So Called
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28

January 29, 2006


Already it was hot on an early July Sunday morning. Molly’s Congregational Church in the Massachusetts Berkshires was situated right next to the town 9-hole golf course. In the middle of the service, Molly noticed a young man without a shirt walk into the back of the church and sit down in the back pew next to a few older ladies. There seemed to be some concern in the back of the room and the young man was escorted out. Molly could hear sounds of a struggle, but during the sermon the young man appeared in the back pew seated next to one of those saints of the church. Her husband stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. Molly asked if there was anything she could do to help, and all she got were those tense silent shakes of the head. Soon the town policeman, the only cop in the town, showed up and the young man was out again, screaming and yelling and thumps on the floor and other un-nice emotions came from the back.

After the service the worshippers congratulated Molly on how cool she had been and kept things under control. Molly asked what the problem had been. The young man was stark naked. Molly went and got her glasses’ prescription changed the next week. The man had some mental problems and was living alone in a cabin on the other side of the golf course. Evidently, he had not been taking his medication and that morning strolled down through the golf course, and like a pied piper all the golfers followed him and waited outside the church doors. “If God had intended me to wear clothes, I would have been born with them,” he told the police.

I was actually in the hospital with a bad virus when this happened, but I was told the story by quite a few people. It was so memorable that at the going away party six years later, members recreated the event. The actor portraying the young man, however, was wearing shorts.

It became a fad in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: you would be sitting in a classroom or perhaps in a church sanctuary during worship when someone would stride in and interrupt and take over. Lectures would stop, sermons would be cut short, and inevitably demands would be made that would have nothing to do with the subject being previously discussed. The rationale was that the university and the church were institutions far too comfortable for their mandate and it was time to afflict the comfortable and address concerns of racial and economic justice. Usually, everybody would be upset and mad before it was over.

One Sunday in a downtown church, my senior pastor Jim Cain was preaching live on the radio. Down the aisle we could see a man enter, walking quickly and purposefully towards the front of the sanctuary. He stopped at the bottom of the pulpit and started berating all of us rather loudly and forcefully. This place is full of the devil and we were all certain to be going to hell. Maybe he was right. At any rate, when Jim Cain saw the fellow coming he vigorously motioned to the ushers to remove him while not missing a beat in his sermon. I listened to the taped version later and couldn’t detect even a change in his inflection. Jim spoiled it by explaining to “the listeners in radio land” that there had been a commotion, but every thing was now OK.

Jesus had come home, not to Nazareth, but to his adopted city of Capernaum. Like a lot of people today, he got out of that Nazareth place and came to reside in a larger centre, a town with connections to the Greek culture surrounding Galilee and Palestine. Yes, Jesus spoke Aramaic, just like in Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion, but he probably could speak some Greek as well. Jesus was more worldly and a lot smarter than we have pretended he was.

Doesn’t take long for a Sabbath day to roll around and Jesus went to the synagogue and began teaching. The verb that is used has been interpreted to mean habitual action: Jesus didn’t go on this one single occasion to the synagogue, he went all the time, regularly every week. So he taught, not as a guest preacher, but as regular pulpit supply. When you teach and preach continually every week, what you teach tends to be a little less dramatic. You aren’t trying to say it all at once, you don’t have to, but piece by piece you paint a portrait of the kingdom of heaven. A little later on Jesus is back teaching and preaching in the Capernaum synagogue, so the congregation must have affirmed his education and wisdom to allow him to keep on teaching.

And he wowed them. There was a forthright confidence in his voice and teaching. He wasn’t quoting others as the authorities to back up his ideas; he spoke as if he had invented and lived it himself.

One day in the middle of the sermon, a deeply disturbed man interrupts and yells at Jesus, “What business do you have here with us, Jesus, you pathetic Nazarene. You’re the Holy One of God and we know you’ve come to destroy us!” To which Jesus impolitely responded, “Shut up! Get out of him!” - a command of authority. You have no right to be in this man. A legion of demons resisted and tore at the poor fellow, bringing him to the ground before departing from him, leaving him a normal human being.

Then all of God’s children started to talk after holding their breath. They couldn’t fathom what had just happened. Here was a person teaching something about the spiritual life that he could actually put into practice. Practically before the night was over, this happening was being reported all over Galilee. Try to hide that one!

This is Jesus’ first “mighty act,” his first demonstration of his godly power and authority. Every leader and every community with a leader waits with baited breath for the moment early on when those spoken words of wisdom take on the flesh of humanity and good deeds. Between leader and community a bond has now been welded. One trusts the other because each has experienced that the other has lived the Gospel before trying to speak and preach it.

Our only nagging problem now is that we don’t buy the bit about demons. We just don’t do demons anymore, and our eyes start to roll any time some religious type tries to create a universe of little devils running around pulling the strings of our lives. There are better and more scientific names for that legion of Biblical demons: all sorts of mental illness, chemical imbalances, perhaps even brain damage and cancer. I believe that nameless, rootless, causeless anxiety that holds so many hostage, forcing us to live and think differently than we know we could, is a subtle spirit of evil.

When Jim Cain had our interrupter bodily removed from the sanctuary, he took his demons with him. That naked young man eventually committed suicide. What are demons other than raw forces of evil or those conditions that destroy the vitality and hope of our lives? Is there not evil still alive in our world today? What pushes us to those conflicts that escalate into a knife in someone’s chest in our city? What do you call that stray bullet that killed the teenager on Yonge Street, caught unwittingly between two gangs? What do you call the actions of the corporations that brazenly pollute the environment for the sake of better profits? If it’s only bad luck, then we are truly in a frightening and out of control universe from which there is scarce any redemption and salvation.

Jesus addressed the demons, the evil, directly and told them that there was no place for them here. This is the very first thing Jesus is shown doing in his ministry: naming evil and robbing it of its authority and power. That was the prophets of old and now have to do first and it’s our first task too, and there is nothing easy or safe about it. I once was at a party where one junior executive lit unto me and told me something like this: “You are a religious person and so you think that our purpose is to be holy and good for the sake of humanity. But our company’s only real purpose is to make money, and we won’t be stopped by your holiness.” It was obvious that he was intimidated by my very presence as “a religious person,” so he had to attack first.

I responded, “I guess that’s what you believe.” I’m sorry that I couldn’t do better. He left the party with the demons even stronger still in him. We still have a word of God to speak to the evil of this world, and the words are not nice.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan