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First
Reading
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Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
Deuteronomy 18:15–20 |
Psalm 111 |
1 Corinthians 8:1–13 |
Mark 1:21–28
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Although it happened thirty years ago, I still remember the incident as if it were yesterday. I was a young rector of my first parish, in a wonderful town of seven thousand in the middle of the Adirondacks. The four churches were all within two blocks of each other, and fortunately the pastors were all good friends. The town looked forward to the Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service as one of those community occasions where we all participated and worshipped together. We pastors were seated in front of the congregation, and the Methodist pastor and I had just finished reading our prayers and Bible passage. The pastor from the Presbyterian Church stood up, and as he began to speak, a loud voice from the center aisle shouted, “You hypocrites!” With that, a large and scruffy individual reared up and launched into a tirade against all church-going Christians. The poor Presbyterian minister just stood there in shock, his knuckles drained of blood and gripping the sides of the lectern, while the rest of us just froze, unable to even think. After thirty seconds, most of us recovered some presence of mind and began to exchange worried, but annoyed glances. No one I glanced at gave any indication of recognizing him. He must have moved into the area fairly recently. After a minute more of the tirade one could sense the anger building up among the congregation towards this obviously disturbed person, who was interrupting this happy occasion. After about four more minutes the belligerent and uninvited would-be prophet stomped out, slamming the door behind him.
That is the challenge for us, too, to discern an authentic message of the Gospel, not what we want to hear or what serves to buttress the status quo of our lives. Yes, Gospel teaching can be arresting. It will disturb us on occasion and shake up our complacency and stretch us, but the critical thing is that it is authentic. In some way the Gospel is meant to set our hearts on fire. The problem is always to discern between the charlatans and snake oil promoters and the real thing. The challenge is nothing new, that is what the first lesson in Deuteronomy alluded to, a millennium and a half ago.
I close with the words of James Russell Lowell that some of you will recognize is from one of my favorite hymns. “And the choice goes by for ever, new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient truth uncouth. They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.”1
My Presbyterian colleague loosed his grip on the lectern, blood returned to his upper body, and he began again. The Methodist minister whispered to me, “Boy, I’m sure glad that didn’t happen to me. I would not have known what to do!” Of course none of us did, and to this day still don’t. I have no idea what was said at the service after that. I was in shock until I was fortified by several cups of mountain coffee the next morning at the daily coffee and chat gathering down at Betty’s on Main Street.
Shock, annoyance, and then anger are the usual progressive responses to rude and disturbing spirits. We have no trouble dismissing such voices as spurious and bizarre. In the same way, those at the synagogue service when Jesus was teaching were likely to dismiss the man with the troubled spirits. Of course Jesus had compassion on the man, drew the evil spirits out of him and sent them packing, and healed him. In the larger context of Mark’s Gospel, however, the exorcism of the spirits and healing of the man were of lesser consequence than the people recognizing that Jesus spoke with authority. Mark’s Gospel is full of irony in that there is a continued contrast between troubled spirits that recognize the divine authority in Jesus and the official leaders and scholars who do not. It is the recognition of Jesus’ teaching as authentic that is the great sign of God’s presence at Capernaum.
May we at St. John’s, in the city of Ithaca on the shores of Lake Cayuga, recognize the words that speak with authority and truth of the Gospel, just as those long ago in the synagogue in Capernaum on the shores of Lake Galilee.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
1Once to every man and nation, hymn #519 in 1940 Hymnal
