago, who radically reoriented how the world could be understood. Who revealed to his followers in this reorientation glimpses of the Kingdom of God. That was Jesus power and the basis of His authority. And that was why his disciples claimed that he was the Son of God. That is still Jesus power today.

So, where I’m going with this is? Well, I hope to help you understand the intention of the writer behind this text so that the text points to something beyond the exorcism and then share with you how a text like this works in my personal journey. My situation may not speak to you but what I hope is that by having the big picture you can take such wonder texts as this exorcism and really know their worth as sacred texts without finding them offensive to your 21^st century mind. I hope to show you that the wonder is just the wrapping but it’s not the gift.

Mark was writing to the early followers of Jesus who at that time were being persecuted and hated because of Jesus. These followers were trying to make sense of the fact that the one they said was the Messiah, died on a Cross, a most degrading death and certainly not expected from a Messiah. Why did it happen to such a good guy? If Jesus performed signs and wonders by God, why did he die? But the author of Mark is reminding the early followers about Jesus life. A life that totally reoriented how we perceive the meaning of life and in that understanding we can be made whole.

What the early followers remembered of Jesus healings was that they were indications of an in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. Last week we heard in Mark 1:14-15, Jesus proclaims ‘the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ His authority to make such claims was demonstrated by his healings in which the early followers experienced the presence of God’s rule, signs of a God who was saying ‘yes’ to their long-standing yearnings and hopes.

The new teaching from Jesus is that this ‘yes’ now came directly from God. Previously the priestly aristocracy, or scribes, controlled access to God, but now we find a ‘nobody’ who walks into the synagogue, unclean, impure, no less, is healed. This is Jesus ‘no’ to the authority that had gone before. No wonder his fame spreads rapidly throughout the region. This challenged the very basis of the temple tradition. The people saw this as the Kingdom of God breaking through and they believed it would be publicly realized. By his actions, Jesus called into question everything that went before.

The text of Mark was written about the year 70 making it about 40 years, at least, after Jesus’ crucifixion and the crucifixion is what scholars agree actually did historically occur. I have trouble remembering what happened even 1 year ago and what happened 1-year ago looks very differently to me now than it did then. When we read the Bible, we never get to read it as if we don’t know what’s going to happen next. The reader knows that Jesus is the crucified one. If you read Mark from start to finish it gathers momentum and moves like a fireball up until his entry into Jerusalem when time stops. You can see it in today’s text when you read the words ‘And immediately’. There are many ‘And immediately’s’ in Mark moving the narrative as fast as it can towards the crucifixion because that was what was of biggest significance to the early Jesus movement. In Mark, when you get to the resurrection you get told that Jesus has gone on ahead, to Galilee, you will find him there. Galilee? Galilee is back where Jesus began this whole journey to the cross. Essentially it says to the reader start back at the beginning and reread this life, then you will see the resurrection. This is not a religion about being nice or being good, it was a way of life. This is a religion about resurrection as a way of life, a new way of being human, alive in Jesus of Nazareth. Reread the story, the author of Mark’s gospel tells us, and there you will find the resurrection. Lepers are cleansed, the unclean are made clean, and the excluded are reunited with community. That is the resurrected life!

The understanding of God’s Kingdom, then, becomes less about a timeless, static state or place and more about a timely taking place[3] of what the world would be like if God was in charge. Jesus lived a radical life of integrity and commitment to bringing into realization the Kingdom of God. He was to His early followers a visionary of the Kingdom they hoped and yearned for. This was the real meaning of the healing and exorcism stories. Jesus restored the broken, disheartened, and excluded back to healing and health. In so doing, God’s kingdom broke in upon the world.

Interesting isn’t it, how when we shift to talking about the Kingdom of God a text about Jesus exorcising demons becomes so much more acceptable to our experience of Spirituality. I wonder if it’s because we each have actually experienced glimpses of the Kingdom of God, Christian or otherwise. The reading now points to an inclusive wholeness. A healing remembrance to the call of the future. These glimpses of the Kingdom, I experience as moments we get to come back to when we start to lose hope and feel ourselves persecuted. Those moments leave their mark on our life because they re-orientate how we show up for one another. The authority is that they shift us so profoundly we are unable to see things the way they were before.

Did you notice in the reading how we learn nothing about the man who is possessed by the demon? I have times when anger feels so big that it feels like I’m possessed by it, as if I’m not a person at all. I could be this man, this nobody. There is nothing at all of me present but huge anger. I read a beautiful novel called The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. One of the characters, Leo Gursky, was living a life of regret. None of the hopes and dreams he had came into fruition. He referred to his experience of anger in this way;

“I’ve tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in. I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. We were locked in a stare of mutual disgust. And then one day I realized I was on my way to being the sort of schmuck who poisons pigeons. I was a human cancer. It had been so long, I didn’t know any other way of being.[4]’

Underneath anger is usually fear, underneath fear is very often hurt and underneath hurt, healing love waits. The authentic love we were born into. Sometimes the hurt that blocked that expression of love happened so long ago we can’t even remember the exact circumstance or do anything to resolve the situation. The unconscious fight or flight response we put in place to protect ourselves is so strong that we are often not even conscious it’s still in effect, protecting our wounded self. We get so adept at protecting ourselves from the pain that years later the person in front of us we are angry at is only the trigger for the hurt we experienced from years before.

Who do you get angry at? Who should you be angry at? Recently for me it is the people that want to help me most? The people that are offering me the healing I needed long ago. They make me so mad I don’t even know myself. They poke me with a burning, hot poker as they challenge my fears; find the hurt, tweak it a bit, to find the love.

A year ago today, I preached my first sermon here at Canadian Memorial and I experienced a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. It was ‘Kairos time’ for me. Kairos time is Greek for ‘special time’. Time which seems out of proportion to regular time, there just seem to be an inflow of goodness, beauty, hope, joy, clarity, creativity, peace and always transcends self. You know these experiences. Always hard to capture in words but whatever it was I knew I needed more of it. I remember thinking afterwards, ‘God I don’t know what that was about but I want more of that. What do I need to do to find more of that?’.

After the post-sermon honeymoon period had worn off, there were times when I was pursuing treatment for my health when I really felt persecuted and this anger kept coming up. Huge anger. It keeps getting in the way even when my intention is in the right place. It really is a demon.

I spoke to a friend about this BIG anger one day and my resistance to accepting help. He suggested maybe I could imagine those people trying to help me as BIG love.  I said, “what do you mean BIG love’. (I probably said, ‘you’ve got to be joking’ but for the sake of the sermon we’ll say that I said, what do you mean.) ‘Well’, he said, ‘they are holding out to you the biggest potential for your life, that is BIG love’. That comment continues to play out for me and I can read my experiences into today’s text. When I’m with the people triggering my BIG anger I remember the author of Mark and his intention to remember Jesus showing him glimpses of the Kingdom of God, I hear the text when it says, ‘Be silent’, that’s when I take a big breath (Pause). Then I consciously remember my glimpse of the Kingdom of God when I preached here a year ago and I set my intention. And I consciously see the person before me differently. I reorient towards a higher purpose. Then what I’ve found, is more often than not, the other person takes on the face of BIG love, BIG potential, saying to me ‘here is all you can be, here are the keys to the Kingdom’. This is Jesus as BIG love in a stand off with my demons. And when the anger comes up and says, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?’ In my mind the response from Jesus is, ‘You bet I have’. Sometimes there is crying, the odd bit of convulsing but there is a shift in orientation that moves the anger aside enough so that it doesn’t possess me. It’s not fool proof, certainly not, it doesn’t work every time, but part of a spiritual practice.

The wonder story’s gift is that it affirms that a new way of being in and for the world is possible. Whatever it was in Jesus that enabled him to still the emotions and thoughts of those who were beside themselves is still alive and active in our lives today. This Love knows the voices within us that keep us from realizing our fullest potential for love and for the Kingdom of God. This love still has authority in the lives of those who say, “yes” to becoming a new creation in Christ, the crucified one.